November SA

 

THE BIG ONE
I finally had a thought about the quake. We've got plenty food in our pantry to last a lifetime, but water is a problem. I've resolved that as I usually have a case or two of wine around, so that lasts me several weeks as it does now. However, no one has ever mentioned how to flush toilets when you have no water. I’.m not going to flush with my wine but my solution is to piss in a can, then use that for a no.two flush. I do expect a Nobel piss for that one.

VOTING

 We're making progress here. I can vote by mail now but am hoping to vote via internet before I die. Baby steps. Meanwhile, I have a few complaints about our ballots.

  First off - I don't want to vote for Controllers, Appraisers, Insurance types. How do their politics come into play when they are just doing a job like controller? why can’t they just be appointed by someone who has the power to do so.  Junior College member? I don't give a rats ass about who is capable of running a college. Why do they have to go through the whole thing of raising money for a job like that?  Maybe it pays pretty good but their politics, forget it. Maybe the whole thing is that you can’t fire the incompetents. But don’;t get me started on that.

  All that’s left is lets all vote more school funds every time. Not me! I know about the obscene amount of money squandered on our wonderful school system. Here’s how it works;  Public schools (College also) do not come under the scrutiny of our Building Dept., they have to be overseen by the State Architect. In this area, that means your school project has to be checked  and approved by a bunch of ass-hole anus loving Chinese engineers & architects who will beat any tiny amount of creativity you may have inadvertally expressed. But wait! It doesn’t  stop there, as now you have to hire another CONSTRUCTION INSPECTOR to make sure you are spending an inordinate amount of our hard earned dollars to construct this machine for learning    Now, I don’t believe that I am a Prima Donna,   Private schools  are weirdly, treated like any other construction project, by the local jurisdiction. I’ve done a few of them and always wonder, are we putting our wealthier kids in danger in order to eliminate them in the next big one?  I guess that would level the playing field, eh?   

 

VIDEO ALERT

I came across ‘Generation War’, a video from Germany, showing a different view of WW2.

Mostly fighting Russians, and not those pesky Americans.

Another good one RESCUE DAWN, a recent video of Vietnam “Incident”, well done. Kind of like an escape from the Stalag. 

 QUESTION;  Is horrific a word?

 KIVA

I mentioned that a couple of years back I loaned $25 to Kiva Organization. They gave a couple of loans to some motivated people in Kenya and I got all the loan back recently. It went so well, I donated it to their management to use to offset expenses.   Kiva, unlike other huge organizations, spends a very small percentage on managing, but uses local people to do that.

TAKE NO PRISONERS  Why do they always refer to her as Hillary Rodham Clinton?  Are there that many Hillary Clintons around?  On the other hand, when talking about a prisoner, they always use the middle name. Kind of make’s me wonder.

NORTHWEST PASSAGE

It took me longer to find his book than it actually did his finding of the Pacific.

BOOK REVIEW  -  I have been searching for a description of the Pacific Coast by McKenzie in 1778, a Canadian who beat even Lewis and Clark’s venture.  I finally discovered a book recently as strangely, there doesn’t seem to be much written about his adventures.  Well, that’s no surprise since I opened up his tome, it was a direct reproduction of his original book of 1780, but how surprising to find it in OLD ENGLISH, which means that the letter’ ‘s’  was not used much as it was substituted by a character that looks like an’‘f’, but subtly altered with part of ‘f’s’ cross over. Anyway, let me give you an example of what I had gotten into;

 “ My new Conductor(guide)  being very much difcouraged and quite tired of his fituation, ufed his influence to prevent our proceeding. He had never been, he faid, at the Benahulla Toe, or White Man’s Lake; and that when he went to the Efquimaux Lake, which is at no great diftance, he paffed over land from the place where we found him, and to that part where the  Efquimaux pafs the fummer. “

This all went well, except for a couple of spots, like:  lefs = less,  the ’s’  is only used on double ‘s’  words.

How about ‘fubfiftence’ or ‘fciffors’? (subsistence, scissors)  that can really slow you down.

Anyway, we all got to the coast above Vancouver and safely back again.

VIDEO ALERT

I came across ‘Generation War’, a video from Germany, showing a different view of WW2.

Mostly fighting Russians, and not those pesky Americans.

HOW THE FARMERS BEGAN

One of my favorite books is’ The History of Civilization’ which has some nifty insights into not ‘Why are we here’ but more like ‘When we were here.’  While we are all sitting around in coffee shops worrying about a change in world temperature of a couple of degrees, the author  describes the massive fluctuation of world temperatures, fo the past few million years.  His enlightening graph shown here is derived from some drillings in some ice masses that are 3,000 feet thick at least and calculated from relationship between two distinct  isotopes of Oxygen. From 200,000 years ago, it seems the earth’s temperature varied massively until about 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC) when it became very stable.  That coincided with the advent of farming and which resulted in the initial growth of cities.  It took a long time for the climate to get to a point where our ancestors could settle down to a farming life, and they took the first opportunity to do it.  Must have been some of my people.

One of my favorite books is’ The History of Civilization’ which has some nifty insights into not ‘Why are we here’ but more like ‘When we were here.’  While we are all sitting around in coffee shops worrying about a change in world temperature of a couple of degrees, the author  describes the massive fluctuation of world temperatures, fo the past few million years.  His enlightening graph shown here is derived from some drillings in some ice masses that are 3,000 feet thick at least and calculated from relationship between two distinct  isotopes of Oxygen. From 200,000 years ago, it seems the earth’s temperature varied massively until about 10,000 years ago (8,000 BC) when it became very stable.  That coincided with the advent of farming and which resulted in the initial growth of cities.  It took a long time for the climate to get to a point where our ancestors could settle down to a farming life, and they took the first opportunity to do it.  Must have been some of my people. 

SWIMMING WITH WARLORDS (Book Review) Kevin Sites

The author, a journalist describes his “Imbedment” with troops in Afganistan .  This war, not much different than Iraqs’, but we’ve only lost 2,100 of our young people so far, not counting the ones who  are alive but missing  legs or arms?

  He notices that the Taliban come from Pakistan. Most of their leaders are not religious, they want to tax the Afgani’s during the opium harvest and take the money back to Pakistan. There is no Jihad is their moto!

Here’s a thought for you “”Man-love Thursday” is a phrase about the Afgani men like to have sex with each other so they will not be distracted by lustfull thoughts on Friday, the Muslin day of prayer. Sexual relations between men and boys in Kandahar are notorious.  Hmmmm. I’ve never read anything about that in the newspapers.

 Some say 50% of Taliban are addicted to opium.  There are maybe a million addicts in Afgan,   and why not after 20 years of war (don’t forget the Russians). 
    Bagram is the incredibly expensive  military base in Afganastan, we spent $200 million in 2009 to expand it to a small city, with a population of 30,000.  Bagram is America’s duty-free space station in the war on terror and may be the most culturally isolated outpost on the planet. The world’s most effective killing machine has ensconced itself in a hastily constructed replica of a Mid-west strip mall”.

The author ,  Site,  gives first hand descriptions of blatant corruption on all levels.  He also makes note of the  suicides  of our troops. In2012, 349 had killed themselves, while 295 were killed in combat.

Was it all worth it? Sites points out a classified report from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that chaos will engulf Afganistan without our aid, even with an ongoing investment of $8 Billion a year, the Taliban will likely take over the country by 2017. I told you so, doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?  Can't we get some of that 8 Billion to fix our pot-holes in Sonoma County?

 

SA October

A LOOK AT EBOLA, WHICH MAKES AIDS LOOK BENIGN
I'm re-sending this as it is the current crises.

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.
Can you imagine the mess, when a person has bled out all over the hospital room? Would you be a volunteer nurse to clean it up?

VENICE

 I suppose one must not miss the Caffe Florian , if you're hanging around the Piazza San Marco. We should have had coffee instead of drink, as the price was not as high as Harry's, but pretty close.  Anyway, one must immerse onseelf into a little history once in a while, damn the cost!. The first coffee house opened in 1683 on the Campo (Piazza), and Florian Francesconi open his in 1720. Soon there were 30 coffee houses on the Campo. But Florian seems to have prevailed, and his is the largest one on the Campo. I suppose part of the cost of your drink goes to pay the four musicians (Classical) entertaining you. Of course, this was the place to be seen for a couple of centuries, where now, we?re just all bloody tourists having a small taste of luxury.  The Rousseaus and Casanovas have all gone.  Let's go around the corner and see if we can spend more fore a Martini at Harry's Bar.

EIFFEL TOWER
I'm re-doing this as the published text got screwed up in earlier blog, somehow.

BOOK REPORT - The Tallest Tower by Jos. Harris
Towards the end of the 19th century, the holy Grail of construction was a one thousand foot  high structure, so that was the program of the competition of such for the Paris Exhibition of  1890 . Only Eiffel had the construction expertise to pull off his design, a basic minimalist tower
that would not be blown over and would carry fair goers to the top, as well as several posh restaurants   on the first stage.  By thee time the Paris Fair Board made up their mind which design they chose, there was two  and half years to design & construct the tower. Of course, the elevator was just being invented, to say nothing about one slanted and changing angles.
   At the same time, forged steel was just  being invented, but Eiffel incorporated both these in his bid to build it. He eventually got paid  $900,000 from the city of Paris, as well as putting up a million and a third of his own money.
When all was complete, on time, it was a little under budget. He had a deal to run the
concessions for twenty years, which reimbursed him for his investment. The previous tallest
structure was the Washington Monument in USA at 555 feet and took 36 years to complete in
stone.
  It as surprising to note that Eiffel did not design it, but his chief engineer did. Although very
probable Gustave was a major influence on the concept. Although we see the tower as
beautiful, his solution was strictly utilitarian, barely an extra pound of steel anywhere in the
structure. He made one exception to that to alleviate the feeling of the time that an arch was
necessary for a structure, so he added a superfluous steel arch on the four sides of the base,
something I've always wondered about.
In order to reduce the problem of the workers who would have to climb all the way down to a
cafe nearby and load up on cognac for lunch, Eiffel opened his own cafe so they could stay up
high but he only sold wine and food, all at a super reasonable cost. However, danger was still
rampant, as they worked through two winters, where wind, snow and ice were formidable foes.
But no loss of life, except for one idiot worker, showing off for his girlfriend after work, fell to his

Briar canal over Loire River

death. splat!
I've been on three of his structures, starting with the rail bridge over the Gironde river at
Bordeaux, (his first large project), the Briar Canal Viaduct that spans over the Loire river for  about a thousand feet, as well as the tower. We are not used to the concept, where the
designer is also the builder. Even though his designs are classic, his inventiveness of
construction methods were amazing. Hydraulic water jacks, sand jacks for alignment , etc. were  only the beginning of his creativity.

Le Canal Viaduct

MOSTLY EUROPE

ST SULPICE

ST. SULPICE ORGAN

Sunday mornings in Paris are usually taken up trying to miss the Noon mass, but catching the marvelous organ concert for half an hour is a real treat. St. Sulpice is an old church but somehow missed out  on all the Gothic architecture (too bad). The facade is embellished with scores of huge Greek columns combined with a lot of poor Romanesque details. However, this is the 2nd largest cathedral in Paris (After Notre Dame). But the organ! Installed in about 1750 by one of the masters, this thing will clear out the interstices of all your atoms when cranked up for some Bach or Buxtahude score. This must have been an awesome experience for the poor, unread masses  (Is that where the word mass comes from?). After each concert, a small lady emerges from the innards of the monster to bow at a small applause from us awed few.

TGV (Train Grand Vitesse or  train real fast)

TGV

But wait! Don't trade your car for a trian just yet. If they have a strong union you are screwed. Every time we go to France (We've been to Paris about 20 times) we get in the middle of a  massive Greve (Strike!). They do not tell ahead of time that they shut down all rail traffic for a week at noon. We found out about it when ewe arrived at the Geneva, Switzerland about noon and noticed something weird about the notification train board of Departures. A note (In French or Swiss or Italian noted that there were problems. No shit, Seymour! There were no trains going to France. Our original layover of one half hour became several as we got in a couple of lines for information, someone told us that the French trains ran from platforms 7 & 8 and maybe one would leave at about 1400. We had a nice Thai lunch with a bottle of wine, then got in a packed hallway to wait for about an hour . It was stifling hot, no place to sit, but in these cases one has to be flexible. Was this the First Class TGV section? Eventually, the door opened and we all ran up to the quai to await the ;Fast Train'. We interpretered the conflicting directions of where the train would stop as we had two bags each someone and wanted to be in our 1st class car. When the train finally arrived, it was a regular type but we surged thru the crowd to get on and find a seat on the upper level. (Most trains, even TGV are two level now). This was a really big surprise, as there ere only four other vagrants in our car. We pulled out of Geneva for Lyon, France but made long stops at several towns along the way. At one point, we were traveling so fast, I became concerned the this type of inter-urban train would de-rail. Maybe we were on a high speed rail line and didn't have many curves to negotiate. Anyway, we arrived in

Lyon eventually, calling our really apartment owner that we were hours late. Now, at the Gare, we followed directions to the taxi stand, got there and waited in vain until an off duty cabbie told us the strike was killing the taxis as there were no crowds. He told us to go to the other side of the gare to find taxis , which we did, and duly were dropped at our riverside apartment to meet Oriele. This was not exactly what we booked as there was no

OUR APARTMENT Two windows4th floor

Orange Cube offices

elevator (After all, this was built in 1875). She said it was on the third floor but Europeans call the 2nd floor the first. Here we were, an 84 your old with a heart condition and Medina with a sprained ankle. We insisted and the Owner humped all the bags up all four flights.

MILLE MIGLIA

Landed in Milan, they are adding to the terminal so we walked forever, took a taxi into town

as 5 of us with bags is formidable. An hours trip but cost 10 euros each, not bad for a start. Lots of big new skyscrapers under construction, we duly took in the covered street ; the Galleria', the Gingerbread Cathedral , Pomodoros sculpture, decompress from jet lag, then catch a train to Pisa. You'd think we wanted to see the leaning tower, but I've already done that a couple of times; the rest our group will return for a look-see. Train to Pisa not an easy thing to do, then getting to airport to pick up cars at Hertz. Our strategy was to intercept the Mille Migli on our way to Volterra, where they were stopped for lunch. We got more than we bargained for. After watching the old racers zoom around a roundabout, we forged on and ended on the same road, but on opposing lane as the race.

Our Locando in chianti

It got a bit hairy when some exuberant driver needed to pass and didn't like waiting for us get clear . There were a few Lambourgini's and Ferrari's there as they probably owned some of the old cars. Upon arrival at Volterra (known for their alabaster work) it was still clogged with the residue and motorcycles so we had to abort and seek our lunch elsewhere. We found a place in Poggibonsi for that and also to load up our grocery cart and wine for our new apartment. After a few short, windey miles, we found our split level, two story stone locando perfect for a few days here in Chianti.

Idiots Delight

LOVE KILLS

   Love is a strange emotion, it can be a great destroyer. Just observe the poor bridge in Paris, (Artists Bridge), a beautiful pedestrian bridge that has become infected with padlocks, Already, the guardrails are collapsing, can the bridge itself support the added tons our love-locks purportedly installed there by couples who claim forever love for each other. There are so many of these 'Love Locks' the the bridge may fail and fall apart. It was not designed for such heavy loads  frivolous poor mis-guided lovers have added? Hopefully, when it does collapse, a horde of lovers will be destroyed in the process, saving us further problems.

ARAGOS' MERIDIAN
 The French are sometimes far ahead of the time, and their establishing the first Meridian, or

A Medallion

line of latitude in 1850's is a prime example. The astronomer, Arago, established a line from the North Pole to the South, actually surveying it to North Africa, even though two years of the work was spent in a Spanish prison (At war with France). This allowed any mariner, who owned a chronometer on the globe fairly accurately. Up to that point, only the Longitudes were of any help. A while latter, the Damned British moved it to Greenwich, where it is currently. Never-the less, this great accomplishment was honored by an artist in 1980, who installed 6'' metal medallions throughout Paris to mark the actual original meridian. Don't ever go to Paris without trying to find one of these as they are mostly still intact.

HOUSEKEEPING

Traveling in Europe these days we rent apartments for a week at a time. This is cheaper than our hotel on the left bank and also we get to interact with the locals when doing our shopping, etc. However, it;s amazing some of these don't have the basic tools in order to survive, like a corkscrew. therefore, we currently have a 'kitchen bag' that we carry on our sojourns. This has all the things you will not find in these apartments; Serrate knife for bread & tomatoes, egg cup, corkscrew, Swiss Army knife (Big one!), sponge, soap, etc. The downside to a system like this is, when your wife (who wants to pack all bags) forgets her brain and puts that bag in Lamont's carry-on. When I arrived at the security at DeGaule Airport, in Paris, the agent knew she had struck gold. Imagine! All the sharp stuff in one small bag. Fortunately we didn't have our plastic wine glasses lost. We use them when we have lunches on trains with our cheese & bread. That sure made her day and her job easy that time. It also strained our filial relationship to the utmost. Some of these things I had found in France on previous trips and are now lost. Fortunately, at my age, I know you can't take it with you so we eventually became friends again.

THE FAN CLUB

Derived from the word, fanatic', you only have to see a few minutes of 'The Tour de France', the World Soccer games, or any professional sports game to observe Idiots in Action:. I would rank the behavior of the bicycle race fans as the worst. Although you have to understand that these poor souls have to camp out, set up, and wait for a COUPLE OF DAYS  in order to have a good place to view the race. Whether 100 degrees or a huge rainstorm, they just persevere. But when the actual competitors zoom by at 30 miles an hour for about THREE MINUTES for all 190 guys to ride by, these fans usually go berserk and start acting like chimpanzees. They all crouch down, holler and scream, clap their hands, or, wave a flag of some nation in the face of the riders. This is one of the few sports where the fans (Fanatics) have full access to the competitors, allowing them to pat them on the back or butt, run alongside of them if they're slow enough, get out in the street until here is virtually no path for these poor bastards on bikes to get through. It would seem that they were all trying to encourage the riders, but it really gets weird sometimes, as about half of the fans are wearing some goofy outfit, going completely naked ocoasionally.

SACRED GROUND?

OUR SACRED GROUND

OK, I've got to vent a bit about 1 WTC again, which is nearing completion in the Big Apple. But someone has to point out a few absurdities of the entire fiasco, might as well be me.  First I want to state I always thought it kind of crazy to hurry up and rebuild the tallest building in town, just because some bloody furriners finally got through our defenses to do some major damage. Can you imagine? A whole building of non-combatants killed in order to get our attention. Kind of reminded us of the dastardly Pearl Harbor attack 60 years ago. Although the body count was about the same, (3,000) our frustration was really a problem as we couldn't blame any one country for it. However, our dear president Bush II and his cronies were able to invade a couple of countries to tighten up our oil supply, with hardly any resistance from our representatives in Congress. Ten years later we're trying extricate ourselves from it, while the rag-heads can start killing each other again. They even have the same religion, for Allah's sake!

  But I digress.   Where to begin? As an architect/engineer the whole thing is fraught with so many over the top ideas it brings me to tears.  Let's begin with the height. Some idiot picked the number 1776 to be the height of the replacement. But that's not really the height. It is the height of a 400 foot (40 stories) mast. the height of the roof is the same as the height of the twin towers that collapsed (1368 ft).  It appears this building is designed to be "sustainable after being hit by a 747 aircraft.  This is crazy!  Why not sell it to Target and paint a huge bullseye on each side?

  Let's look at some stats.  This is the most expensive building ever built. Originally estimated to be $1.5 billion, it has gone up to about $3.9 billion!  Wait, there's more. The first 186 ft is a windowless base of steel and concrete, 5 ft thick.  24 steel columns, so huge, they had to be made in Luxembourg (do you know how teenie a country that is?), as they were the heaviest in the world & we couldn't do it here. These, with the added concrete form a 5 ft protective barrier from a truck bomb on the nearby street. Just as well, there was no room there for office space, anyway, as the core & elevators, stairs took up all the room. 

  Anyway, the tall building folks were not fair in voting it to be the tallest in US. Just because they added a giant mast to it. But some criteria for tall building require the highest usable space to be the top. Not even close here. It appears that the top couple of hundred feet are mechanical floors. I maintain the Chicago tower is still the highest.   You don't see the citizens of Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan running to build on what is now called "Sacred Pit" and we killed 100,000 in each hell Fire.

   I'm only  upset by our knee jerk over reaction quasi religious hullaballoo and massive  squandering of money on a project that could have been completed with  with some real thought going in to such a huge project and maybe save a few billion along the way.

 

FERAL FACTIONS

 Since I strongly believe that our form of government (State & Federal) is suffering from a bad case of Democralerosis (Too much democracy), i searched my The Federalist again for an answer to this enigma. Madison's No. 10 anticipated something of this before the Constitution was adopted. He talked about factions are hard to resist in a Democracy but much easier in a Republic. I guess at the time, it didn't seem possible how much power Lobbyists were to wield, and how much money would be available for the poor legislator to resist.  If the term "Everyone has his price", how many can resist a juicy little extra something, even though most of them are already millionaires.

  It has been said that citizens should be familiar with three foundations of our Republic; The Bill of Rights, The Constitution and the Federalist Papers.  The papers were essays written weekly before the constitution was ratified.   I always wonder how many of our legislators have even heard of them.

  One of Madison's observations was that the problem would get out of hand as states were added. This is a tremendous view, as maybe part of our problem is the hundreds of politicians, who are wrangling at this time, from the addition of nearly forty more states since that time. .  Also, remember the alternate to a Federal government that was being considered at the time was to divide the 13 states into three small nations, probably to fight each other forever, or maybe that would have avoided the civil war?

 AVANTE!

  Things are heating up around my house again as Joy and I are preparing for another trip to Europe in the Spring. Not so simple this time as we are traveling with a couple of friends as well as a couple of my kids. Fortunately, Joy has become a real tour guide from our experiences on about ten trips before. She can transform an economy seat on the plane into a First Class (Use of Admirals Club!) by throwing our 'miles'  at them. Now we couldn't possibly be seen in the 'cattle car' section of the aircraft. That's not as easy as they make it sound, even though we charge nearly everything on our 'miles' card, even our property taxes. since 1988, we have spent about twenty weeks in Paris alone, Mostly on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) among the art galleries. Our favorite sidewalk Cafe ,Le Frigate, is in an unlikely spot, right across the Seine overlooking the Pont Royal

 bridge and the Louvre. It's an incredibly busy street, very noisy, but so very interesting! Motorcycles, Smart cars, policia vans with their wonderful two tone siren, tour buses from all over Europe,  hot babes on scooters. See my map of or digs in Paris on the left.

 WHERE WAS I?

  A couple of years ago (Seems like yesterday) I left off describing my various incarnations on the way to here & now.  Let's see, I left off when I was a sperm whale (love the term!) I had a real need to be out of water as I already breath the air, so it wasn't long before I was buzzing around in a mosquito body, sucking blood from beings like me now. I wonder, if time doesn't really exist, if it is possible to run into yourself in a different body. Let's let that one go, and set me up in a nice humming bird , flying from Argentina to California every year, fighting off all my friends in order not to share any of he meager food these flowers provide.  I especially liked my time as a ladder back wood pecker, banging my brains out on telephone poles and trees.  I might mention one of my stints in the aviary kingdom was the time I spent as a small dinosaur, feathers and all, except I couldn't even get off the ground to fly, but I could really speed around on my two hind legs. Wasn't much different from my chicken life, laying eggs around in a nice barnyard somewhere in Persia.  Finally got into four legs as a cheetah, really had a ball running around the Serengeti. Fell into a really boring life as a house cat for some folks in Boston, man, did I ever have it easy there, eat, drink & sleep all the time, but didn't live very long, I was glad to be a bull elephant for a hundred years or more before i finally fell into a humanoid form. This form really was a drag as it lasted for thousands of years, although there were some highlights, like the times I was a geisha in Japan, a lot better than the damn Zen monk later on. Anyway, I finally got into Lamonts body and here I am, describing my long and interesting ride thru all the species. I remember them well,  We'll see how long this one lasts, maybe a few short years more in human form, then I''ll be one with god.  You know what? i wouldn't have missed the trip for anything, as if i could.  I hope I didn't miss anything, I did start out this excursion in the plant kingdom, didn't I?  You know, you can get some idea of your past times by noting the books, objects that interest you (or repel). I can't get enough of sailing ships of the line and their crews, also wars with Wellington, Napoleon as well as Alexander the Great. What grater thrill than reading about his shenanigans when i was getting married in Greece. Walking the ancient stones of Athens, Rome, as I felt such a kinship with the city planners of 500 BC around the Aegean Sea.

EIFFEL'S '"MONSTROSITY"

EIFFEL TOWER
BOOK REPORT - The Tallest Tower by Jos. Harris
Towards the end of the 19th century, the holy Grail of construction was a one thousand foot
high structure, so that was the program of the competition of such for the Paris Exhibition of
1890 . Only Eiffel had the construction expertise to pull off his design, a basic minimalist tower
that would not be blown over and would carry fair goers to the top.
By thee time the Paris Fair Board made up their mind which design they chose, there was two
and half years to design & construct the tower. Of course, the elevator was just being invented,
to say nothing about one slanted and changing angles. At the same time, forged steel was just
being invented, but Eiffel incorporated both these in his bid to build it. He eventually got paid
$900,000 from the city of Paris, as well as putting up a million and a third of his own money.
When all was complete, on time, it was a little under budget. He had a deal to run the
concessions for twenty years, which reimbursed him for his investment. The previous tallest
structure was the Washington Monument in USA at 555 feet and took 36 years to complete in
stone.
It as surprising to note that Eiffel did not design it, but his chief engineer did. Although very
probable Gustave was a major influence on the concept. Although we see the tower as
beautiful, his solution was strictly utilitarian, barely an extra pound of steel anywhere in the
structure. He made one exception to that to alleviate the feeling of the time that an arch was
necessary for a structure, so he added a superfluous steel arch on the four sides of the base,
something I've always wondered about.
In order to reduce the problem of the workers who would have to climb all the way down to a
cafe nearby and load up on cognac for lunch, Eiffel opened his own cafe so they could stay up
high but he only sold wine and food, all at a super reasonable cost. However, danger was still
rampant, as they worked through two winters, where wind, snow and ice were formidable foes.
But no loss of life, except for one idiot worker, showing off for his girlfriend after work, fell to his
death. splat!
I've been on three of his structures, starting with the rail bridge over the Gironde river at
Bordeaux, (his first large project), the Briar Canal Viaduct that spans over the Loire river for
about a thousand feet, as well as the tower. We are not used to the concept, where the
designer is also the builder. Even though his designs are classic, his inventiveness of
construction methods were amazing. Hydraulic water jacks, sand jacks for alignment , etc. were
only the beginning of his creativity.

Briar Canal Bridge over Loire River, circa 1890

AB URBE CONDITA
We've got to get organized. This dating fiasco has got to come to a head. How did everyone
(Europe) keep track of time before Justinian or ?? changed all the dates to when a mythical
figure had been born 3 hundred years earlier. The Arabs tried the same damn thing with their
guy, but did that ever take? Do the Mexicans still use their old calendar that was good for
thousands of years, except the damn Spaniards changed all that. Maybe we could begin when
the writing was invented, 2500 BC? See, I'm still doing it, except someone changed all that to
BCE & CE? Christian Era? No body told me they were doing that! Or start with Buddha, 1500
BC = Year one. Or at least with Socrates time, about 500 BC,
Keeping track of the years kind of started by the founding of Rome. It was around 753 BC that
Varro had the bright idea to keep track instead of listing the Consuls names. Therefor, the
mythical Jesus was born about 753, not the year one! AB URBE CONDITA is Latin for "from
the founding of Rome". which is a reasonable time frame to start from. The Anno Domini (AD)
came into use about 532 AD, where tis gets really confusing. By 537 AC? Justinian changed to
a new system beginning with the birth of a mystical figure Jesus.
Therefore, was Jesus born in 753? Was Socrates living in 550? or 1003? Was it additive of
subtractive? Let's assume additive.
Rome Founded - Ab Urba Condita year 00
Socrates - 1000
Jesus born - 1506
Columbus discovers us - 2245
July 4th! - 2529
WW 2 - 2693
Today - 2767 (And you thought it was only 2014!)
GET USED TO IT!  By the way, my birthday is June 4,  2683, but I'll be in Paris again.

HURRAY! THE WAR'S OVER!
Our president just told us "I ended the war in Iraq". I was wondering how that was going. I
guess we got all the nuclear war heads out of there. Is there still a war in Afghanistan? And
remind me what we were supposed to be doing there? (Other than protecting our oil supply).
Do we still believe we were doing it to help propel these poor bastards into Democracy? Don't
any of our advisors read history? We all know these Islamists have been killing each other since
Mohammed's brother in law started his own form of Islam.
I know it's not P.C. to question 'what went wrong?' but I have to. Just ask anyone from ORHA ,
The people from Washington who were supposed to set up a government as soon as the killing
was over. It seems impossible but we didn't begin planning for such a thing until a couple of
months before 'mission Accomplished'. By comparison, we spent two years planning the post
war Germany. The ORHA folks were given a bare space without even desks, to say nothing of
telephones. Washington sent recent grads from prestige schools to help run Iraq. One young
woman was given the job of all traffic control in the country of millions, yet she knew nothing of
Urban Planning.
Worse, yet, in 2003 Paul Bremer was sent in to run the whole crazy deal. He initiated several
disastrous programs. First, he closed all form of government the Iraqi's had, second, he fired all
Saddams workers and disbanded the existing army. That immediately formed a group of
500,000 armed men who had no jobs & no way to support families & relatives. Oh, and by the
way, these men knew where all the arms were stored. Immediately there was wholesale looting
of one of the most historic Museums in the world, as well as the incredible library with
thousands of ancient writings, but worse, the U.S. didn't feel it was necessary to protect these
from the looting and destruction. I forgot to mention we let out 100,000 prisoners to help out the
looting. And wee didn't think it necessary to protect the several huge arms dumps. Have I
painted a stupid enough picture, yet?
I'm glad we got it all sorted out about just who or what was to know the difference between a
Rebel, Insurgent, Militant, Shiite & Sunni?

WHAT IF??
Have you noticed how our wars have gotten kind of weird, lately? We sure showed 'em in
Vietnam. Those dirty commies thought they could get away with a government of the people,
like we do (Well, at least our 'A government by the Lobbyists ' ). I guess they must all really be
sorry they have to live under a commie government, although a friend of ours has been there for
several years and says it;s OK. But that's impossible, right? My government told me so.
That brings up a question of has anyone written books about our wars describing how it may
have turned out if Germany had won the war, One & two? How about the revolutionary war? Or
our Civil War? I'm just found one about how Hitler won and will let you know how that comes
out.
Did we ever declare war on Them? Did we ever surrender to them? But that was a simple
war, unlike these damn skirmishes in Iraq & Afghan, where we end up fighting guerrilla warfare
in the hills & streets with our giant aircraft carriers and monster high altitude bombers. It seems
some of our politicians still don' know what we're supposed to be doing there. (What?
Destroying expensive war equipment so our Mil-Industrial guys can build more and cash in on
the bonanza? now I hear we have to take in refugees who were mere translators and can't live
in their country anymore as they will be killed. I mean, like thousands.

FOR THOSE GOING TO EUROPE SOON

Every few years I have to send this out as it reminds me how I tried to learn Esperanto, the all-language language. (Forget it!).  For all us really good spellers.

Subj: EuroEnglish Phase In Schedule

The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English

will be the official language of the EU - rather than German (the

other possibility). As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's

Government conceded that English Spelling had some room for

improvement, and has accepted a 5-year phase-in of new rules which

would apply to the language and reclassify it as EuroEnglish.

The agreed plan is as follows;

In year 1, the soft 'c' would replaced by the 's'. Sertainly, this

will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be

replaced by 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan

now have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the

troublesome 'ph' is replaced by 'f'. This will reduse 'fotograf' by 20%.

In the 3d year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted

to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have

always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the

horible mes of the silent 'e's in the language is disgrasful and they

should eliminat them.

By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as

replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v' (saving mor keyboard spas).

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords

kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be applied to ozer

kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz year, ve vil have a reli sensibil riten styl. Zer

vil be no more trubls or difikultis and evrirum vil find it ezi to

understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!.

Karla K. Wurzel