Inherent Wisdom.

Every now and then, I get tired of trying to solve all of the world’s problems. That would be an easy task, but the rest of the people of the world just won’t follow my instructions. So, we find ourselves in a messy election cycle, and a messy stock market scandal, and a messy political solution to the world financial problems. Soon it comes to the point where you just want to chuck it all and think about happier things.

The local blogs have an individual commenter that shows up sporadically and makes comments that some understand and others don’t. What scares me is I understand much of what she has to say. Some times I even find some inherent wisdom, that just speaks volume to me about something that I was just thinking about

I was just thinking that our lawmakers shouldn’t try so hard to lay the blame, or take the credit, for every political move they make. They should try to do a better job of representing the common American, the ones that they are supposed to represent, maybe they would come to and understanding of each other and be able to do their jobs.

So, needless to say, I was delighted to see a comment from Suzy Blah Blah. Her comments always seem to be topical and fairly close to what is being discussed, but she turns her comment into a delightful stream of, almost, incomprehensible babble. She is never mean or accusatory, she even tries to help the rats that chew up her water lines by putting out water bowls for them.

But I digress. What I’m getting around to saying is that is you look for wisdom in people you will probably find it. Something Suzy said stuck in my brain and it wouldn’t go away. What she said was probably unintentional, so it must be something in the way she thinks, which makes her seem to be a much better person in my eyes. This was taken from her comment in a reply, which I find worth saving to think about another day.

“love is always perfreeable to understanding anyway --except soemtimes i think maybe theyre close to the same thing…”

Suzy Blah Blah

Those of you who read and enjoy Shakespeare, or other great works of literature, probably spend a good part of your time pondering the meaning of what he said. So I will just leave you with a new, and original, work of literature to ponder. Personally, I printed it out 8”x10” and put it on my office wall. I intend to try and understand it a bit more someday.

One thing that I never do is discount another human being from what I see on the surface. Some of the most wise people that I have ever known, never graduated from grammar school. So I’m an expert I reading between the lines. Take the time to share other peoples wisdom.

Thanks Suzy!!! Drop a line anytime. (That's not what I mean, and you know it!)

Ernie

Who am I?

"Ernie, you may be registered as a Republican, but in[fact] you think like a Democrat."

I’ve been accused of that before. I’m probably an “Old School” Democrat, ala John Kennedy. But I haven’t seen many Democrats that I would trust lately. They seem to want to give everybody the shirt off my back. I’m not big on funding “the arts” or many of the outlandishly liberal social programs. The democrats always seem to be shifty-eyed and they always seem to have some hidden agenda that only they and their in-crowd friends know about, but their agenda seems to be hidden from view.

I believe in socialized education, and socialized healthcare, where everyone has the opportunity to be educated and healthy to the best of their ability. After that, if people don’t do something to support themselves, they can starve for all I care. And if they punch their brains out with drugs, they can just suffer the consequences.

I don’t like the Republican idea that everybody has to tremble in the presence of God or they can’t be trusted. I believe that I, in no way, have the right to tell a woman what to do about her pregnancy, and I’m not the one to decide what might be best for her or her baby. It would seem to me that any decisions that she might have to make would be hers, and hers alone, or whoever she might trust to help her make her decisions.

I don’t like the way that the Republicans think that only big business can be good for our country.

So, I guess that I’m not a Democrat or a Republican in the true sense of the words. But to register or vote for any other party would be to throw my vote away. So I am a registered Republican, because I have a tendency to be a fiscal conservative. I don’t like the Idea that Reagan gave away America’s businesses to other countries, and I don’t like the way he busted the unions and allowed deregulation.

Bush the daddy tried to give us NAFTA, but it was Clinton that pushed it through. I’m still not sure about Bush the baby, but I’m sure I don’t like his 700 billion dollar bailout.

I don’t like the way that the Democrats and Republicans align themselves against each other like each party is going to fight for our interests, when both parties are totally sold out to the big money interests that are going to finance their campaigns. They justify selling us down the river by saying that “You have to be able to compromise to get your way the next time”, when all they really do is protect the big money people.

So, I say again, there are two parties alright, they are called “Government” and “The People”. Somehow, and I don’t know how, we have to get back to “WE the People” being the Government. It seems so far away sometimes.

In France when they were told to “Eat Cake” they chopped their heads off and started over. I advocate a simpler do-over, but I do advocate a do-over.

Do you want America back?

Big Money runs this country and they have become so obscenely rich that they control our media and our politicians. Big Money can take out a rogue politician in less than a day.

So, what chance does the common working man or woman have? Those working people that produce everything tangible, who have become looked down upon by the rich and the MBAs and CEOs as disposable.

This is my campaign speech:
If I were the leader of this country you couldn’t get a college degree in anything until you have worked with your hands to build something useful or grow something edible, that course of study could be in anything that you wanted to pursue. That course would also have to include some hard physical labor that put some sweat on your brow and gave you some pride in what you accomplished. That course would be for a duration of at least twelve months of study.

Part of the college curriculum would include a course in ethics, and a term paper on why ethics are important in business, politics, international relations, and human relations. It would include the concept of taking care of those people less fortunate than ourselves, with the thought that they might be the ones taking care of us someday.

It would include a course on why there were once anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, that prevented corporations from controlling us instead of us controlling them. “US” like in “We The People”.

We live in of the the most beautiful parts of the world, with one of the most pleasing climates. Now is as good of a time as any to start holding political fingers to the fire and start making them do what is right for the working people, and America in general!

Start screaming that you are tired of the rich, uncaring bastards giving working people a bad name, and picking their pockets. If they do bail out wall street, and unfortunately they will, make sure that there is something included in the package that bring jobs and working pride back to America.

America wasn’t built with MBAs and CEOs. It was built with the blood sweat and tears of the working man, and it was stolen from us and sold to foreign interests. I want it back. How about you?

Greedy Bastards!

Here George, I know it isn't much, but if enough of us get together, maybe we can bail out your greedy, rapacious, Rich-Bastard friends. I'll just think of it as another stupid investment, like a bunch of others that we've suffered recently.

I know that the folks that come here, come because of my gentle, unassuming and kind disposition, so any exception to that rule will shock most of you. I have a huge aversion to getting too deeply into politics, and the entire educated minutia that goes with that genre. I warn you now, that those of you with faint(weak) hearts should leave this posting! Those of you with feint(false) hearts, must leave now, because this post is not for you.

Most of the people of America are not Masters of Business Administration, nor do we have degrees in Political Science. Most of us don’t even have degrees in anything. Some us are darn lucky to have high school diplomas. Most of us are just gentle lambs, that simply provide the fleece that the fabric of the American Economy is made up of, and we depend on our caretakers to care for us, and the economy that keeps us alive.

But, I guess that was before our caretakers discovered cheap-assed Chinese fleece, that itches real bad, and kills a few of us, but we have been told that we are better off, because it makes our caretakers wealthy. Then we find our that our caretakers have sold the farm, and we are kinda' in the way now… and oh, by the way we are going to have to take your pen away, you are too stupid to be able to pay for it.

They say that an insane person can’t follow similes and metaphors, so we just lost a bunch of people in that last paragraph, so I’m going to have to assume that if you are still with me, that you are sane person and can understand a few simple concepts.

I have a friend that has a civil engineering degree, and his father was an investment banker, the family business was in finance and investments, so he decided to get a business degree on top of his engineering degree, he attended Harvard for about six weeks and decided that the focus of business administration was too much on “greed” and too little on “ethics”, so he dropped out. He has done quite well with his engineering degree, and high ethical standards. So, it can be done.

Now to get around to what I have to say: I am against Bushes bail-out! It does no good to enable a greed-addict, they won’t learn a thing. It is time for some tough-love, knowing full well that we are going to suffer as much as the rich bastards that put us in this position of financial failure.

We need to stop electing people that get in bed with the people that, Run-Wall-Street-to-their-own-advantage. We should, in no way, support the same people that caused “the mortgage melt-down” as they call it. We would have been far better off to have re-financed the poor “Stupid People, that bought house that they couldn’t afford”. Wall street thought that it would set a bad precedent to finance people that spent over their heads to put their families in a home.

Actually, what happened, is that there was such a brisk market in housing that the Wall Street funded corporations overbuilt them, and the housing prices dropped, so the bankers raised interest rates to fund THEIR losses. The poor “Stupid People” were paying over-priced interest on a, now, devalued home. The "Poor Stupid people" should have known better. (In case there are any insane people still reading. I was being facetious!) Honest, hard working people had their houses yanked out from under them!

It cost the American economy enormously to repossess those houses. The houses should have been refinanced at a current reasonable value and interest rate. What they did instead is kick people out. The houses are now setting empty, while the banks are paying MBAs to administer their losses. Refinancing the houses alone, would have saved the American economy, but no… we had to teach “the stupid people” a lesson. What I really think is, that the uber-riche bastards that run the major corporations and banks, thought that the economy would come back, and they could resell the houses at inflated prices! Which may still happen if we help them “bail out the economy”. After all, it will only cost the taxpayer 700 billion smackers. Think of it as a good investment!

Now that wall street is crashing, the investment company’s are going broke, and the people that ran them into the ground are bailing-out. Out, with FIFTY-MILLION-DOLLAR retirement packages. (They say that you have to pay that much to get people that really know what they are doing.) So, where are the Smart Bastards going to work now? Oh! I forgot! They are rich! They planned it that way! They don't have to work! They squirreled away enough money to take care of their whole family! It's only the "Stupid People" that have to suffer. The stupid people didn't get MBAs. They said that they "like to build things", like America for instance. The poor naive fools.

I’m probably stupid myself for thinking this, but if we have to suffer through another depression, I want to see that people that caused it to suffer too! The only problem is that I’m one of the poor sheep that wishes he knew how to bite like a wolf! Can you find “How to bite like a wolf” in the yellow pages?

I like to end things on a positive note, just to keep the good spirit alive. So what I would suggest is that we start thinking, seriously, about what we hear on the "News Service", and start taking what they say with a grain of salt. We don't have a single political figure in the whole Presidential election that hasn't sold out to Wall Street. If you don't believe me, just hide and watch. That's about as positive a note as I can hit today. Remember that I told you once, that character and ethics were important? Well I can't give you any good examples right now, but if you want to see what can happen when people without those qualities are allowed to run things, you need only look at where we are now.

Classic Saturday Night Live!

Saturday Night Live, with Jane Curtain and Dan Akroyd.

I'm not sure that my blog is rated for this kind of stuff, but if you wait until after ten o'clock to view it, then be sure to clear any children out of the room, it should be okay. I remember when this skit shocked the nation. "Jane you ignorant slut" was not in the script, it just rolled of of Dans tongue and producers thought that it was so funny that they left it in.

I'm sorry that you have to put up with a commercial first, but you might find that it is worth it!

Bloggers Picnic Sunday!

Okay, it looks like this Bloggers Picnic thing is really going to happen, so I want to say right here and now that I’m sorry for all of the mildly offensive things that I might have said, and I am beginning to really regret the really deeply offensive stuff that I’ve dished out, and those childish hurtful names that I’ve called people were all just in good fun, and I hope that no one took me too seriously, and to anybody that doesn’t like run-on sentences, tough! That’s called Poetic License

If anybody tried any of my acorn recipes and they didn’t turn out that good, hey it was just stuff that I passed on, anybody who has ever eaten an acorn has to know that they have a little after taste to them for two or three days, Get over it!

To all the girls that I flirted with, my wife is going to be there, so pretend that you don’t know me, Okay?

To all the people that were offended by my “Bullshistory“, the stories were at least partly true, and all I did was make them better! It’s not really lying.

Just because I’ve said that anonymous doesn’t have a right to exist, doesn’t mean that I really feel that way. I have several anonymous friends, so it’s not really like I’m not sensitive to their issues.

So, I guess now that I’ve made my apologies, and we are all friends again, I hope to see everyone at the picnic!

I swiped this off of Ekovox’s “299 Opine” Blog:

HUMBOLDT BLOGGERS COUNCIL
BLOGGERS PICNIC
Sunday, September 21st. 11am - 4pm
Rio Dell Fireman's Park.
(Corner of Wildwood Ave & Center Street)
(It's right downtown, you can't miss it)
Potluck Style -
You know what to bring...but, if you need guidance:
A-F: Main Dish
G-L: Salad
M-R: Dessert
S-Z: Drinks, Snacks or Appetizers,
Members with numbers in their title: B&M's Canned Brown Bread
There are some barbecue pits if the meat deal is to your liking
And, be sure to bring your own Plates, Cups & Utensils
Remember, bocce courts and miniature golf are within walking distance.

No joy in Mudville!

Remember a couple of Wednesdays ago I launched into a semi-scientific description of a love affair that I have with big glitzy machines? I even showed you a few pictures the Large Hadron Collider. I tried to make the description of the machine, and what it was going to do for us, simple enough that even I could understand it, with the hopes that you could share my joy in actually knowing part of what they were going to do with the Machine.

Remember, they were looking for the Higgs Boson, the little particle that has to be everywhere but it doesn’t weigh anything and they can’t detect it? Remember I didn’t use big words like “ubiquitous” just so we could understand? The Higgs Boson is known as the “God Particle” because it’s everywhere, but nobody has seen it.

Then in my next post I talked about the “Perfect Vacuum” and “Absolute Zero Degrees Fahrenheit”. Remember, I said that there was no such thing as an absolute vacuum, or absolute zero degrees? We talked a lot about that, so you could understand when the time came, how they were going to sling ionized particles around the Large Hadron, super magnetized, 17 mile diameter race track at near the speed of light. Remember, I said the there is no resistance to electricity at absolute zero degrees Fahrenheit?

I left all those descriptions just hanging out there so you could have that “serendipity moment” when you realize how they were going to scoot that itty bitty particle around the 17 mile track at nearly the speed of light, in nearly a complete vacuum, and at near zero degrees of temperature, and you would say; “Hey!!! I know about vacuums and zero degrees, and the speed of light. Wow, so that’s how they do it!”

Remember, I told you that I know something about cold, because I am a refrigeration Contractor?

Well the experiment failed, and they had to shut it back down. Know why? The refrigeration failed….

There is no joy in the world tonight….

Jim has discovered the enemy... it is us!

I found this posted back on the "Bush Doctrine", and Jim was afraid that it was "off-topic", and I was afraid that it was back where nobody would see it. So, I gave it it's own posting

Thanks for your thoughts Jim, I agree with you entirely, but I have a feeling that whoever did this will be caught and prosecuted. One can only hope!


Jim said...
I know this is off-topic, but think it deserves some conversation.
I can think of few other situations that demonstrate the mass duplicity of our own citizenry than the prevailing ho-hum indifference to the breach of Gov. Sarah Palin’s personal email account. I would say the same thing if it were Barak Obama who suffered this crime. No matter where you position yourself in the political spectrum, this crime is cause for grave concern by all of us, and the perpetration of the crime should be met with unrepentant outrage, not with the ravenous glee I see coming from so many places.

Here’s why: Because that could have been you or me. It could be our lives’ modest secrets and confidentialities, now spread across the vast reach of cyberspace — accessible to everyone! Even accessible now to media, who are, to my mind, complicit, not only because of their lack of outrage, but also because of their eagerness to pour through the contents of messages and publish them. These communications were not obtained by journalism, but were stolen, just as surely as if your car had been driven out of your garage and to an LA chop shop.

The media seems to be more concerned with any alleged, unfounded possibility of untoward activity in the emails than they are the reality of the clear, and present nature of the offense of the stealing a family’s private life. “Invasion” is part of a war, and this is a real INVASION of privacy, a war on all of us.

So we need to get mad.

I can tell you with certainty that if your private email account was compromised and its contents posted in some extremely public place, you would be furious, and you would also have to spend a great deal of time worrying about what you might have innocently written to someone, and the prospect that the contents might show up later.

We ought to be mad as hell — Democrat, Republican, or independent — about what’s happened to Gov. Palin. This should act as a catalyst for better laws and broader protections of our private lives from the invasion of snoops who are no better than terrorist. Because this is a form of terrorism.

Why is your email mailbox any less inviolable than your mailbox on your house? I don’t get it. Millions of people use email as a primary form of communication. Why aren’t people more outraged by what happened?

I remember reading George Orwell’s book, “1984,” when I was young, and thinking, ‘Could there be a society in which everyone’s private life was examined by a government that used the information to control its people.’ The book, and people subsequent reactions to it, may have prevented 1984 in some countries, though Big Brother — the KGB, the Stassi, and prior to that, the SS and Gestapo — existed, in Nazism and Communism.

Who would ever have suspected that the Big Brother of our privacy-seeking society would turn out to be individuals. The video from the spy cameras that damage people’s lives by glaring up from public bathrooms toilet bowl or hidden recesses of dorm rooms where students are unwittingly caught doing private things, are, without conscience, put up on YouTube, the default throne of the Unrestrained Populist Voyeur Kingdom. Stolen photos and communication are put up on websites run by unprincipled people, such as the website were Palin’s mail was posted.

More often now, it is private citizens — not the the NSA or the CIA — who hack into email accounts or monitor cellphone calls, or who gaze at the private records, emails, photos, and videos of unsuspecting people.

The surveillance that is intended to keep us safe, to keep us from being killed, is hotly debated and despised because the ‘GOVERNMENT’ is doing it. Yes, we’re actually fire-walled from the government by laws. If the government ever published, without judicial approval, the contents of a private citizen’s email, or transcripts of cell or land-line phone conversations, an unending flow of furore and condemnation would roll across the land for years to come.

It turns out, however, that the government has made laws to protect us from them. So it’s absolutely absurd when anyone to complains about government spying, remains silent about far damaging breeches of personal security, enacted by private citizens.

I believe that the contents of an email box should be just as sacred as the post office, and that there should be strong enforcement of stricter laws, if they are violated by hackers, WIFI “wardrivers,” cell-phone eavesdroppers, and the camera voyeurs.

Could Orwell have ever imagined that private citizens, not government, would pose the greatest threat to our privacy and put us all under a vile, uncontrollable microscope? Despite his pessimism about government, I believe Orwell wrote optimistically about the behavior of individuals.

He was wrong.

We have felt the breath of Big Brother on our necks, and when we turn to see who it is, there stands one of us.

The man in the moon.

Andy Kaufman was known as the "Man in the Moon". He was on of the most bizarre people that ever lived. His many zany personalities kept you on your toes. You never quite knew when he was serious, which was never.

He was the world champion "Inter-Gender wrestler". He would bet women a thousand dollars that he could beat them at wrestling. You always had to wonder if he was serious, and he never was.

He wrestled Jerry "The King" Lawler in an exhibition match in which Lawler broke Kaufman’s neck in a “piledriver” move. After that Andy wore a neck brace everywhere he went, and he tried to sue Lawler. Lawler would stalk and terrify Kaufman. I wasn’t revealed until twenty years later that his neck was really not broken, and it was all just part of the zany personality that Andy Kaufman had.

He would start out on stage so bad that you really felt sorry for him, that he would do one very, very outstanding impression, then go back to he timid, awful, awkward, stage act.

More on Andy Kaufman

Full Moon and Politics, Stangely Connected.

The Full Moon was lemon yellow at my house, what's up with that.
The following is for my liberal friends who think that I'm skating dangerously close to sounding like a... Shudder... Conservative.

The following was recorded during a "Vote for change" concert.

The Bush Doctrine

The White Rose is for the people that know what the White Rose society was. (Not my photo)

Okay, besides Sarah Palin and me, how many of you don't know what the Bush Doctrine is?

I know that I'm not an expert on politics, nor do I intend to become one, but this is an election year and maybe we should pay more attention. When Sarah Palin was asked what her opinion of the Bush Doctrine was, she was caught off guard about what it might be. I think that she knew about the philosophies that Bush advocated, but she simply didn't know that they were called a “Doctrine.”

The bush doctrine is:
...first articulated in 2002, which holds that the United States government should depose foreign regimes that represent a threat to the security of the United States, even if such threats are not immediate and no attack is imminent.

Okay, most of the people that come to this blog are more than reasonably intelligent people, and most have given us some very good opinions. It is difficult to know when one country should engage in war against another country, but I’m sure that all but the most rabid pacifist would, at some point, agree that war is a reasonable response to agression. We just don’t agree on what that point should be. Bush thinks we should attack any country that “represent a threat to the security of the United States”.

When the terrorist flew their planes into the Twin Towers, I felt that there was a need to retaliate. Most people of the United States agreed with me. We went after the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and by extension we went after the government of Afghanistan, because “You are either for us, or against us”.

All of the above is straightforward, and is understood by most people. When it gets fuzzy is when we went into Iraq, and after Saddam Hussein. We went into Iraq because they “represented a threat to the security of the united States”. But indeed, Iraq was found to be a “Hot-bed of Al Quada” and the skirmish there attracted more Al Qaeda to follow our troops. Here is some dicussion on the beating that they took at the hands of the free world troops: the demise of Al Qaeda in Iraq

And here is some more references on a couple of the main players if you like:
Osama Bin Laden
Saddam Hussein

We all desire peace and tranquility, and “the price of peace is eternal vigilance.”

We know that Appeasement didn’t work with Hitler, and two nuclear bombs turned Japan into one of our best ally’s.

With out getting into the rhetoric of who’s the best candidate and why, I would like to know what your “Personal Doctrine” would be if you were President. To be fair, I’m not sure what mine would be. This is one of those times when I would recommend that you post “anonymously” Unless you are particularly proud of your “Doctrine“. I really would like to see peace in the world, and I would like to see some good ideas from people like “us” on how to achieve it.

Honey Bee Mites

Varrora Mite, It looks like a tick.

It happened again! Last year I was in the middle of thinking about what an abundant year it was for acorns and pepperwood nuts, and Ben Schille made the comment that it was a “Mast Year”. A year with great abundance of nuts. This time, I was noticing that there were a lot of honey bees about, and wondering if it was my imagination, or if there really were more bees this year. Ben made the comment on Kym’s Blog that he had noticed that there are more bees than usual. He said: “I have lots of bees on my sunflowers. It’s great to see them back after the mite plague.“

So, why are there more bees this year, have they gained an immunity? I looked it up and the bees had more than just bee mites. Somehow the mites made the bees susceptible to bacteria and viruses also.

“This bee mite probably arose in the Eastern or Chinese Honey Bee population and hopped over to the United States in 1987. They quickly infested western or European honey bees. One sign of infection is the presence of bees with deformed wings. Also, sometimes seemingly healthy colonies become ill and the complete hive collapses in about two weeks.
"The native Chinese bees do not have the same problems," says Dr. Xiaolong Yang, post doctoral researcher in entomology and plant pathology, who raised bees in China. "I do not recall seeing deformed wing bees in the Chinese bee. Chinese honey bees have grooming behavior which can remove the mites from the bees. They get rid of the mites."

Have our bees gained an immunity to the bacteria and viruses, thus making it easier to survive, or have they learned to groom? Have they crossed with the Chinese bees that know how to groom? Anyway, I agree with Ben, It’s nice to “be” seeing them making a comeback!

Upon further research, I found the hilarious Answer... It is Serenhippity! The bee mite is killed by certain essential oils. "When varroa mites contact essential oils such as wintergreen, patchouli, tea tree oil, et al., mixed into oil or grease, they are killed on contact--usually within a few minutes."


33394

Physics Lesson.

There’s a moral to this story, and only a few will get it, so if you get bored somewhere near the middle, just speed-read until you get to the moral. I love stories with a “Moral”, it reminds me of the good old days when everybody spoke in parables.

Just like language snobs are a pain to me, because I don’t write good English, It bothers me when amateurs start talking about things being too warm or cold, so I get my turn to be a pain, because I am qualified! (Not to be a pain, but to explain hot and cold) I consider myself kind of a cold expert, being a refrigeration contractor and all.

First, there is no such thing as cold… Don’t go off on me yet!!! I know what you are thinking, and that’s not nice. But, there is no such thing as cold.

Everything has heat in it, clear down to 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. So, if there is any place that is 460 degrees below zero you can say it’s cold. Until then, it has heat… got it? Actually, because this is kind of scientific, and I know that there is some pretty smart people out there, I should tell you that absolute zero Fahrenheit is actually -459.67 degrees. Having cleared that up, now I’m an honest person again, but just for the sake of simplicity, we’re going to call it -460, okay?

At absolute zero all molecules stop moving, that’s because they have no energy. If you had a wire that was at absolute zero, electricity would flow through it endlessly, without any resistance at all. Anything at absolute zero is a super-conductor. But, don’t worry, nobody has gotten anything down to absolute zero yet, so all those thoughts about free energy are all wasted. Scientist’s have gotten things pretty close to absolute zero, and electricity flowed with way less resistance, but they never got to zero. Same as an absolute vacuum, there is no such thing. Even in outer space there are a few molecules floating around fouling up the otherwise perfect vacuum. So, absolute zero, and an absolute vacuum only exist in theory. That’s why we have what they call “theoretical scientists”, to study such abstractions. Hey, it a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

To explain heat to you, the English people invented a unit of heat that they called the British Thermal Unit. Most people just call it a BTU. It is the amount of heat that is used to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. So if you had one pound of water at absolute zero, and added one BTU of heat to it would become one degree warmer, and become -459 degrees. Actually you might have guessed that at -460 water is ice, so you are right about that. Now if you add 459 more BTUs, you would have zero degree ice, and if you add 32 more BTUs. You would have 32 degree ice.

Now for the fun part, if you add 100 BTUs you will still have thirty two degree ice, in fact you will have to add 144 BTUs to melt one pound of ice into thirty two degree water. The 144 BTUs of heat that it takes to melt 1 pound of ice is called the latent heat of fusion.

So, now you have invested 1,146 BTUs of heat to make yourself a glass of ice water. Are you beginning to see that there is no such thing as cold. If you add 180 more BTUs you will have boiling water. Then you will have to add 970 BTUs to turn your boiling water to steam. By then you will have added 2,296 BTUs of heat to your water to turn it to vapor. The 970 BTUs are called the latent heat of vaporization.

If you are still with me and not bored spitless, you should also know that there is no “up or down” when it comes to expressing temperature. Temperature is expressed as hotter or less hot. There is no such thing as cold, remember. If you ask me to “turn up your freezer” I will have no idea what you mean, I won’t know if you want it hotter or less hot. So, to be polite I might ask you something like: “What is the temperature now, and what would you like it to be.” When you say: “I don’t know, just turn it down” I will ask you if it’s to warm. “Warm” is kinda’ okay to use because it doesn’t acknowledge that cold exists, and that’s a good thing. So I will turn your freezer a few degrees less warm.

I judge everyone by how well that I think that they might be at building a refrigerator, so most people look pretty bad to me. Everybody uses a refrigerator, or a freezer and everybody knows what temperature that they are the most comfortable at, but few people are experts. Most people are real nice and they deserve to be treated decently, so I don’t correct them about there being no such thing as cold when they make that mistake. As you might guess I spend a lot of time not correcting people that make that mistake, and I know that most people are nice to me and don’t tell me that I don’t use very good English, so I guess that it all works out.

I guess the moral would be that we are all good at different things, and we are all deserving of respect. And you got a very simple physics lesson for free. Cool… I mean “not warm“, right?

33175

Large Hadron Collider

Click photos to enlarge:

God, I do love machines. They always work in the same ways, they are always predictable, and they always produce a change in the world to some degree. One of the world’s most intriguing machines right now is the Large Hadron Collider. The 10 billion dollar machine project was first planned in 1984. The collider is installed in a 17-mile circular tunnel, deep under Switzerland. The reason that I say “God” I do love machines, is because they are trying to determine where all the matter in the universe came from. They are searching for the “God Particle”. They call it the “God Particle” because it is everywhere, but it is, so far, undetectable.

From associated Content: “The Higgs Boson theory was created by Professor Peter Higgs in 1964 to try to explain how particles actually gather mass. Higgs proposed that an electromagnetic background field must exist and that particles, once they pass through it, attain mass. But the Higgs Boson, derogatorily referred to as the "god particle," has eluded scientific discovery. Researchers are hoping that the Hadron super collider will settle the question of the "god particle" once and for all.

Other questions the LHC hopes to answer are whether or not parallel universes may exist and what actually constitutes "dark energy" and "dark matter," believed to constitute 96% of the known universe.”

Okay, I won’t pretend to know what they are doing, but some scientist’s fear that they may activate a black hole, that may suck the whole universe back into it, but Steven Hawking says that there is nothing to worry about:

“…there's no threat from little black holes. If such black holes were to be created by a chance cosmic ray, for example, their runaway growth would be most evident from feasting on the super-dense matter of white dwarfs and neutron stars, but there are plenty of those stars that are very old.”

Suddenly, I’m reassured by all of those stars in the sky! But, it does bother me that they seem to be winking. They say that this machine wont be up to full power for a year yet, so maybe it is to soon to relax.

We must have more collider research that goes on around here, I’ve seen numerous places that had huge tunnels built into the ground, that had large power lines going into them. I expect that they will find the “God Particle” right here in Humboldt County!

Another thing that occurred to me, that if they do find where the “God Particle” came from back at the Big Bang, and it did cause a black hole. Was it caused by a collider that they were experimenting with? That sucked the universe wrong-side-out, and we are about the be sucked back through the hole, and become a negative universe again?

But, don’t you wish that you had a collider under your house? You could have one for only eight to ten billion dollars. Wouldn’t it be worth it to maybe see God?

Cool Dog!

107 degrees outside, 50 degree air coming out of "twizzles vent".

Okay! I'll admit that there may be global warming. But, I'm not about to admit that it is in any way my fault!

Maybe the Indians were the first bloggers.

Click on photo to enlarge. Photo by Robin Shelly.

This is a reprint of an article that I sent to The Redwood Times

There is a Round Rock on a road, a few miles north of Laytonville. On that rock is what we used to call “Indian Writing”. I recall that the rock was quite intact and well detailed when I was a kid. I was deeply offended, for my own personal reasons, that people have chipped artifacts and writing off the rock. I can only imagine how the Indian people feel.

All human beings like to communicate… Bear with me here because this gets a little crazy and weird, and maybe a little irreverent, because nobody really knows. But, maybe it was started by Little Running Fox, or someone with a name like that. He scratched on the rock as fancy as he could, like carving his initials plus hers on a tree, but instead to really impress his sweet little girlfriend he carved them on a rock. He pledged his eternal love to Little Spotted Fawn.

Then, when Little White Rabbit saw what had happened, she went and told on Little Running Fox, because she was so jealous! Chief Big Smoke told little Running Fox to knock it off, and to quit scratching up the rocks, and that The Great Spirit in the sky didn’t like his rocks being all scratched up.

Little Running fox went out into the woods with his feelings hurt, and in his embarrassed anger, he swore that he would grow up and become the Indian Chief of all the north coast, and as the first declaration of his mighty Chiefdom, he would pass a rule that all little kids could scratch on the rocks all that they wanted to.

And lo, little Running Fox Grew up to become Chief Standing Wolf. He was to become the most powerful Chief that the north coast had ever known, and true to his word his first declaration to all the children of the land was to go forth and decorate all of the smooth rocks, in any way that they wished to. Soon they learned that in their travels to the sea and back inland, that other little Indian kids had left messages on the rocks for their girlfriends and boyfriends from other tribes.
Having gained this great knowledge of how to communicate on rocks, the adults started leaving the history of where this years great hunting and fishing could be found. Some of the Indian people were not as good at rock carving as others, but the great chief declared that it made no difference how the Rock was carved, as long as we knew what it said. Soon, Eel River Ermine was telling fishing tales of great interest to all that passed. Soon word got to them from the Oregon tribe, about how Oregon Wolverine killed eight bear with eight arrows. EchoFox wrote about tying four stings to a hollow log and made wonderful sounds with them.

Great Chief Standing Wolf married Spotted Fawn and they had many children. They never counted how many children that they had or how old they became. Because how well you lived life was more important.

Chief Standing Wolf died a very old and wise man and he was to become the most loved Indian chief ever, ever.

Few people today know it, but the rock beside the road was the first rock that Standing Wolf carved on. It would be a shame to see such a legend end, from people chipping at Standing Wolfs great words.

Epilogue:
This story is not true! The rock is real, and it is defaced. It was written from my history and compiled out of things from my past. When I was just a child of about eight, I had a little girlfriend that I would meet on the hill behind the house. Being a child of great chivalry, I would meet her at the “Old Pine Tree”, way more than half way. Either that, or I was much more anxious to see her than she was to see me.

If I arrived, and she couldn’t meet me, I would leave a note in the pine bark. If she was there and I wasn’t, she would leave a note in the pine bark. Imagine my distress when one day the tree was destroyed in a fire. Standing wolf was wise to use rocks to write on because they don’t burn. He never imagined that vandalism would ever be allowed. And as you might guess, the vandals are anonymous.

It's not for naught.

One of the things that I really like about writing this blog, is every now and then somebody really “gets It”. They know exactly what you are talking about, and it will bring back some memories for them, or fill in some of what they missed. Every now and then I think that; wow, I just wasted a whole bunch of time writing that, because nobody gets it, and nobody knows what I’m talking about. Then I get a letter like the following, and it adds to my memories and expands some of what I said. The lady below knows what I mean about the loggers that had a song in their hearts and it came out every Saturday night. Thanks for writing Nancy. there are still a lot of old loggers that still live here. If you have any logging tales that you would like to share with us, please dive in. anytime, or anyplace is appropriate. We don’t stand on any form of formality on this blog.

She left her reply on the post "Jolly Johns Gyp Joint"

Nancy said...
“I'm writing my late husband's bio for the grandkids. He was one of the Arkies that arrived in Garbervile in 1951 with sawmill experience from Van Buren Co, Arkansas (Dennard,Clinton). After the Army tamed him, I met him at SRJC. (I was born and raised in Sonoma County.) He died in 1990 and I loved reading your account because it fleshes out my memories of his stories. At one point during the workless days of rainy wintertime, he played in a band in one of these joints. "We'd pass the hat..only to learn later the clinking sounds were pennies, nuts, bolts, washers.. etc. When the fight started, and it always started, we'd throw our instruments under the table and get in front of them. Our skin would grow back, but them instruments were hard to replace. I recall he talked about Sprowel Creek and living at Layontonville once. He was fond of saying, "If you didn't like the mill you worked for you could quit,take your dinner pail and have a better job before dinner (Arkie name for lunch).I know that Garberville was the center of the universe during those years. In 1972 I found an envelope in Dennard, Arkansas home we had just bought from another Arkie who worked on Sprowel Creek. The envelope's return address was a Garberville accountant who did the taxes for the Arkie. The accountant was the older brother of my next door neighbor in Petaluma, CA. Small world in 1952..I knew the accountant. In 1962I married the Arkies. In 1972 I found the letter that link us all together.Most of these Arkies moved down to Willets before 1954. So glad to find this blog through Google. My dad loved fishing the Eel River and we vacationed at Richardson Grove. I remember driving old 101 in our 39 Chevy with huge log trucks with ONE log hugging us on all sides. Nancy , Ark.”

Willie wowed 'em.

Willie Nelson performed for about two hours, and the People Productions and the Dimmick Ranch never looked better.

I'll start with the rumors, then move into the things that I saw. The rumors were; that it was difficult to get into the venue due to all of the traffic. There was also a rumor that the venue filled up, and people had to be turned away, and weren't too happy. I don't know because I went down early.

I found a good place out front, and sat up our chairs where we would have a nice place to sit and watch the bands play. I was very impressed with the foresight of the promoters. The right side of the viewing area was set up for “seated guests only!” and the left side was open for standing, dancing, cutting up, and other concert type fun. I really appreciated the fact that you could just sit comfortably and see great. That is until the dancing, boogieing, cut up yahoos on the left side figured out that; “Hey if we just squeeze out front of the seated people we can see real good”. There was screaming from the crowd; “Down in front” which was deafly ignored, and of course there was no enforcement. So, the some of the elderly folks that had come to see Willie Nelson got to watch some unknown chick’s wiggling ass. Which is not a bad trade-off if you think about it.

It became apparent that the venders were way, way understaffed. I went for a buffalo cheeseburger, thirty-five minutes of waiting in line I had a delicious, burger in my hands. The “Save The Schools” foundation ran the booth as a fundraiser. They worked their butts of making cheeseburgers, and if they only had just a little bit more help, they could have doubled their profits, because the crowd was willing.

There was long miserable lines at every booth. I’m not sure if they had just underestimated the crowd that showed up, or the vendors were understaffed, but next time I go down there, I’m going to bring a pocket full of granola bars. I don’t abide lines well, I start getting that “I feel like a sheep, wasting my life waiting for someone else” feeling.

Now, on to good things. People Productions, true to their promise that they would kick-in one dollar of every ticket sold to the “Southern Humboldt Technical Rescue Team“, came through on their promise, which theoretically should have raised about four thousand dollars for our local rescue squad, but due to the squads need, and P.P.'s generosity, they donated TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!

The Technical Rescue Squad does difficult rescue, like over the bank and difficult access rescues, swift water rescues, and rescues that are beyond the capabilities of the regular first responders. Ten years ago… okay twenty… I would have loved to have been on the squad. But, having a problem with my teeth getting way to long, I might just hold them back. They also "Passed The Jar” in the crowd, and I saw some big donations going into it. So, I see some much needed equipment showing up on the squad soon. I have worked with all of these folks, and all of the local fire departments are trained to assist them. Hopefully, some time in the future they can do some demonstrations of their skills, so the public can see how valuable they are to our area.

Oh… Back to the concert. They opened with the Delta Nationals. Due to their large “bag of songs that they do” to choose from, and their large range of talent, they were able to skillfully entertain the gathering crowd. They were a good group to start with, and really put the crowd in the mood for a party. They must have had some groupies show-up with them because I noticed a few people in the crowd singing along with all of their songs.

The DN’s were followed by The Human Revolution, and Pricilla Ahn. Due to my propensity to “converse”, (my wife doesn’t like me to use words like “bullshit” on my blog, so I won‘t). But anyway, I missed much of their music. My wife said that I missed some awfully good music and social commentary. She doesn’t like to “converse” as much as i do or I would get her to write a review. So, I guess that I will just have to apologize to those folks who's songs I missed.

But, while I was missing songs, I got to see Tom Allman again. I asked him if he saw what I wrote about him on my blog, and he said yes he did, and he went on to prove that he was much better at quoting me than I am at quoting him. Some people are such sticklers about accuracy!

I saw Estelle Fennell and Kathleen, I got to buy Roy Heider a Buffalo Burger. I formed new life-long friendships while waiting in lines. I got to visit with all of my “Beer Camp” friends. I got to say hello to my firefighter friends. I put a dollar in their jar just to piss them off. (I put more in later while they weren’t looking, I didn‘t want to ruin my image as a tightwad.)

I ran in to my cousin “Oregon’s” daughter and her new boyfriend.

I got to get a first hand report from some crazy people that went to Burning man. Howard Phun thought that it was real Phunny that everybody was mistaking him for Willie Nelson. I told him that Willie Looks much younger. He didn’t think that was Phunny!

Oh yeah! I ran into Ekovox and Ladyfriend at the concert. I got to say hello to them before the concert, and we agreed to meet up later. We saw each other in the crowd several times after that, we were both busy being like ships in the night. Ladyfriend helped me re-arrange my armload of buffalo burgers, so I wouldn’t get so much catsup and mustard on my shirt. We decided that the “Bloggers picnic” would be fun, and that we would have more time to talk.

Oh... Willie Nelson was Willie Nelson. What the hell else can you say about Willie Nelson? Who else could draw a crowd like that?

“Mommas don’t let your Cowboys Grow up to be Babies”