Mental Floss

Ding My Dong

2011-05-02T21:11:00.003-06:00

DING! DONG!

Bin Laden's dead!

Bin Laden's Dead!

He's fucking dead!

DING! DONG! Bin Laden's FUCKING DEAD!!!!

Had to come back and revisit this cobweb of a blog just for the occasion, given that killing terrorists was one of the founding principles thereof. I know I should have given some sort of explanation, but I kept toying with the idea of continuing blogging, but the Blogger "Danger Will Robinson" click-through screen just slowly sapped my desire to continue, since it cost half my readership because of site blocks at work servers. I've really enjoyed the time I've spent with you guy, but I guess this is as good a final entry as there can be.

Anyway, like the song says, "tomorrow I might go as far as suicide, but I will not let it bother me tonight."

I stopped off and bought a $100 bottle of 18-year-old scotch and fetched my favorite crystal highball glass that would break a toe if you dropped it on your foot. Now I am celebrating the welcome demise of a cocksucker -- the violent death of whom I have been awaiting for almost 10 years now.

L'chaim!!

When there's no such thing as overkill

2010-09-16T16:20:00.000-06:00

The Atom V8

65 Years Young

2010-08-06T20:19:00.002-06:00

This photo from Life Magazine just kills me.

Happy fucking 65th fucking birthday fucking atom bomb.

So glad you made it here o_O

Jesus fucking christ

2010-07-09T10:37:00.003-06:00

OK, it turns out there is a decent chance that modern directional drilling technology can intersect the BP well on a perpendicular path. There have been long perpendicular runs made that have missed their hypothetical "X" by only a foot. So it's not at all impossible.

It's just that long before that happens, a hurricane is going to blow all that oil up on land and kill people and a shit load of wildlife and render enormous swaths of land uninhabitable. It's going to be an environmental holocaust.

Might as well laugh. Nobody is going to let you do anything more purposeful.

And the band played on...

2010-06-28T10:40:00.001-06:00

This just about sums it up, and is about what I have been suspecting.

Jane! Somebody! Stop This Crazy Thing!

2010-06-21T09:58:00.005-06:00

OK, this is bullshit!

You want a suggestion about what to do about the Gulf oil leak? How about QUIT PLAYING AROUND WITH THE BLASTED THING AND SHUT DOWN THAT OIL WELL?!

The “kill shot” had an effect, but BP only went about it half-heartedly. It’s time for THIS COUNTRY to mobilize and shut that thing down! We’ll worry about BP later!

WTF are these morons trying to do with this high tech “relief well” horseshit while the Gulf is dying every fucking day? It’s been TWO FUCKING MONTHS of this horrific geyser of oil spewing, now we know, roughly 60,000 BARRELS OF OIL A DAY into the Gulf of Mexico!

Currently, BP’s little cap on the top of the well is capturing about half of that amount and pumping it aboard ships topside. The rest of it, every day, is going into the GALACTIC oil mass floating around in the ocean off the coast.

And what’s the PLAN? What’s the big PLAN?!

This is what they are trying to do.

OK, first of all, I don’t know if anyone has EVER intersected a target that small with directional drilling. Maybe they are planning to use sonar from both bores to triangulate against the existing casing column. But the point is, the last bit of distance, every time they make a correction, they have to “trip pipe” and pull everything out of the well, get bearings, make corrections, go a bit more, then make another reading. As they have already said, it will take them into August and I suspect longer. And that’s IF THIS WORKS.

FUCK THAT!!!

That is AFTER HURRICANE SEASON! You haven’t THOUGHT about the ecological devastation that’s coming when the first hurricane blows all that oil miles and miles inland! It’s going to be apocalyptically BAD!

Meanwhile, Texas’ only ocean is being killed, and it doesn’t have many days left to live.
We went to the moon in the ‘60s! We can stop this if we want to, and I want my government to want to! Goddamnit! Let this “relief well” thing be Plan B while somebody else does something MORE FUCKING DEFINITIVE!!!

If enough resources and expertise are invested, this or something similar could be made to work:

Improved Top Kill
(A synopsis)

Raw Materials Required

Material 1
Move a bunch of basalt from a quarry in New Jersey or somewhere down to rock crushers near the coast and start pounding it into basalt pea gravel and basalt sands. The improved top kill is going to require multiple barges full of basalt pea gravel and basalt sand floating right above that well head. There are closer basalt sources, but in the South of the U.S., they tend to be in places like national and state parks and not where you want to dig big holes in the ground. Basalt is the heaviest readily-available form of the earth’s crust – heavier than granite, heavier than marble.

Material 2
Secondly, the improved top kill shot will require the metal element lead. As in Pb in the periodic table. Start buying up every bit of solid scrap and ingot possible and move it by rail to Houston where it can be ground into barge loads of tiny lead filings. Houston has plenty of chemical plant sites where a little elemental lead processing won't matter. Elemental lead is not that hazardous and can be contained. It is water soluble lead oxides that are far more dangerous.

This will require (erring on the side of overkill because a failed attempt would be stupid) 3-4 million pounds of lead. At bulk prices, it can be had for under a dollar a pound, so this would be a good time to open up a national strategic lead reserve that can be refilled over time so that the overall market value of lead doesn’t spike while 2,000 tons of lead is purchased out of the 16,000 million pounds of annual global lead production (much of this annual production is recycled lead).

Key Technologies
Get a team of engineers together to select the best pumps, because not just any old pump is going to get the job done. I’m thinking some kind of multi-stage centrifugal jobs that can move the pea gravel at high pressure and volume. Also, someone is going to need to find God’s own mud-engineer to design a specialty mud to move this heavy mix, probably consisting mostly of the gums, CMC and hematite and light on the bentonite, but that’s just my guess.

Materials to produce

Basalt pea gravel 50% + Basalt sand 50% = Heavy Rock Mix

Heavy Rock Mix 50% + lead filings 50% (by volume, not weight) = Pumping Solids

Pumping solids added to just enough of the specialized drilling fluid to move it through the pumps needs to be moved down the well as fast as it can be done once it starts. Otherwise, that monster well will just spit it back out the way it did the heavy drilling mud BP tried.

At least it will spit the sand back out. One thing it will not be spitting back out is the lead. Another is the basalt pea gravel. Those are going to sink to the bottom as long as there is not an obstruction. There is nothing the oil can do to stop them from getting down there. That makes it imperative to get the nozzle of the hose deep into the well, beyond any serious obstruction. If it takes the “downhole tool” guys learning to fly deep sea submersibles and using robotic arms – I don’t care. We went to the moon in the ‘60s with less computer power than a multifunction wristwatch in the capsule. The expertise exists to make this or something similar work.

And don’t worry about the lead “contaminating” anything when it’s miles below the ocean floor. It’s heavy. That’s the charm of lead. It will be covered up deep down hole where water does not percolate to the surface.

Also, it’s become obvious to me that when BP failed to properly secure the high pressure gasses in the Deepwater Horizon well, the explosive force of those gasses surfacing ruptured the casing in multiple places. Near the surface where the soft sea bed provided little support to it, multiple splits were formed by the blowout. That is why capping the top of the well head didn’t work. It cannot be made to work. BP is pumping oil as fast as they can and this monster is still blowing at least that much around their cap.

On the other hand, unless there's something about the condition of the well that I am not privy to, this can be done in two weeks time if forces are properly marshaled. The technology exists.

Rationale:
The lead filings and basalt pea gravel’s is used to provide resistance to the rising oil column, slowing its flow. This should allow the basalt sands to sink. The sand eventually reaching the bottom is critical to forming the “heavy plug” that is the first goal.

The sand is going to sink slowly, but the lead is headed down hole, and it’s going to start causing flow problems within the oil-bearing formation. I suspect there will be some back surging into the formation as the pressure within the column increases.

Pumping more material as fast as possible would be critical at this point. The pressure in the formation is going to start building immediately after the lead and the sand amass deep in the well and “sand off” the formation. Think about it, the deepest part of the casing is only about 7-inches in diameter. Yet through this narrow tube (over much length through the formation), the 21-inch diameter pipe near the ocean floor was blowing what has been estimated at 60,000 barrels a day – it’s going to be a fight for even the lead to get down to the highest flowing regions of this, but it will make it as long as the lead never stops coming. Pumping continuous and fast is crucial to the physics of the fight, using hydraulic advantage higher in the column to weaken the adversary where it is strongest and allow the materials to sink in and build mass. The objective is to get mass down hole as quickly as possible, overwhelming the well before it can build enough pressure to shoot the initial mass back out.

Once the pumps have stacked up a mile or so of the initial pumping solids, then the lead has certainly done its job. At that point crews can switch pumping just the heavy rock mix of basalts and drilling fluid. Then just continue on until the entire weight of the earth and more has been replaced inside the drill bore and the earth can’t use its weight to force oil from the formation (the basalt likely being heavier/denser than much of the crust the bore hole traverses). Fill the entire well to within several hundred or a thousand feet of the surface. Then watch it for a bit before cementing it off.

And some people are concerned that the world will run out of lead some day. No problem. Once this oil field is depleted, this will be one a national strategic lead reserve. If the world ever gets that hard up for lead, it can be drill back out, albeit at some expense.

The lead is not only important for being the least expensive super heavy weight that can be put down hole, I’m counting on it becoming a binding agent for the other components at the high temperatures found deep in the well. The heated lead under pressure, I suspect will form a matrix that will bind the heavy rock mix into an aggregate within the confines of the well.

The lead is should flow, slowly, taking the basalt sands with it into all the crevasses of both the casing and the oil-bearing formation and plug it off with a hermetic seal.

Secondly, at some point in the column, the temperature and pressure are likely to be just right to allow the lead and basalt aggregate to form a “non-Newtonian fluid” that will form a physical barrier, which would resist geological pressure spikes coming from the oil-bearing formation below. At least, that’s my untested hypothesis.

Kids of my generation were first introduced to the marvels of non-Newtonian fluids when someone came up with the toy doll “Stretch Armstrong”. This doll could be squeezed and stretched more than a yard or a meter long, and then it would slowly return to its original shape. It was a stretchy rubber-like body over a malleable goo inside that was probably a byproduct of the Space Race, as many toys were in the day, such as the “Superball”.

The thing about the Stretch Armstrong doll was that, as a child with a male mindset, as soon as you felt it squish, the first thing you did was smack it with your fist, and it could break your fingers and knuckles. The goo inside would move infinitely, but only slowly. If you attempted to move it quickly, it might as well be concrete. They took Stretch off the market soon, I suspect because too many boys thought it would be a fun soft thing to hit their little brother with and parents were upset about stitches and broken noses.

At any rate, I believe at some point in the column, the lead-basalt aggregate is going to be difficult to move quickly, although it will flow into every crevasse smoothly. This will provide a physical barrier in addition to the weight barrier to the pressure from below.

End game
After switching to the mud mix carrying only the basalt heavy rock mix and filling the remainder of the well, leave just enough space for a good cement job later. It would probably be wise to run some seismographic studies of what has been done, and maybe some more after the formation goes back under production from other wells and looses pressure at the site.

This is how we roll in Dallas

2010-06-04T09:00:00.000-06:00

LOL

Car Jumps Tollbooth At DFW Airport - Watch more Funny Videos

The Problem with Porosity

2010-05-27T16:24:00.002-06:00

I don't get all bent out of shape about illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America flooding into the country to keep the lawns looking nice. I just don't really give a shit.

However, there is a clear, definitive reason to have secure borders. There are thousands and thousands of jihadist goatfuckers in the world who want to come here and kill everybody -- and they're going right through Mexico just like we all said they would.

THAT'S why we need everybody entering the country through proper international entry points and nowhere else, just like most other Western countries.

Stop Using Dispersants You IDIOTS!

2010-05-17T10:26:00.006-06:00

Note: I was going to publish this Friday, but my ISP was down. BP is currently claiming success, but I stand by everything written below and include this quote from the current CNN story as supporting evidence: “The pipe isn't capturing all the oil gushing into the water, Suttles said, but the company hopes to increase the amount of oil it is siphoning from the site. Crews are trying to avoid mixing water with the oil, which can cause the formation of crystals known as hydrates, he said.”

I can’t claim to have all the answers, but I can say one thing with a very high degree of confidence. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are being poisoned as we speak and the real environmental impacts are being hidden, at least to a degree.

Currently, BP is attempting to run a pipe-within-a-pipe so that they can pump the oil out before it escapes the rupture … Hmmmm…. Can you say “really leaky oil production?” Why is it the two things they have tried, this and the giant top hat that froze up with methane hydrate crystals – both had the “incidental” end result of BP CONTINUING TO GET OIL FROM THE WELL?

SHUT THAT FUCKER OFF!

What kind of fucking RETARDS knowingly go into deep, high-pressure zones with a dodgy blowout preventer?!! That’s like going into combat with a rusty rifle! Only a fucking RETARD would do that!

But be that as it may, that’s what they did. Oh, the Congressional hearings are going to be fun.

“BP has blamed Transocean, which owned the rig. Transocean says that BP was responsible for the wellhead's design and that Halliburton was responsible for cementing the well shut once drilled. And Halliburton says that its workers were just following BP's orders, but that Transocean was responsible for maintaining the rig's blowout preventer.”

Jesus!

And, of course, BP has been blowing smoke up our collective skirts about the amount of oil coming out of this deep sea gusher. After looking at the robotic camera footage, experts have basically said “five thousand barrels a day my ass!” Some have put the amount as high as 70,000 barrels per day. At 42 U.S. gallons per barrel, that’s almost three MILLION gallons per day. 2,940,000 gallons = 11,129,111 liters.

Personally, I like the Russian solution. Stick a nuke deep into the earth’s crust so there will be no escaping fallout and crunch that well closed like it was never fucking there! (Well, I’m not sure the Russians were diligent enough to get it deep enough to prevent ANY leakage, but I know it can be done)

I know, I know. We’re way too namby pamby to do anything like that. Besides, if you pulled a deep water drilling ship off station on day one and sent it steaming full speed to the Gulf, it still wouldn’t be anywhere close to sufficient depth yet. Not to mention other engineering “what ifs”. Anybody at the Pentagon got a warhead that can fit in this hole and withstand a thousand atmospheres pressure? Just askin’ before we spend a lot of time drilling …

Anyway, BP is currently trying to SIP the well into submission by building an elaborate system of soda straws. I am awash with confidence. No, really.

In the meantime, however: QUIT PUMPING DISPERSANTS INTO THE FUCKING GULF ECOSYSTEM YOU EVIL GOOFY FUCKERS!!

By the way “dispersants” is a code name for “heavy duty petrochemicals that take the oil from the surface and allow it to hide as a giant toxic cloud under the water where it can’t be seen and therefore is better for the corporate image”.

When the oil is at the surface, at least you can get to it. You can corral it. You can scoop it up. You can see the SCOPE OF THE DISASTER!

By making the oil water soluble, these fuckers are sending it right into the water column to be absorbed by the ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM!

And they won’t even tell you what is in the chemical stew of these 400,000 gallons of chemical dispersants that have been pumped into the Gulf so far. There are two formulation of the commercial dispersant “Corexit” being used, and although we are being reassured that there are no known carcinogenic compounds in either formula, a review of the laughably limited available literature is not reassuring.

Corexit is going to be a much more complex chemical brew than the Inipol EAP 22 dispersant that was used on the Alaskan Valdez oil spill, yet both employ the solvent 2-Butoxyethanol to keep the “active” ingredients preserved and ready for use. The 2-Butoxyethanol alone is something you’d want to steer clear of. Many people employed to spray Inipol from boats during the Valdez spill later developed Gulf War Syndrome like illness. Of course, Exxon claims they are just being whiners.

An educated guess as to the nature of the chemistry, after reviewing the literature, indicates a mix of objectives in the chemistry. Again, just a guess, because even the EPA will not provide the actual chemistry because IT’S A TRADE SECRET – COCKSUCKERS! But one class of agents seem to be designed to modify the large oil molecules so that they can be bound with other agents into directly water-soluble compounds.
The other mechanism is a given, because the word was mentioned in the list of specifications that are followed by “CONFIDENTIAL”. This is the formation of “micelles”. This class of chemical has an oleophilic end (literally “oil loving” but in a molecular way and not a kinky way). However, on the other end of the molecule there is a water-friendly anionic charge. Surfactants in the chemical stew break the crude oil up into microscopic globules and these are then surrounded by the oleophilic ends of the dispersant molecules, leaving a surrounding field of negative charge on the opposing ends that allow the entire complex, known as a micelle, to slip peacefully into the water column forever.

Interestingly, a recent study appears to indicate that when the toxicology studies of some of these chemicals are conducted in the presence of ultraviolet light – such as that found in the WORLD where things LIVE and not in a laboratory under florescent light where toxicology studies are conducted, the results are different. It appears the toxicity may be underestimated by 50 to THOUSANDS of times, depending on which chemical in the stew is being tested.

But the end result is that thousands of barrels of crude oil are becoming one with the Gulf ecosystem instead of being scooped off the surface. All of the components of this crude, which include some lovely players like our friend and deadly carcinogen, benzene, will be absorbed into the food chain and begin bioaccumulation.

The plume will continue to disseminate and it will get into the plankton, it will concentrate in the oysters and muscles as they filter-feed. It will get into the zooplankton and be eaten by the tiniest of creatures where it is concentrated and those will be eaten by the shrimp where it is concentrated further. It will be concentrated in the little fish and concentrated more in the big fish and maximally concentrated in the fish that you and I eat.

I’m tempted to go buy a deep freezer and stock up on frozen seafood. Expect prices to go up. Trust me.

Man … there’s this little out of the way restaurant in Jackson Mississippi where they truck in fresh Gulf seafood on ice every day … absolutely delicious. There’s another great place in Corpus. I wonder where the plume currently is? Is there time to drive down for one last plate of fresh seafood?

Oh, they don’t have any idea how long all this shit will linger in the ecosystem. There’s been no studies. Nobody knows. They’re just fucking doing it.

I REALLY wish they would stop it.

1911 Lust

2010-04-28T16:27:00.003-06:00

This is likely to be a new inclusion to the Gadfly household after they start shipping them in June.

Of all the 1911 variants out there, this one calls to me. It harkens to the original G.I. model in overall look, but has all the necessary upgrades to make it a solid, sweet shooter. Plus, it’s being made in America. And just to sweeten the deal – unlike many of the others, it’s not ridiculously overpriced.

This gun speaks to me.

A bit about the history and this new weapon offering:

Back in 1917, at the height of WWI, the U.S. Ordnance Department ordered Remington-UMC* to produce 500,000 1911 pistols. By the time the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 Remington had produced 21,677 1911s. 91 years later Remington is once again producing John M. Browning's famous design.

The new Remington 1911 R1 pistol is a variant of the 1911A1 design. Remington has added a flared and lowered ejection port, beveled magazine well, loaded chamber indicator, high profile dovetailed single-dot front and two-dot rear sights, a crisp 3.5-5 lbs trigger and a match grade stainless steel barrel with barrel bushing.
The pistols will be manufactured at the Remington factory in Ilion, New York. Remington plans on shipping the pistols in June.

Specifications:
Action: Single Action
Caliber: .45 ACP
Magazine Capacity: 7 rounds
Barrel Length: 5"
Barrel Material: Stainless Steel
Barrel Finish: Satin Black Oxide
Rifling Twist Rate: 1:16 LH
Overall Length: 8.5"
Overall Height: 5.5"
Grip Material: Walnut
Grip Design: Checkered (Double Diamond)
Trigger Pull: 3.5 - 5 lbs
Average Weight: 38.5 oz
MSRP (Price): $699

* Not to be confused with Remington Rand who produced 1911s during WWII. Rand is a different company.

The only thing that might get changed are the sights. I’m kind of finicky about my sights, but I’ll give these a spin first and see how I like them.

My BFF Joan

2010-04-22T12:59:00.002-06:00

By the way, the mighty Joan is back, and has been posting regularly :D

PS: I call her my BFF specifically because of how gay it sounds for a guy my age to use that term. What can I say? She makes me stupid ;-D

Went to a garden party ...

2010-04-19T12:10:00.003-06:00

Went to a party Saturday night that had a contingent from the other college in Denton. Texas Women’s University is … well … rather blessed in its percentage of “women who enjoy the company of women”. In addition, a goodly percentage of its attendants are feminists of the militant variety.

Now, politically speaking, I AM a feminist. I am very much about equal pay for equal work, anti-glass-ceiling, pro-choice, and pretty much the gamut of women’s rights. Hell, when I got married I told my to-be-wife that she didn’t have to change her name if she didn’t want to. To me it’s an antiquated custom and belittles the woman’s individuality, but most women grow up getting comfortable with the idea *shrug*

It’s when the feminist hardliners cross the line and start trying to make men behave to some militant standard that they make an enemy out of me. “Look, you fucking dyke-do femiNazi! I’ll look at porn if I damn well please. I don’t care how hard you stamp your little Doc Marten boots. So, since you have seen fit to intrude into my world and castigate me to my face, let me retort in kind: You have just turned an ally into an enemy. That makes you completely fucking stupid. Therefore, you should not open your idiotic mouth EVER, unless somebody wants to stick a dick in it.”

Fortunately, the combat-booted contingent at the large party didn’t confront me in any way, even though I was definitely one of the rare non-beta males wandering around this large outdoor party. I did get the evil eye from a couple of the alpha bulls with their anti-male T-shirts.

It’s just my Loki streak, but I have a terrible desire to annoy people who are overly sensitive and militant about it. I think I’m going to have a T-shirt made in case I ever get invited back:

If you’ll get me a beer, I’ll pull your hair and call you “Fuckmeat”

Geothermal

2010-04-08T09:59:00.007-06:00

Note: Interesting spelling errors corrected. Thanks Alaska Chick. I need a copy editor LOL

I love it when someone produces a technology that I’ve postulated. ‘Cuz, let’s face it. Left to me, postulation is about all you’re going to get unless I get some grant $$$ for R&D up in this mother *chuckle*

My original idea was to use pressurized ammonia as the vaporizing agent to drive an electric generation turbine using geothermal heat that was below the boiling point of water. See, in most places, to get above the boiling point of water by going into the earth, you gotta go really, really deep. That is, unless you live somewhere volcanically active like Iceland. But just to get warmth from the earth, you don’t have to go that deep.

But ammonia is reactive as all hell and tends to eat up various metals, not to mention toxic if it leaks, so this guy in Alaska used plain old automobile air conditioner refrigerant (R134) to do just what I was thinking about.

He uses geothermally-heated water (located near the surface in this instance) to heat the pressurized R134 into vapor that is then under much greater pressure. This pressure gradient is then used to rotate the vanes of generation turbines that power his resort up in the hinterlands of Alaska. Way cool.

The Carrier air conditioner company has made a few modifications to one of their largest AC units so that it can be, basically, run backwards to serve as a generation turbine in this manner. Larger units for greater power output are in the works.

The great thing about this is that any waste hot water anywhere can be put to use making electricity. Of course, it takes an investment in the generator, but if the hot waste-water stream isn’t going anywhere, it will pay for itself. Plus, there is a new refrigerant called R245 being tried out that looks like it’s going to double the efficiency of this kind of power generation.

From the Chena Hot Springs Resort web page: “Oil and gas production also provides another possible application for UTC's power plant. Because most oil and gas wells are quite deep, they are warmed by the natural thermal gradient of the earth. "Waste" water that is extracted along with the oil and gas can hold a temperature high enough to produce electricity. This hot water could be used to generate power directly, without impacting oil and gas production. Some estimates suggest up to 5000MW of additional power could be generated in Texas alone - that's more than 10 times the amount of power used by the entire State of Alaska!”

This brings me to the other part of my idea, which I have yet to figure out. See, geothermal energy from drilling has a … well … an uncomfortable little gap in the technologies.

There is a company called Geothermal Anywhere that uses technology gained during the Soviet Union’s Kola Super Deep Borehole project, which was similar, but more successful than the U.S. Project Mohole. Both projects were testing the feasibility of one day drilling through the earth’s crust to what is known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity boundary over the mantle. Both projects found that ultimate goal to be unfeasible. However, the Soviets went MUCH deeper. Eventually, 7.6 miles (12.2 kilometers). The deepest hole ever drilled.

Anyway, Geothermal Anywhere uses a plasma-cutting head that never actually contacts the surface it is cutting, so it doesn’t rely on the massive weight of the drill stack above it to drive it into the earth. That was the problem with going deep. Once the temperature got high, the metal bits couldn’t stand the weight and the grinding.
And somehow they get this plasma bit to work in the liquid environment of the circulating “drilling mud” that carries the cuttings up and out of the hole. I would love to know more about how they do that, but they play their technology very close to the vest. All they say is “Electric plasma rock cutting method based on principle of electric current transmission through the rock exposed to the extremely high voltage.” Well, I figured the high voltage part when I read the word “plasma”.

So anyway, this technology solves HALF of my remaining conundrum …

Directional drilling techniques had already been available, but what is needed to make a truly efficient geothermal system where there is no surface geothermal activity is a continuous loop.

Currently, drilling-based geothermal uses underground storage formations to hold and heat water which is then pumped back up into heat exchangers to boil fresh water to run turbines. Not exactly efficient. In a non-geothermally active region, this would need to be 5-6 miles (8-10 km) deep to run standard steam turbines using water geothermally heated to 470ºF-670ºF (200ºC to 400ºC).

That would take some serious pumping power, which would bite into energy production efficiency. And then punching six-mile holes in the ground is not cheap, and you’d need two of them to create an efficient loop system.

It would be so much better if you could just form a continuous metal casing inside a bore hole that goes down to the level you need (which for running the refrigerant-based turbines is only ordinary oil well depth of around 2 ½ to 3 miles). And then, with horizontal drilling techniques already long perfected, run a span along at the proper depth to allow time and contact area for heating.

Then if there were only a way to get that bore hole and continuous casing to run back up to the surface, you could have a beautiful closed-loop system. No waste pumping, only production pumping. The heat and hydrology would be in your favor.

Now, by mounting the Russian plasma bit on a directional drilling motor or some other type of subterranean robotic crawler, I can envision a method to ensure that it can make another turn and drill straight up toward the surface by supplying it with a flexible pushrod from the drill site. It would have to have this, because no matter how well it’s crawlers or screws were designed, sooner or later it would lose traction and fall on the way up without support.

And there are all manner of sonar and GPS means to track the progress and course of the drill head as it made its way to the surface. That’s existing technology.

What I can’t figure out is the casing. The casing pipe is pushed down from the surface, one joint locking onto the next all the way down. To get it to make one bend in a horizontal well, they pump the bend full of heavy lubricant and it’s still a very twitchy thing. Making a second bend would increase the drag coefficient exponentially. Then on top of that you would have gravity working against you. There’s no way to continue to shove casing down the hole. The casing would collapse under the force and wad up.

Sending the robotic drill on a banzai run to the surface after the bend seems fraught with peril in the absence of casing to support the upturn in the borehole beneath it. If it made it, I could see having it trail a heavy cable from the end of the casing string to the surface where traction could be applied to augment the force moving the string through the earth. However, breakdowns, borehole collapses, difficulties “tripping” or backing the drill tool out of the hole for service … nigh impossible.

There’s got to be a way.

In fact, if you can figure out a novel, efficient way to do this, the U.S. government is interested. If you just happen to have a magnificent solution for laying a closed loop deep underground, you can send your proposal to the guy listed here with the Department of Energy. This is listed under Grant Application subtopic “g”.

Hmmmm…. I need to design some sort of down-hole pipe tractor … I think I’ll have a look at modern oil well “fishing” tools to see what is possible to do “down hole” and go from there.

You know … since we’re not talking about super high heat, polyurethane makes a very durable pipe. It could be sent down-hole as beads and melted and extruded into the sides of the borehole as the crawler progresses. Just make the cutting head collapsible so that it can be tripped back out for service. Maintaining thickness and protecting it from mud circulation while it cures would be the technological challenges. How thick would it have to be to support the borehole at a bit below the boiling point of water, say 190ºF? Would it transfer heat well enough? Is there an inexpensive plastic that would?

Anyone know a good polymer properties website?

Bad Crackers! No Biscuits!

2010-03-31T13:55:00.003-06:00

OK, when I first heard that the Feds were rounding up militia members in multiple states I was a bit concerned.

At first I was wondering if this administration was going to start going Janet Reno on all the crazy crackers up in the hills like the Feds did during the Clinton administration.

No, it turned out these particular crazy crackers NEEDED to be fucked with.

"This is a group that I would classify as neither a militia or a Christian group," said Michael Lackomar, a member of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia. "They're really a fringe group outside of anything we do.

"They're more of a private army or a terrorist organization or really just a criminal organization."

Federal authorities on Monday charged nine members of a group called the Hutaree militia with conspiring to kill a Michigan law enforcement officer and then kill other officers at the funeral.

OK, if these charges prove true, these are some crazy crackers who definitely have lost the right to stay up in the hills and live free and crazy as shithouse rats. It’s OK to be crazy as a shithouse rat as long as, like Randy Weaver, you take your family up into the hills where you can all be crazy together and not bother anybody (until the Feds go Janet Reno on your dog and your son up on Ruby Ridge, which was a travesty far worse than Waco, Constitutionally speaking).

But when the crazy crackers start making plans and putting logistics in place in order to bring their crazy ass shit down out of the hills and inflict it on the rest of us – OK, that’s what the Feds are for. Good going, guys. Spectacular job. Put those crazy crackers in a hole before they fucking kill somebody.

And I know this isn’t fair on some level, because not many people look good on their mug shots …

But just looking at them, you wouldn’t think any of these fine gentlemen and lady would have any IQ issues or harbor any hatred in their hearts, would you?

*laughing*

Healthcare Deform

2010-03-19T09:27:00.001-06:00

UPDATE: Never "misunderestimate" the power of stupid people in a group. *sigh*

For God’s Sake! Don’t pass this fucked up piece-of-shit bill NOW!

This piece of proposed legislation has been so goat-roped, butt-fucked and snake-bit over the last year, it’s a fucking abomination!

IT

WON’T

FIX

ANYTHING!

Hey! Democrats! The few of you who aren’t bought and paid for by the healthcare industry, as are most of the Republicans … Have you noticed that the healthcare industry is NOT running commercials trying to defeat this bill anymore?

Let me repeat that.

THERE ARE NO TERROR COMMERCIALS RUNNING ABOUT HOW THIS BILL WILL DESTROY THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT LIKE THERE WERE MONTHS AGO.

Now, put your little thinking caps on. Why do you figure that is?

Well, you’ve compromised this “healthcare reform” bill to the point where it does NOTHING to lower healthcare insurance costs, BUT MAKES IT MANDATORY THAT EVERYBODY BUYS HEALTH INSURANCE FROM THE CROOKED FUCKING HEALTHCARE INSURANCE COMPANIES!!!

And then you’re opening a big, fat tap to channel our tax money out to pay for lower income families so that they can GIVE THE MONEY TO THE CROOKED HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES!! ARE YOU STUPID!!

The healthcare giants LOVE this plan. You are going to make them richer than emperors of avarice.

Fucking idiots!

What kind of fucking thinking is that in the first place? Our country is crippled because a third of its people cannot afford health insurance – SO YOU IDIOTS WANT TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO BE TOO POOR TO AFFORD HEALTH INSURANCE!! That is calloused, elitist, cake-eater horseshit!

Do NOT pass this bill.

It’s not about Obama. It’s not about party politics. It’s about America.

You were too chickenshit to stand up to the healthcare insurance giants.

You failed.

Take it like a man. Don’t make things worse.

OK, I feel better now. Hope I didn’t get any bile on anybody ;-)

Problems in the Pebble Bedroom

2010-03-15T16:23:00.003-06:00

Well crap.

A while back I did a post about nuclear power generation, with a heavy focus on the high-temperature reactor technologies like the Pebble Bed reactor (PBR) design (the other variants share similarities under different acronyms).

If you remember, the PBR has the enriched fuel manufactured into graphite and ceramic coated balls, or “pebbles”, with the graphite acting as a moderator for the intensity of the reaction. And you have to pile the pebbles together to generate a critical mass to make the core of the reactor.

Anyway, it appears there are snags in the commercialization of that technology.

After spending nearly $10 million developing a functioning pebble-bed commercial plant without first building a test plant, South Africa has pulled the plug on their project, amid ongoing public criticism.

Well, I would criticize that project too. The design of their “pebbles” has been called into question and I don’t think their containment strategy was at all sufficient.

However, China has scaled back its pebble-bed development and is even converting the design of one of its prototype plants into a hybrid of pebble-bed reactor cooled by old-fashioned light water, which is inherently more dangerous and more expensive than the “as advertised” high-temperature reactor technologies. This leaves one to assume that the Chinese are having trouble getting the technology to perform as advertised.

The problem appears to be one of “unobtainium”.

And yes, that term is used in the film “Avatar”, but for those who don’t know, it has been used in engineering circles for a long time. Generally, it means that a thing could be built, or a technology could be feasible – if a material existed that had specific properties, which no natural material, or material yet developed, has.

And scuttlebutt is that in Germany, where the technology was developed and small-scale pebble-bed reactors and variants have been run successfully for years, they had heat variability problems. Sometimes overheating of the fuel pebble pile would exceed the pebble’s design limits. Temperatures would rise to the point where the “pebble” structure began to lose its integrity. And if such an occurrence were to get out of hand, the entire pebble bed could slag into one big caramel-peanut cluster that would finally solidify once the fuel began to run out. Of course, by then the whole reactor would be useless radioactive waste, I’m guessing. This problem never got that far, but the overheating has to do with the manufacturing of the pebbles and is, apparently, somewhat unpredictable, from what I was reading about it.

So, the theory is sound. The technology works. But at the moment it still appears too clunky for large scale commercialization. Someone needs to develop a higher-temperature pebble material, or design a better pebble out of existing materials – at least that’s my suspicion

But the inherent safety and the ability to burn old radioactive waste products as a portion of its fuel continues to make the high-temperature reactor very desirable. The powers that be in the United States are actively shopping for and reviewing various designs, but are looking down a 20-year time frame, because, apparently, the PBRs don’t quite trip their trigger just yet :-(

Unfortunately, things like these ARE being developed and beginning to be implemented around the world: Slightly safer versions of older nuke technology in smaller packages (from National Geographic):

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out which one of those I would want to be farther away from if it breached.

A lot of radioactive water suddenly blasting into steam…

Or a smaller amount of chemically reactive molten sodium, also radioactive, hitting ground water and exploding in a fireball …

Keep both of those things away from me o_O

Gotta give 'em an "E" for effort

2010-03-08T09:05:00.001-06:00

Random Surfing

2010-03-03T11:56:00.002-06:00

OK, this took me a second before I got it -- and then it cracked me up.

Hope everybody is doing well :o)

UPDATE: Here is a more clear image :o)

Special

2010-02-06T09:12:00.001-06:00

You know ...

You feel like a special kind of stupid when you open the washing machine and begin moving clothes into the dryer and then notice your cell phone laying in the bottom of the washer :-/

Fuck

Chupacabra!

2010-01-20T11:09:00.007-06:00

Metaphorically speaking, this was found just a stone’s throw from my house.

Here is a news snippet about it:

WISE COUNTY -- Animal experts are baffled by a small, hairless creature found dead on the golf course at Runaway Bay in Wise County.

Maintenance worker Tony Potter removed the animal's remains Wednesday morning.

Potter showed the remains to several people and then took it to a veterinarian's office in Bridgeport. He said no one there could identify it, either.

The creature is dark brown, about 18 inches long, with a black nose and a face resembling a rodent -- but with long canine teeth jutting from the upper and lower jaws.

The front claws have narrow digits about a half-inch long, with long, narrow nails.

Whatever this is has powerful rear legs "almost like a kangaroo," according to CARE research assistant Sherre Sacher. She said the front claws look like they're made for digging.

The tail is like that of an opossum, but not quite as long.

"It's really exciting," Sacher said. "I can't wait to find out what it is."

The center hopes to hear from experts who would like to examine the animal. Some who have seen it wonder if it's the legendary chupacabra, an animal that supposedly sucks the blood of goats.

If nothing else, one thing appears certain: This is the ugliest bogey ever seen on the Runaway Bay golf course.

OK, this had me stumped for a bit. I knew it was just a genetic anomaly where some normal, local animal was born without fur. At first I was thinking coyote, but surely ANY veterinarian in Wise County Texas could look at ANY coyote’s teeth and tell whether or not it’s a canid or not.

That stumped me. Maybe he was a really stupid vet? Maybe the news crew just talked to the goofy veterinary assistant who was smoking weed?

BUT YOU GOTTA ADMIT THAT THING REALLY LOOKS FUCKED UP!

I can see where the unlearned have to flap their arms and run about screaming “Chupacabra! Chupacabra!”

But tests are done. The biologists have had a look-see – it’s a raccoon.

Didn’t know they looked that weird without their cute little bandit-fur faces on LOL

Poor little procyon girl. Don’t know what evils you might have committed in a former life to be born without fur, but this was not the winter for you o_O

Damn!

2010-01-11T23:45:00.003-06:00

Is it cold in here or what?

I am NOT sorry to see this arctic cold front slacking off o_O

In my particular idiom

2010-01-07T15:22:00.001-06:00

My friend does a regular report on a radio talk show as an art critic, and the last one was on the bizarre new medium of digital art.

So I made bizarre digital art in honor of her.

I call it: “Damn it! I Dropped the Vibe After You Came!”

Well ....

2010-01-07T10:45:00.003-06:00

You know, I've always said:

There is the way the world ought to be...

And there is the way the world IS.

The Israelis don't have time for jacking around with the way the world ought to be.

It was a holly jolly Christmas

2009-12-30T11:31:00.004-06:00

I love Texas. Proud to be Texan.

But these poor bastards cannot drive on ice at all.

A confluence of weather fronts pushed the blizzard just west of Dallas. So Christmas Eve traffic ran into this winter storm like a herd of bison stampeding off a cliff into oblivion. The roads were covered in ice and the blowing snow was cold it was frozen into dry white grit. The defrost on my truck only melted the snow enough to make it cake onto my windshield wipers as ice. Finally, I had to break it off by hand.

Visibility was dicey when the wind picked up a good wad of fine snow.

So, people who KNEW that they did not know what they were doing slowed down to 15-20mph and stayed in a big, slow conga line in the right-hand lane. Very good. No problem with that.

Other people want to drive 45-50 in the straights. I am one of them. I learned to drive on ice as a teenager. We are in the left lane.

Problem:

90+ percent of the people wanting to drive faster don’t have a fucking clue. These people are RIGHT ON EACH OTHER’S BUMPERS!

Yeah, I’m driving 45-50mph, but there are 30 friggin’ car lengths between me and the guy in front of me. Why? BECAUSE THAT’S HOW LONG IT’LL TAKE ME TO STOP ON ICE! That’s at LEAST the amount of distance it will take me. I’m factoring in a hopeful amount of distance the next guy will travel after I KNOW I need to stop.

YOU PEOPLE ARE INSANE!

And yeah … we only went about 15 miles before one of the 20mph people thought it would be a good idea for him to be in the 50mph lane, and then there was a traffic jam of epic proportions with the most heinous automotive carnage spread for miles and miles.

*singing* “In intensive care for Christmaaaassss…”

It was only after inching through almost all of this cluster fuck that I felt safe enough to get the camera out and take pictures of the last little bit of it. Apologies for shitty photography. With rear-wheel drive on ice as slick as oiled glass, I was primarily focused on driving.

I tell ya. People up north in quaint rural places where there aren’t a lot of people to get hurt should hold winter driving courses for Texans. A nice bed and breakfast and some competent ice driving lessons for young Texans. ‘Cuz, although we are geographically south, there is nothing between us and the Arctic but the Great Plains, so we get just enough bad winter weather to make us dangerous.

Holiday Gift Ideas

2009-12-23T10:59:00.000-06:00

Just in case anyone wondered what I wanted for Christmas ;-)

Magma Chambers Give me Chills

2009-12-17T17:19:00.003-06:00

Well, isn’t that special.

Not only is the lava dome beneath Yellowstone Park overdue for a devastating eruption the likes of which no human has ever seen – it’s VASTLY larger than previously thought.

While no one has ever seen such an eruption and lived to tell of it, our ancestors felt the effects of one very similar. The mighty Toba eruption, which is the only magma chamber on the planet known to be even larger than the one under Yellowstone, is believed to be responsible for a “bottleneck” in the human genome. Studies into our genetic diversity have indicated that at about the time of the Toba blast, human blood lines were reduced to only a handful of specimens in the entire world. We were a whisper from being wiped out by the mega-eruption.

Damn. Just have a look at that image of the Yellowstone magma chamber. The tail of that monster stretches down 410 miles into the mantle, and that’s just what they were able to determine from these seismographic surveys. There is every reason to believe that fat tail stretches the rest of the way, 1800 miles (2900 km), down to where a tendril of it taps into the fantastic heat at the earth’s core boundary.

However, since the Yellowstone chamber is shaped thus, it is logical to assume that the Toba chamber also has this tap into the core’s heat. In fact, that is the going theory, that plate tectonics cool the mantle and these magma plumes cool the core.

Not that it’s going to make your Monday commute any more fun if this puppy blows *chuckle* The last time it popped its top it dropped enough ash 1000 miles away in Nebraska to kill vast herds of animals.

Oh, and just because it’s going to suck here in North America, people in the rest of the world might not want to count on having anything to eat for a few years while the climate unfucks itself from having hundreds of square miles of ash blown into the air along with millions and millions of pounds of sulfuric acid. Don’t bother asking for help. Those of us who are left over here are going to be … busy :-(

It might be a good idea to seal a bunch of people up in some caverns somewhere with a bunch of equipment so they can come back out and remind the survivors how to do engineering and shit again. You know, rebuild libraries and teach whatever few new children their might be how to read and use computers and whatnot o_O

You know, I think it’s absolute bullshit about the 2012 thing. Nostradamus is utterly meaningless. By reading that tripe you can convince yourself that you’re predicting the past with 100% accuracy and still know not a fucking thing about the future. And I believe the Mayans just ran out of room on the rock *chuckle*

But, you know … I will admit that there’s nothing actively PREVENTING doomsday from happening at any moment LOL

Sweet dreams :o)

Fun facts (courtesy of Wiki and other sources):

The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor—almost 3 inches (7 centimeters) each year for the past three years—is more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923. From mid-Summer 2004 through mid-Summer 2008, the land surface within the caldera has moved upwards, as much as 8 inches at the White Lake GPS station. The U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory maintain that they "see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future. Recurrence intervals of these events are neither regular nor predictable."

The Toba eruption occurred at what is now Lake Toba about 67,500 to 75,500 years ago. The Toba eruption was the latest of a series of at least three caldera-forming eruptions which have occurred at the volcano, with earlier calderas having formed around 700,000 and 840,000 years ago. The last eruption had an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index of 8, described as "mega-colossal", making it possibly the largest explosive volcanic eruption within the last twenty-five million years.

Bill Rose and Craig Chesner of Michigan Technological University have deduced that the total amount of erupted material was about 2,800 km3 (670 cu mi) The pyroclastic flows of the eruption destroyed an area of 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 sq mi), with ash deposits as thick as 600 meters (1,969 ft) by the main vent.

The largest known eruption of the Yellowstone magma plume was about 2.1 million years ago at the 588cu mile (2450 cu km) Huckleberry Ridge Tuff that created the nearly-50-mile-long Island Park caldera in Idaho. The next major eruption was from the Mesa Falls Tuff around 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry’s Fork caldera at the western end of the Island Park hole – much less impressive at only 10 miles or so across, but still big enough to make you wistful for something as gentle as the largest thermonuclear warhead ever made.

Following that blast, most of the plume’s volcanic activity shifted to the uplift under Yellowstone. The last eruption there 640,000 years ago was from the 240 cubic mile (1000 cu km) Lava Creek Tuff and the formation of the present 28 x53 mile (45 x 85 km) Yellowstone caldera. That would have been a bad day be geyser watching.

The Toba caldera isn’t vastly larger than that in area, however, its depth (1,666 ft or 505 meters to the bottom of the lake STILL) speaks to it being 3X the magnitude.

To give an idea of its magnitude, consider that although the eruption took place in Indonesia, it deposited an ash layer approximately 15 centimeters thick over the entire Indian subcontinent; at one site in central India, the Toba ash layer today is up to 6 meters thick and parts of Malaysia were covered with 9 m of ashfall. In addition it has been calculated that 1010 metric tons of sulfuric acid was ejected into the atmosphere by the event.

The Toba caldera is the only supervolcano in existence that can be described as Yellowstone's "bigger sister”.

Psyched!

2009-12-10T14:15:00.003-06:00

My sweetie is coming into town for a long weekend. We're going to play.

She's my babydoll :o)

We're gonna laugh ...

And then we're gonna be baaaaaaadddd :D

Hope you all have fun.

Gadfly

My man!

2009-12-07T09:56:00.002-06:00

Here's a guy who is looking to unfuck things. He's looking to take on the fat cats and the ingrained mores problem. And with some zeal, it seems.

We are corrupt

2009-12-03T17:18:00.002-06:00

Continued from the previous discussion.

As went the Romans and a number of other once-great societies, my country is dying from the inside even as strong men stand resolute to defend her from without.

Over the decades, as more and more legislators were bought and paid for by the hoard of lobbyists and the bottomless pockets of global corporations, the laws forbidding such things themselves were eroded.

In 1989, Bo Pilgrim of Pilgrim’s Pride chicken fame went to the Texas Senate and started passing out $10,000 checks hand-to-hand to help get a bill passed to gut the Texas worker’s compensation laws. He hadn’t bothered to look into the fact that such a thing was illegal, he had just witnessed how things worked. His crime was not passing the money through the proper Party money launderers like the RNCC/DNCC (Republican and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees).

Of course, it didn’t stop a bunch of politicians from taking the checks. And then when it was found out, boy, were their faces red. *eye roll*

And a few of us “tsk”ed. Most of us laughed. We should have been outraged. However, at the time, the pessimists had lost faith completely, and the more positive minded people figured surely the public humiliation of it would bottle that kind of thing up for a while. Goes to prove you just cannot look at American politicians with an over-jaundiced eye.

In 2004, Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham got popped for outrageous bribery. Oh, well. We can’t have a war hero and former jet fighter ace and all around swell guy having that kind of thing happen to him. So the laws were loosened up and now you can have “donations” from individuals to a Congressman given the blessing of the RNCC/DNCC without ever having gone through for oversight.

Listen to what one of the few good apples in the rotten Congressional barrel has to say about it. Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur laid it on the line: “We have to take the money out. We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before, political parties used to raise money; now, individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt.”

And this lust for “campaign” contribution funds leads to a war between the parties – a war that is fought through image and sound bites because the masses are ignorant and controlled by the television. Because of this, if I am a U.S. Senator from Party A, any opportunity to make the Party B look bad is more money in MY POCKET. There is a direct cash incentive to favor allegiance to Party A over allegiance to America as a whole, or as Ms. Kaptur puts it:

“People wonder, 'Well, why doesn't Congress get along?' Because they are made into arch enemies by the type of fundraising system that is embedded in the very guts of the institution.”

Now, we have the worst financial crisis the country has faced since the Great Depression. Moreover, we know how it happened. We know HOW things must be changed to see that it does not happen again.

But our elected officials are not doing what we expect them to do!

They are NOT reestablishing safeguard regulations on banking and Wall Street. Clearly, a majority of American citizens want to see legislation enacted to protect the taxpayers from another such fiasco (especially while we’re still trying to figure out what in the hell we’re going to do with the present one). Hell, I suspect a clear majority would like to see the major players responsible marched out onto the Bonneville Salt Flats, doused with gasoline and set ablaze on national television.

But the legislation is not even being addressed because Money owns our elected officials. The richest 0.5% in the nation want to continue raping the middle 80% of the population under the Bell curve – those of us whose commute to work does not include a chauffeur and/or pilot.

Well, the middle 80% doesn’t WANT to be raped AGAIN by those bastards, but we have no say in the matter, because WE are not paying lobbyists and shoving truck loads of “campaign” contributions into the pockets of our Congressional representatives. We elect them – they buy them. That’s how that crap works anymore.

“Because what they (Investment bankers and major Wall Street firms) are doing is they're taking their mistakes and they're dumping them on the taxpayer. So, you and I, and the long term debt of our country and our children and grandchildren - It's all at risk because of their behavior. We aren't reigning them in.,” Kaptur points out.

Currently in our government, Money is writing the laws in favor of itself and at the expense of the U.S. citizen – and we are powerless to stop it.

We should march in protest and scream at the top of our lungs – but we don’t do that kind of thing as a rule. Most of us view that as an activity for the crazies. Most of us are sheep.

Fact is, it’s hard to work up a belly full of rage when you’ve realized this crap has been slowly and steadily getting worse and worse since the fall of the Johnson administration. Our democracy has been slowly taken away from us in a manner most pernicious. The continuing corruption has inured us – weakened us into becoming more accepting of corruption, and now it is clear that a tipping point was passed long ago. The same names shuffle between Capitol Hill and the golden-parachute club signing lucrative government contracts, and nobody bats an eye. There is a LIST of multi-billion-dollar industries that have three or more lobbyists on the Hill for every man and woman in the House and Senate.

Congress now blatantly decides issues in conflict with the wishes of the majority of American voters. Not that this is ALWAYS a bad thing, but when it becomes the order of the day – you’ve become a serf in a totalitarian state. And if Americans start making too much racket, the multi-national deep pockets just hit the populace with a PR blitz to assure us all that these are not the droids we were looking for. (“Obamacare is going to have your family doctor executed” [note hyperbole]. You’ve seen those kinds of commercials everywhere. The money ALL traces back to Big Insurance).*

The once large number of independent media outlets has been consolidated and conglomerated into a tiny handful of global corporations that literally control what the mainstream media says about corporate affairs over the long term. I have a newspaper background. At one point I had the brief blessing of working under one of the last few newspaper publishers in the country to have come from a journalism background. The rest have been promoted from the advertising side of the paper, which has been the trend for a long time now. Advertising ultimately controls your news content.

We’ve been trained like obedient puppies to wave the banner of free enterprise so high that we looked the other way or were lenient as corporate corruption slowly oozed its way into tighter and tighter control of our government. We might have bitched about it, even cursed it. Some made demeaning jokes about it – but we never DID anything about it.

Whenever someone spoke before Congress and groused about all the regulations being pulled off Big Business over the years, the multi-national corporations waved the banner of free enterprise furiously to shut them up. And now that these clowns managed to run up trillions of dollars in debt, they didn’t skip a beat before waving the flag of socialism and screaming for tax dollars in amounts so obscene one still cannot entirely comprehend the scope of it all. That’s the sociopathic mentality of the global corporation, as a general rule. He who has the gold makes the rules – even if he is galactically stupid.

At this point we literally don’t have the power to get Congress back. We can beseech our representatives all we want – but who do you think they will listen to? Us? Or the people lining their pockets with cash? Especially when our desire is for them to STOP letting those people line their pockets with cash.

Yeah right …

So you and I no longer matter to the officials we elect. We are no longer citizens. The only citizens recognized on Capitol Hill are multi-national corporations that have no more loyalty to this country than they have dedication to following the law.

Corruptio optima pessima, “the best thing corrupted became the worst”.

I don’t know about you, but I want my country back.

I’ve thought about this a lot.

Oh, it’s a simple fix in theory: Outlaw paid/corporate-sponsored lobbyists and institute massive campaign reform and term limits – done deal. That’s kind of like saying “take all the unwanted carbon out of the atmosphere and make diamonds out of it”. Easier said than done doesn’t BEGIN to cover it.

OK, when you break it down, this is our conundrum: How do you convince a legislative body to enact regulations forbidding itself from conducting activities that are financially beneficial to the individuals of that body?

You can’t.

There is no way Congress is going to police itself. The Money is soundly ensconced in the halls of Capitol Hill and it would take a small army of Congressmen to shake it loose. No amount of marching in the street will ever make that happen.

It was the culture in our government that first became corrupt, THEN the rules protecting taxpayers and inhibiting bribery were torn away. That culture will remain as long as the election process remains predictable and largely controllable as it is now. The Money always serves itself.

The only way to disrupt the culture is to make term limits the single most important issue our nation faces.

I know that sounds preposterous, but that is the ONLY way it will ever come about.

Nobody serves more than two terms in the House or Senate!

It’s not like there’s a shortage of intelligent people – far from it. There’s a shortage of people who are allowed the opportunity to serve and would do a much better job of it. People who might tell the global conglomerates to take their lobbyists and stuff them where the sun don’t shine.

We’ve got to break up the money chain, and to do that, there must be votes in the House and Senate that haven’t suckled from it. There must be enough regular American citizens serving on the Hill to point fingers, make noise and shame the others into doing the right thing.

Term limits is THE most important agenda for any Congressional candidate.

I LOVE my guns and I am a Second Amendment crusader – but from now on, I’m voting for Sarah Brady if she puts term limits at the top of her agenda.

I am absolutely passionate about maintaining a woman’s freedom of choice on abortion rights, but if some religious conservative is preaching term limits – I’m dotting his name on the ballot.

Gadflyism: There’s the way there world ought to be, and then there’s the way the world is.

As distasteful as it might be, we’ve got to get term limits passed before we can begin to clean up the cesspit Capitol Hill has become. From there the door is open for all the rest: Campaign reform, lobby reform … reinstating the common-sense regulations to stop the hemorrhage of tax dollars into holes dug by corporate jackals that has been going on since the 1980s!

Currently in the world, we need to win our government back from global corporations and the richest of the rich. There’s only one weapon I’m willing to turn to at this time, and that’s my vote. Please use yours.

http://www.termlimits.org/

* Not that I’m a fan of the healthcare plan as it is. It’s too hopelessly piecemeal to fix anything. The only reason I support it is that Big Insurance wants it defeated.

AAARRRGGHHHH!!!

2009-11-24T12:43:00.002-06:00

I'm getting spammed again!!

Probably related to the "Danger Will Robinson" click-through page giving spammers some sort of programming guide for their bot. *sigh*

I'm just deleting them for right now.

Oh, and I'm working on the other thing. It's ... angry.

Well freakin' DUH!

2009-11-18T16:59:00.002-06:00

I've been wondering how long it was going to take before somebody was FINALLY forced to choose the OBVIOUS interim solution >__<

Although ... that it was the "Maersk Alabama" is kind of hilarious *chuckle*

US ship repels pirates with guns and sound blasts

By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya – Guards aboard the Maersk Alabama used guns and a sound blaster Wednesday to repel the second pirate attack in seven months on the U.S. vessel at a time when ships are increasingly hiring armed security teams to thwart hijackings.

Despite an increased international flotilla of warships off the Horn of Africa, maritime figures indicate the number of ship boardings has remained about the same in the past year.

A U.S. naval commander hailed the ship's new defenses and family members rejoiced at the Maersk Alabama's escape this time around, but the handling of the attack highlights a growing schism over use of arms on commercial vessels.

The U.N.'s Maritime Safety Committee says members should "strongly discourage the carrying and use of firearms by seafarers for personal protection or for the protection of a ship." The concern is that bringing guns aboard ship will encourage violence.

With young and impoverished Somalis increasingly seeking out multimillion-dollar paydays from successful hijackings, ship owners are turning to new tactics, including armed security.

"Somali pirates understand one thing and only one thing, and that's force," said Capt. Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and the father of a sailor aboard the Maersk Alabama the first time it was hijacked in April.

Then, pirates took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. U.S. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates.

This time, the ship used its own private security guards to save itself.

Maritime experts said it is not unusual for ships to be attacked by pirates more than once, particularly those that regularly travel through trouble spots.

Pirate attacks have spiked around the globe this year, according to a report released this week.

The number of attacks worldwide rose to 306 between January and September, surpassing the 293 incidents recorded throughout 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur. Somali pirate activity off the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes, accounted for at least 135 of the cases. There were 44 pirate boardings and hijackings by Somali pirates in 2008 and 42 so far this year, according to the bureau.

Somali pirates hold 11 ships and 254 crew, a U.N. diplomat said. Attacks have increased in recent weeks as the monsoon season subsided, and pirates in that area are expanding their reach well into the Indian Ocean.

On Wednesday, a self-proclaimed pirate said the captain of a chemical tanker hijacked Monday had died of wounds suffered during the ship's hijacking. The pirate, Sa'id, who gave only one name for fear of reprisals, said the captain died Tuesday night from internal bleeding. The chemical tanker Theresa was taken Monday with 28 North Korean crew, the EU naval force said.

Poverty and hunger are driving the number of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean around Somalia, which has not had a central government since 1991 and is bloodied by war since then.

A member of a Spanish fishing trawler who was freed from pirate captivity with his crew on Tuesday after a $3.3 million ransom was paid, said his captors were emaciated men ranging in age from 20 to 40.

"The Kalashnikovs were so heavy they bent the men over backward," Iker Galbarriatu told the Madrid newspaper El Pais, referring to their assault rifles. "They would not have been able to shoot without falling down."

The United States is calling for intensified efforts to combat piracy and warning against paying ransom.

The EU this week approved an extension to the union's naval operations in the area. Speaking to the EU parliament, force commander British Rear Adm. Peter Hudson said that no ships operating under EU escort had been hijacked by the pirates.

More ships traveling near Somalia are using armed guards but still make up only about 20 percent of the total, Murphy said. Many of those are American vessels. Nexus Consulting Group, a Viriginia-based company, said Wednesday that its armed maritime forces have thwarted at least eight reported pirate attacks.

Richard Scurrell, who analyzes risk for the global insurance broker Willis Group, said that while more security companies are offering their services aboard vessels, many companies remain reluctant to use armed personnel out of fear that crew members will be killed or injured. In addition, there are insurance issues, and countries that flag the vessels have differing rules about carrying weapons.

When the Maersk Alabama was attacked last spring, the ship, like most in the region, had no armed guards.

"Due to Maersk Alabama ... embarking security teams, the ship was able to prevent being successfully attacked by pirates," said Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. "This is a great example of how merchant mariners can take pro-active action."

Four suspected pirates in a skiff had approached the Maersk Alabama, firing with automatic weapons from about 300 yards away, a statement from the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain said. The ship responded with evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which emits earsplitting tones.

A self-proclaimed pirate told The Associated Press from the Somali pirate town of Haradhere that colleagues at sea had called 2 1/2 hours after the attack began.

"They told us that they got in trouble with an American ship, then we lost them," said the man who gave his name as Abdi Nor.

A U.S. Navy P-3 surveillance aircraft monitored the Maersk Alabama as it headed for the Kenyan port town of Mombasa, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, spokesman for the 5th Fleet.

Kimberly Rochford, the wife of the Maersk Alabama's captain, Paul Rochford of Barrington, R.I., told WBZ-AM radio in Boston that she is happy there were weapons on board this time.

"It probably surprised the pirates. They were probably shocked," she said. "I'm really happy at least it didn't turn out like the last time."

juvenile

2009-11-11T11:36:00.001-06:00

Main Entry: ju·ve·nile
Pronunciation: \ˈjü-və-ˌnī(-ə)l, -nəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: French or Latin; French juvénile, from Latin juvenilis, from juvenis young person — more at young
Date: 1625

3 : reflecting psychological or intellectual immaturity : childish

Figured I'd skip the first two definitions

*juvenile snicker*

It's good for you

2009-11-04T11:11:00.003-06:00

I found this in an old National Geographic

This is about the time that all the sodas in the U.S. switched over to cheap high fructose corn sweetener instead of cane sugar and everybody started getting fat.

37 years later there are headlines about fat kids ever other week and they STILL have everybody eating that shit.

Why?

Lobbyists from corn corporations in the Congress. It USED to be just the congressmen from corn-producing states, but now there are hardly any more independent farmers -- it's corn corporations producing the lion's share of it all, and THEY have lobbyists.

Ahhhh.... America.

The best government money can buy.

I love that it has become so blatant. The government of Sudan, accused of crimes against humanity over the Darfur refugees, has been seeking license from the Treasury Department to get lobbyists in the U.S. Congress LOL

"Let us give some money to the fat cats so they make the silly people shut up and leave us alone!"

*shaking head*

We are either going to rise up against it, or we will go the way of Rome. And if we don't do the former, then we deserve to do the latter.

Email Follies

2009-10-26T11:13:00.006-06:00

From a female coworker to a large email list at work:

My reply to a short list of work friends:
(Her mom really is a blast :o)

Her reply back to the short email list:

I retort:

There's always a nervous lag after you push the envelope a little bit on the company email ...

Then a male colleague replies to the group:

And the other woman on the list comes back with:

First: Admit it's Gone

2009-10-21T17:14:00.003-06:00

Over the past 20 years, I feel like I’ve watched my country being dismantled from the inside while everybody stands guard around the gates. My government is corrupt beyond the point of repair. Lobbyists rule Congress. There are dozens of corporate lobbyists for every single man and woman in the House and Senate. If you are not a corporation, you have no representation at the U.S. Capitol building.

The American working people just got absolutely, financially raped by Congress in order to subvert the rules of capitalism and free enterprise. We were all scared shitless and they told us that the world would just fall apart if we didn’t bail out these investment market criminals. So, even while we screamed and moaned at the staggering sound of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS that we haven’t even begun having taken from our pockets yet – we did not say “no” with a concerted voice.

But the ONE thing we were sure of, was that the elitist CEOs and board room pirates who did this to us were going to get the Enron treatment and they would be made to pay for their sins.

But as the wailing goes on, Congress did nothing.

Well, the one thing other than that we could be sure of, is that they will damn sure fix the idiotic deregulation that allowed this galactic catastrophe to happen in the first place.

As the wailing goes on, they dismantled the last brick in the Banking Act of 1933, otherwise known as the Glass-Steagall Act. That was a major part of the regulatory bulwark put in place following the Great Depression to protect American society from EXACTLY the catastrophe that has been wrought upon us by the elitist, golden-parachute cunts (hereby known as the GPCs).

It was only a minor brick, to be sure. Glass-Steagall was already in ruins. And deregulation, as everyone should be able to see, when coupled with the sociopathic absence of civic responsibility hardwired into the charter of the American-global corporation, is the source of our current and to be long lived misery.

Glass-Steagall placed funnels through which economic pressures can flow without boiling together and causing a shitstorm. One pipe for commercial banking, one pipe for insurance, and a third pipe for investment banking. And they’re NOT ALLOWED TO COMPETE AGAINST EACH OTHER BECAUSE IT WILL CAUSE A SHITSTORM!

My point is, instead of fixing the problem since the Great Financial Collapse of 2008, your government (for those of you in the U.S.) has not only failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall or anything like it, it has ripped away the final piece of it. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO FIX IT! YOUR REPRESENTATIVES ARE GOING TO LEAVE THE GPCs FREE REIGN TO DO IT TO US AGAIN!!!

Just in case you are not keeping score, here is the breakdown:

1986: Ronald Reagan deregulates the Savings and Loan industry in the 80s. Result: It takes almost NO time before the S&Ls fuck up the entire financial structure sending a shitload of banks into failure and eventually costing the American taxpayer $124 billion dollars. As a side note, we will be finished paying that debt off in four (4) more years. I have been paying on it since I was a very young man. I will be paying for the current debacle for as long as I remain working.

By the way, that “last brick” I was talking about? Just this August, Congress allowed hybrid commercial/investment banks known as “financial holding companies” to tap directly into the U.S. Treasury money stream just like a purely commercial bank. Now a gigantic investment bank like Goldman Sachs can have American money printed, and take it right out and invest it here or in any country they see fit – nobody has to earn it first. Yes, there are people overseeing how much they can have at a time, but when you have pet Congressmen bought and paid for – that is not a hindrance to the GPCs of these chimera banks. It’s like the S&L situation reversed, but on a much grander scale. You can already smell the shitstorm.

1994: The Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act blows the first hole in post-Depression protective regulations.

(I'm skipping the over-the counter derivatives thing that was wholly the fault of Allan Greenspan's cadre who allowed investment banks to circumvent the SEC, but who are largely responsible for much of this mess)

1999: Comes the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (don’t you luv how they couched it as “modernizing” all those antiquated old rules that do nothing but protect the public from financial catastrophe?). Glass-Steagall ceases to be able to protect.

This begins the churning of the shitstorm as the commercial banking and investment banking waters mix and begin to turn brown. First Enron folds under the weight of its blunders, screwing millions of people. Then in 2004, Fanny Mae GPCs use financial trickery to cover their blunders and are found out. But your loyal representatives in Congress fix nothing. It’s PERFECTLY obvious that the problem is the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 allowing shady shit to go on under the radar. But nobody fixes a goddamned thing!!! Your congressmen and senators are on the payroll of the GPCs and are no longer working for you in any way shape or form.

So Glass-Steagall is gutted completely and we get the Great Financial Collapse of 2008. With the gracious help of our elected representatives, the GPCs are bailed out of their crimes, and the American working class takes a galactic buttfucking that is going to leave our collective ass ringing for decades and decades. There are children of children who are currently too young to fucking TALK who will be paying on this debt!

And we don’t even get a reach-around!

The banks are back up and doing fine now for the most part. Woohoo! And what are they doing to help repay working class America to for graciously paying for their mistakes and crimes? Foreclosing on their mortgages as fast as those pesky state laws will allow them. Wall Street hits 10,000 again and people are still losing their jobs. NONE of the federal money is being used to protect homeowners from losing their homes – it’s not being done because it’s not profitable. Working class Americans are livestock to be used and abused at will, all with the cheerful compliance of our Congress.

One of the few good guys on The Hill, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D. Ohio, recently lost it over how many foreclosures were going on in her district and how heartless these post Glass-Steagall banks were refusing to use any of the federal money and work with anybody to let them keep their homes. Obviously, her Congressional colleagues are not solving the problem, so she finally just went nuts at the podium and I LOVE her for it!

“So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? In Ohio it is going to be 10 or 20 below zero. Don't leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don't have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can't find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.”

While there are a few rare good ones, most of the U.S. House and Senate are committing Crimes Against Humanity by failing to repeal the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and reinstate the full measure of the Banking Act of 1933! They are placing the fate of the entire world in the hands of the GPCs, whose moral compass is dictated by a single axiom: “increase shareholder value by…”

Five or 12 years in the future, the GPCs are going to do it to us WORSE THAN THIS TIME. And when they do, it’s all over. There will BE NO WORLD ECONOMY. Yes, they will immediately be bailed out by their pet Congressmen. Certainly nothing in the past has ever shown the GPCs anything to the contrary. They ALWAYS get bailed out from their galactic fuckups! However, next time we won’t have enough ass left to be fucked like that again. The astronomical sums will cause money to completely lose its faith-based value. Without the liquidity of money, trading goods for goods is impossibly complex and will not support a global economy, a national economy or a state economy -- it will be global depression of the worst kind. (While heavily paraphrased and embellished, I’m going to attribute this to Simon Johnson of the Global Economics and Management at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. He also writes a great insider blog about economics, Wall Street and the collapse.

I read a study done in 2001 by a couple of economist/business Ivy League researchers showing statistically how great the dismantling of Glass-Steagall had been for the banking business. However, at least one of them could not forgo his humanity and had to end the Conclusions section with the following. I found it quite prophetic.

“One final caveat is in order. Gains to shareholders need not reflect gains to society. Shareholders could gain at the expense of society if financial companies expect to increase the value of the financial safety net (e.g. deposit insurance, discount window lending) by becoming larger and more complex. This could occur if very large financial conglomerates are viewed as “too big to let fail.” In addition, it is possible that financial companies hope to increase their ability to exploit market power and raise prices through cross-sector consolidation.”

Next time: How do we unfuck Congress and get our government back before those golden parachute cunts kill us all?

Costume Chix

2009-10-15T16:36:00.014-06:00

I just love this time of year.

Girls get to dress as slutty as they want to and nobody gets to say anything about it :D

Except maybe the Leia thing is not very original.

Oh, who cares? It shows lots of skin. It’s a great costume in my book.

Crazy Like You

2009-10-11T19:03:00.001-06:00

Huh …

I just realized a major impediment to my blogging. Well, I find the warning page annoying because of the way in which it was imposed. But there’s a distraction apart from that.

I finally introduced a fucking cell phone into my life.

I know. You’re thinking “whuuu??”

OK, let me start at the beginning. A million years ago, back when I was a paramedic, we had analog voice pagers that keyed off of a tower system in the city. We weren’t allowed to leave that radio coverage when we were in “backup” status. And the cocksuckers wouldn’t pay us for it!

I HATED the idea of being electronically leashed against my will. Not that the backup crew wasn’t absolutely vital to the emergency medical coverage of the city – but that the restrictions placed on us were deemed unworthy of pay unless we were called out. It was one of those small injustices that just needled on me.

So, I began to loathe my voice pager.

And decades later when cell phones became universal, I noticed that all of you people had become insane.

Now there is no place where you can be guaranteed any peace! You’ve all sacrificed your precious right to be un-fucking-available!!!

Well, after a nasty episode of being stranded in the middle of nowhere a couple of years ago– I decided my god-given right to be unavailable might not be all that fucking sacred o_O

So, after a year had gone by, I had gotten enough numbers and familiarized myself with the technology that I had, finally, in 2007-2008, been dragged kicking and screaming into the 1990s.

Unfortunately, now, I realize that whenever I have a moment of down time waiting around, I no longer think about what to write on the blog. My fucking phone is right there. I can just text somebody!

As I suspected, I’ve become as crazy and ineffectual as all the rest of you cell-phone-talking/texting lunatics!

Say it ain’t so!

;-)

Goodbye Mighty Trivia Friend

2009-10-02T22:26:00.002-06:00

Just got the message today as I was hiking through the Atlanta airport.

33 years old and dead of colon cancer. He had gone to Houston for experimental treatment and he was still looking good when he left. However, the chemo wasn't keeping the immunological marker out of his blood and I knew he was in deep trouble.

I just thought he had years, hopefully. Not months.

He was so brilliant. And funny... I wish you could have known him.

OK... For the record. In MY life. So far ... This whole "New Millennium" crap, you can keep. Mine and my circle's luck was much better before.

I'm in Atlanta. I hear as I get here that his funeral is tomorrow. I send flowers.

That's what I can fucking do. I send flowers so his poor mother and father -- especially his father, who would occasionally drop by and play with us, would know I was at least thinking of his son.

I send flowers.

What a stupid fucking tradition. Might as well send flatwear. Or decoupage >__<

A smarter stupid fish

2009-09-29T14:58:00.002-06:00

Damn. I've never wanted a Billy Bass until now. And now I'll bet you can't find one to save your life *laughing*

Hacking Big Mouth Billy Bass' Brain - Watch more Funny Videos

My friends have to hate me sometimes

2009-09-27T22:13:00.002-06:00

Especially when my mind starts wandering for no reason.

I was wondering about using multiple, local, energy inputs for a home ... and then I realized I didn't know how to condition multiple voltage inputs to recharge a battery bank safely, consistently and efficiently. However, I knew who would LOL

How would you like to be an electrical engineer and get this in your email with no monetary value attached? LOL

However ... feel free to chime in if you know the answer :o)

In other news

2009-09-24T09:31:00.003-06:00

OK, this would be fun to find. I just love the crosses. That definitely dates the Saxons in England, because they sure as fuck weren't Christians when they came there LOL

And this is the first actual good news I've heard on this front in ... since ... well ... ever

By Marilynn Marchione And Michael Casey, Associated Press

BANGKOK – For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.

The vaccine — a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines — cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

Even though the benefit is modest, "it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine," Col. Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is "not the end of the road," but he said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

"It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. "This is something that we can do."

The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study. The U.S. Army has long worked with that government and others to develop and test vaccines and medicines to protect troops and the general public.

The study used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.

Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, UNAIDS estimates.

"Today marks a historic milestone," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine. Warren was not involved in the study.

"It will take time and resources to fully analyze and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field," he said in a statement.

The study tested the two-vaccine combination in a "prime-boost" approach, in which the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.

They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.

ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and cannot cause HIV.

Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003.

"I really didn't have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result," Fauci confessed.

The results proved the skeptics wrong.

"The combination is stronger than each of the individual members," said the Army's Kim, a physician who manages the Army's HIV vaccine program.

The study tested the combo in HIV-negative Thai men and women aged 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four "priming" doses of ALVAC and two "boost" doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots. No one knew who got what until the study ended.

Thanad Yomha, a 33-year-old electrician from southeastern Thailand, said he didn't expect anything in return for volunteering for the project.

"I did this for others," Thanad said. "It's for the next generation."

Participants volunteered for the study and were told about the potential risks associated with receiving the experimental vaccine before agreeing to participate.

All were given condoms, counseling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines. All participants continued to receive an HIV test every six months for three years after vaccinations ended.

The results: New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. Two of the infected participants who received the placebo died.

The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood for those who did become infected. That had been another goal of the study — seeing whether the vaccine could limit damage to the immune system and help keep infected people from developing full-blown AIDS.

That result is "one of the most important and intriguing findings of this trial," Fauci said. It suggests that the signs scientists have been using to gauge whether a vaccine was actually giving protection may not be valid.

"It is conceivable that we haven't even identified yet" what really shows immunity, which is both "important and humbling" after decades of vaccine research, Fauci said.

Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October.

This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself did not cause infection.

In 2003, AIDSVAX flunked two large trials — the first late-stage tests of any AIDS vaccine at the time.

It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combo in Thailand. Before the trial began, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for U.S. licensing.

"This is a world first which proves that vaccine development is possible," Supachai said. "But this is not to the level where we can license or manufacture the vaccine yet."

Mass-producing the vaccine, plus how to proceed with future studies, will be discussed among the governments, study sponsors and companies involved in the trial, Kim said. Scientists want to know how long protection will last, whether booster shots will be needed, and whether the vaccine helps prevent infection in gay men and injection drug users, since it was tested mostly in heterosexuals in the Thai trial.

The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study.

Extrasolar Planet

2009-09-17T09:30:00.002-06:00

OK, that’s pretty cool (at least to a geek like me).

They found this planet that is a “rocky planet like Earth”. This is the whole story, I’ll pick back up afterward :o)

(CNN) -- Scientists have discovered the first confirmed Earthlike planet outside our solar system, they announced Wednesday.
An artist's impression shows what the planet may look like in close orbit with its sun.

An artist's impression shows what the planet may look like in close orbit with its sun.

"This is the first confirmed rocky planet in another system," astronomer Artie Hatzes told CNN, contrasting the solid planet with gaseous ones like Jupiter and Saturn.

But "Earthlike" is a relative term.

The planet's composition may be similar to that of Earth, but its environment is more like a vision of hell, the project's lead astronomer said.

It is so close to the star it orbits "that the place may well look like Dante's Inferno, with a probable temperature on its 'day face' above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) and minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius) on its night face," said Didier Queloz of Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, the project leader.

Hatzes, explaining that one side of the body is always facing the star and the other side always faces away, said the side "facing the sun is probably molten. The other side could actually have ice" if there is water on the planet.

"We think it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat," Hatzes told CNN from Barcelona, Spain, where he is attending the "Pathways Towards Habitable Planets" conference.

The astronomers were stunned to find a rocky planet so near a star, he said.

"We would have never dreamed you would find a rocky planet so close," he said. "Its year is less than one of our days."

The planet, known as CoRoT-7b, was detected early last year, but it took months of observation to determine that it had a composition roughly similar to Earth's, the European Southern Observatory said in a statement.

Astronomers were able to measure the dimensions of the planet by watching as it passed in front of the star it orbits, then carried out 70 hours of study of the planet's effect on its star to infer its weight.

With that information in hand, they were able to calculate its density -- and were thrilled with what they found, Hatzes said.

"What makes this exciting is you compare the density of this planet to the planets in our solar system, it's only Mercury, Venus and Earth that are similar," Hatzes, of the Thuringer observatory in Germany, told CNN.

They were helped by the fact that CoRoT-7b is relatively close to Earth -- about 500 light years away, in the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn.

"It's in our solar neighborhood," Hatzes said. "The thing that made it easier is it's relatively close, so it's relatively bright. If this star was much much farther away, we wouldn't have been able to do these measurements."

At about five times Earth's mass (though not quite twice as large in circumference), it is the smallest planet ever spotted outside our solar system.

It also has the fastest orbit. The planet whizzes around its star more than seven times faster than Earth moves, and is 23 times closer to the star than Mercury is to our sun.

The planet was first detected early in 2008 by the CoRoT satellite, a 30-centimeter space telescope launched by the European Space Agency in December 2006, specifically with the mission of detecting rocky planets outside the solar system.

At least 42 scientists at 17 institutions on three continents worked on the project.

They are publishing their findings in a special issue of the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal on October 22 as "The CoRoT-7 Planetary System: Two Orbiting Super-Earths."

But if you read between the lines – they DIDN’T.

Five times the mass of the earth?

Not as large in circumference as the earth?

That planet was SUPPOSED TO BE A GAS GIANT like Neptune and Uranus and Jupiter and Saturn and like every other planet they have found outside our solar system so far. In the past, they have found these because their mass makes their parent stars wobble as they circle it – so the only ones they find are large gas giant planets orbiting very close to their stars. I can only assume that’s how this one turned up.

But five times the mass of the earth in a smaller space?

Nope, that thing WAS a gas giant, but when its star lit up, the stellar wind blasted everything off of it that wasn’t nailed down! That planet is nothing more than a giant iron-nickel core covered in olivines with a basalt crust.

Zipping all the way around its star even before our earth can turn one time on its axis. Its YEAR is shorter than our day? You could look at your watch, “Oh, it’s half past winter already”. *chuckle*

Yes… I am a total geekazoid, but I love this kind of shit ;-)

My Favorite Old Wrench

2009-09-13T16:16:00.004-06:00

Damn.

The utility truck out here at Redneck Acres had a flat. And the idiot that put the tires on it last apparently welded the lug nuts on with an impact wrench turned up to maximum torque.

Idiot! There's an adjustment on that pneumatic wrench, you freaking retard! Grrrr!!!

At first I thought I was just turning into a complete wimp in my aging body. The lugs would not fucking budge. I had my entire weight supported on one side of the 4-way lug wrench while pulling up against the far side. No go. And I knew I couldn't keep hanging like a monkey on the lug studs or they were going to break off.

Keep in mind, this is all going on during a non-stop monsoon rain that lasted all weekend without a moment's let up.

I SHOULD have gone and found my big 1/2" drive breaker bar and found an appropriate size socket. However, standing in the rain, I was angry. I grabbed the closest "cheater" available, which was a 24mm box end wrench that has had the open end cut off of it (not sure how I came to possess this large tool remnant). But it so happened that the opposite side of the 4-way was not another lug size, but a tire spade, and the box end slid over the tire spade end and the wrench shank laid flat against it to make an extra 9 or 10 inches of leverage, but only on one side, as I could no longer reach the other end of the 4-way.

However, positioning for a "dead lift" with my spine as linear to the force as possible and lifted with everything I had, several seconds ticked away as nothing happened save muscle and tendon straining bone and compressing flesh. Then with a horrific shriek of metal, the first lug nut gave way and turned on its threads -- finally loose.

After the second lug was loosened, I had to stop and go assess the condition of my back before continuing.

It was dark before the sixth lug finally surrendered and I called it a day.

The next day I changed the tire. The rain had slowed to a steady mist. When I put the spare on is when I noticed that my trusty old 4-way lug wrench was bent.

Damn. I really liked that old wrench. Now it's no good. It won't spin, which is the charm of a 4-way wrench.

And, of course, when I was tightening the lugs back up on the spare, I felt one of them have a tiny integrity failure (internal crack) -- which is kind of like being a little bit pregnant. A new stud is going to need to be pressed into place when I get the tire fixed, that means extra time and machining cost (I'm pretty sure, I'm going to check and see how the studs are designed).

Damn it. I've been meaning to pick up an impact wrench :-(

Health Insurance Lapdog

2009-09-11T14:38:00.003-06:00

I knew the minute he said it ...

This cocksucker was bought and paid for by the health insurance giant corporate vultures.

(CNN) -- Less than a day after Rep. Joe Wilson formally apologized to President Obama over his "you lie" outburst, a campaign aide confirms that the South Carolina Republican has raised "more than $200,000" in the wake of the now-infamous moment.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, shouts "You lie!" during President Obama's speech Wednesday night.

News of that cash haul comes after Wilson directly asked in a Web video for campaign cash to fend off attacks from political opponents and said he's standing by his opposition to Democratic efforts at health care reform.

"On these issues, I will not be muzzled, I will speak up and speak loudly against this risky plan," Wilson said in a YouTube video released Thursday evening. "The supporters of the government takeover of health care and the liberals who want to give health care to illegals are using my opposition as an excuse to distract from the critical questions being raised about this poorly conceived plan."

The congressman disbursed the video via Twitter and asked his followers to "please watch and pass on."

"[Democrats] want to silence anyone who speaks out against it," Wilson also says in the video. "They made it clear they want to defeat me and pass the plan. I need your help now. ... Contribute to my effort to defeat the proponents of government-run health care."

Wilson also sent a fundraising appeal via e-mail, saying he is confident that "my voice is serving as the voice for Americans across the country who are tired of irresponsible government programs that have only worsened our situation."

The appeal for cash came as Wilson's Democratic opponent in next year's congressional race, Rob Miller, reported raking in $750,000 as a result of the outburst during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress. iReport.com: What's your take?

Miller ran against Wilson last year, losing by 8 percentage points. It was Wilson's smallest margin of victory in his five elections for Congress.

In an e-mail to supporters Thursday night, Miller said he is aiming to top over $1 million in the next 24 hours, a total that dwarfs the $67,000 he has took in during the entire first half of the year.

PS: Apologies for the sloppy Photochop. I didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for penises, and I wanted to spend even less time looking at Dipshit's face.

Fire in the eyes

2009-09-07T20:05:00.004-06:00

I suspect she will get smacked down soon. But you gotta love the eyes of a hungry young leopard, in the fight and screaming for more ;-)

I'm thinking she wouldn't respond to this ad campaign:

*chuckle*

Leave it to the Nazis to fuck up a good thing.

2009-08-30T15:10:00.006-06:00

Across the trivia table the other night, some question or another sparked a quick debate about the origin of the swastika.

My buddy major immediately brought up the Hopi native American symbol.

I said "Yeah, but the one the Nazis used was all about the Indian symbol, because that's where they got the idea of the Aryans."

And we started talking about all the variants, he knew several, I knew several. From a Joseph Campbell lecture, I even knew of a Norse symbol that signified Thor's hammer being swung in a circle.

Anyway, afterward, we did some research, and it turns out, the swastika from the Sanskrit is one of the nicest symbols in the ancient world.

Our own research turned up a different reduction of the original Sanskrit, but then again, everybody else disagrees slightly on the minor points, but the meat of it remains the same. Our breakdown came out "good + thing + intensifier". But in the end, it's a the best of luck and blessings symbol.

From the Hindu Temple of Florida's online page.

In Hinduism, Swastika is a very sacred symbol. It is revered by hindus and ranks second to “AUM” in its significance. The word Swastika in Sanskrit is normally believed to be an amalgam of the words Su and Asati. Su means 'good' and Asati meant 'to exist'.
As per Sanskrit grammar the words Su and Asati when amalgamated into one word become Swasti and ka is just a noun ending. The literal meaning of the term Swastika would be 'let good-prevail'.

From one of the groups trying to reinstate the sanctity of the horribly sullied symbol:

The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit svastika (in Devanagari, स्वस्तिक), meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark
made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of su- (cognate with Greek ευ-, "eu-"), meaning "good, well" and asti a verbal abstract to the root as "to be"; svasti thus means "well-being". The suffix -ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being".

Hindu swastika symbols:

However, I think the world is going to have to wait until every last Holocaust victim has died and some time after that has passed until this symbol can step outside of Hinduism. Yes, it got an unfair bad rap. But a bad rap it received.

And later we popped into the chemists

2009-08-26T12:42:00.002-06:00

Well this is kind of slick.

After trivia last night, we wandered out of the bar and there is an old British double-decker bus parked down the street.

We wander up to it and there’s an Englishman in this converted bus selling fish and chips.

I’m tellin’ ya’… NOTHING hits the spot like a couple of big, fat pieces of deep fried fish after you’ve been drinking LOL

Apologies for photo. Phone cam wanted more lighting, or at least different lighting. And yes, you can go up top and sit at tables, but he doesn’t have the air conditioner or the big-screen TV in yet, but he’s working on it :o)

But how cool. British guy living in Texas finds and refurbishes this old double-decker and turns it into a rolling restaurant. You can have fish served one way, you can have fries, and you can have fish cakes – all fried – all fresh (well, I suspect the fish cakes are processed and frozen, but that’s just my guess ;-) – all cheap. I mean, I had had fish for lunch the day before and you could have stuffed the entire amount of fish I received on that plate into one end of ONE of the pieces of fish I bought off this bus, and I paid nearly three times as much for the lunch.

And he parks right off bar row by the local university – he knows his target audience *chuckle*

We’re standing right on the sidewalk outside the bus, where there’s a couple of little racks of condiments. I’m dumping English malt vinegar on my piping hot fish and wolfing it down and we’re all joking with the British guy, blowing him away that these crazy Texans know as much about England’s history as he does, and then the conversation turns to soccer (I didn’t participate much in that one. I barely keep up with any domestic sports, let alone futbol ;-).

Just not the average thing you run into on a Tuesday night, but apparently, he’s going to become a fixture. Kind’a slick.

Lube N' Load

2009-08-18T14:28:00.007-06:00

UPDATE: Damn. Somebody apparently had a talk with the Gunny. He's being noticeably more reserved now. So for future episodes ... disregard *chuckle*

Has anybody watched R. Lee Ermey’s new series “Lock N' Load”?

I TOTALLY think gay guys should make this series an underground favorite. Seriously. I know this is not your normal gay-guy television fare, but just watch it.

Especially the episode on artillery, but the one on tanks is almost as good. Be sure to drink a lot of wine or umbrella cocktail drinks or whatever. Trust me on this, it’ll be hilarious. (I know. That was condescending. But it does say “dickhead” at the top of the page ;-)

See, the big Erm-meister just goes GAGA over guns: the bigger the better. And he makes a point of getting all excited about shooting big guns and blowing stuff up.

However, he is so old-school, hardcore military that he doesn’t understand how homoerotic it looks when he kisses the ammunition and strokes the barrels while grinning maniacally at the cameras!!!
Seriously, gay guys, have a party and watch “Lock N' Load”. Whenever he fondles a weapon in an overly-excited way (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it) – everybody has a sip of their drink. When he kisses some type of ammunition prior to firing it – everybody downs their drink!

In fact, just because of the abstruse juxtaposition of show and audience, I suspect these parties could become so popular that “Ermey” could enter the gay lexicon as a verb. Say a gay guy has a really big schlong, and he pulls it out with a new sex partner and the new partner is completely enamored with it. The new partner begins fawning over it and talks to it and generally squeals with excitement. Then, when recounting the story to his friends later, the gay guy with the big dick says:

“He went all Ermey over my cock.”

Editor’s note to Gadfly's straight buddies: Gadfly actually enjoys the Gunny’s shows and respects his work for country and corps. However, this shit was just too funny not to pass on ;-)

A shout out to other first world nations

2009-08-09T20:37:00.003-06:00

UPDATED

Please speak up about your health care systems. I realize that familiarity breeds contempt and all that. I realize that dealing with people is never something you want to do unless absolutely necessary.

But the health insurance conglomerates spend $billions to keep my countrymen ignorant of how the remainder of the advanced world lives with regard to health care. Those few of us who get some of our news from non-corporate sources (i.e. public broadcasting, etc.), know that money is offered to people in Canada and England to come and tell us horror stories about their healthcare systems so that Americans will remain compliantly afraid.

Meanwhile, we have people gathering in masses outside our capitol building to tell horror stories about our healthcare system. That's because it is mitigated by corporations that maximize profits by keeping medical care away from sick Americans, leaving them to bankruptcy and death through inability to pay.

Yet most of my fellow citizens still believe the fairy stories about people not being turned down for medical care because of their inability to pay. Most of my fellow citizens believe the horror stories of long lines and inability to get things like MRIs and etc. when needed in other first-world countries like Canada, Germany, England, France, Sweden, Denmark, etc., etc.

Please let us know the truth, from your own mouths.

UPDATE:

And now you are beginning to do just that. Thank you!

By GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer

LONDON – Britons love to mock their National Health Service — just don't let anyone else poke fun at it.

They particularly resent the British universal health care system being used as a punching bag in the battle against President Barack Obama's proposed reforms.

Conservatives in the United States have relied on horror stories from Britain's system to warn Americans that Obama is trying to impose a socialized health care system that would give the government too much power.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neuron disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system.

Britons say the country's universal health care system, which provides free medical care, is far fairer than the current American system.

Behind the criticism is a popular British view that American society represents unbridled capitalism run amok, with catastrophic results for people left behind in the boom times like those of the last two decades.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is usually pro-American, blasted U.S. health care Friday, suggesting the delivery system is fine for the wealthy but not for the poor.

"If you can't pay, you have a very, very second-rate service or you can't get health service at all," he said.

Britain's left-leaning government has responded to criticism offering selected statistics that show England out performing the U.S. in health spending per capita, life expectancy and more.

Newspapers have jumped in, with the Daily Mirror calling the United States "the land of the fee" because of the way patients are forced to pay for medical services.

And Dr. Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, warned Friday that Britain must be careful not to let America's "market-style philosophy" take hold at the NHS.

The National Health Service, one of the world's largest publicly funded health services, was set up in 1949 with the intention of providing everyone with access to health care regardless of their ability to pay. A number of other countries, including Canada, have similar systems.

Although Canada's program is not fully public, it ensures coverage for all of its citizens through provincial and territorial insurance systems. These systems are governed by a federal law that says coverage is universal, and ensures that taxpayers, not patient fees, pay for primary medical services.

During a press conference Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama said Canada's model "would not work for the United States."

"We've got to develop a uniquely American approach to this problem," Obama said.

The Canadian system has been vilified during the U.S. health care debate for having long wait times and scant resources, putting Canadian officials on the defensive.

"We have a system that provides universal coverage — the flaw in the American system is that first they check the size of your wallet, not the size of your need," said Ontario Health Minister David Caplan.

Despite the widespread show of support for the British system recently, the NHS has been struggling to cope with rising medical costs, and there are fears it could be overwhelmed if swine flu cases surge this winter.

Doctors and nurses warn that the organization faces a 15 billion pound ($24 billion) deficit, and NHS hospitals are often overcrowded, dirty and understaffed. Many people have to wait weeks or months for medical care despite government promises to shorten waiting lists.

But even those who complain about the NHS say they want it to be improved, not dismantled or transformed into a U.S.-style, profit-oriented system.

Generations of Britons have grown up with universal coverage and although about 12 percent of the population has private insurance, the vast majority of people still rely on the system to provide them with emergency care, surgery, and access to a family doctor.

"The NHS has many faults but health care is a basic right and shouldn't be an arena for private companies to make profit," said Kathryn Wilson, an information technology consultant.

Even British health campaigner Kate Spall — who criticizes NHS failings in U.S. television ads produced by Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a lobby group that opposes Obama's plans — declared that the group had misled her and was distorting her true views.

Spall's mother died of kidney cancer while waiting for treatment, but she said she is still a supporter of the NHS.

"There are failings in the system but I'm not anti-NHS at all," she said, praising Britain's commitment to universal coverage.

Associated Press Writers Karolina Tagaris in London, Charmaine Noronha in Toronto and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.

END UPDATE.

Meanwhile, this is what the health insurance lobbyists have our politicians doing:

(CNN) -- The Senate's second-ranking Democrat slammed recent town-hall protests over health care on Sunday, insisting they violate "the democratic process," while the Senate's top Republican accused Democrats of "attacking citizens" with such complaints.

Speaking to CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said: "We have these screaming groups on either side. That isn't helpful. Let's be honest about this. Town meetings are not bean bag. I've had hundreds of them, and sometimes folks get upset. And that's part of America, part of our process.

"But this is clearly being orchestrated, and these folks have instructions. They come down from a Texas lobbyist in Washington."

Durbin said that when "there's a group of people honestly sitting in the middle trying to ask the important questions and get the right answers, and instead someone takes the microphone and screams and shouts to the point where the meeting comes to an end, that isn't dialogue, that isn't the democratic process.

"We need to respect free speech, but we need to respect one another's rights to free speech, too. When these people come in just to disrupt the meetings, no, that isn't right," Durbin said.

On "Fox News Sunday," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said such complaints were "absurd."

"I think attacking citizens in our country for expressing their opinions about an issue of this magnitude may indicate some weakness in their position on the merits," McConnell said. "And I also think it's particularly absurd for the Democrats, who have over an $8 million e-mail list over at the DNC (Democratic National Committee) called Organize America, to be criticizing citizens for being organized.

"Frankly, the truth of the matter is we don't know who's organized and who isn't. The point is the issue, the substance. They need to deal with it. Americans are concerned about it. "

On CNN, Durbin defended the White House's new effort to track and rebut rumors about the president's health care plan, following Republican criticism that the move was intended to intimidate opponents.

"What I can tell you is that the White House is not trying to collect names of any Americans. What they're trying to do is post on some of these Web sites a rebuttal to some bad information," he said, pointing to rumors that provisions in the proposal might be used to fund abortions, cover undocumented immigrants or raid Medicare funds. "There's so much bad information out there, you can understand the effort to at least let people hear both sides of the story."

Both Durbin and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, signaled the precarious status of any "public option" -- a possible government-run insurance plan -- in the final version of any health care legislation. Cornyn called the idea a deal-breaker. Durbin repeated a reluctant willingness to sacrifice the idea to assure passage of a bill. Watch Durbin, Cornyn discuss situation »

The idea is not considered likely to be included in the final Senate version of the bill, although a modified public option remains in the House version of the legislation.

Cornyn said one possible administration proposal might have GOP support: an extension of unemployment benefits.

"I think we need to take a close look at that. We don't want to provide a disincentive to work, but where people are out of work and they need some help, sure. We're open to that," he said.

President Obama calls reforming health care the centerpiece of his current domestic platform.

Artsy Fartsy

2009-07-31T10:18:00.002-06:00

I was having a conversation about art the other day with ‘Kota. And as you may or may not know, ‘Kota has forgotten more about art than most of us will ever know.

Now, I like expressionist, abstract painting as much as the next guy. I just have real trouble with the canvas full of squares thing. You’ve all seen them. There was a phase back in the day … apparently.

She did enlighten me quite a bit about the paintings being related to what was going on in the art world at the time. Apparently, it’s all about the context of how the heavy thinkers in the art world were exploring the philosophy of art at the time, and so on.

But it’s not for me, and she conceded that no one style has to appeal to everyone and that it doesn’t necessarily make me a cave man if one or another doesn’t appeal (no insurance jokes from the peanut gallery! You! Yeah you there with the lizard! This means you!)

Anyway, during the discussion, it was finally determined that I love abstract art that has a purpose within it. It’s trying to engage your mind in one or several ways. Maybe the artist intended it, maybe he didn’t, but it draws you in a direction none the less.

Oh, nothing specific, to be sure. Nothing cut and dried. But emotional or intellectual snippets playing through the esthetics of the painting. Evocative, but subtle. Or overt, but amorphous. That’s the beauty of having so much flexibility in the style.

However, I just realized that there is one more caveat to “Gadfly’s likes” in the genre: That just looks cool *laughing* (Yes, that can easily be rephrased as the philistine “I may not know art, but I know what I like” ;-)

Artist: Gadfly
Medium: electronic pixels
Name: Accidental art ;-)

Lakota's Nosy Meme

2009-07-16T10:51:00.001-06:00

From Lakota (my answers in red)

You've all seen them. Most of you have struggled to answer them, even when a part of you cringed and wondered who the hell came up with those dumbass questions. So I've decided to start my OWN meme/tag note. And this one isn't going to ask you what you like on tv (borrrring) , or what you want played at your funeral (hello morbid), or the name of your third grade teacher (zzzzz). No, this questionnaire is going to ask you all those things we want to know about you but were afraid to ask. Heeeheee. Okay... maybe all the things I WANTED to know. :P

These are MY rules - if you are tagged you better damn well play along and answer the questions or I will hunt you down and make your life miserable. Cuz that's just the sort of annoying friend I am. In other words - ignoring the meme... not an option. Got it? Good. Besides, it is only ten little questions... how hard could it be to answer them?

1. What are you hiding under those trousers or skirt? Briefs, boxers, g-string, granny panties, or commando? Black cotton boxer briefs. Kind of my general uniform for my pelvic area *chuckle*

2. Have you ever had a threesome or more? Yeah. The youngest girl got upset later when her fundamentalist guilt kicked in *sigh*

3. What is the wildest, craziest thing you ever wanted to do but didn't have the courage to follow through? Well … there was this one time when about two dozen regulars were locked up in the bar after hours and many of the women were naked and some were performing oral on guys who had the balls to walk up to where they were dancing and whip it out. But … being there with two girls that I worked with watching the human zoo – I decided against joining the show *chuckle*

4. Before you die there are five things that you absolutely, positively want to accomplish. What are they? I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Now I’m just playing by ear.

5. What is your best and kinkiest fantasy and have you actually done it? Just one?!?!?!?!? Hell, read the blog. And I have done many, but not all.

6. Have you ever turned down plans or a date in real life in order to spend time with a friend or friends online, and did you feel guilty, foolish or just plain ol' content/happy? I have turned down plans to do an ordinary ho-hum hang out with the guys to spend time with a particular woman online.

7. In your opinion really outstanding sex should be?
a. romantic and emotional
b. fun and wild
c. hot, fast and sweaty
d. the kinkier the better
e. other: __ a, b and d, depending on the mood

8. What is every single quality you can think of that your ideal woman or man would possess? Kind, witty, intelligent, a good spankable booty, and a deep interest in a subject or subjects in addition to me – she may NOT adopt me as the only meaning in her life. That’s boring, annoying, and too much to live up to.

9. The unspeakable has happened. You can't believe it. Your facebook account has been disabled. Who are the first people you contact to let your FB friends know? (CENSORED CONFIDENTIAL)

10. You have to describe yourself to someone you just met that intrigues you. What are your assets and what are your flaws? If I am intrigued by you, I want to learn what you know and I will help you teach me. I teach what I know as a matter of course. And I will make you laugh as we do both :o)

Bonus question: you plan to exact revenge on Lakota for tagging you in yet another dumbass meme by _ showing her that she just THOUGHT she knew what a hard, bare-ass spanking felt like.

Brokeback Spyder

2009-07-15T16:08:00.002-06:00

Damn.

First my home air conditioner blows up, costing me a wad.

Now my poor gay car has come up lame. *sigh*

(For those of you not in on the joke, one of my good friends has pronounced my red convertible GT Spyder as "gay". I didn't really think about that when I bought it. I really would rather it be a different color than "give-me-a-ticket-right-now" red.

Anyway, she’s going to need a new transmission. I’m trying to baby her until I can rebuild the bank.

I’d put up a paypal button – but that would just add insult to injury. Nobody’s going to donate to an over-opinionated, loud mouth dickhead. God knows I wouldn’t *chuckle* So I’m going to continue to pretend I’m above that sort of thing LOL

Hope everybody else’s luck is going a little bit better :o)

Ciao for now (gay salutation intended)

G

This is just perfect

2009-07-10T15:50:00.001-06:00

I have a story about one of our esteemed POS airlines coming up as well :-(

Southern Cross

2009-07-06T08:56:00.003-06:00

Sailin’ ‘cross Louis’anna in the rain an' steam.

Walls of green glory. Long road, Southern gray

Delta Blues an' the wipers keepin’ time with me.

Lift me ‘cross Louis’anna in the rain an' steam.

Laughing eyes and fingernails taunt my mind,
From a sprawling bed back in Jackson, Miss.

She surprised me when she broke my record.
We both lost count.

I surprised her when she exploded me on the 4th of July.
Let me tell you ‘bout steam… Rain on me, girl.

State lines, parish lines, county lines … always the road and the wheel

But don’t take that like it’s you’re forever right …

Now sheets of rain, can’t see the road – steerin’ by the Caddo pines.
No need worry ‘bout others. Ever sane man gone.
Supercell thunderstorm. Welcome back to Texas.

Tore out’under that storm at 75 miles per …

As all that rain turned to steam

Douchebag Alert

2009-07-01T08:49:00.006-06:00

Editor's note: Cool video at end. Well ... Cool-ish ;-)

I hate that Michael “What the Fuck is That?” Jackson’s death is taking the heat off this guy.

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- The attorney general of South Carolina on Tuesday asked the state law enforcement division to review Gov. Mark Sanford's travel records after the governor admitted to more visits with his mistress than previously disclosed.

OK, granted. You would think Agen-fucking-TINA would be a safe enough place to keep a mistress. But no. Your pilot must file a flight plan. Them’s the rules.

And I don’t give a flying fuck (pun intended) where and how a guy gets his dick wet.

What is important, is, this is the very cocksucker who WROTE the impeachment proceeding against Bill Clinton when Clinton was working late and got his dick sucked by an over-eager girl who was working late with him.

FILLED with righteous indignation was this douchebag!

And now he is caught with his airplane snug in some sultry Argentine hanger in a long-term affair.

If it were anybody else, I wouldn’t give a shit. But HE lit the fire! HE MUST ROAST IN HIS OWN HYPOCRISY!

I don’t care how long you have been playing “the game” inside “The Beltway” Mr. Sanford. But when you play the “holier than thou” card to skewer a political rival, YOU HAD BETTER FUCKING BE HOLIER THAN HIM, BECAUSE IF YOU ARE NOT, YOU ARE A MISERABLE, SLIMY PIECE OF SHIT!!!

That’s the thing that fucking kills me. Assholes on The Hill casting votes for ideals they don’t even fucking believe in. No wonder our government is for sale to the lobbyists. It’s absolutely filled with liars, frauds and hypocrites – with no good men to hold another accountable.

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- The attorney general of South Carolina on Tuesday asked the state law enforcement division to review Gov. Mark Sanford's travel records after the governor admitted to more visits with his mistress than previously disclosed.
Gov. Mark Sanford has said it's better for him to keep his governorship to "learn lessons."

"In light of the governor's disclosure of additional travel today, I have requested that SLED conduct a preliminary review of all Governor Sanford's travel records to determine if any laws have been broken or any state funds misused," Attorney General Henry McMaster said in a statement.

After returning last week from a secret trip to Argentina that his staff and wife didn't know about, the Republican governor admitted to an extramarital affair and said he had seen his mistress three times in the past year.

But he told The Associated Press on Tuesday he had met with Maria Belen Chapur seven times, including five visits in the past 12 months. Sanford also told the AP he'd "crossed lines" with other women, although Chapur was the only one he had sex with.

The review by law enforcement officials would be the first formal probe into whether Sanford abused his power while carrying on his affair.

McMaster, a Republican, has so far been reluctant to move forward with calls for an investigation into Sanford, saying he is wary of mixing legal matters with political score-settling from longtime Sanford opponents.

McMaster is running for governor next year. His opponents say his hesitancy to investigate Sanford is meant to prevent a Sanford resignation, which would elevate Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer to the top office. Bauer, also mulling a run at the governor's mansion, would then be able to run as an incumbent in next year's race.

Sanford said in a statement Tuesday that he's "pleased that SLED will look into this matter."

"There's been a lot of speculation and innuendo on whether or not public moneys were used to advance my admitted unfaithfulness. To be very clear: no public money was ever used in connection with this."

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer confirmed Tuesday that Sanford had met with his mistress more times than he originally admitted.

Two of the meetings in the past year included multiple-night stays in New York, Sanford told the AP. Sanford told the AP he met with Chapur a third time in New York on what was intended to be a goodbye visit. Sanford was accompanied by his spiritual adviser, the AP reported.

Sanford also told the AP of two nonromantic encounters, including their first meeting in 2001 in Uruguay and getting coffee in New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

"There was some kind of connection from the very beginning," he told the AP.

He said his experiences with other women took place outside of the United States while he was married, but before he knew Chapur, the AP reported.

Since Sanford's admission last week, there have been growing calls for him to step down, with critics saying he's not able to steer the state out of its economic crisis.

Republican Larry Grooms, who is running for governor in 2010, told CNN Tuesday that Sanford "is incapable of leading because of his behavior."

Unlike many of his colleagues in the chamber, most of whom have remained silent on the resignation question, Grooms, a key conservative ally of the governor, has been a supporter of Sanford's fiscally conservative agenda in the Senate. But Grooms said he told Sanford by phone last Thursday that he thought the governor should resign. Sanford said he disagreed.

"He indicated he believed that his only chance for redemption was to stay in office," Grooms said. "To me that doesn't serve any purpose well. That doesn't serve the people. It's not about him; it's about governing the people of the state."

On Monday, three Republicans in the South Carolina state legislature spoke out against Sanford, saying the best thing for him to do in the wake of last week's scandal is resign.

Sanford wrote in a message to his political action committee e-mail list on Monday that while he considered resigning, "I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm."

In addition, the governor made a round of phone calls to county GOP chairmen around the state to apologize and ask them for a chance to work together over the next 18 months to help restore the public trust, according a Republican source.

State Rep. Nikki Haley, another Sanford ally running for governor next year, said last week that the governor should stay in office because otherwise, Bauer would assume the top office. Haley said that would be a step backward for the conservative reform movement in the state.

Anti-Sanford sentiment is also set to play out in the public eye next week. Glenn McCall, one of South Carolina's three Republican National Committee members, told CNN that he and other conservative activists are organizing a rally for Wednesday or Thursday at the State House in Columbia to demand Sanford's resignation. McCall said he has lined up nearly 400 people ready to attend the rally.

McCall said the event is being organized, in part, because not enough Republican leaders in the legislature have publicly called for Sanford to step down. "There is no leadership out of our Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, so we have to go down to the State House steps and have a rally," he said.

If the Republican party was at all what it pretended to be, they would take this guy out, old school ...

Appropriately Macabre

2009-06-30T15:30:00.003-06:00

I love it. Designing predatory robot furniture that eat mice and flies for fuel!

(It's a guy thing LOL)

I couldn't help it

2009-06-24T23:38:00.003-06:00

Yes, I realize this is just fucked up

LOL

Fuck it. I'm heading to Georgia on Friday
:D

;-)

Shinedown

2009-06-17T10:59:00.003-06:00

When I haven't been working my ass off, I have been listening to three Shinedown CDs nonstop.

I ripped them all to a single Mp3 CD and it has not been out of the CD player in like 10 days O_O

The Bailout Jamboree

2009-06-08T10:27:00.002-06:00

Having been around some four-plus decades, and watching the handling of the current financial debacle, which will possibly be the ruin of my country as I have always known it – the growing fear has finally shown itself to be fact:

Every moral bulwark upon which this country was founded has been sacrificed to corporate greed. Even the later-sanctified “free enterprise” principles now have been discarded under the wheels of the moneyed few who have their turn at the helm of multinational corporations.

We now witness that Ayn Rand was wrong in her novel, “Atlas Shrugged”. In that story she prophesied that “the people”, through the use of Congress and the Executive branch, would tax and generally screw businesses and corporations until they could no longer function and society would collapse.

The exact opposite has now become fact.

Ignoring the basic tenets of free enterprise, our very own government has written checks to multinational corporations to pay off galactic debts earned by their own fraud, folly and malice. Checks in sums larger than even our hundreds of millions-strong taxpayer asses can’t cash – and the bill is coming due.

This is a twisted, corrupted form of reverse socialism. We supposedly elect representative government officials, who are then – either drugged, bribed or mesmerized – into serving the interests of corporate officials against the interests of those who elected them. So instead of being allowed to fail, as is their due by the rules of free enterprise, corporations somehow get our very own government to foist their burden onto the taxpayers! WTF? My fellow Americans, let us eat cake!

The moral compass has been lost and the taxpayers need to begin thinking for themselves. No one else cares.

There is ONE, and only one justification for a bailout: “Should it serve the greater good of the people that this corporation be saved from collapse through taxpayer dollars”.

That is the ONLY justification one should accept from one’s leadership in government. Period.

But what is the first thing the government allows in the major bankruptcy cases like GM? The PEOPLE are the lowest priority. They mean nothing. All of the people who worked their whole lives for GM – their retirements are GONE! Tens of thousands of elderly people now destitute so that already-bailed-out AIG can make back a few more cents on the dollar on its GM stock!

That says it clearly. The paradigm has shifted in Beltway philosophy forever. People = livestock. Corporations = are the new “People”. You and I, brothers and sisters, mean shit to our elected officials. Do you have a lobbyist on the Hill? I don’t either.

We are now a nation “of the corporate world, by the corporate world and for the corporate world”.

Now that I’ve had some time to look at this thing, I can see that we should have charged Washington with torches and pitchforks demanding that not one dollar in bailout ever be given. Just let it all crash so we could have seen what the real damage was and then see what was left so that real rebuilding could begin. We should have let those bastards try and squeeze their golden parachutes out of a bottom line that equals shit/debt. Instead, however, they’re making us all frogs in slowly heating water. We’re not going to jump until it’s too late.

And apparently, Satan has taken the president’s soul or something. I don’t know what has happened to his morals. Obama had always talked about a single-payer healthcare system, but now he’s on board with this state-run “competition” to the health insurance giants, which is just going to provide a convenient place for them to dump their high-risk clients so they can rape even more money. That kind of plan has failed in every state in which it has been established. Now it can fail on a national level *sigh*

AND, he and others on Capitol Hill are contemplating a 12% national sales tax to help pay back some of the trillions and trillions of dollars that have been bequeathed in the bailout jamboree.

By the way, for those of you keeping score at home, that will put Americans with professional salaries paying the same percentage of taxes as people living in European cradle-to-grave socialist democracies. Oh, and that that will be WITHOUT the free healthcare and everything else you would get in a socialist democracy – you still have to pay for all that. And the sales tax is just a potential plan to pay back part of it.

We’re fooked, me beauties.

Welcome to the greater good. >__<

Smoking Stupidity

2009-06-03T09:10:00.003-06:00

Again, when you witness stupidity in its pure, crystalline form.

It can be ... breathtaking. Mesmerizing, even.

Now I remember ...

2009-05-30T17:20:00.004-06:00

There's a reason that I learned a long time ago to strike paper matches a certain way ...

You never use the pad of your finger to slide the match head across the strike pad. It's more awkward, but you let the head bend back across your fingernail and let your finger angle back so that your nail presses the match head against the red-phosphorus*-impregnated strike pad.

In this way, one avoids the occasional tiny shotgun blast of burning match head chunks that erupt from a tiny but locally energetic explosion at the strike pad and embed themselves in one's fingerprint grooves. And whereupon the aforementioned chunks become embedded, they then commence the completion of their rapid oxidization with its inherent chemically exothermic release of energy into the surrounding tissue of the fingertip. This has the incidental effect of incinerating a tiny crater into one's fingertip, where nature has seen fit to locate the greatest concentration of nerve endings, among these being no small number of pain receptor nerve endings.

And the crater does not form instantaneously. It must evolve over a second to 1500 milliseconds. This is due to steam escaping from the incinerated tissue slowing the combustion of the potassium chlorate match head material. This has the effect of keeping the remainder of one's central nervous system fully amused as one continues with the process of lighting one's smoking materials.

Oh ... One might jump about and curse, but what's the point? This was a lesson learned long ago. Now it is a tiny reminder not to let one's mind wander too far from what one is actually doing in the here and now *chuckle*

*Phosphorus sesquisulfide

Getting Ill of Kim Jong-Il

2009-05-26T20:12:00.008-06:00

OK, is anybody besides me getting about fucking tired of Kim Jong-Il and North Korea’s saber rattling shit?

In case you were too busy celebrating over the holiday weekend, Idiots-R-Us detonated a sizeable underground nuke, and followed it up by launching a couple of offensive missile tests out into the ocean to make the world quake in fear at their mighty 1950’s technology.

You know, if anybody in the world is going to sell a nuke to a terrorist organization, it’s THAT little delusional pimp stick.

I’m tired of that megalomaniacal little clown starving millions and millions of people while putting every dime the country has into its military – just like his fucked up father before him. But the son is worse.

But it’s time this delusional little fucker had an object lesson. Militaries of the West are not afraid of your army, you sawed off retard. First of all, China is just as sick of your shit as anybody. They are tired of starving refugee North Koreans swarming across their border begging for food. They are tired of you talking smack. China will not help you.

Yeah, you have a million man army and a lot of tanks. The Republican Guard had a lot of tanks. Better tanks than yours. Read up on the Battle of 73 Easting. And the other Western nations’ front line shit is the same way. The British Challenger, the German Leopard II, the French Leclerc, can smoke your shit at distance without stopping. And that’s only if some of your shit manages to get through the air assault.

Because we EXCEL in taking out missile installations these days. That’s one thing the Serbs taught us in Bosnia. They put out shitloads of decoy radar sources made out of microwave oven magnetrons. Brought these up whenever they switched on their anti-aircraft radar to screw up our anti-radar missiles. That was smart. But it only slowed the destruction of their installations. It didn’t stop it.

But that lead to a new terminal seeker head being designed for the AGM-88. GOD doesn’t have enough security clearance to know how smart this missile is now *chuckle*

In fact, don’t even think about starting with missiles. Our missiles are better than your missiles by orders of magnitude.

Yes, we’d have you ringed with Aegis class destroyers and every other new anti-missile system in inventory to keep you from nuking Japan and military forces, but there’s never a guarantee of 100% perfect interception.

And if you JUST INSIST on pushing it that far…

It can come right back at you, with fusion on top.

So just wise up! You are not untouchable, you delusional little Ozymandias cunt!

Transiting

2009-05-21T12:22:00.003-06:00

I just had to toss this little salad together.

This is Hubble and Atlantis transiting the sun during the recent Hubble upgrade and repair mission.

Something about this just tweaks my inner geek.

(click to ... ah fuck, you know)

Horseshit

2009-05-19T11:00:00.003-06:00

As you may have noticed, I have recently been anointed with the dreaded Blogger content warning splash page.

Everything at Blogger being bot driven, there are no human decisions involved. I tried to email one of the people on the contact list and explain that I have my own click-through links on seriously graphic content, but received no response.

With my limited readership, and considering the timing, I’m pretty much certain that the “complaint” came from somebody associated with this effort:

Vote "Yes" to Reform Blogger's Content Warning

Angelo
Hello, this is the editor of High On Sex, a sex/porn/erotica blog.

Using Google's new Product Ideas service, I'd like to work with you and other bloggers to reform Blogger's flawed content warning interstitial. As you may know, the forced warning page placed on "objectionable" blogs has caused a great deal of frustration for many users and possibly yourself. More info on these issues here.
http://highonsex.blogspot.com/2009/04/vote-yes-to-reform-bloggers-content.html

I ask that you consider voting "Yes" to:
"Make Content Warning optional. Remove flagged blogs from Blogger's Listings (Next Blog, etc), instead of forcing a splash page on 'objectionable' blogs (ex: nude art blogs). The warning page causes more problems than it solves and limits expression."

Here: Reform the Content Warning
http://productideas.appspot.com/#11/e=e828&t=agxwcm9kdWN0aWRlYXNyLwsSCERvcnlVc2VyIiF1MTk3YmE5YzA0YTVhNzYyOGM2Njc3NTY2Yzk5MDFlZWIM

It'd behoove the cause to spread the word to your readers.

Thank so much for your time and consideration. To a better Blogger!

Angelo
http://highonsex.blogspot.com/

I received a brief series of email about this, but did not sign the petition, since I have a limited readership and Blogger never fucked with me before.

Then, low and behold. As soon as the deadline for signing the petition was up, somebody turned me in for questionable content.

And I’ve noticed several HNT and sex advice blogs that didn’t have the content warning page suddenly now do as well.

I will be moving my blog soon.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

*shaking head*

High school fucking horseshit …

Vadge Mojo

2009-05-14T14:00:00.002-06:00

“This sculpture may look a little bit like a roast chicken...”

Image by Nicholas Conard

No, that’s a rather symbolically represented female form, with gigantically exaggerated breasts and a vadge of honor you could store your golf clubs in o_O

It’s also likely the oldest example of an artistic human form ever found. It was recently discovered in sediments in a cave that carbon-date to at least 35,000 years ago in Germany.

And no, they didn’t carve it like that for any kind of pornographic expression.

You have to understand the religion of the hunter-gatherer tribe in ancient Europe. Women were a separate entity with separate rituals. The female hierarchy are believed to have had their own powers within the tribe that no man could wield. The highest ranking among them had especially important positions in religious rites, including those that protected the hunters.

By virtue of being able to bring new life into the world, women were considered more connected with the "spiritual" than were men. So, in effect, a man was never closer to the gods than when he was having intercourse.

I think we lost a lot when we turned our back on that :o)

So that is why the breasts and vulva are so vastly exaggerated in this figurine. It’s not out of lewdness. It’s calling upon the power of the lunar gods – the power of the feminine, which is tied to the power of creation.

But yeah, I have to agree with the guy. The carving does look a lot like a roast chicken. *laughing*

Editor's Note: The historical discussion presented above was gleaned from the lectures of the late Joseph Campbell.

The news report:
(Apologies. When I copied this over, I didn’t notice that it didn’t include the Brit reporter’s byline)

Prehistoric pin-up is oldest known figurative art

This sculpture may look a little bit like a roast chicken, but don't let that distract you - it's an incredibly important artistic find. This small figurine is arguably the oldest representation of the human body yet discovered.
The figure is clearly human, with short arms ending in five, carefully carved fingers, and a navel in the right position. But its most obvious features show that it depicts a woman, and very explicitly at that. She has large protruding breasts, wide hips and thighs, accentuated buttocks and pronounced vulva between her open legs. In contrast to these exaggerated sexual features, her arms and legs are relatively small and her head has been left out entirely. It was replaced with a carefully carved ring that probably allowed the figure to be suspended like a pendant.
The figurine is very similar to the so-called Venuses of Europe's tool-making Gravettian culture. These prehistoric works of art also had crazily proportioned breasts, buttocks and genitals, as well as curiously downplayed heads, arms and legs. They were created between 22,000 and 27,000 years ago, but this new find is much older than that.
It was unearthed by Nicholas Conard from the University of Tubingen, who found the Venus three metres underground, within the Hohle Fels Cave in southern Germany. It's just 6cm long and was carved from the solid ivory tusk of a mammoth. Judging by carbon-dating measurements of other finds from the dig site, Conard estimates that it was fashioned at least 35,000 years ago, although it could well be millennia older.
The Venus was found in six separate fragments, recovered over a week in 2008. Despite being shattered, most of the pieces have been found and reunited, with only the left arm and shoulder still missing. Conard still hopes to recover these missing fragments as the cave dig continues. Like other Venuses, Conard suggests that his latest find could be a symbol of fertility. She's also adorned in other markings, including horizontal lines around her waist that could possibly represent a wrap or piece of clothing.
The Venus hails from the Aurignacian period, which saw the demise of the European Neanderthals and the settling of genetically modern humans in their place. The German caves where the Venus was buried have yielded a treasure trove of human creativity from this far-gone culture, including the world's oldest unmistakeable musical instruments -flutes made from the bird bones, joined by mammoth ivory.
Archaeologists have also found a veritable art gallery of 25 other Aurignacian figurines, but all of these depict animals or half-human, half-animal creatures. The Venus is unique, for it is older than all of these earlier finds and it's the first one that's clearly human.
It's quite probably the oldest human figure on record. There are other contenders to the title including rust paintings in Italy's Fumane Cave (although these may again depict human-animal hybrids) and those in France's Chauvet Caves. There is a caveat - Conard admits that the carbon-dating estimates are ambiguous. Nonetheless, the figurine was found at the bottom of sediment that was deposited during the Aurignacian and that shows no signs of having been disturbed since then.
According to Conard, the mere existence of the Venus radically changes our view of the origins of prehistoric art. Modern humans evolved in Africa and the oldest art there is abstract - geometrical designs that were created between 75,000 and 95,000 years ago.
But portraying the human figure appears to have been a European invention, achieved only when our ancestors migrated northwards. In Africa, the oldest figurative art is a set of seven paintings on stone blocks from Namibia's Apollo 11 cave, and these were created just 25,500 to 27,500 years ago. Archaeologist Paul Mellars believes that Conard's Venus pinpoints south Germany as the "the birthplace of true sculpture in the European - maybe global - artistic tradition".

No

2009-05-11T08:26:00.001-06:00

"You probably think I'm a monster."

Former U.S. soldier Steven Green has been convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl

No. I think you are a product of this “entitlement” environment.

I’m not going to pretend to understand the horrors of combat that you went through. I just know that I would NOT have committed the crime that you did.

In WWII, more often than not, the men that went shell-shocked on the line, or suffered “combat fatigue” as was the term then, killed themselves rather than civilians. I might shit myself and go blind when the first mortar round hit – I don’t know. I have not been thusly tested. But I know I would eat a bullet before I would kill a family just so I could rape and kill a little girl without witnesses.

Oh, there were a few of you in WWII. The War Department kept those few instances under wraps, for the most part. But considering the scope of the war, the instances were quite few. Suicides on the line were not, although they were politely called “killed in action” for the sake of the families.

While you weren’t the mastermind, you were just a weak-minded follower, you knew better. But you decided to vent your impotent rage on the innocent. You shit on everything for which your brothers in arms sacrificed. You’re a bug. You’re a rodent. You are common. You are no monster.

When the agents came for you, you were taking your grandmother out for dinner.

It angers me that I still feel some latent sorrow for you.

Damn you to hell.

Green Nukes

2009-05-03T20:55:00.007-06:00

Update: Questions answered in comments.

OK, I kind of dislike the term “green”. But I’m into lowering greenhouse gas emissions and reducing fossil fuel consumption.

Mind you, uranium consumption has a limit too, so it is a short-term … “interim” kind of thing. There is, in fact, only so much available uranium on the planet. However, it produces copious power without producing greenhouse gasses.

NOW!!!!

Before everybody goes batshit.

I have been against nuclear power generation all of my life, because they are just far too dangerous and nobody had any plan for nuclear waste disposal of these fuel pellets that were going to be hazardous for more than a hundred thousand years. Valid concerns, eh?

But times have changed and technology has changed, and priorities have changed.

And of these, MOST IMPORTANTLY, TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED.

Currently operational nuclear power plants on land are so dangerous because they use highly radioactive water circulating within the nuclear pile to cool the radioactive-metal pellets that produce the heat that eventually produces clean steam to drive the electricity-producing turbines.

But that initial high-pressure hot water is radioactively hotter than anything you want to think about, and thermally so hot that the only reason it is still water is that it is contained within ultra-high pressure pipes. That is why they build the huge vase-shaped containment towers around nuke plants. If that system ruptures, all of that expanding steam must be contained within that giant building or it will kill everybody. That’s why modern naval nuke plants are considerably safer, because they use circulating molten sodium instead of water for the primary coolant to the reactor. Though, something as reactive as pure sodium has its own risks.

Enter Pebble Bed nuclear reactor technology, currently being built by Westinghouse in China and other places.

Rather than try to tame the beast of nuclear chain reaction (mind you, I’m simplifying a lot here, so science guys, cut me some slack), they design the reactor to deal with the beast on it’s own terms. The Pebble Bed reactor uses small pellets of uranium, plutonium from dismantled bombs, and other junk nasty nuke products like thorium, which can be used because of the higher operating temperatures – but these are encased in laminated layers of high-tech ceramics that withstand the high temperatures and keep the pellets in shape and in place.

These are allowed to go critical as all hell, and produce all KINDS of heat. And that heat is removed by circulating gas. The preferred gas is helium, although other inert gasses such as nitrogen or CO2 have been used and have pros and cons that I won’t go into right now.

For the record, I think circulating helium and maintaining a pure nitrogen atmosphere within the containment vessel would be ideally maximum safe. If a rupture happened in the helium system, it would rise to the top and the system would be filled by inert nitrogen. Yes, all the workers outside of the control rooms would have to carry their own air supplies on their backs, but there are many work environments today where that is done, and in a modern automated plant, there are not many of those workers.

But because you begin with a hot reactor, it CANNOT MELT DOWN. If the reactor gets hotter than optimal, a quantum mechanical effect takes over, and the uranium atoms become so pliable at the greater temperatures, that they ABSORB the slow neutrons instead of being shattered by them. Therefore, the reaction is self-mitigating.

And containment buildings would be extremely tiny in comparison to the incomprehensibly huge towers around the existing nuke plants. They would only need to be able to contain the expansion of a ruptured hot gas circulation system.

And instead of sticking all that nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain and monitoring it at massive ongoing cost, it can actually be re-refined (within one of the big containment buildings of one of our shut-down nuke plants) into new TRISO fuel pellets for the PBRs.

Now, the PBRs produce a greater volume of high-level nuclear waste at the end of the day, and this is still very nasty stuff.

But for love of God. We are currently storing high-level nuclear waste inside the nuke plants near major population centers. THAT IS THE STUPIDEST POSSIBLE THING WE COULD DO.

Yucca Mountain is a better idea than that.

But how about a better one?

Somewhere out there in the wide Pacific or Atlantic, is the perfect stretch of subduction zone.

There is not a volcano within 5000 miles of it.

Once the pebbles are worn out, just bury them two miles down in the rock with, pretty much, existing technology.

No matter how big the earthquake, that rock is just going to go downstairs until it becomes one with the earth’s mantle. And even if there is hydrothermal circulation at some point, there is no volcanic rift. Any water that contacted the waste would percolate into the rock layers above, cool and deposit out anything it picked up miles underground – and those deposits would continue on down to the mantle. Everybody knows where the subducted plate is headed.

You would only need a few newly-engineered rigs to service 100 new, inexpensive in comparison, (underground would be my choice in case of terrorist strikes) PBRs throughout the U.S. That would be 100 nasty old coal plants we could take offline. Or, OK, call it 50, since power needs are unlikely to diminish over time, but still. The idea is to reduce emissions.

Instead of saving the old, lets invest all this magic new money Congress is throwing around on new, and let the old fend for itself.

Southpark

2009-05-02T01:07:00.002-06:00

I only watch Southpark every now and then, these days. But I still remember my favorites. When you think they won't push it any farther -- they do. And they still do, so I try to check in every now and then.

I just have to appreciate guys as over the top as I am ;-)

Mirror of the Soul

2009-04-26T22:17:00.001-06:00

I have a book of short erotica written by historical figures and from archeological sources through history back to the ancient, and up to the contemporary with pieces. These include stories and theses by Sappho, Ovid, Casanova, Keats, Nabokov and Leonard Cohen just to pick a few out of the hat.

This is the first one I’ve read and I found it quaint. The early Moor empire in Spain was a very cool place. They didn’t oppress the locals at all. In fact, the Islamic-lead culture thrived with all the local Christians and Jews being very much a part of it’s success – both working for it and prospering from it (it helped that the wealthy founder was basically kicked out of the heart of the Caliphate and had to build his own paradise somewhere else). And everybody was cool until the first dynasty was overthrown and the new rulers decided to convert the locals to Islam at the point of a sword. Well, they shouldn’t have done that. Comes the First Crusade and no more Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula.

But for a long time there, it was one of the best places to live in the world. However, still very “thou may not have sex” as far as how proper people are supposed to maintain all outward appearances.

So this is a quaint little piece that pays homage to my predilection for eyes. So I also thought I would dress it up with some steamy images. So a link has been provided to a version interspersed with images about his descriptions (as interpreted at my whim) DO NOT click on the link unless you are prepared to see graphic sexual imagery. Otherwise, his treatise kind of … well. Everybody knows this ;-)

Cordova
MIRROR OF THE SOUL

Ibn Hazm, from The Ring of the Dove. The Spanish-born Muslim theologian, littérateur, and jurist produced some four hundred works before, during, and after the fall of the Caliphate of Cordova in 1031. His ambitious Book of Religions and Sects is one of the earliest works of comparative religious history.

After verbal allusion, when once the lover's advance has been accepted and an accord established, the next following step consists in hinting with the glances of the eyes. Glances play an honorable part in this phase, and achieve remarkable results. By means of a glance the lover can be dismissed, admitted, promised, threatened, upbraided, cheered, commanded, forbidden; a glance will lash the ignoble, and give warning of the presence of spies; a glance may convey laughter and sorrow, ask a question and make a response, refuse and give — in short, each one of these various moods and intentions has its own particular kind of glance, which cannot be precisely realized except by ocular demonstration. Only a small fraction of the entire repertory is capable of being sketched out and described, and I will therefore attempt to describe here no more than the most elementary of these forms of expression.

To make a signal with the comer of the eye is to forbid the lover something; to droop the eye is an indication of consent; to prolong the gaze is a sign of suffering and distress; to break off the gaze is a mark of relief; to make signs of closing the eyes is an indicated threat. To turn the pupil of the eye in a certain direction and then to turn it back swiftly calls attention to the presence of a person so indicated. A clandestine signal with the comer of both eyes is a question; to turn the pupil rapidly from the middle of the eye to the interior angle is a demonstration of refusal; to flutter the pupils of both eyes this way and that is a general prohibition. The rest of these signals can be understood by actually seeing them demonstrated.

You should realize that the eye takes the place of a messenger, and that with its aid all the beloved's intention can be apprehended. The four senses besides are also gateways of the heart and passages giving admission to the soul; the eye is however the most eloquent, the most expressive, and the most efficient of them all. The eye is the true outrider and faithful guide of the soul; it is the soul's well-polished mirror, by means of which it comprehends all truths, attains all qualities, and understands all sensible phenomena. It is a well-known saying that hearing of a thing is not like seeing it; this was already remarked by Poleron, the master of physiognomy, who established the eye as the most reliable basis for forming judgment.

We state and affirm, by the tenor of these presents, that love cannot extend its rights over two married persons. For indeed lovers grant each other all, mutually and freely, without being constrained by any motive of necessity, whereas husband and wife are holden by their duty to submit their wills to each other and to refuse each other nothing.
-Comtesse de Champagne, 1174

Even if all this were not due to any superior virtue in the eye itself, yet the fact remains that the substance of the eye is the loftiest and most sublime of all substances. For the eye possesses the property of light, and by it alone may colors by perceived; no other organ surpasses it in range and extent, since by the eye the bodies of the stars themselves in their distant spheres may be observed, and the heavens seen for all their tremendous elevation and remoteness. This is simply because the eye is united in the nature of its constitution with the mirror of which we have been speaking. It perceives those things, and reaches them as in a single bound, needing not to traverse the intervening distance by stages, or to alight at halting places en route. The eye does not travel through space by labored movements.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

2009-04-22T20:53:00.002-06:00

Just to add another obscure reference that has been further warped:

"Pretty strong meat there from Hirayoshi Peckinpah"

Wow. My life sucks

2009-04-20T22:37:00.003-06:00

I am so sorry that I haven't been visiting. My life/job is a living hell. I have no idea what the fuck I need to do as far as a "move"

I love the company and the people.

But the owner is a bipolar psycho >__<

On the bright side. Even when I am absent, I have amazingly smart, hot women sending me pictures that include pieces of images such as this. I am so, so thankful for that :o)

Love you guys.

G

My Dick Hurts

2009-04-12T21:25:00.004-06:00

Sorry

As has been the case of late.

My job has been rippin' it where it hurts.

Many, many apologies.

Texture

2009-04-09T13:39:00.002-06:00

When you get finished sauteing five pounds of catfish in the same pan, with olive oil and Cajun spices ...

You have a thick build up of pieces of fish skin and other organic matter on the pan that produces a freaky texture.

I just thought I'd share.

Texahzz

2009-04-01T20:56:00.003-06:00

If your system has a subwoofer like mine does, and you have a taste for blooze -- you'll like this old number.

Unfortunately, I don't live in this part of Texas anymore. I live (or at least work) in the urban psychopath city like most everybody else >__<

My Mensa Boner

2009-03-23T15:25:00.004-06:00

(click to largicizify)

OK, I’m going to have to bitch about #8. First of all, they immediately tell you “This difference has nothing to do with letters …”

So I didn’t even bother with the anagram thing. Then these questions are so freakin’ old! A bag of jellybeans cost a penny?! In my entire life I have never met a girl or woman my age named Greta, Mabel or Melba.

I answered “blame” because it was the only one of the three that was intangible.

Am I wrong?

Now, I gotta give ‘em props for #10. I totally didn’t catch the joke. I should have stopped and thought about that for a bit instead of switching to my default mode of being a smartass *chuckle*

#6 was cute. I liked that one.

I'm keen to guess

2009-03-18T11:56:00.006-06:00

I was watching this cheesy German horror movie the other day. I think it was called “Anatomy”, where a bunch of med-school kids were dissecting cadavers and a killer was wandering about doing what slasher-movie killers do.

Anyway, I noticed that the star of this cinematic offering was the chick from “Run Lola Run”. I think she also played the inadvertently-assassinated wife of Jason Bourne in “The Bourne Supremacy”.

Yeah. I haven’t run an output from the DVR to a computer yet, so I took a picture of the TV. Which, before the days of high def, was really hard to do. You had to be really tricksey with the shutter speed to keep from blanking part of the screen. Now you have high def screens refreshing so fast that a 1/125sec. exposure is nothing. Technology marches on …

Anyway

I also noticed what has to be a young Natalie Portman in brief a non-speaking role as a girl who has just been told that the red bumps on her crotch are just pubic lice ... which ... you just gotta snicker a little.

At least she had no lines in this over-dubbed English version of the German flick.

And yeah … I know I could just “imdb” all this shit. But as John Cleese says in the Cheese Shop Sketch: “I’m keen to guess”. *chuckle*

Cool Breeze

2009-03-16T12:04:00.003-06:00

My snugglebumps sent me some cool breeze music, to which I have been Kerouacing in beat state of mind ;-)

This is music from her movie, as we used to say. Meaning, if someone made a film about her, this must be on the soundtrack. This is among the artists and works that are important to her for whichever of the varied reasons a piece of music makes itself important to us.

Some of it I had heard before, some of it I had not, then she included a trumpeter who I had never heard, but enjoyed. However, now that what I had heard before connects to her, it has a different effect on me than it had years and years ago. So Mr. Coltrane and Co. have been workin’ the speakers at the Gadfly residence.

Oh, and the knife?

That’s my letter opener.

Works well on boxes and other packaging, as well as women’s undergarments. However … it’s important to whisper a deep warning to the woman prior to sliding the blade under the aforementioned clothing: “be very, very still …”

Hmmmm… I like the idea of playing one of those games with snugglebumps while Mr. Coltrane plays in the background … I like the juxtaposition.

Incident Profile

2009-03-11T13:12:00.009-06:00

Thought I might toss a bit of a deeper look into a recent “incident” for my readers (both of you).

First, this is the incident (from CNN reports):

The Pentagon said Monday that Chinese ships harassed a U.S. surveillance ship Sunday in the South China Sea in the latest of several instances of "increasingly aggressive conduct" in the past week.

During the incident, five Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable, in an apparent coordinated effort to harass the U.S. ocean surveillance ship while it was conducting routine operations in international waters," the Pentagon said in a written statement.

The crew members aboard the vessels, two of which were within 50 feet, waved Chinese flags and told the U.S. ship to leave the area, the statement said.

"Because the vessels' intentions were not known, Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself," the statement said. "The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

After the Impeccable alerted the Chinese ships "in a friendly manner" that it was seeking a safe path to depart the area, two of the Chinese ships stopped "directly ahead of USNS Impeccable, forcing Impeccable to conduct an emergency 'all stop' in order to avoid collision," the statement said. "They dropped pieces of wood in the water directly in front of Impeccable's path."

A Pentagon spokesman called the incident "one of the most aggressive actions we've seen in some time. We will certainly let Chinese officials know of our displeasure at this reckless and dangerous maneuver."

He said the Chinese crew members used poles to try to snag the Impeccable's acoustic equipment in the water.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing lodged a protest over the weekend with the Chinese government, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

The Impeccable's crew is composed primarily of civilians and the ship itself is not armed, the spokesman said.

In that incident, which occurred about 125 miles from China's coast in the Yellow Sea, the Chinese ship "crossed Victorious' bow at a range of about 1,400 yards" in darkness without notice or warning. The following day, a Chinese Y-12 maritime surveillance aircraft conducted 12 fly-bys of Victorious at an altitude of about 400 feet and a range of 500 yards.

The next day, a Chinese frigate approached Impeccable "and proceeded to cross its bow at a range of approximately 100 yards," which was followed less than two hours later by a Chinese Y-12 aircraft conducting 11 fly-bys of Impeccable at an altitude of 600 feet and a range of 100 to 300 feet, the statement said.

"The frigate then crossed Impeccable's bow yet again, this time at a range of approximately 400-500 yards without rendering courtesy or notice of her intentions."

And on Saturday, a Chinese intelligence collection ship challenged Impeccable over bridge-to-bridge radio, "calling her operations illegal and directing Impeccable to leave the area or 'suffer the consequences,' " the statement said.

Obviously, the PRC version differs:

A U.S. surveillance ship violated Chinese and international laws during patrols more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the Chinese coast over the weekend, China's state-run media reported Tuesday.

"China has lodged serious representations with the United States, as the USNS Impeccable conducted activities in China's special economic zone in the South China Sea," said Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman. "We demand that the United States put an immediate stop to related activities and take effective measures to prevent similar acts from happening."

Ma said that "the U.S. claims are gravely in contravention of the facts and confuse black and white and they are totally unacceptable to China," although he didn't say what China's version of the events were.
According to the Pentagon, the Chinese crew members aboard the vessels, two of which were within 50 feet, waved Chinese flags and told the U.S. ship to leave the area.

This all has to do with China wanting to claim ALL THE FUCKING ISLANDS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA.

China already shot up a bunch of Vietnamese ships years ago that were trying to protect the part of the Parcel Islands that they claim.

Editor’s note: Gadfly is fully aware that these are the English names for these archipelagos, but that is the language in which he writes. He finds the indigenous vocalizations for Mt. Everest and Ayer’s Rock entirely distasteful. I believe his exact words to me over scotch and cigars one evening were “far too vowelly”.

No, I have an editor. Really. Don’t you believe me?

Anyway …

Claiming these islands would give China territorial waters that would command the entire South China Sea, as the red line in the following graphic illustrates.

Seriously. That’s the Chinese government’s official claim. They even claim Learmonth Shoal right off the coast of Malaysia o_O

It’s difficult not to look at that as saying “Malaysia doesn’t matter … they’re part of the Chinese Empire in our 20-year plan anyway”.

However, for the immediate near future, China wants two things:

1) The yet-to-be-determined amount of oil and natural gas under the ocean in the Spratlys. Well, so does every other country in the region – especially the ones that are actually NEAR THE ISLANDS!

2) The ability to have power over the entire world by controlling one of the most important shipping routes on the globe. If it were allowed to happen, that would give the People’s Republic of China the right to board, seize, and levy fees against any and all shipping to all of the countries of the region.

I mean even if you leave China out of it, in today’s economy, this is a global shipping gravy run.

Kuala Lampur, Singapore, Jakarta, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong (hey, the PRC had nothing to do with building the economy of Hong Kong) – that’s shipping for the whole fucking world.

If China had control of that, they could put a choke hold on shipping just like OPEC has done with oil prices and DeBeers has done quite successfully with diamond prices.

So yeah. The U.S. story had a lot of lipstick put on it for the media. The ship wasn’t exactly out in the big wide open South China Sea minding their own business.

And the USNS Impeccable isn’t exactly a rowboat.

They’re keeping track of Chinese attack and ballistic missile submarines prowling about the shipping lanes.

Personally, I don’t even know why you would let an asset the size the Impeccable run around without armament.

Those civilians onboard are running all the high tech sonar gear. I’m pretty sure they have serious security fucking clearance. The sailors should at least have a little sumpum’sumpum to defend themselves …

Although, I suspect there was a big eye in the sky ready to call down CAP fighters orbiting nearby if things got too dicey for them.

Plus, you wouldn’t want a trigger-happy sailor starting a war that’s going to destabilize the region. Of course, I wouldn’t want to see Navy personnel and a high value intelligence asset captured by PRC warships … but then again, see aforementioned combat air patrol … (I’m hoping)

I just wish China wouldn’t get so froggy. While nobody is going to fuck with them on land, the rest of the world is not going to let them throttle the growing economies of that region, which includes a major shipping route to and from India. The PRC had better think twice about facing Western forces on the sea. To do battle on the ocean means to fight a mechanized war. That means presenting targets.

Fuck a bunch of insurgents mixing in with the local population. The militaries of the U.S., Great Britain, and the ANZAC nations have wet dreams over fighting targets. All the cool technology gets to go to work then.

Our militaries are designed to make ships, submarines and missile bases go away. They could give a fuck about killing all the millions of soldiers. They just like to fuck up stuff. And to threaten the South China Sea, you gotta have stuff.

Don’t get froggy.

Anti-Pedantry

2009-03-05T11:27:00.002-06:00

SETUP 1:

Smart Friend is over playing music in the media room. I walk in with a look of disgust, having been watching TV in another part of the house.

Smart Friend: “What?”

Gadfly: “I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

Smart Friend: “What”

Gadfly: “ – ‘Historicity’ – “

Smart Friend: “Oh, no. That’s a word. If I had my political anthropology reference, I’d show you …”

Gadfly: “I don’t care! It’s obviously spawned of some incestuous circle of Acadeeeeeme … with NO concept or connection to field science. They’re just arguing over other people’s findings and published works without doing a fucking thing on their own and inventing a word to sound smart instead of using perfectly clear, viable, and available lay-terms.

Smart Friend: “Well, I don’t know what you were watching, but I can see it hit a nerve (laughing)”.

SETUP:

Smart Friend knows me and understands that since the encounter, I had already looked the word up in my encyclopedic dictionary. I know it comes from the Late Victorian, which was a time of GREAT pedantic horseshit in the purely academic circles. I can surely see some third-tier twat inventing a word and forcing his students to use it instead of simply saying “historical accuracy”. ALSO, I can see how, more than a century later, it took decades of listening to academic discourse before I finally heard another third-tier twat use the term again.

In addition, Smart Friend is defending its use, because he makes up new words all the time. However, being hyper-intelligent, he creates a new word to crystallize a complex concept so that the argument at hand can move forward at an accelerated pace. I am ALL ABOUT that. Where we cross swords is that I maintain that each of these new words must be recrystallized EACH TIME the matter is discussed. It is not up to THE WORLD to learn a single man’s lexicon! But then, Smart Friend could give a fuck about 99% of the world *chuckle*

WHITEBOARD IN THE MEDIA ROOM (over following days)

Smart Friend: I guess there’s two ways to look at it:
1) Safire’s rule: Even if you know it’s correct, it will start another argument which gets you know-where.
2) My prof: “That’s not a word.” Me: “It is now.”

Gadfly: I loathe words like that. If it’s specialty-specific jargon with no redeeming reason to be brought into cross-disciplinary discussion, I take a higher stand and fling chimpanzee shit at them.

Smart Friend: (Picture him in Smokey Bear hat for mock effect)

Only you can prevent pedanticity

Heh … Would that that were so ;-)

Freakin’ DUH

2009-02-25T15:31:00.000-06:00

OK, this is NOT rocket fucking science.

And you wonder how a few dozen psychos, aided by goat fuckers could fly airliners into the WTC. It’s because half the people in government are retarded.

I just read a thing about “the continuing, baffling failure of a dollar coin to catch on in the United States.”

Well, that’s just fucking stupid.

I was around for the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin. That failed because some retard decided to make it look like a quarter. I had them handed to me regularly as change for a dollar bill. Toward the end there, I was placing them in the clerk’s hand and saying “that’s a dollar” before they were taken out of circulation.

The Sacagawea dollar was perfect. Looked and felt like nothing else. Wanna know why it failed? YOU PINHEADS DIDN’T MAKE ENOUGH OF THEM!

I was given my first two Sacagawea dollar coins and promptly spent them, as they were and remain legal tender in these United States. Everyone else, apparently, took theirs’ home and put them in a desk drawer. I never saw another one.

I’m thinking if they started showing up every day, most people would have gotten the ones out of the desk drawer and spent them. Not everyone is a numismatist, for fuck’s sake. But no. Some douche just pulled the plug on the whole program and wasted however many hundreds of millions in tooling, production and distribution.

Now we just have the dollar bills that have to all be reprinted every year at great expense. Makes about as much sense as the penny.

Dorkamus Prime

2009-02-23T11:49:00.002-06:00

Spent my weekend evenings learning about the DNA studies of the strangely Caucasoid mummies of the Tarim Basin in the high steps of China. Also watched a Nova episode about network theory, twice. Watched the latest laughable attempts to explain what dark matter and dark energy are by explaining what proportions make the mathematical models work – and how the Sachs-Wolfe effect seen in the cosmic background radiation backs it up. Even watched a documentary on the history of lead. That’s right. The metal … lead.

Why? Because ...

PS: I made this image as part of a T-shirt I'm putting together for a friend *chuckle*

Just a reminder

2009-02-20T15:11:00.001-06:00

www.aprilwinchell.com/h/mp3/GodWill.mp3

No reason to panic

2009-02-17T18:15:00.006-06:00

Holy shit. I thought the cowling was going to come off there for a second.

This came to me with text indicating a goose was fired at the engine to to simulate a jet-speed impact. Actually, however, they used an explosive charge to simulate any incident that causes a turbine rupture. Basically, this is just having fun fucking shit up.

PS: Finally got around to responding to comments on the Valentine post *sheepish grin*

My Zombie Valentine

2009-02-15T16:47:00.005-06:00

I included this card in the gift box to my sweetheart.

I wiped out the names and initials, so it reads a little clunky now, but it had the desired effect. She got a huge laugh out of it, and she loved the gift that went with it. She rocks :D

Thankfully, she has a weak spot for my goofy tard humor *chuckle*

Hope all of you had sweet and/or steamy Valentine's Days

Taking Chance

2009-02-10T11:13:00.000-06:00

In case you haven't had your tears quotient this year ...

Just dig the hole and let’s go home

2009-02-09T13:50:00.001-06:00

Don’t you know these guys had about a good half second to a second to think “oh shit” before the gas concentration reached ignition levels at a source on the heavy equipment.

And then they were smote the fuck down as if by the fiery hand of God O_O

I worked one of these a long time ago when I was a paramedic. Well. “Worked” is a bit of an overstatement. I stood around with the rest of the first responders and watched it burn way up into the sky until the gas company could shut the main trunk valves down. It wasn’t like there was anybody down at the site that was needing medical care by that point.

Remember the Soviet Union?

2009-02-04T17:16:00.002-06:00

I sure as fuck do.

And apparently Putin and his henchman Medvedev do too – with great fondness. Like Mark Twain said, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes. Welcome back to the cold war children. The colors on one side have changed, but the chess match resumes.

Russia says it wants to help US in Afghanistan (HA! Yeah. They were really fucking "helpful" in Afghanistan back in the '80s)

By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer Mike Eckel, Associated Press Writer –

MOSCOW – President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies want to help the United States stabilize Afghanistan, saying Moscow wanted "full-fledged" cooperation with Washington.

He spoke a day after the ex-Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan announced it would evict the U.S. from an air base key to the Afghan war. Kyrgyzstan made the move after getting a promise for $2 billion in loans from Russia — which resents the American presence in a region Moscow regards as part of its traditional sphere of influence.

The possibility of the base closure poses a serious challenge to the new U.S. administration and President Barack Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 more American forces into Afghanistan this year.

"Russia and other (alliance members) are ready for full-fledged comprehensive cooperation with the United States and other coalition members in fighting terrorism in the region. This fight must be comprehensive and include both military and political components. Only in the case will this have a chance to succeed," Medvedev said.

It was not clear if Medvedev's reference to "full-fledged" cooperation was an attempt to reassure Washington or an indication that Moscow would seek concessions in exchange for helping keep the Manas air base open.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday that about 1,000 U.S. troops — and dozens each of French and Spanish — are working at the base to move 15,000 people and 500 tons of cargo monthly through the facility for the Afghan campaign.

"Kyrgyzstan has been a good ally. And we certainly appreciate the arrangement that we have with them right now," Whitman told Pentagon reporters. "The base does contribute to the security and stability of Central Asia and Afghanistan."

Use of the facility is laid out in a July 2006 U.S.-Kyrgyz agreement that requires the U.S. to pay $17.4 million a year, renewable each year through July 2011 — and with the option by either side to back out of the agreement with 180 days notice, Whitman said. Total U.S. assistance to the country is about $150 million a year, including health, police, human rights and economic programs.

Russia has appeared open to aiding the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan by facilitating attempts to find northern alternatives to Pakistani supply lines increasingly threatened by militant attacks. But Moscow also wants to protect what it says as its strategic backyard by blocking the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Russia has also vehemently opposed U.S. plans to put a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Medvedev appeared to criticize U.S. efforts on stabilizing Afghanistan, saying it would be impossible to defeat terrorism there only using military means.

"It is necessary to form a full-fledged political system, keeping in mind, cultural and historic traditions. Democracy cannot be forced upon (a country). It must grow from within," he said.

"It's not the number of bases that matters. It would be good if that would help reduce the number of terrorists, but the fight against terrorism is not limited to building up military forces," he said.

Russia, which waged its own bloody and unsuccessful attempt to control Afghanistan, has sent mixed signals about working with the Obama administration, after years of political clashes with the administration of George W. Bush.

On Wednesday, Medvedev hosted presidents from seven-member Collective Security Treaty Organization — a loose, Moscow-dominated alliance made up of several ex-Soviet states.

After Kremlin talks, the group announced the creation of a joint rapid reaction force that would boost the military dimension to the alliance, which until now has served mostly as a forum for security consultations.

Crazy Ants

2009-02-03T14:29:00.003-06:00

I had heard they had made it from Houston up to Dallas.

Now I think we have the little bastards in the coffee nook near my office, because, if you will excuse the vernacular: I ain't never seen no ant this small before in my fucking life.

The only good thing about the crazy raspberry ant is that they supposedly kill fire ants and don't sting you.

However, they have no compulsion at all about crawling all over you and LOVE to crawl by the thousands into electrical equipment until it shorts out.

I'll probably have the teeny little fuckers out at the house before long *sigh*

OK, was it just me?

2009-02-02T14:14:00.003-06:00

Or were there not four or five, massive, game-affecting penalties against the Cardinals that were exceptionally iffy?

There was no doubt that the dominant team won, in the end, but without some of those calls, the game could have ended quite differently. I hate when the stripes affect the outcome of the fucking game.

By the third quarter, I was beginning to think the bookies wanted some insurance against the long-odds payoffs and might have shoved some incentive into some referee pockets.

But I'm cynical that way.

At any rate, it was a fun game to watch.

My Thoughts on Blago

2009-01-28T13:12:00.003-06:00

This is what I said over at Woozie's, who happens to be African American and gay, not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. We even have a gay president now.

Wait ... Anyway...

I said this:

Actually, I find the whole farce infinitely amusing. I love when one of the elite get nailed and show the world just how utterly fucked up many of the elite actually are.

And they wonder why many of us among the lowly proletariat question the wisdom of our lawmakers and executives *chuckle*

What a total nuthouse fucktard. He's like batshit on parade LOL

You using the whole fist, doc?

2009-01-26T20:11:00.004-06:00

I have that exam and etc. coming up later this week.

I really hate being "fiddled with" in general. And that really ... well. Let's just say, I am less than enthusiastic.

When I first turned 40, I immediately went out and found a female GP. I'm sorry. I come from the land where the men are men and the livestock are nervous. Having another man fiddling about back there was just going to raise more fucked up psychological trauma than it was worth, especially given that I had access to a major metropolitan area with a plethora of physicians.

But then I turned up with an infection of the joy juice gland a while back. "You have to go find a urologist", she says.

"Well", thinks I ...

Urologist is going to give me that exam, big time. Not an issue. I have access to a major metropolitan area with a plethora of physicians. I find a highly competent female urologist. There's only one problem. She like's hurting men.

I know you want to say "bullshit".

But it takes one to know one. I have all manner of medical experience. And you don't do it that way, unless you want to cause pain.

Mind you .... my bits get examined the fuck out of ...

Not looking forward to this follow-on check-up bullshit.

Pain bitch makes a guy doctor look ... more ... tolerable ... I dunno ... Maybe ...

Golden Turd Awards

2009-01-22T13:21:00.005-06:00

Gadfly gives two Golden Turd Awards today.

First, to Justice Asshat Roberts who decided to get inventive with the word grouping and cadence when delivering the oath of office to President-Elect Obama. He managed to get them both verbally stumbling over each other that a word was misplaced in the Constitutionally-mandated language.

Roberts was forced to later re-administer the oath of office.

This has to be a first, but I’m glad it happened. At least now there will be some footage that can be aired throughout history. Granted, it will be like the flag on Iwo Jima. It won’t be the real oath of office for the first African American POTUS. But at least it won’t have Asshat adlibbing a new cadence for the swearing in, appearing to deliberately trip up a guy who is expecting the same grouping of words that has been done for the last dozen of these fucking things.

GOD! That pissed me off.

Let’s get all creative at a one-shot moment in history and fuck it all up.

Asshat

Second, and this is why all my 2nd Amendment buddies are none too trusting of the new president: his history on protecting this Constitutional freedom is none too comforting. And then our second Golden Turd winner hails from Obama's old home state.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is hoping to pass a firearm-licensing bill that will significantly rewrite gun-ownership laws in America.
Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner's address in America.
The bill claims its purpose is "to protect the public against the unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with the unrecorded sale or transfer of firearms to criminals and youth."
Columnist David Codrea of Guns Magazine, however, calls it a "ridiculous affront to liberty."
"This is nothing less than a declaration of war on American gun owners," Codrea writes on Gun Rights Examiner.
Rush's proposed bill, H.R. 45, is alternatively known as "Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009," named after an Illinois teenager killed by a gunshot.
According the bill's text, "On the afternoon of May 10, 2007, Blair Holt, a junior at Julian High School in Chicago, was killed on a public bus riding home from school when he used his body to shield a girl who was in the line of fire after a young man boarded the bus and started shooting."
The bill then argues that interstate firearm trafficking and children dying from gun violence create legitimate cause for the federal government to monitor gun ownership and transfers in new ways.
If passed, the bill would make it illegal to own or possess a "qualifying firearm" – defined as any handgun or any semiautomatic firearm that takes an ammunition clip – without a "Blair Holt" license.
To obtain a "Blair Holt" license, an application must be made that includes a photo, address, all previous aliases, thumb print, completion of a written firearm safety test, release of mental health records to the attorney general and a fee not to exceed $25.
Further, the bill makes it illegal to transfer ownership of a qualifying firearm to anyone who is not a licensed gun dealer or collector. Exceptions to this rule include transfer to family members by gift or bequest and loans, not to exceed 30 days, of a firearm for lawful purposes "between persons who are personally known to each other."
The bill also requires qualifying firearm owners to report all transfers to the attorney general's database. It would also be illegal for a licensed gun owner to fail to record a gun loss or theft within 72 hours or fail to report a change of address within 60 days.
And if a minor obtains a weapon and injures someone with it, the owner of the gun – if deemed to have failed to meet certain safety requirements – faces a multiple-year jail sentence.

I love how the anti-gun crowd never mention the hundreds of violent crimes that have been stopped by legally gun-carrying people since the concealed carry laws came about.

Now Representative Herbivore Eyes is going to decide if you are sane enough to own a firearm.

“Have you ever watched a gory movie?”

“Can you imagine any circumstance whatsoever – any condition, in which you might use a firearm to take a human life?”

“You have taken a human life?! Then give us your weapons! And give back those silver and bronze stars! You are no hero. You, sir, are a disgrace!”

*sigh*

OH Bama, Hey Bama ...

2009-01-20T11:47:00.001-06:00

Wow. The Obama inaugural address just rocked. It has been a long time since I have listened to a presidential speech that I couldn’t have written better (mind you, the last couple of terms haven’t had stellar writing with which to compete). But Obama knew he had to acknowledge the present, connect with history, embrace the American commonality and not divide, brace everyone for impact, and motivate everyone to forge ahead through the trouble like those who came before. He did that beautifully. He said so many of the same things that I have been saying for many years (albeit without as many “fucks” and “those miserable cocksuckers” and other colorful phrasing ;-)

I know he’s just a politician, and he is going to turn around and do a bunch of partisan horseshit and piss me the fuck off.

But for the moment, let me be a little school girl and dream *chuckle*

Lost Illusion

2009-01-19T21:16:00.006-06:00

Among the things that are fucked up about this world ...

Interesting people in your life ... die.

I was a new-ish reader. I linked her.

I found her fuckedupedness charming, adorable... a real sort of kinship ... but we had not gotten close.

So, what all of her close readers knew, I didn't. And then I went there, and she was gone.

I haven't figured out what I wanted to say, so it has been weeks. And I realize, I am out of range of homage territory in your circle. I'll just say, Suzanne, I enjoyed you, as Liquid.

Rest is yours.

G

PS: My readers: I realize, I am just a happy fucking camper lately LOL

Venom and Bile on the Commute

2009-01-18T21:52:00.001-06:00

God… Work fucking sucked hard Friday. I worked late into the evening.

And then the "new hard rock" station played an oldie on my drive home just to reach back to the past and annoy me.

“Gather ‘round the family! With a pocket full of shells!”

OK. I realize that everybody who likes hard rock is supposed to swoon at Rage Against the fuckin’ Mosheen. However… I appreciate very much that they are musically interesting, articulate and accurate. That is a very rare thing in the genre. But number one, the guy tries to sound tough and he has a little bitch voice. It’s difficult for me to get past that.

And then, the guy repeats the same lines over and over and fucking over.

“Gather ‘round the family! With a pocket full of shells!”

“Gather ‘round the family! With a pocket full of shells!”

Shut the fuck up bitch voice boy! It’s been a rough day. I don’t want to have to think about stabbing you in the belly and liver fucking you to death just to see that astonished look in your eyes while you die.

Sorry. I’ve had a rough week.

Anyway, that line is barely poignant, and fails the entire reason for repeating a single line over and over in the first place. See … what an aaaaaaahhhhhhtist (read a lot of sarcasm into that pronunciation of artist) wants you to do, normally, is to think and think and imagine about all the possible meaning that could come from the line that is being repeated over and fucking over in the fucking song.

Like in the goddamned Moby song. “I can’t stand, to see the morning come – when the evening rain’s still falling”.

Over and fucking over.

Inviting you to think about all the possible things he could mean by that.

“Does he mean a rejected lover who has been looking out the same window into the rain since sundown the previous evening, alone with his/her heartache, and realizes the sun is coming up?”

“Or, maybe, it’s a psycho husband, standing outside the bedroom window in the rain all night long, hidden by the landscaping, watching his wife and her illicit lover. Now that the sun is coming up, he knows she is going to shower and go to work, and he is going to shoot her dead in the rain, and that’s too cruel even for a cheating whore like her …”

“Or maybe …”

No, fuck it! I don’t want to play into that old, old, old, old trick of the poet or song writer putting in florid, quasi-meaningful horseshit verse and relying on the listener to fill in the blanks with his or her own imagination and intellect. I mean, hey – it’s OK if it’s free. But this shit costs money.

So, how about this: tell me why YOU think “Gather ‘round the family! With a pocket full of shells!” is all that. Because, for a bunch of Harvard grads … the rest of the song ain’t impressing me either. Oh, I don’t know. There might be a cover of some RATM by another band later on that I just love. BUT NOT THAT SONG *chuckle*

But as far as repeating lyrics, here’s my opinion: It is a far too common shtick. Everybody from deep into the Rap/HipHop cannon to Neil Young is guilty of it.

But how about this, artist boy? Why don’t YOU give me another line or two and tell me what YOU think is going on. Why don’t you impress ME with your talent and earn your fucking money.

That way, I can be entertained and edified, all at the same time!

I mean … given the obvious … that you are all great artists … and all.

Meh … It was a really bad day and left me in a snarly mood.

I was expecting young-ish

2009-01-13T22:16:00.003-06:00

But this made me laugh.

They didn't have appropriate responses available *chuckle*

You Act Like You Are 26 Years Old

You are a twenty-something at heart. You feel like an adult, and you're optimistic about life.

You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

You're still figuring out your place in the world and how you want your life to shape up.

The world is full of possibilities, and you can't wait to explore many of them.

What Age Do You Act?

Hat tip to Big Pissy

Sometimes, the answer isn't "42"

2009-01-13T11:11:00.007-06:00

Life has been acting kind of psychotically ... lately ...

I have friends having meltdowns ...

Everywhere I turn these days there's madness.

I'm being as stoic as I can be ...

However, I did talk to my sweetie last night. She always makes me feel better.

Hope things are a bit more sane for you guys. And don't worry about me. I turned pro long, long ago. And if you don't know what that means, search your Hunter S. Thompson references.

PS: If you don't know what the title means, search your Douglas Adams references *chuckle*

Stay strong

G

Yup

2009-01-09T13:49:00.005-06:00

This would even get me to slow down :D

Hat tip to the mighty Joan. She is sorely missed.

Deersss

2009-01-08T14:25:00.002-06:00

This is a picture from near my old stomping ground in West Texas. These two bucks had their antlers get locked in a fight and couldn’t get them unlocked. I’m sure it was a fight in which both deer eventually wished they hadn’t gotten involved.

However, it’s hard to fault the big 12-point buck. He obviously was the dominant male. I don’t know what the little 8-point had for breakfast that day… But as they used to say in West Texas, he let his alligator mouth overload his mosquito ass.

Having, apparently, spent several days trying to thrash the little bastard free of his antlers, I’m not surprised that the big 12-point didn’t spot the hunter.

Around the Rugged Rock, the Ragged Rascal Ran

2009-01-06T22:19:00.000-06:00

Watching destruction and medical TV and conversations with Major.

“It’s like the guy who was lecturing on this freaky arcane mathematical model theory and he walked into the lecture hall where the group had just finished a lecture. He looked up at a 5000 year history of the Nile flood plane and he says: “How is it that my data set has preceded me?”

There is NOTHING funnier than watching a bunch of dipshit Southern crackers erecting a huge stone monument to a U.S. Civil War battle and watching the crane lines sway into power lines immediately over the site. And then, while you are already laughing at them, realizing that Bubba the crane operator hadn’t secured one of his outriggers and the crane is toppling over, bringing down the power lines and sending everybody scattering. It was beautiful.

A guy in a coma condition being brought out after several years by a doctor who thought outside the box and decided to give him amphetamines for a while. He fidgeted in his comatose state for a while, then suddenly opened his eyes and asked where the fuck his wife was.

If you cross a train track in a semi truck ... make sure the trailer is also off the track. This is important – dumbass.

In 1907, Duncan McDougal tried to prove the existence of the human soul by weighing poor people as they fucking died. AS THEY FUCKING DIED OF DISEASE! What a humanitarian. He found a weight difference of 22 grams. He was a fucking idiot.

By the way ... if you ever drink scotch and lay down in the living room floor and fall asleep petting the huge red hound ...

You will wake up alone ... In your underwear... on the living room floor. With the dog in the hallway because you were snuggling too much, because it was cold with no blankets.

It’s a huge loser feeling *chuckle*

Later dudes