Saturday, January 31, 2009
Genius
I'm a freakin' genius. (A person having an extraordinarily high intelligence rating on a psychological test, as an IQ above 140)
Last night at the computer a perfume smell kept bothering me. I finally decided that it was a nearby candle so I moved it into another room. Today at lunch I was smelling it again. I thought "It wasn't the candle, it's my daughter who is home from college, using too much perfume even though she's never done that before." Well a few minutes ago I washed my hands and then I could smell it again. It's the new soap my wife bought, Equate Morning Dew. They should have named it Morning Dew on a French Whore!
Last night at the computer a perfume smell kept bothering me. I finally decided that it was a nearby candle so I moved it into another room. Today at lunch I was smelling it again. I thought "It wasn't the candle, it's my daughter who is home from college, using too much perfume even though she's never done that before." Well a few minutes ago I washed my hands and then I could smell it again. It's the new soap my wife bought, Equate Morning Dew. They should have named it Morning Dew on a French Whore!
Monster Magnet/Danzig
When I was going to work today a song played that I associate with a guy that I use to work with, David something an ex-marine that was real cool.
When I left work, the only other song in the world that I associate with David was playing. Stuff like that blows my mind. I've lost contact with him but I sure do wish I knew what he is doing today.
When I left work, the only other song in the world that I associate with David was playing. Stuff like that blows my mind. I've lost contact with him but I sure do wish I knew what he is doing today.
Fearless
“Travelling up Taylor Canyon in central Colorado after a recent storm, I was captivated by the play of light and shadow between the forest and the new-fallen snow. Most of the canyon is heavily forested, making finding a simple subject difficult. Finally, up near the Taylor Lake Dam, I found this seemingly threatened young pine.”
Dusty Demerson has been photographing the landscape of the western U.S.A. for nearly 20 years. Demerson was trained as a photojournalist and won numerous awards for news and sports photography before pursuing his career as a portrait and landscape photographer. Based in Crested Butte, Colorado, since 1987, he is represented locally by the Rijks Family Gallery.
www.color-west.com
The Numbers
Sure the coming ice storm had him on edge but that wasn't what was bothering him, it was the numbers. The numbers on the digital clock when he happen to look at them, 3:33 that was the number of his old friend that had killed himself a few years earlier. There were other numbers too that he had kind of assigned to things and they were all coming up. No, he hadn't gone crazy but he would readily admit that it would be a short trip. Beer, he needed beer for tonight. The thought of sitting around in the dark with no electricity without beer was unacceptable. The friendly cashier rang up the thirty pack of Keystone light and a sausage biscuit. He wasn't thinking about the numbers any more...until the total was the year of his birth. "That's $19.62 sir." He tried not to look freaked out as he handed her a twenty. "Have a nice day!" she said.
It should be easy enough to "have a nice day" since it was his day off but the numbers, those stinking numbers.
It should be easy enough to "have a nice day" since it was his day off but the numbers, those stinking numbers.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Red River Bridge War
By GENE CURTIS
7/7/2007
A delay in opening free bridges across the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma touched off a controversy in 1931 that became known as the Red River bridge war.
Before the issue was settled, Oklahoma Gov. William H. "Alfalfa Bill" Murray had declared martial law, created a military zone extending into Texas, assumed personal command of his troops, defied a court order and dared a federal judge to cite him for contempt.
The controversy developed after a court order delayed the opening of the free spans built by the two states to replace privately owned toll bridges.
There wasn't much controversy over Murray's opening of the new free bridge on U.S. 81 between Terral, Okla., and Ringgold, Texas. And the new bridge on U.S. 77 between Marietta and Gainesville, Texas, remained closed because the approach on the Texas side hadn't been completed.
The war, fought mainly in newspaper stories, involved the new bridge on U.S. 69 and 75 between Durant and Denison, Texas. That span was the object of the injunction against Texas Gov. Ross Sterling and his highway commission obtained by the Red River Bridge Co., which claimed the Texas Highway
Commission had promised to buy the span for $60,000.
In response to the injunction, Sterling ordered all three new bridges barricaded on the Texas side, pending settlement of the court action.
Within minutes after Murray ordered the three bridges opened on July 16, an Oklahoma Highway Department crew had gone to the Texas side of the Terral bridge and removed an old truck that barricaded the highway, acting on the theory that Oklahoma owned half the span lengthwise across the stream. Before evening, the action had been duplicated at Denison.
Asked about possible resistance at the Denison span, Murray said, "There is an old watchman there and I have instructed that he not be hurt. I directed highway officials to take his pocketknife and chewing tobacco away from him."
Murray also wired the Texas governor to advise him of his removal of the barricades and plans to have his highway department tear up the approaches to the toll bridges.
"I feel you have extended your authority beyond all reason," Sterling responded, and he directed Texas Rangers to erect new barricades at the Denison-Durant free bridge, where they stood guard armed with shotguns in front of a sign advising motorists that the bridge had been ordered closed by the U.S. District Court.
But Murray claimed that Oklahoma had jurisdiction over the Texas banks of the river by virtue of old Spanish treaties, claiming the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld that authority. "So I wasn't exceeding my authority," Murray said in response to Sterling's criticism.
Several days later, Murray activated some units of the National Guard, placed the approaches leading up to the toll bridge under martial law -- an order he extended into Texas the next day -- and set up a military camp near the bridge.
An order obtained by owners of the toll bridge in federal court in Muskogee didn't faze the colorful Murray, who, wearing a large hog-shooter pistol on his belt, assumed personal command of his troops.
When the judge threatened Murray with a contempt citation, Murray responded, "He can't cite me; let him try it." He also threatened to call out the entire Oklahoma National Guard if the federal court interfered.
Guard Lt. Col. John MacDonald told an attorney he would accept service of a federal court order but he would pay no attention to it.
"I am taking orders from only one man and he is the governor of Oklahoma," the colonel, also a state senator from Durant, told the lawyer.
The governor said he would keep the free bridges open despite any order from any court or other authority except President Herbert Hoover.
The controversy ended on Aug. 6 after the Texas Legislature, in special session, passed a law allowing the Red River Bridge Co. to sue the state and the federal court dissolved the injunction that touched off the "war."
That free bridge served the public well until 1995, when it was dynamited and traffic was shifted to a new bridge -- also free.
Photographic research by Rachele Vaughan
Gene Curtis
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Bottom Drawer
"Yes the bottom drawer that locks, looks like it has about two pounds of pure Peruvian flake...I mean some strange white powder, I guess buttroy left it."
What happened to the climate consensus?
By PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT
Tue. Jan 20 - 4:46 AM
CAN we all agree – yet – that the issue is settled?
Scientists DON’T all agree the planet is warming precipitously, or that humans are responsible for that supposed warming. In fact, more and more experts in a number of fields have been speaking up to challenge the supposed scientific "consensus" on climate change.
As the headlines scream out the latest sensational warning – a NASA scientist now predicts U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has just four years to save the planet – let’s not forget that last month, more than 650 international scientists went on record as dissenting from the man-made global warming findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Who are these scientists?
The list, which grew by a substantial 250 new names from a similar statement in late 2007, includes prominent names in fields ranging from geology, atmospheric science and solar physics to meteorology, oceanography and paleoclimatology. According to the U.S. Senate’s environment and public works committee minority report, released Dec. 10, the skeptics also include many current and former IPCC scientists.
You can check it for yourself with a quick Google search, but here’s a sample of some of the comments from scientists:
"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming." – atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg
"Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science." – physicist Will Happer
"For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" – geologist Dr. David Gee
According to the document, the planet has actually been in a cooling trend during the last decade, not getting warmer.
That claim certainly fits the theories of scientists who say warming and cooling trends on Earth are closely related to sunspot activity, and that the lull in the numbers of these solar phenomena in recent years has corresponded with dropping temperatures.
More worrying are claims by Russian scientists that their research has convinced them the planet faces not overheating, but the imminent return of a major ice age.
Talking about ice ages as we shiver through another winter of record-setting cold in many parts of North America (though Nova Scotia just seems snowier this year) is not meant to suggest there’s more than coincidence at work in terms of short-term weather patterns. That, of course, would be as unfair as suggesting global warming is out of control in the middle of a summer hot spell.
But the fact remains that scientists have long known the Earth has gone through a cycle – for perhaps a million years – of ice ages, lasting perhaps 100,000 years, which have been regularly interrupted by short, warmer periods of 12,000 years or so. According to that clock, we’re apparently overdue for a major refreeze, since the last ice age ended more than 12,000 years back.
I’m not buying that we’re on the brink of kilometre-thick ice sheets stretching down south from the Arctic, but the report – and the undisputed fact that the planet has cycled through ice ages and warm periods for a very long time – certainly shows that not everyone’s on board with Al Gore, UN IPCC and the global-warming conformists.
Regardless of the shifting sands in terms of the science, I think it’s safe to say that many people are far more worried about the current global economic crisis than about claims by either the warming or cooling crowd. We’ve already seen European countries recently move to water down their Kyoto treaty requirements.
The acknowledgement there actually is a scientific debate about global warming and its causes would be, at the very least, a refreshing change from the monotonous droning of the climate change cultists that it’s all a done deal. Um, no, it’s not.
Prominent scientists, in ever greater numbers, are now speaking up to reject the group-think paradigm. While there’s no doubt the climate is changing, there’s less certainty about just where it’s going.
I expect one trend to continue, however. I predict the number of scientists willing to defy the global warming "consensus" is only going to get bigger.
Tue. Jan 20 - 4:46 AM
CAN we all agree – yet – that the issue is settled?
Scientists DON’T all agree the planet is warming precipitously, or that humans are responsible for that supposed warming. In fact, more and more experts in a number of fields have been speaking up to challenge the supposed scientific "consensus" on climate change.
As the headlines scream out the latest sensational warning – a NASA scientist now predicts U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has just four years to save the planet – let’s not forget that last month, more than 650 international scientists went on record as dissenting from the man-made global warming findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Who are these scientists?
The list, which grew by a substantial 250 new names from a similar statement in late 2007, includes prominent names in fields ranging from geology, atmospheric science and solar physics to meteorology, oceanography and paleoclimatology. According to the U.S. Senate’s environment and public works committee minority report, released Dec. 10, the skeptics also include many current and former IPCC scientists.
You can check it for yourself with a quick Google search, but here’s a sample of some of the comments from scientists:
"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming." – atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg
"Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science." – physicist Will Happer
"For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" – geologist Dr. David Gee
According to the document, the planet has actually been in a cooling trend during the last decade, not getting warmer.
That claim certainly fits the theories of scientists who say warming and cooling trends on Earth are closely related to sunspot activity, and that the lull in the numbers of these solar phenomena in recent years has corresponded with dropping temperatures.
More worrying are claims by Russian scientists that their research has convinced them the planet faces not overheating, but the imminent return of a major ice age.
Talking about ice ages as we shiver through another winter of record-setting cold in many parts of North America (though Nova Scotia just seems snowier this year) is not meant to suggest there’s more than coincidence at work in terms of short-term weather patterns. That, of course, would be as unfair as suggesting global warming is out of control in the middle of a summer hot spell.
But the fact remains that scientists have long known the Earth has gone through a cycle – for perhaps a million years – of ice ages, lasting perhaps 100,000 years, which have been regularly interrupted by short, warmer periods of 12,000 years or so. According to that clock, we’re apparently overdue for a major refreeze, since the last ice age ended more than 12,000 years back.
I’m not buying that we’re on the brink of kilometre-thick ice sheets stretching down south from the Arctic, but the report – and the undisputed fact that the planet has cycled through ice ages and warm periods for a very long time – certainly shows that not everyone’s on board with Al Gore, UN IPCC and the global-warming conformists.
Regardless of the shifting sands in terms of the science, I think it’s safe to say that many people are far more worried about the current global economic crisis than about claims by either the warming or cooling crowd. We’ve already seen European countries recently move to water down their Kyoto treaty requirements.
The acknowledgement there actually is a scientific debate about global warming and its causes would be, at the very least, a refreshing change from the monotonous droning of the climate change cultists that it’s all a done deal. Um, no, it’s not.
Prominent scientists, in ever greater numbers, are now speaking up to reject the group-think paradigm. While there’s no doubt the climate is changing, there’s less certainty about just where it’s going.
I expect one trend to continue, however. I predict the number of scientists willing to defy the global warming "consensus" is only going to get bigger.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Beast Portrays 9/11 Truthers As Dope Smoking Terrorists
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, January 19, 2009
A new FBI drama currently showing on A&E portrays 9/11 truthers as dope smoking terrorists in its pilot episode, a ploy made all the more interesting for the fact that A&E is part-owned by Hearst Corporation, which has also attempted to debunk 9/11 truth with savage hit pieces via its subsidiaries The History Channel and Popular Mechanics.
The plot of the show, which stars Patrick Swayze, centers around an attempt to infiltrate a group who are suspected of smuggling Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers into Iraq. In one scene, a member of the group talks with an FBI agent who is operating undercover.
“Are you a truther or a sheep?” the man asks the FBI agent.
He continues, “9/11 was a false flag operation man, wake up, a self-inflicted wound to control the masses, you know there was no planes, all of them were holograms and CGI.”
The man then takes a drag on a marijuana spliff and gives the FBI agent a crazed look.
The insertion of the 9/11 truther caveat in the episode serves no purpose except seemingly to convince the viewer that the man is unstable and dangerous. The mention of CGI and holograms, an obsessive tenet of an extreme fringe that attempted to hijack the 9/11 truth movement a few years ago, also serves only to detract more credibility from the subject.
Watch the clip.
The A&E network, which stands for Arts & Entertainment, is jointly owned by Hearst Corporation (37.5% ownership), The Walt Disney Company (37.5% ownership) and NBC (25% ownership). NBC is owned by General Electric, a major player in the military-industrial complex and a huge benefactor of the 9/11 attacks, which of course could only have resulted in gargantuan profits for military contractors if the official story was upheld.
Hearst Corporation, the founder of which became synonymous with the term “yellow journalism” for his publication of dubious and sensationalized stories, also owns The History Channel and Popular Mechanics magazine, both of which attacked 9/11 truth in separate hit pieces in 2005 and 2007.
A&E also has close ties with the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has also attempted to debunk 9/11 with a series of hit pieces over the last few years.
Portrayals of the 9/11 truth movement in popular culture have manifested with both negative and positive connotations. An episode of South Park satirized truthers but a more recent episode of the firefighter drama Rescue Me showed actor Daniel Sunjata, himself a truther in real life, talking at length and with clarity about issues surrounding 9/11 being an inside job.
The very fact that the 9/11 truth movement has entered into popular culture alone and that giant media corporations and arms of the military-industrial complex are having to go to such lengths in a desperate attempt to debunk questions surrounding the attacks, is proof positive that the movement as a whole has had a significant impact on public consciousness, a fact that debunkers are loathe to admit.
Prison Planet.com
Monday, January 19, 2009
A new FBI drama currently showing on A&E portrays 9/11 truthers as dope smoking terrorists in its pilot episode, a ploy made all the more interesting for the fact that A&E is part-owned by Hearst Corporation, which has also attempted to debunk 9/11 truth with savage hit pieces via its subsidiaries The History Channel and Popular Mechanics.
The plot of the show, which stars Patrick Swayze, centers around an attempt to infiltrate a group who are suspected of smuggling Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers into Iraq. In one scene, a member of the group talks with an FBI agent who is operating undercover.
“Are you a truther or a sheep?” the man asks the FBI agent.
He continues, “9/11 was a false flag operation man, wake up, a self-inflicted wound to control the masses, you know there was no planes, all of them were holograms and CGI.”
The man then takes a drag on a marijuana spliff and gives the FBI agent a crazed look.
The insertion of the 9/11 truther caveat in the episode serves no purpose except seemingly to convince the viewer that the man is unstable and dangerous. The mention of CGI and holograms, an obsessive tenet of an extreme fringe that attempted to hijack the 9/11 truth movement a few years ago, also serves only to detract more credibility from the subject.
Watch the clip.
The A&E network, which stands for Arts & Entertainment, is jointly owned by Hearst Corporation (37.5% ownership), The Walt Disney Company (37.5% ownership) and NBC (25% ownership). NBC is owned by General Electric, a major player in the military-industrial complex and a huge benefactor of the 9/11 attacks, which of course could only have resulted in gargantuan profits for military contractors if the official story was upheld.
Hearst Corporation, the founder of which became synonymous with the term “yellow journalism” for his publication of dubious and sensationalized stories, also owns The History Channel and Popular Mechanics magazine, both of which attacked 9/11 truth in separate hit pieces in 2005 and 2007.
A&E also has close ties with the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has also attempted to debunk 9/11 with a series of hit pieces over the last few years.
Portrayals of the 9/11 truth movement in popular culture have manifested with both negative and positive connotations. An episode of South Park satirized truthers but a more recent episode of the firefighter drama Rescue Me showed actor Daniel Sunjata, himself a truther in real life, talking at length and with clarity about issues surrounding 9/11 being an inside job.
The very fact that the 9/11 truth movement has entered into popular culture alone and that giant media corporations and arms of the military-industrial complex are having to go to such lengths in a desperate attempt to debunk questions surrounding the attacks, is proof positive that the movement as a whole has had a significant impact on public consciousness, a fact that debunkers are loathe to admit.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Jerky movement on TV
Has anyone else noticed that some tv shows look jerky? By jerky I mean the movement of the people seems to skip a few frames. An old Taco Bell commercial use to be like that.
I was watching Scrubs a few minutes ago, it's very jerky. Why I ask! Why?
I was watching Scrubs a few minutes ago, it's very jerky. Why I ask! Why?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Earth on the Brink of Ice Age
The central piece of evidence that is cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The ‘hockey stick’ graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.
The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years -- evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW. whole article
The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years -- evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW. whole article
Alarming Climate Change
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports
Newsweek 1975
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
—PETER GWYNNE with bureau reports
Newsweek 1975
Faith
I use to have a job that required a very early morning commute. My buddy would usually drive and I had time to let my mind wander. Driving through the mountains in the predawn darkness I sometimes thought about people back before religion. Looking at the stars I thought about how they must have believed in a creator. It gave me a feeling of pure faith, not diluted with words and technicalities. I've had trouble trying to relate that feeling to others. A feeling of believing in something bigger before the bible or preachers came along. That's my faith, maybe that's why I feel no need to go to church or any of that. But somewhat ironically, a passage from the bible explains that feeling better than I ever could.
The heavens tell of the glory of God.
The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or a word;
their voice is silent in the skies;
yet their message has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to all the world.
—Psalm 19:1-4, NLT
The heavens tell of the glory of God.
The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or a word;
their voice is silent in the skies;
yet their message has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to all the world.
—Psalm 19:1-4, NLT
Spooky Mind Blowing Photons
Using two villages on opposite sides of Geneva as their lab, Swiss physicists have taken one of the strangest phenomena of quantum mechanics to a new level. From Geneva they sent a pair of photons along fiber-optic cables, one to each village. When they measured one photon upon its arrival, the other changed instantaneously —though it was 11 miles away. This weird linkage, called quantum entanglement, raises exotic possibilities like teleportation. When two particles are entangled, the measurement of one immediately affects the other, no matter how distant. It’s so counterintuitive that Albert Einstein dismissed it as “spooky action at a distance.” Such entanglement had been observed before, but never over such a great distance.
One might assume that one particle sent an ultrafast signal to its partner, says physicist Nicolas Gisin, a member of the University of Geneva team. If that were true, the quantum communiqué would have traveled at more than 10,000 times the speed of light, something difficult to reconcile with the known laws of physics. “Nature does not function that way,” Gisin says. In relativity theory, communicating faster than light speed is not possible. But the correlations observed in entangled photons cannot be used to communicate any kind of signal, so they do not violate the theory. Still, Gisin says, “We have to admit this is a really big conceptual change.”
Friday, January 09, 2009
Simple Songs for Simple Minds
Today I was working in an uncontrolled environment
and was exposed to toxin that I can usually avoid, country music.
I laughed out loud, literally, when I heard these lines. Then another guy walked up, heard these lines and laughed out loud too.
I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
There now you have some inkling of the size and location of Iraq and Iran.
I'm going to go out on a limb here.
You're a Republican aren't you?
and was exposed to toxin that I can usually avoid, country music.
I laughed out loud, literally, when I heard these lines. Then another guy walked up, heard these lines and laughed out loud too.
I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
There now you have some inkling of the size and location of Iraq and Iran.
I'm going to go out on a limb here.
You're a Republican aren't you?
Monday, January 05, 2009
ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS
TOBACCO ........................ 400,000
ALCOHOL ........................ 100,000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS ................ 20,000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS .............. 15,000
CAFFEINE ....................... 2,000
ASPIRIN ........................ 500
MARIJUANA ...................... 0
----------------------------------------
Source: United States government...
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics
TOBACCO ........................ 400,000
ALCOHOL ........................ 100,000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS ................ 20,000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS .............. 15,000
CAFFEINE ....................... 2,000
ASPIRIN ........................ 500
MARIJUANA ...................... 0
----------------------------------------
Source: United States government...
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Welcome to Custter County Jail
"Welcome to Custer County jail." Words that send chills down the spine of even the most hardened criminals.
Word on the street "Never get put in Custer county jail, you'll get Burgessed!"
Is it all just jailhouse lore? Apparently not.
FAIRVIEW, Okla. -- Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of former Custer County Sheriff Michael Burgess.
Burgess is charged with rape, kidnapping, sexual battery and bribery, charges that carry sentences of up to 467 years in prison.
