Predominately in my blogs I will speak my mind about world events and the collective political scene. As a scientist I look for refuge in my own family microcosm. I feel it necessary as the resident scientist to maintain order and remind my family from time to time when insanity is creeping up on them. Of late I am confronted with my own . . . Well . . . strangeness.
To my eldest son Elvis, who is dating and in denial about dating at the same time, I merely remind him to be sure not to marry a sociopath. I did this once, to forever prove to the world that it is a bad idea! “Sociopaths are everywhere,” I tell him. They are like the mold spores that infect bread after the expiration date, you think you are eating a tuna sandwich and BAM! There’s this new weird thing going on between your taste buds and your gag reflex. And oh yes, be pure and wholesome at all times, I know its hard, but remember, your hormones are the constant adversary of the soul.
Freddy, caught precariously between childhood and a tank-like body like the HULK, understands only that he must be cool. He knows all the "rules," most of which I do not. Among the strangest rules? I note. Don’t walk with me at the mall and don’t make me wear my coat to school. The scientist says, “but son it’s only 15 degrees this morning. I was nearly buried alive last winter during that blizzard last year. Coats are good! Cold . . . BAD! Water, of which composes 75% of your body , freezes at a mere 32 degrees.” As of this date he is still alive.
The scientist does not understand what cool means. That it is not cool at 15 degrees? How cool is cool? Oh I get it! . . . this is a lingo, slang, semantic, teen thing right? In only five more years, I remind myself, his brains frontal lobe will be fully developed.
Then there is Hans. Hans is six years old. When I was five, I was already a scientist. One of my first and most persistent exploits into empirical data, was to take one of my mothers bobby pins and try to race the electrons in the wall outlets around the house. I was sure I could beat them at least once. I practiced and practiced for hours, with my rapid in and out motion. I guessed I had honed the motion down to about as fast as I could blink, which was faster than dynamite on the Lone Ranger. It never worked. There were no slow electrons anywhere in the house. My hand and arm would ache terribly for hours. Science . . . Must . . . Persevere!
Did I mention genes? My genes are terrifying me these days. In the argument center of my brain, the dialog goes something like this:
“Look! Hans is only half you . . . In fact he is less than half you because the woman carries the mitochondrial DNA“. Yes”, says my other self, “but you are squeezing a decimal here, the glass looks half full to me“. “Nonsense!” says the scientist, “he hasn’t jumped off the roof with an umbrella or been scene pushing metallic objects into the wall outlets“. “Yes” says the other part of the brain, “but here is what he asked me yesterday”:
“Dad, can my eyes fall out?”
The question causes a paroxysm somewhere deep in my medulla. Somewhere behind my first seven year old encounter with Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man and my first look at the nuclear test video from the Bikini Atoll, I am pulling myself together to answer this mad mad child. “NO” . . . “and you must never try doing that!”
This afternoon, I notice the after effects of my six year old's early morning explorations before mom and I awoke. It snowed again. Something transfixes my six year old about snow. Feburary at 6,250 feet in the Utah mountains is pretty snowy. I note, while contemplating a strategy to get the hot tub, which is buried in snow, that oblong orange objects litter . . . No . . . decorate the snow which is chest deep in the back yard. “Carrots from last nights dinner”, the thought seeps dimly into my scientist mind . . .
I remember telling him, “Good boy Hans! You ate all your carrots!” That little sneak.
Which half of his DNA did that? Robin and I are still contemplating this.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
OUR NEW AMERICAN MACHINE
Our nation is still imbued with aspects of redemptive merit. Despite the evidence of our eminent demise, the recent behavior of Nancy Pelosi and the combined treacherous and deliberate surrender of this nations financial future by its government, I counter the twain efforts of said Nancy Pelosi in the house and her counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid, with the sublime preeminence of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
By these two geographic features it may be possible to prepare some defense from invasion and there likewise perhaps be granted enough time to say our prayers before our nuclear demise. I doubt that Nancy or Reid shall compare in their duration to the persistence of these dividing barriers of water.
And to our president, I hearken to the truth of history, not to the compilation by worshipers who have deigned a faux solidity upon the only existing counterpart in this present incarnation. I speak of the naked facts which are yet remaining, the failure of a past “stimulus
package” which only aggravated an existing depression and which thus persisted for the better part of a decade. This was the “Great Depression” to which Roosevelt was granted the undeserved title of national savior.
We did not learn the lesson. Obama washed his hands of any true oversight in the construction of this abominable excess. In the promotion of this action, Obama will have to continue to grind furiously the media organ forsworn to uphold him. This thin twisted hymn to his honor must continue now for at least four more years, the conductor must untiringly wag his baton year after year as the economic cacophony of collapse rumbles beneath us, from the tingling energies up one's famous leg will come a few notes of the enduring strains reminiscent of those after the sinking of the Titanic; an awful sound of thousands drowning in vain.
More madness than heretofore mustered must be multiplied as conviction. Doom must be made light of. Pretentious pundits must wisp away massive suffering with shrinking news of successes Downright fabrications and lies will often fill the gaps where knowledge begs to lie. The sounded charge of a galant cavalry must be blown by a brigade of disposable bugalists. The sound by now will be deafening it will be a symphony of evil familiar to some, foreign to others. We know the devil has endured some 6,000 years. Legend fitingly casts him also as a musical genius exiled from heaven. Surely now he will nnod to the polyphony of our suffering. I doubt the foundation of this administration would stand a chance without him. After all, Jeremiah Wright is the only significant “reverend” of record to have influenced the mind of our “Great One.”
Let us pray:
For the greater endurance. For continued faith in the true God. For the promise of true deliverance. For the repentance of the masses from this massive darkness surrounding them.
Truly, we all have to wait now. The great gears of a mighty machine are moving. Like a meat grinder, a wood chipper, a milling stone and refiner's oven. I speak of the bowels of this sinking ship, propellers swinging in mid air, boilers shreading its crew, heat and steam let loose, and crushing objects turned against anything in their path. Satire will fall dead after this wait. There are no jokes told by survivors of this nightmare. Satire falls dead in the wait for death.
Let us pray:
For the greater endurance. For continued faith in the true God. For the promise of true deliverance. For the repentance of the masses from this massive darkness surrounding them.
Truly, we all have to wait now. The great gears of a mighty machine are moving. Like a meat grinder, a wood chipper, a milling stone and refiner's oven. I speak of the bowels of this sinking ship, propellers swinging in mid air, boilers shreading its crew, heat and steam let loose, and crushing objects turned against anything in their path. Satire will fall dead after this wait. There are no jokes told by survivors of this nightmare. Satire falls dead in the wait for death.
I expect and entertain many a critic. It matters little to me. In the privilege of tendering the truth, I do not feel worthy, yet I see many who are more eloquent than I, silently scratching their chins. It is as if one is daring to wager the outcome of piranha loosed in the national swimming pool. Get out! Get out of the pool now! Disaster in water is my primary metaphor here. It grabs the imagination in a way that is antithesis to our land faring ways, and we have truly left the precious land thes days.
When an axle has been broken we order a new window. With the corn yet remaining in the field we have summoned the hail, and after the hail we have borrowed money to party. After the party, we can look out the new window, look at our ruined harvest and starve to death.
Perhaps, with some "luck" it will only be to our children this death. Perhaps Nancy will have found those shoes she so wanted in Rome or Paris and she will die the vapid happy fool that she is, in an aged state of blessed dementia. I am not sure of the difference from her present state, however. Hats off too, to the millions who likewise without qualification, entrusted her and her ilk to fashioning our doom.
Once again imagination has taken me back to the water:
I’m looking at a life boat. Seating comfortably in the hollow of its protection are Bernard Madoff, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Chris Matthews is rowing madly against the wind with a tingling leg - and who but our esteemed Obama, is posing gallantly at the bow in the guise of the famous Washington crossing of the Delaware painting. Suddenly there is an argument and brittle words are exchanged. Obama keeps his poise, nary averting his magazine-quality pose. It seems the fine boat has a defect. Its one hole, though yet holding back the sea from invasion, is plugged by a 100 karat diamond cork.
Once again imagination has taken me back to the water:
I’m looking at a life boat. Seating comfortably in the hollow of its protection are Bernard Madoff, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Chris Matthews is rowing madly against the wind with a tingling leg - and who but our esteemed Obama, is posing gallantly at the bow in the guise of the famous Washington crossing of the Delaware painting. Suddenly there is an argument and brittle words are exchanged. Obama keeps his poise, nary averting his magazine-quality pose. It seems the fine boat has a defect. Its one hole, though yet holding back the sea from invasion, is plugged by a 100 karat diamond cork.
All is lost, greed prevails, and the machine of rescue, which is lifeboat America . . . . . . . . . Sinks.
Friday, February 6, 2009
While Nonsense Reigns
He’s at your door. The eighteen-year-old neighbor boy your sons used to play with is smiling brightly at you with a clipboard in his left hand. He explains, that under the new energy act he is here to check your thermostat and record your last utility bill. Hesitant, but unwilling to be unpleasant, you let him in, guide him to your thermostats and make a photocopy of your last utility bill. Smiles abound, thanks and cordiality marks this transaction without incident. It is 105 degrees on that July day. You notice while cooking dinner that it seems uncomfortably hot. You go to the thermostat and see that it has been changed from 72 degrees to 82. “Why that such and such”, you think, resetting your thermostat back to 72.
It is August 12, and a more modest 98 degrees today. Someone knocks on your door. This time you see a technician standing there with a toolbox clothed in overalls with a strange green embroidered symbol on his chest. He hands you his card with the Department of Energy Conservation Services over arching the name Frank Whittle. You don’t know this guy, he is less polite than your eighteen-year-old pesky neighbor and explains that he has twenty houses to do and is in a hurry. You seem to remember now, that notice you got in the mail late in July.
Three hours later, the ‘Frank’ man is gone. You are now part of the “smart” power grid. It’s getting hot again while you cook dinner. This time when you try to reset the thermostat you can’t. You notice that a small button like device is connected to the outside of your thermostat, and another module about the size of a matchbox is attached to your phone. That night you are so hot you can only go to sleep with the sheets on and then only when the night breeze picks up around midnight.
It is now winter. You live in a northwestern alpine climate. A cold snap has conspired in January to bring temperatures down to fifteen degrees below zero. Here go the blankets. Your children are all knocking one by one on your bedroom door telling you that they are cold. Every blanket you have is piled onto them, including the sleeping bags normally reserved for camping. You notice a fog emanating from your mouth as you breath. Checking your thermostat, just for kicks and giggles, because after all, you haven’t been able to control your own thermostat for over 5 months now, you are astonished to see the temperature is only 48 Degrees. The Thermostat in the master bedroom is a more comfortable 60 degrees but it is more insulated near the center of the house. The thermostat in the master bedroom has the button on it. The other thermostat has no ‘button’.
It is April; the bills have been mounting on your office desk. An annual vehicle registration bill punctuates your expectations for having an extra $500.00 towards summer vacation with an incredible 300% disappointment in the bill. The bill is for $1,800.00.
Your oldest son is furious. He wants to use his own car to go to work, but you can’t afford to register it and gasoline prices have skyrocketed. You try reminding him who he voted for, explaining the hardship the new conservation legislation has caused everyone and that you will drop him off down at the bus depot an hour and a half before he needs to be at work. He doesn’t seem to care what you say. He just vents incessantly, adding that he will be missing a date with his girlfriend.
OPEC now supplies 50% of the nation’s oil. The government seems almost gleefully eager to shut down new oil exploration. For the fifth month in a row OPEC has maintained an unchecked embargo on the United States. Oil imports shrink and gas prices soar to a staggering $12.00 a gallon. But, like every thing else in the news these days, the only thing you hear is how gluttonous and excessive you are as an American consumer.
The current administration in Washington DC seems more concerned with carbon trading and green energy incentives for anything not oil, not coal, not nuclear and not convenient.
“Global Warming”: The billboards by the highway are rife with pictures of scorching deserts, wayfaring polar bears and rotting fish on some nondescript shore. Your misery index is high and assurances that you are saving the world are low.
Large sporting events have been targeted by the government as leaving too large of a carbon footprint. As a result, the Super Bowl is only 1/3 full that year and riots breakout in the parking lot stadium over the high price of parking permits.
Headline: San Diego shipping container from Mexico found with traces of plutonium daughter isotopes.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012: The neighbor fellow who tagged you last year as an energy hog, is seen driving a brand new hybrid. It seems that government conservation officers are moving on up in the world. You stopped being friends with him last winter when he reported you for using an old kerosene heater in your home.
Headline: Construction for a wind farm in Kansas was stopped after a tornado destroyed 83 10-megawatt rotor towers. The president promises emergency funding to revive the 20 billion dollar project.
Headline: A man selling firewood on a San Francisco road side is arrested and given a three-year prison sentence. (His children go to Child Protective Services and then on for Foster Care.)
You vaguely recall hearing in a high school science class that life could not exist with out carbon dioxide.
“Carbon Trading” becomes a mainstream “industry,” becoming the first time in history that an “industry” is described as being something that is ‘not made’ or ‘serviced’ and can also be traded in the stock market.
Headline: Al Gore’s Private Jet gets stranded for two days due to a snow storm in Chicago.
Headline: Despite claims of 60% thermal conversion efficiency, General Electric loses a permit for a new power plant in Virginia because it proposes using coal from two nearby mines. Brownouts, blackouts and the daily news nags remind everyone that conservation is “everyone’s” business.
A bill passes the house and senate, amending the constitutional amendment for two presidential terms and extending the office term limits of president to four terms.
The World Economic Summit tries to convene in a secret resort in Switzerland. The U.S. President is rushed out by the secret service, riots break out and the summit is cancelled.
A Secret Service agent ‘takes one’ (bullet) for the president during a press conference. The agents name is not reported in the news.
Headline: Somali pirates kill over 800 passengers on a vacation cruise when their ransom demands are not met. A bright member of the press mentions that none of the pirated ships to date have been from an Islamic state. A UN spokesman replies emphatically that pirate activities are merely a symptom of desperate poverty conditions in the third world.
Christmas: December 25, 2014, New York City and Lower Manhattan, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC are all leveled simultaneously by coordinated nuclear detonations approximating two megatons each. There were no ICBM alerts, and no warnings of any kind. Twelve million Americans are dead. Twenty million more will die in the next few months. News is scarce. No one is claiming the office of President. Marshal law is declared by a U.S. air force general. Quarantines are enforced near the blast sights resulting in 30 million more human deaths due to disease and starvation.
The Midwest and northwestern states form a new provisional protectorate. UN troops flit about nervously in and out of the larger towns. It becomes a popular sport for snipers to pick them off in their convoys, raiding their supplies and leaving their helmets atop the fence posts.
A U.S. peace treaty signed in 2010 with Iran gave them enough time to finish building several modern nuclear devices. Threats to several other nations are rumored to have come from Iran, alluding of like consequences. No one really knows if Iran even exists anymore. Radio Bands are dominated by the military and news comes down largely from these sources.
Your last can of Spam is finished without ceremony. Your family is just too tired to even mumble a complaint. You are carrying your youngest on your shoulders down a long highway. You’ve lost more weight than you thought you ever could. Your wife stopped crying weeks ago. Your water is getting low and you hope your family can make it to the next town before nightfall.
I wouldn’t want to have to live through all this.
Nonsense has its price.
Milton
It is August 12, and a more modest 98 degrees today. Someone knocks on your door. This time you see a technician standing there with a toolbox clothed in overalls with a strange green embroidered symbol on his chest. He hands you his card with the Department of Energy Conservation Services over arching the name Frank Whittle. You don’t know this guy, he is less polite than your eighteen-year-old pesky neighbor and explains that he has twenty houses to do and is in a hurry. You seem to remember now, that notice you got in the mail late in July.
Three hours later, the ‘Frank’ man is gone. You are now part of the “smart” power grid. It’s getting hot again while you cook dinner. This time when you try to reset the thermostat you can’t. You notice that a small button like device is connected to the outside of your thermostat, and another module about the size of a matchbox is attached to your phone. That night you are so hot you can only go to sleep with the sheets on and then only when the night breeze picks up around midnight.
It is now winter. You live in a northwestern alpine climate. A cold snap has conspired in January to bring temperatures down to fifteen degrees below zero. Here go the blankets. Your children are all knocking one by one on your bedroom door telling you that they are cold. Every blanket you have is piled onto them, including the sleeping bags normally reserved for camping. You notice a fog emanating from your mouth as you breath. Checking your thermostat, just for kicks and giggles, because after all, you haven’t been able to control your own thermostat for over 5 months now, you are astonished to see the temperature is only 48 Degrees. The Thermostat in the master bedroom is a more comfortable 60 degrees but it is more insulated near the center of the house. The thermostat in the master bedroom has the button on it. The other thermostat has no ‘button’.
It is April; the bills have been mounting on your office desk. An annual vehicle registration bill punctuates your expectations for having an extra $500.00 towards summer vacation with an incredible 300% disappointment in the bill. The bill is for $1,800.00.
Your oldest son is furious. He wants to use his own car to go to work, but you can’t afford to register it and gasoline prices have skyrocketed. You try reminding him who he voted for, explaining the hardship the new conservation legislation has caused everyone and that you will drop him off down at the bus depot an hour and a half before he needs to be at work. He doesn’t seem to care what you say. He just vents incessantly, adding that he will be missing a date with his girlfriend.
OPEC now supplies 50% of the nation’s oil. The government seems almost gleefully eager to shut down new oil exploration. For the fifth month in a row OPEC has maintained an unchecked embargo on the United States. Oil imports shrink and gas prices soar to a staggering $12.00 a gallon. But, like every thing else in the news these days, the only thing you hear is how gluttonous and excessive you are as an American consumer.
The current administration in Washington DC seems more concerned with carbon trading and green energy incentives for anything not oil, not coal, not nuclear and not convenient.
“Global Warming”: The billboards by the highway are rife with pictures of scorching deserts, wayfaring polar bears and rotting fish on some nondescript shore. Your misery index is high and assurances that you are saving the world are low.
Large sporting events have been targeted by the government as leaving too large of a carbon footprint. As a result, the Super Bowl is only 1/3 full that year and riots breakout in the parking lot stadium over the high price of parking permits.
Headline: San Diego shipping container from Mexico found with traces of plutonium daughter isotopes.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012: The neighbor fellow who tagged you last year as an energy hog, is seen driving a brand new hybrid. It seems that government conservation officers are moving on up in the world. You stopped being friends with him last winter when he reported you for using an old kerosene heater in your home.
Headline: Construction for a wind farm in Kansas was stopped after a tornado destroyed 83 10-megawatt rotor towers. The president promises emergency funding to revive the 20 billion dollar project.
Headline: A man selling firewood on a San Francisco road side is arrested and given a three-year prison sentence. (His children go to Child Protective Services and then on for Foster Care.)
You vaguely recall hearing in a high school science class that life could not exist with out carbon dioxide.
“Carbon Trading” becomes a mainstream “industry,” becoming the first time in history that an “industry” is described as being something that is ‘not made’ or ‘serviced’ and can also be traded in the stock market.
Headline: Al Gore’s Private Jet gets stranded for two days due to a snow storm in Chicago.
Headline: Despite claims of 60% thermal conversion efficiency, General Electric loses a permit for a new power plant in Virginia because it proposes using coal from two nearby mines. Brownouts, blackouts and the daily news nags remind everyone that conservation is “everyone’s” business.
A bill passes the house and senate, amending the constitutional amendment for two presidential terms and extending the office term limits of president to four terms.
The World Economic Summit tries to convene in a secret resort in Switzerland. The U.S. President is rushed out by the secret service, riots break out and the summit is cancelled.
A Secret Service agent ‘takes one’ (bullet) for the president during a press conference. The agents name is not reported in the news.
Headline: Somali pirates kill over 800 passengers on a vacation cruise when their ransom demands are not met. A bright member of the press mentions that none of the pirated ships to date have been from an Islamic state. A UN spokesman replies emphatically that pirate activities are merely a symptom of desperate poverty conditions in the third world.
Christmas: December 25, 2014, New York City and Lower Manhattan, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC are all leveled simultaneously by coordinated nuclear detonations approximating two megatons each. There were no ICBM alerts, and no warnings of any kind. Twelve million Americans are dead. Twenty million more will die in the next few months. News is scarce. No one is claiming the office of President. Marshal law is declared by a U.S. air force general. Quarantines are enforced near the blast sights resulting in 30 million more human deaths due to disease and starvation.
The Midwest and northwestern states form a new provisional protectorate. UN troops flit about nervously in and out of the larger towns. It becomes a popular sport for snipers to pick them off in their convoys, raiding their supplies and leaving their helmets atop the fence posts.
A U.S. peace treaty signed in 2010 with Iran gave them enough time to finish building several modern nuclear devices. Threats to several other nations are rumored to have come from Iran, alluding of like consequences. No one really knows if Iran even exists anymore. Radio Bands are dominated by the military and news comes down largely from these sources.
Your last can of Spam is finished without ceremony. Your family is just too tired to even mumble a complaint. You are carrying your youngest on your shoulders down a long highway. You’ve lost more weight than you thought you ever could. Your wife stopped crying weeks ago. Your water is getting low and you hope your family can make it to the next town before nightfall.
I wouldn’t want to have to live through all this.
Nonsense has its price.
Milton
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