3-30-07 The Costanza Doctrine

Of all the analyses of the George W. Bush presidency, I have to say that this one from Financial Times is probably the first to really hit the nail on the head.

Anything and everything that the Bush administration has done can finally be put into its proper perspective.

3-20-07 Spring

At seven minutes past eight (eastern daylight time) this evening, the spring equinox will occur and it will mark the beginning of the Spring season. The first full day of Spring will be tomorrow, March 21st.

Every year, I look forward to the first day of Spring because, in my soul, this is the real beginning of the year to come. We can go by all sorts of different calendars that start each year at different points, but in the northern latitudes of this planet, Spring signals the rebirth of the flora which has been dormant through the winter months.

Of course, this particular Winter has been anything but typical, here in the northeast USA. We saw record high temperatures being set, over and over again, through October, November, December, and January. I'm over a half century old, and I've lived here in the northeast all but one year of my life, but I can't remember a winter like this one. We've only had two snowstorms this year that had any amount of snow that needed to be plowed, shoveled, or removed with the snowblower. They both occured within a couple weeks, during this current month.

The forecast for the next five days has temperatures rising to the point where, this weekend, temperatures will be into the 60's. I guess it's safe for me to assume that spring really is right around the corner. In fact, as I write this, it's only three hours away...

I spent a year in Los Angeles in the early 1980's. On New Year's day 1983, I swam in the Pacific Ocean and it was not a "polar bear" event... it was a warm sunny day, in the 70's, and the water was warm. That year stretched my seasonal sense, the sense of changing seasons, to the limit. There didn't appear to be any real change, the whole time I was there. The lowest temperature that occured while I was there was all the way down to about the mid-50's. That morning, I saw grown men wearing snorkel jackets with the hoods up, and drawn tight. I just wore a shirt. I remember standing there outside a restaurant talking to one of the LA natives, whose teeth were chattering, and who couldn't believe that I wasn't wearing a coat.

Temperatures in the mid-50's is spring-like weather, as far as I'm concerned.

The signs of Spring, the things that hit me and register "it's really Spring" include driving with the window open, and seeing that one or two day period where the buds on the trees suddenly burst open into leaves. There's something magical about that day when it's suddenly there, all those leaves unfolding on the trees.

There's also the final disappearance of the piles of snow. When it snows, it gets piled up in various places by plows, snowblowers and shovelers. These piles can be quite high in some places, and the bigger the pile, the more likely it will persist for quite some time into the warming weather. I tend to refer to them as "glacial deposits" and they seem to behave like some sort of glacial mass in many instances. If a big pile of snow has been made in a spot that doesn't get much sunlight on it, it can last well into the Spring. It really has to get hot out for several days before these shaded monsters finally melt away. And, as with a glacial mass, what's left behind is a lot of gravel.

I really like the changing of the seasons here in the northeast. The four seasons are distinct divisions to the year, and the transitions between them, although merely dates on calendars, nonetheless keep me looking forward to each one, year after year.

3-16-07 Patrick Fitzgerald of Gerald Fitzpatrick?

If you spent the time to read the three part Washington Post Op-Ed I linked to in my previous post, there is also a fourth part arguing the case for Patrick Fitzgerald as Gonzalez' successor.

Yes, the story has moved so fast that some journalists are no longer bothering to speculate whether Gonzalez will go, and not even when, but who will succeed him as Attorney General.

3-16-07 Atty Gen Gonzalez - pt4

Gee, I really didn't think it would be this big...

The Department Of Just Us is a humorous piece about it...

Then there's Delay the Amputation...

This is a really funny one, where the spin is that Sen. John Sununu is personally avenging his Dad's firing by Dubya.

And there are lots more where they came from. The "Bring me the head of Alberto Gonzalez" game is at a fever pitch, now. Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, there's a nice three part Op-Ed describing in great detail what's going on with this whole thing. If you've got some time to spare, there's part 1, part 2, and part 3.

3-14-07 The Expected One

This is just a followup post about a book written by Kathleen McGowan entitled, "The Expected One" which I finally found on the markdown table for a mere $4.98 last week. I posted about it last July here, although I hadn't read much of anything at that point. Now that I've read the book, I would say that I got what I paid for.

The essence of the southern France connection to Mary Magdelene is very juicily served up in this work of fiction that, were it not for the fact that it was written before the DaVinci Code was written, could easily be perceived as an opportunistic work. As an ode to Christianity, albeit the mystical piece it initially seems to come on as, it ends up being a fairly unsatisfying read (for me, anyway... maybe born-again types will really like it, especially the women).

What got me about the book is that the author had so much great stuff to work with. But with the hidden agenda of validating the resurrection folded in near the end of the story, it was terribly uneven. At some points it moved as tantalizingly as DaVinci Code, but then would drop off into some winding setup for... well, I never did figure out what. In the end the suspension of my disbelief was inadequately tethered.

How any of this can be worked into two more books is beyond me. I was off the bus with the chapters toward the end that are presented as the "gospel of Mary Magdelene"... as if the prose presented could be adequate to suspend disbelief even though it's presented as fiction. Most of the basic plot devices for building up suspense are wasted in favor of the "too much information" turnstile spinning at the end. Handing the reader ALL the answers at the back of the book just proves to be, in the end, unsatisfying.

I got the distinct impression that this is basically Kathleen McGovern's catharsis. As catharthis, it's actually very interesting and full of great stuff about this woman's personal spiritual journey. If it had only been presented as such more clearly, I think I would have enjoyed reading it much more than I did, having come at it from the "DaVinci Code" angle, especially as a work of fiction.

So, I'd recommend this book with that caveat... it's not really a work of fiction, but rather a personal catharsis, an outpouring of how the author put some semblance of order into what would otherwise be chaotic and troubling expereinces... visions, coincidences, quasi-historical revelations, and so forth. She makes no slightest claim to be relating anything but a fictionalized accounting of those personal experiences over the past two decades. As such, the work is more about her finding a resting place for her Christian beliefs, out of the turmoil of her visions and experiences over the past two decades. And I have to say that the feminist bent is enjoyable, too (something there wasn't enough of in DaVinci Code).

There's plenty of tantalizing stuff in the book for "DaVinci Code" fans, but the payoff isn't the big unanswered question leaving one salivating for more. The "payoff" here is a long denouement into a re-affirmation of faith.

3-14-07 Atty Gen Gonzalez - pt3

Oh, gosh! Well, lordy me! Yes, well, he may be in charge but, ...but, well, y'know he really didn't KNOW that this was going on! Here's the quote... "As we can all imagine, in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of justice, nor am I aware of all decisions," he [Gonzalez] said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

The brilliance of pleading ignorance is such an amazing thing to see.

And the response? Well, it's clear that Chuck Schumer is really pissed. Here's his quote... "That is a sorry excuse," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said minutes later on the Senate floor. "Did the attorney general not know that eight U.S. attorneys were to be fired?" Schumer said. "If he didn't know, he shouldn't be attorney general, plain and simple."

Here's the story from CNN.

And we need to keep in mind here that this is merely the focus of the eight attorneys that were fired. We still have a whole 'nother scandal going on with the justice department's choice of who to "investigate" and when, over the course of the past few years.

3-12-07 Atty Gen Gonzalez - pt 2

Things are moving quickly in this undercurrent of abhorrence that people feel towards the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez... I wondered if this sense of disgust would spread rapidly, or perhaps take a more languid journey into the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere, and that was only a couple of days ago.

Today, I find this article from Bloomberg which describes how distaste for this man is spreading quite rapidly into the public eye.

This is a good thing. I hope it goes beyond merely being yet another "scandal of the week" because this Gonzalez character has truly caused serious damage to the judicial branch of our government in his two short years in office. If he resigns today, it won't be soon enough for me.

3-9-07 A.G. Gonzalez

The problem with the Bush administration is that it is so corrupt, so unbelievably corrupt, that... well, people just don't believe it until the proof of the corruption is shoved in their faces. But then, an amazing thing happens. They get a little scared.

If, as the proof often demonstrates, these people in the Bush administration are really capable of such deep seated corruption and dirty tricks and manipulation and just plain evil, ...well, then, it might be prudent not to piss them off. If you did piss them off, they might go after you. They do, after all, have an awful lot of power.

So, we turn now to one of the ways that the Bush administration has been demonstrating that power against anyone who pisses them off. Here we have a link to a story that has only barely begun to break.

As with all the other bad news about the Bush administration, this story will merely fester around the internet for a while, until enough people get wind of it that it finally breaks upon the major media for the incredibly heinous scandal that it really is. Alberto Gonzalez should be out of the A.G. office before summer.

Tomorrow wouldn't be soon enough for me.

3-7-07 Making Fire and Making War

I think these two things go hand in hand. It's a "man thing". It's full of testosterone. I mean, do girls play with matches? Of course not... they know better.

Our millenia long existence on this planet has been as a fire society and there's not much chance of that changing anytime soon. Why? Because most of our war machinery runs on petroleum products.

It's all about the firepower.

Tanks and Hummers and B-1 bombers won't be running "hybrid electric" anytime soon, and they sure won't be running on solar power, either...

Oil drives the war machinery, and the war machinery is directed towards defending the access to this fuel, more often than not. It's a self-feeding, closed loop situation. Those in power cannot maintain their power without the military, the military runs on petroleum products, and thus the only way those in power can stay in power is to defend their access to the oil.

It doesn't take a doctorate to figure this out. Access to oil has played a major role in the conduct of war ever since mechanized armies were invented. The only other comparable influence on our history over the past century has been ideological fanaticism. People get all charged up on some idea, some issue, and they end up being used by the powers that be to further some other agenda. The old "bait and switch" is all it is. Besides, when the armies and navies and air forces of any ideologically driven warmonger has run out of gas, that's the end of it.

That's what happened to Nazi Germany when they failed to capture the oil fields at Baku, and that's what happened to the Japanese when they failed to hold onto the Phillipines. It was only the access to the oil that really mattered in the end.

The twentieth century could easily be viewed as the history of the Oil Wars. Anyone who views the current warmongering going on since the turn of the century as anything BUT Oil Wars really needs to take another look.

But the waging of war is something that requires the will of the people. The populations that send their children into the fray as cannon fodder need to believe that there's a good reason for the sacrifice. If they are lied to, if they are told that they are sacrificing life and limb for a good cause, but it turns out to be a lie... things tend to get a bit screwed up.

The reason the US government has active military stationed all around the world is to stay in power. The reason we're in Iraq is to keep the oil out of the hands of the fanatics.

If the Bush administration had told it to us straight, we wouldn't be in this mess. It's a good fight, it's in our best interests to go after control of the oil in the middle east. But it's the biggest mistake in history that the Bush administration has made, and continues to make, in trying to foist all these lies on us. Not only did they lie to us, they tried to work the whole thing so that cronies and buddies would profit from the warmongering activity, to the exclusion of everybody else.

Making fire and making war have been with us all our lives, and it will continue to be with us for the rest of our lives and our children's lives. But it will be a lot more difficult for our children and our grandchildren because the Bush administration played the wrong game. They played the selfish and greedy game, the game of spinning lies and more lies, and the game of pretending they didn't screw up on a grand scale from day one.

"Winning in Iraq" has nothing to do with anything else except "winning" our access to the oil. The Bush administration continues to squander our national resources on this pursuit, and if the prize is won, then this country's economy may have a chance to survive it. But if the prize is not won, and not won soon... making fire and making war will no longer be America's game as the biggest superpower on Earth.

3-7-07 How To Get Screwed

There's a whole bunch of people out there who are running their diesel cars on vegetable oil. They can get lots of free vegetable oil from the back doors of restaurants that use vegetable oil to fry food in. The waste vegetable oil that the restaurants used to pay someone to haul away and dispose of can now be taken away for free. And the people who take it away for free can use it to run the diesel engines in their cars. Everybody makes out, everybody wins.

Right?

It was just too good to be true... Apparently, it's too good to be true in Illinois where David Wetzel, 79, is currently being drawn and quartered by the Illinois Department of Revenue for failing to pay motor fuel taxes, operating without some kind of fuel "license", ordered to pay a $2500 bond, and as if that isn't enough, he's threatened with felony charges by these storm troopers.

It's all just another lesson in how to get screwed by the government... if you do something where everybody comes out ahead, the government thugs will show up sooner or later to demand their cut.

3-6-07 Making Fire

Somewhere back in the dim mists of pre-history, humans discovered how to make fire. We still make fire, and use it for just about everything. The whole world runs on fire. We are a "fire society" that has learned how to make hotter and more efficient fires with different fuels, thoughout the ages.

This is a paradigm of our existence that's so basic, it's often overlooked in everyday life. Oil, natural gas, coal, alcohol, hydrogen, wood, and several other substances are used to "make fire" and produce heat. We burn these things in fires that we control. The various technologies we have for controlling fire is quite amazing, when you take a good look at it. Finding a source of energy that we use which isn't generated by fire is actually very difficult.

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is nuclear energy. Einstein's fantastic theory, that the whole universe is actually made out of energy, has changed the way we think. But it hasn't changed the way we think THAT much...

A few short decades after Einstein's breakthrough in theoretical physics, the prospect of harnessing the energy that the universe if made out of finally burst upon the consciousness of the world on August 6, 1945. This was the day that an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. The "Atomic Age" had begun.

Six decades later, however, the only thing that "nuclear energy" is used for is heat. We've learned how to control the nuclear chain reaction so that it doesn't explode, but it does produce a great deal of heat. It is, essentially, only another form of "fire" that we've learned how to control. The heat from the nuclear chain reaction is used to boil water into steam. The steam is used to make a turbine spin. The spinning turbine is hooked up to an electrical generator, and this is how we get electric power out of "nuclear energy" ...pretty much the same old fire society paradigm that's been running along, now, for thousands and thousands of years.

We live in a whole universe that is, literally, made out of energy. But we only use the heat from a radioactive chain reaction in the same way we would use heat from any other fire...

There are alternative fuels such as alcohol and hydrogen that can be used to make fire, but they are still completely within the "fire society" paradigm, as well.

It's only when you start to look at energy sources that aren't based upon coming up with something to burn that we actually start thinking "outside the box". If you take a peek "outside the box," there are fires that are already burning which can be harnessed.

The Sun is radiating energy from the fusion of hydrogen, and this "fire" will be burning for a very long time. We know how to turn this radiant energy of sunlight directly into electricity at this time. But it's a lot less efficient or cost effective, so far, than simply "making fire" by burning things such as oil, coal, or natural gas.

There is also a "fire" already burning inside the Earth, and it's referred to as "Geothermal" energy when looking at how anyone might harness that. It's "free heat" and it'll be there for a very long time to come.

Looking just a bit further outside the box, there is wind power and tidal power. If fully developed, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and Tidal power sources could be used to supply more power in the form of electricity than the entire world could ever possibly need for thousands of years.

Generating usable power without burning something, without starting a fire and controlling it, is apparently a very difficult concept for this civilization to grasp, however. It seems simple enough, but the existing scene in our civilization is completely wrapped up in the "fire society" paradigm.

Until the cavemen who control this fire society can be brought to understanding and realize the need for change, we will continue to "make fire" and burn away this planet's limited resources.

3-4-07 Pangea

There's an intriguing geological sequence of continental drift, generally agreed to be an accurate description of how the Earth has looked over the course of the past 250 million years. This sequence begins with the supercontinent called "Pangea." It's composed of all the present day land mass on Earth, all smashed together.

Here's a drawing of how that is supposed to have looked. As you can see, there is basically one big continent and one big ocean.

Next, we have a drawing of what it looked like 180 million years ago. Pangea has split into a northern continent named Laurasia, and a southern continent named Gondwanaland.

The next drawing shows the breakup of Gondwanaland, as it was occuring 135 million years ago. And here we have how all the continents are believed to have been positioned around that point in time.

Finally, we get the familiar mercator projection world map as it looks today.

The develpment of the data behind all this has gone on for many years. The geological phenomenon of "continental drift" was eventually brought to these conclusions regarding what's been going on with it over the course of the past 250 million years, and now we have the Pangea story.

A recent article about how the Earth's crust is missing in a large area of the mid-Atlantic, and the Earth's mantle is exposed in this area, is what prompted me to come up with today's blog entry. It's an area at the midpoint of where Europe and North America drift further and further apart. The "mid-atlantic" has a lot of volcanic activity, as these plates keep spreading apart under the ocean. The only land mass on this split is Iceland, which is rife with volcanic activity. And it is, oddly enough, on the exact opposite side of the planet from the Pacific Ocean.

It's the Pacific Ocean that needs more explaining, in my view...

At any rate, all of the above seems to lend more and more weight to the theory that the Moon may have originally been part of the Earth, or that maybe the Earth was hit by an asteroid way back in geological time, and this impact ended up creating the Moon. These various theories, and I don't know which one is more generally accepted at this time, generally line up on one point, however, and that point is that the impact happened on the side of the Earth that's now the Pacific Ocean.

So, way before Pangea, back in the range of 2 billion years ago, it can be plausibly theorized that some sort of huge impact occured to explain why there would be only one land mass on the exact opposite side of the planet 1.75 billion years later (250 million years ago), and why all the land mass of the planet ended up spreading out from that side, and there yet remains the largest ocean in the world on the side that was impacted.

The article about the exposed mantle under the middle of the Atlantic Ocean lends some credence to the idea that the Earth's crust is still "adjusting" to the damage done by some theorized impact around 2 billion years ago.

It's all very interesting to see how this information has been developing over the years, as more and more research has been done to bring these ideas into focus.

3-1-07 WTC-7

Is it just me? Am I the only one who can calculate what time it is in New York, when it's 10pm in London?

According to this YouTube clip of the BBC broadcast on the evening of 9-11-01, the news service is reporting the collapse of Building 7 in the World Trade Center twenty minutes before it collapsed. It calculates that because it's 10pm in London, then it's 5pm in New York, which would put the report of the building's collapse as coming out before it even happened.

However, at 10pm in London on 9-11-01, it was 6pm Eastern DAYLIGHT Time (Not EST), and the building had collapsed about 40 minutes before the report was made. If there is/was any conspiracy surrounding the events of 9-11, this sort of easily discredited reportage certainly muddies the playing field, doesn't it?

Who would want to do that? (duh!)