Rage, Against Vanessa Carlton

 My buddy Joe M sent me this link this morning, and it really brightened an otherwise depressing start to my day.  First day back to work following my son's death, funeral, wake, cremation, flight home, and zoom wake for relatives yesterday.  I listened to this, and thought several things simultaneously:

- It is brilliantly done

- It's perfect for introducing Rage Against The Machine to generations of people who may have never heard them before, or think they're too hard to listen to, or that "rock is roll is not my kind of music" listeners

- It can be listened to by teenage tik-tok trolls who love music like Vanessa Carlton, and perhaps it can open their eyes and ears and hearts to the message within

- My son would have enjoyed this

- I need to share this with a wide-of-an-audience as possible

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did, wether you live in Kenosha, Portland, Washington DC, Charlottesville, Charleston, San Diego, Orange County, or wherever closed minded, anachronistic, 1950s-nostalgic, Confederate apologists, Nationalists, Alt Right, Q-anon, pathetic nazis, and white supremacists keep raising their ugly, delusional filled, willfully ignorant little heads.

Link: https://youtu.be/6kYco2Zt-cM

Last Weekend's Epiphany on The South

Last weekend, Dr Desert Flower and I went down the hill on Alga Road to go see Free State of Jones at the Cinépolis in Carlsbad.  It exceeded expectations, despite what the critics on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes say, it was a great film that shined a light on the racist, bigoted, arcane & persecutory laws & culture engrained in The South - in this case Mississippi.  McConaughey was great in it, but so were Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mahershala Ali, and a host of other excellent actors.  Having lived 16 years of my life in South Carolina, I can talk about how it felt, what I heard, and what I saw when I lived there... I'm not an outsider who never lived nor experienced the hatred and bigotry in the work place, in public places, and in conversations about it with my friends and co-workers who were trying to rise above the ugly, despicable, evil past that ensconced The South before, during, and after the Civil War, and still lives and breathes today (sorry SCOTUS, racism and bigotry are NOT dead even after we elected a black President; they're still alive and well in many parts of The South.

Then, when we got home after the movie, we watched Bryan Cranston in the HBO movie All the Way, where he portrayed LBJ accurately.  The movie portrayed the hatred and bigotry of The South (again, Mississippi leading the way... but other Southern States agreed with them) very accurately as well.  Not only was it well acted, but well written, nuanced, well researched, and well directed.

After watching both of these films so close together, whose settings were 100 years apart, but which accurately and poignantly portrayed the racism and hatred in The South that is still alive today, I am resolved that I never want to move back there and live there again.  Perhaps in another 100 years, after I am ashes, the progress seen since the Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 1960s MIGHT continue and the old entrenched racists die off, with their progeny becoming slightly more progressive and color-blind - similar to how Gay Rights & Equality was unthinkable 20 years ago by main stream America, and now it is an accepted fact for 95% of the country.  But I won't see it in my lifetime.

I am not a hater, and I still firmly believe that there are many very nice, very accepting, very civil & loving people in The South, both in the states that voted for George Wallace, and in the states that didn't.  I've met and worked with many of them, or they were my neighbors & friends.  But the fact remains, that there's a solid double digit percentage block of Southerners who still think lynching is a good idea if they can get away with it, who believe Klan meetings are an acceptable form of social gathering, and who have a false-superiority complex in regards to anyone who is not Caucasian - black, brown, Asian, Jewish, Catholics, Sikh, Muslims, included in their fearful hatred & loathing.  Trump's tapping into their base with his rhetoric and his re-tweets of white supremacists, and "the worst" is manifesting itself amoung us in America.  I do hope that in November 2016 we can close the Trump chapter and not open up a "Wallace 2.0" era of the American political landscape.

No, I'll take the multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual melting pot that is California,
any day over any of the nicest places in The South.  Yes, it is expensive to live in California, but the weather is great, the people are nicer, the hatred is (I've seen) less wide-spread, the wildlife is more diverse, the waves are at least 10X better than the East Coast, the population is more heterogeneous & diverse & growing (+300,000 residents last year! We're gonna add another congressman or two at least in the next census, making the most populace state even more populace!), the businesses RUN BETTER and are safer (and growing), the wine is better, Science is accepted and not argued against or 'disbelieved', the State budget is balanced (after getting a Democratic governor, finally!), the humidity is lower (in Northern San Diego County, at least), religion is less invasive & pervasive, and the people are more accepting of everyone, not just those who look like themselves.

Confused & Self Loathing, Not a Terrorist

The scared, self-hating, confused little boy who used to be named Omar Mateen was NOT a terrorist.

He was
- a former physical abuser of his ex-wife, before their marriage failed and ended in divorce
- an openly angry and expressive of disgust when with his father in Miami when he and his father saw two men kissing and the son became outraged that men would do that
- a Grindr profile user, where several users blocked him because he was 'creepy' (as I just heard on All In with Chris Hayes)
- a Jack'd profile user (yet Another Gay Men's chat and dating website)
- a frequent visitor to The Pulse night club in Orlando before he went on a killing spree in the early morning of June 12th, right after 'last call' at 2am, armed with a legally purchased AR-15
- completely ignorant of the dichotomy, animus, and outright armed hostilities between Hezbollah (fundamentalist Shiites in Lebanon) and ISIS / ISIL  (fundamentalist Sunnis in Iraq & Syria) when this confused & stupid little boy called Orlando 911 and 'pledged his loyalty to ISIS', AND Hezbollah,  AND the AL Qaeda inspired Tsarnaev brothers of the Boston Bombing.  When you DO NOT understand the centuries long hatred and conflict between the diametrically opposed groups such as Hezbollah and ISIS, and you claim allegiance with BOTH of them, you're ignorant, a fool, and incredibly desperate for someone, ANYONE, to like you, claim you, want to support you.
- A natural born US citizen (Queens NY), not an immigrant
- formerly on the TSA No Fly list & investigated by the FBI after he bragged at work (as a security guard) that he knew the Boston Marathon bombers, that he knew people in ISIS, and that he was a big deal among terrorist organizations [the FBI investigated this little punk Mateen for 10 months, interviewed him with an under-cover agent, and then had 2 formal interviews with him, before finally finding he was 'all talk' and had no actual affiliations to any organizations]

Granted, much of what comes out as "News Coverage" immediately following such horrific and despicable acts is frequently inaccurate.  But it has been 36 hours, and Actual Journalists like Chris Hayes are on the scene, interviewing people who had friends killed, who had been at the night club before the shooting, who had talked to this turd Mateen on gay men's hook-up aps, and the stories are being reported in the LA Times, Washington Post, and other reputable, researched, long-standing journalistic sources.  Even the shooter's own father has told reporters that his son was not stable and angrily blew up when he saw openly expressive gay people with public displays of affection. Nobody ever loved nor will ever love dead Omar.

So wether it is a public marathon in Boston, an African American church in Charleston, a Californian social worker office, an armored US Army Texas military base (Ft Hood), or an elementary school in Connecticut, each of these delusional, hateful, fearful, unloved, incapable-of-loving, heavily armed, NRA endorsed, socially out-cast, social rejects continue to inflict pain and sorrow upon American citizens who have DONE NOTHING to them.  Meanwhile, complete dumbasses like Drumpf try to say they "predicted" this, and thank themselves for their inaccurate self-proclaimed false prescience.

Congratulations to Walmart & Dick's Sporting Goods for no longer selling AR-15s (following Sandy Hook, and the potential of class action law suits and horrible publicity).  Shame on every other gun dealer, gun show participant, re-seller, and NRA stalwart who continues to try and defend "the right" for every miscreant, dumbass, and confused little boy in America to buy & own assault weapons.  What pathetic hunters and terribly inaccurate marksmen they must be! (I used to be qualified as a 'Sharpshooter" by the NRA, 35 years ago... and can still hold my own at a gun range [indoor or outdoor] with a BOLT Action rifle. A real man doesn't need a semi-auto nor automatic rifle to defend himself, period. Anyone who disagrees is compensating for their lack of marksmanship, or their inadequacies in the bed room or elsewhere.

Love will always over-rule fear and hatred.  Fear & hate are effective in the short term, but over the log term love will Always win out.

Airports Need More Bomb Sniffing Dogs

The preferred explosive of the failed ideology that calls itself "ISIS" is TATP, triacetate triperoxide.  They've leveraged the extensive Palestinian bomber experience use in the explosive, and re-purposed it for attacking soft civilian targets in Europe by returning EU citizens who failed on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields to have any impact, and now want to attack unsuspecting Europeans.  The dead Paris attackers used it in their suicide vests, and the dead Belgian attackers used it in Brussels.  The civilized Western World will continue to see this relatively easy-to-make explosive used by the cowardly disaffected radicalized Muslims who feel they have no future in a civilized world.

Many "experts" have said that there's no way to "harden" airports and other public places to such attacks, but I disagree.  Bomb sniffing dogs are IDEAL for this task, and would be able to easily detect plastique, TATP, TNT, or any of a dozen other explosives.  They could (and should) be applied curb-side, as people disembark from their cars, taxis, buses, and shuttles, at airports and train stations.  They could also be applied at turn styles for subway stations.

Working dogs, like bomb sniffers, love to be worked hard by their handlers.  They see the hunt for what they've been trained to sniff as "a game" and they live to make their handlers delighted.  The more bags they can sniff, the happier the dog can be.  Let them work.  Re-purpose ALL the dogs used in Iraq previously looking for IEDs to now look for suicidal, cowardly, stone faced radical fundamentalists.   30 lbs to 100 lbs suit case bombs would be easily found by a well trained work dog.

Drug sniffing dogs - which are far too plentiful and for-the-most-part completely un-necessary in Western society - should be deployed less, and bomb sniffing dogs applied ubiquitously at every airport near a city with more than 1 /2 a million people, with includes just 35 cities in the United States.  Thirty Five cities.  So 350 bomb sniffing dogs...  and a bomber in a vest or pushing a luggage trolley of suit cases full of explosives would have no chance of being successful.

But it's much easier to monger fear... and stir up rhetoric, than to apply a meaningful and straightforward solution.

Republican Hyperbolic Allergies to Islam

The Washington Post has a nice article today about how Republicans presidential candidates and primary voters are all in a tizzy about President Obama visiting a Mosque yesterday... yet 15 years ago, George W Bush did the same thing and there WAS NO OUTCRY.  (Link here)


The hypocrisy is so thick, it's ridiculous.  W can visit a mosque and no one denounces him, or says he's being divisive.  President Obama visits a Mosque and he's obviously a secret Muslim, or trying to divide Umerika, or stirring up religious divides??? No Rubio... you're incorrect, again.  Short-sighted, fear mongering, myopic fools.

Bush visits a Mosque in 2001... no Republican Outcry resulted.

First 4th of July in N.SD For Us

I just finished hanging up my American Flag outside my home here in N.SD County, for the very first time.  Surrounded by lavender, hibiscus, mandevilla, palm trees, japonica, oleander, humming bird feeders, Allen's & Roufus & Anna's hummingbirds, and flapping gently in the 72F, 5 mph, intermittent breeze 3 miles from the ocean, it struck me as particularly beautiful... even with the gray over-cast sky.


I am appreciative that I live in a country where I can speak English, and not German (link here) - and English is Still spoken around the world by more people than any other language who control more of the world's capital and decisioning making  (even with nearly 1.4 Billion Chinese, not all of whom speak Mandarin), with the most influence internationally;

We hope to replace this grass with mulch and rock in the next 2 months, with the drought

[I once, while waiting for my company car to pick me up, observed a French business man try and check out of a very poorly run South Korea hotel in Changwon, "Hotel International" - a total pit, very unpleasant, highly NOT recommended for anyone who wants a pleasant stay -  using only French.  The poor man tried and tried, but the hotel clerk just looked blankly back at him, until in broken English, and with great venom & distaste in his pronunciation, he was able to pay his bill and leave the wretched hotel].

I have been able to live & work in multiple states, without the central government approving it (unlike my friends in China, who need central approval to relocate), [link here] going from Indiana, to South Carolina, then back to Indiana, then back to South Carolina 3 years later; then to Arizona for 5, OC California for 2.5, and now Northern San Diego County, where I hope I don't have to move again any time soon.

In this country, I don't have religious fundamentalists telling me how I can dress, what I can eat & drink, and what kind of music I am allowed to play in my home without head phones, like the Basiji do in Iran and the Mutaween do in Saudi Arabia.

In this country I don't have to worry that we are on the brink of national bankruptcy, as the Republicans & many Libertarians kept screaming we were when President Obama took office (yes months earlier, in the same financial conditions under Bush, no one on the right seemed to notice or care about a growing national debt - a debt which the Democrats have once again substantially paid down after the Republicans ran it up... again)... and it is not Greece with radicals on both the left and right rioting in the streets because their government has not had a spine to be able to make any hard choices and implement any austerity effectively for the last 4 bankruptcies.

America has its problems, but it is still a pretty damn good place to live & work and raise a family.  I am grateful to the men & women in the US military who have fought to keep us free, as well as grateful to the Federal leaders (Presidents, Secretaries of State, Senators, etc) who have kept us OUT of wars over the centuries making the spilling of the blood of our military unnecessary (Sorry Lindsey & McCain, we Don't need to bomb Iran and [what's left of] Syria and everywhere else that makes you wet your bed).  It's an English speaking, free movement of labor & capital (relatively, Joe M) =-) , pleasant country where peacocks can picnic wherever they please... "freedom baby, that's what it's all about!" [Freedumb Weekend Aloft, Greenville SC, 1992, yelled by a drunk redneck next to a fully armed A-10 warthog, at Donaldson Center].

Happy Fourth of July to everyone, no matter where you live!

Thank You Justice Kennedy

Swing Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy, thank you for being human, reasonable, and compassionate in your SCOTUS ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges on Friday.  All of my Gay friends can now enjoy the LONG LIST of rights and privileges that Dr Desert Flower and I have enjoyed for the last 28 years, if they find the love of their lives and want to get married as well.  Thank you.  You joined your 4 reasonable SCOTUS colleagues in making the right decision, and you worded your majority opinion so eloquently.

The hyperbolic fit throwing from the religious right - and their ridiculous predictions of being "forced" to act against their faith, or to "go out of business" as Huckabee said on This Week with Snuffleupagus - is amusingly stupid.  No chicken little, the sky is not falling, but legal barriers to basic rights are.

Thanks Justice Kennedy.

Special Holiday Specials

I can't wait for Robot Chicken's new holiday special.

ALEC - Associate Producer of Creating Horrifying Things

If you are unfamiliar with the pervasive, universal, insidious evil that ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) does, just watch the HBO John Oliver "Last Week Tonight" episode from last week.

I had thought that I'd mentioned the corrosive molecular acid that ALEC uses for their life blood, here on JustJoeP in the past, but a google search and a blog search turned up nothing.  So I'm laying down a place marker here.

Embed video here:

We are ISIS. We Milk The Goat Even If It's Male.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for alerting us to this hilarious video:

Iraqi comedians who are mocking ISIS in Kurdish.  Dish link here.

Youtube link here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxFyPZdPAO0
(for some reason Google Blogger keeps preventing the embed video from appearing)

Dailymail link to the story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2800154/kurdish-tv-turns-musical-parody-battle-isis.html

Daily Beast link to the story:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/29/middle-east-goes-monty-python-on-isis.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29


I find it not only funny, but a very catchy tune.  Listening to it once, it is inside my head, and I am sure I'll be humming "Daesh...  Daesh...." all day.  [Note:  "Daesh", the Arabic acronym for "ISIS" also means "A bigot who imposes their views on others".]

From now on, I am going to try and use "Daesh" and not "ISIS".

“We are bearded, dirty and filthy."
"We are brainless with nothing in our heads.”
"We kill the dove in the sky and bring history to the present"
“We are [Daesh] ISIS. We are [Daesh] ISIS,”
“We milk the goat even if it is male.”
“Our music is without rhythm. And our leader is called Qaqa,”
 "Our music is without rhythm, and we hate the smell of mint"
“Our pockets are full of Qatari money. Our language is bullets and cutting.”
“Our pockets are full of Qatari money, and peace poses a danger to us."
"From Chechnya and the Hijaz, we came smelling of garlic and onion"
"From Chechnya and the Hijaz,we came with a flock of geese"
"We strive for Jihad and sex, we are comfortable and happy to see blood"
"We strive for Jihad and sex, we are the sons of Al-Hajjaj and Al-Saffah"
“We are [Daesh] ISIS. We are [Daesh] ISIS,”
“We milk the goat even if it is male.”
"We have no knowledge in our brains, we attacked the town of Sinjar
"We have no knowledge in our brains,we scare women and children"
"Our Caliph is bearded and our brains are upside-down"
"Our hope is to kill, that's why we have no future"
“We are [Daesh] ISIS. We are [Daesh] ISIS,”
“We milk the goat even if it is male.”

Where Is 9M-MRO?

9M-MRO is the tail number of the Boeing 777-2H6-ER aircraft that was designated as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing last week.  The location of the aircraft, crew and passengers, remains unknown, but on Friday night (US time) the Malaysian government issued a statement that they believe the plane's South and Westerly flight paths towards the Indian Ocean - instead of the NE direct route intended to go to Beijing over the South China coast line - were the result of a hijacking, and are now treating the disappearance of the plane as a crime.

While this may sound grotesque, I hope a debris field or fuel slick in the Indian Ocean are found soon.  Why?  Because if the passengers are still alive, they are imprisoned, hostages, or worse.  If they are all dead, then their families can begin to have closure and mourn their losses.  

Why would they be alive, and the plane possibly landed somewhere?  Well, consider the following evidence:
- Rolls Royce's monitoring system (9M-MRO was equipped with RR engines, instead of GE90s) continued to get satellite "pings" from the plane, for more than an hour past the time it was supposed to land in Beijing; meaning, the engines were still on, and still running.
- The built in Boeing transponder that sends out location signals was manually turned off over the middle of the gulf of Thailand, just after Kuala Lumpur air traffic control handed over guidance of the air craft to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon, in southern Vietnam).  
- The pilots (Zaharie Ahmad Shah [Zaharie was also qualified as a flight instructor] & Fariq Abdul Hamid) never checked in with Ho Chi Minh city.  They told Kuala Lumpur "Good night", and then turned their plane around, away from the Beijing flight path, over the Malaysian mountains, and out towards the Indian Ocean.
- yes, both the pilot and co-pilot were Muslims
- Not a single cell phone, black berry, iPad, iPhone, smart phone, smart watch, laptop, tablet, or other device carried by the 227 passengers has been answered, or has sent out any kind of tweet, FB post, distress call, text message, or anything else.  If the passengers (from 15 countries, most of them device happy Chinese) are alive, all of their electronic devices have been totally confiscated.  Missing not a single one.  If the mobile devices had been destroyed, then they would not be "going to voice mail" or ringing without being answered.  They would be giving "no longer in service" responses, from their respective mobile provider networks.

So where is 9M-MRO?  Why don't I call it MH370?  Well...  my theory is that it will never be seen again as MH370, unless it has crashed somewhere and a debris field is found, or a fuel slick spotted in the Indian Ocean.  Instead, either a "State Actor" or a "Non State Actor" has stolen the plane, killed or imprisoned everyone on it, and they are in the process of re-painting it to look like another country's airline 777...  probably a United States based airline, like Delta, American, or United, or a Emirates or Qatar airlines 777.  If there is an old, abandoned WWII runway somewhere near the Indian Ocean, and Zaharie was able to land his plane there, my guess is it being repainted, the electronics are being re-configured to send out a less conspicuously serialized signature that no longer resembles MH370, and the plane is being loaded with fuel, and (probably) explosives, or a WMD.  

What would a State Actor do with such a stolen plane?  Well, "Red Dawn" showed what Cubans could do to the US with troop carriers disguised as commercial airlines.  Tom Clancy probably has several novels that could provide a road map as well.  It would have to be a state actor with few connections to the west - like North Korea or one of the former Soviet "disillusioned-stans".  If it is a non state actor, like Al Qaeda, Basque Separatists, Philippine Separatists, Shining Path, or a Bond villain, then all sorts of terrible things could be planned.
- fly it into a large commercial building, ubiquitous in SE Asian capitals
- fly it into a military base, again, ubiquitous 
- fly it into an LNG plant in the gulf (many to choose from)
- fly it near a US Carrier task force, and detonate a nuclear device within the plane, before the navy shoots it down
- land it in a Western airport, and then detonate the WMD (nuclear, chemical, or biological, basically destroying that airport for that city)
- execute one passenger every time a US drone strike takes place, anywhere in the world (it is well known that Al Qaeda fears drone strikes more than any thing else), delivering the video of the passenger execution to Al Jazeera each time it does, so it can't be traced as to where).  With 227 passengers, that will halt the drone  strike program.  

Like I said, I hope a debris field is found soon, and the families can begin the mourning and closure process.  If their family members are still alive, nefarious things are going to happen to them, or they will be used as bargaining chips and more pain and suffering and death will be brought to more people in the world.  

I theorized this on Monday of this week, when everyone in the media and all pilot experts were saying "it is too early to tell" and "we should not speculate".  BS.  Many humans are evil, and the smart ones who are evil have nasty plans for the rest of us.  Plan ahead to deal with such evil, and minimize its impact on the world.

Creationism Is Making US Dumber

This is disgusting.

Distorted views being taught to impressionable children.  These "Christian" madrases in the US are doing a disservice to the nation.  "Blue Ridge Academy" in Landrum SC...   DDF and I used to live just a few miles from there.  A "100%" - that's a perfect score in fictional history.  Saudi Arabia would be proud.  ANyone in the USA who subscribes to this literal mis-interpretation of "The Bible" is frankly, delusional, and needs to seek therapy immediately.

Picking Sides In Syria? Lannisters, Tullys, Baratheons, or Greyjoys?

Bill Maher made an excellent observation last Friday on "Real Time":

"MAHER: You mean al Qaeda? Because we're basically arming al Qaeda. I don't understand this --

ALTER: There's a peace conference. If they don't go into that peace conference with at least some victories on the rebel side, the rebels won't show up. So the president is trying to bolster them enough so they can get to the peace conference.

MAHER: It's like picking sides in Game of Thrones. "

Transcript link here. Syrian deaths over time, here.  BBC's comprehensive map of the violent factions who are often fighting each other, as much as they are fighting Assad, here. CSMonitor's take on the chaos here.

Frankly, I'd go with the Targaryens. It's wise to not bet against those who control dragons.  It just sucks that in Syria, the closest Targaryen equivalent are the fundamentalist Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state...  =(  They both eat hearts as part of bizarre rituals.  =(

Not Just A Bright Dot In The Sky

This evening, the international space station will be orbiting over Southern California: (from SpotTheStation)

"Time: Wed Feb 27 6:22 PM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 72 degrees, Appears: NW, Disappears: SE"

Frankly, I look forward to each time the station will be passing over-head and the night sky is cloudless.  While some people may think "what's the big deal, it's just a bright spot in the sky?" I see it as much more fascinating, impressive, and noteworthy.  Why?

Well, wether it is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court predicting an eclipse, or Ash Williams in The Army Of Darkness's "boom stick", chain saw and Oldsmobile, or NASA predicting the near-Earth fly-by of an asteroid... these are applications of science and technology that show that some humans actually use their neurons and firing synapses for useful purposes - to gain favor with the king and the fair maiden (Bing), to preserve one's life (Ash), or to avert a possible planetary threat (NASA).  Each time scientists and engineers get it right, it is a victory for the thinking class, the anti-Kardashians, the geeks who otherwise go un-appreciated and often-mocked / ridiculed / pigeon-holed / devalued & who are frequently ostracized, and a rebuke to those who do not value (or "believe") science.

To say confidently "at this time, and this place, you're going to see this man made object that is 230 miles above you, hurtling at roughly 17,250 mph, along a trajectory path from HERE to THERE that will last 6 minutes" ... and that object has scientists in it, who are doing experiments that may change the way materials are manufactured on Earth, how diseases are fought, or alter what we know about the condition of this tiny blue sphere on which we all live... well, that is pretty damn amazing to me.

Yes, it LOOKS like just a little bright white dot in the sky, not much brighter than Venus or Jupiter, moving in a straight line, but it is something that humans - collaborating, working together - created, tested, launched, maintain, and inhabit.  It's not some natural occurring phenomenon over which humans have no control.  Looking up and seeing it is one of the purest manifestations of the evidence that "science matters".  If we all believed that the Earth was 6000 years old, and the Ptolemaic Earth was at the center of the universe, and that eating of a creature that was not of cloven hoof & chewing cud was an abomination, there Would Be No international space station.  We'd be bleeding patients to get their humours corrected and relying upon astrology and alchemists as we tried to kill off or subjugate the rival neighbor tribes for the differences in their beliefs and appearance.

Each time I see this manifestation of successful technology, doing something very impressive, and very useful for all of humanity, it gives me hope.  It helps to remind me that life is not a series of pathetic of reality TV shows, bad news, innocuous fluff producing teen bands, marketing of products we don't need to buy, and mystical beliefs of invisible beings in the sky who randomly wreak random havoc on their terrestrial follows.  No, there's an actual space station, made of steel, titanium, plastic, and aluminum, full of scientists, engineers, and pilots from many different countries, safely flying more than 24X faster than  I've ever flown (an Air France 777 flight I was on once clocked in at 705 mph at 40K feet) at an altitude 32X higher than I've ever been, AND there are humans so smart that they can predict where it's going to be, automatically email me the information to let me know where that will be, so that I can also gaze upon the beauty of that manifestation and appreciate it.

It's something I'll never be able to explain to a tea bagger who wants to cut ALL government spending - without government expenditures, the international space station never would have been built.  It's not something that a quick creationist will ever understand, as they cannot separate the miracles that they believe their deity created from the modern marvels that science and engineering can create.  It's not something that I could explain to an uneducated manual laborer who has worked their butt off since the age of 6 and never even graduated from 8th grade (as my departed grand parents were) because they were too busy trying to stay alive and keep their family fed...  but it IS a thing of beauty that I appreciate.

I'll get off my soap box now.

My Last Arizona Sunset

Arizona has some absolutely fabulous sunsets.  The desert dust in the air makes a beautiful prismatic display during the August and September monsoons, and the wide open spaces between the mountains that dot the Sonoran desert make for some beautiful back drops.  On Tuesday night, after helping the 2 man crew who packed my home Monday, load the 17,000 lbs of household belongings into their 53 foot semi trailer, I climbed into my Mazda 6 (loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go) to drive to California.  While I heard no gun shots, out on the highway, I was also not dressed like a student or a housewife... I did get waved through the California Agricultural road block, and today, the cable guy is on a ladder outside my CA rental literally "tappin phone lines" as I type this up.  We Are still at war in Afghanistan, so I guess it is somewhat relevant.

But I digressed on a Byrne-esque diversion there.  The final sunset, as I drove West towards LA, was phenomenally pretty, and made a moving impression on me (no pun intended).  I was hyped up on a 5-Hour energy drink with enough B vitamins to feed a whole class of kindergarteners, and my hand might have been a little shaky as I took the pics through the windshield as I drove.

It will be an indefinitely long time before I am driving down I-10 again, westward, from Phoenix at sunset.  Dr Desert Flower is working with a property manager who is handling the renting out of our house there, and I detest being an engaged, active, out-of-state land lord as that's what we did for 7 years from South Carolina while our Bloomington IN FHA starter home wouldn't sell.  I used to have to cross the Appalachians and drive 7 hours along I-40 & I-75 to get to that house to fix things and check on it.  I don't want to have to drive through 6 and a 1/2 hours of Mohave & Sonoran deserts and through a check-point  on I-10 to maintenance the Phoenix residence.

The 5 and a 1/3 year Arizona experiment was not a complete loss.  I hiked the Grand Canyon twice.  Got to take friends and relatives who visited to Sedona & Torilla Flats.  Ate some really delicious Mexican food.  Saw some nice concerts.  Hiked every mountain taller than a 1000 feet in Phoenix city limits & within a 10 mile (or so) radius.  Got to swim in my own back yard pool, grew lavender & aloe, communed & bonded with hummingbirds, saw a massive number of lizards and a road runner or two (or three), got bitten by one and killed dozens of other black widow spiders, relocated  more than a dozen feral cats, farmed cactus, sculpted ocotillo, harvested vast numbers of ripe juicy lemons, drank many great wines, and paid ridiculously low taxes while watching my home value plummet by 2/3rds.  I fought & won a court magistrate case against a wrongful traffic ticket, frequently visited the nicest desert botanical garden in the world, volunteered at some good organizations, donated nearly another gallon of blood, started a blog at my old friend Rufus's prodding, and made some nice new friends as well along the way.

It's also ironic that my one friend who lives in California already texted me to ask me "do I feel flakier now?" that I'm a Californian, while back in Arizona I voted Against a flake (Jeff Flake) for US Senator.   While my candidate (Rich Carmona) lost, I am glad to leave Flake and his ilk behind, and for the first time in my life, live in a blue state.  Of course, I am in the reddest of the red counties inside that blue state - my next door neighbor has a sign on the back of his Hyundai Sonata parked in his driveway that actually says "I do not believe the liberal media" and there's no shortages of Hummer SUVs on my block (and John Campbell is my Congressman now, instead of Rahul Grijalva), but at least the governor and both Federal senators are moderate democrats, and the minority speaker of the US House of Representatives are not tea partying, racist, birther, 'build the damn' fencers.  So I think we'll get along okay here in the Golden State.  Now if it would just stop raining (as it has everyday since we got here) I can go soak in the hot tub I've warmed up in the back yard  =)

Spires of Dubai

Supposedly the tallest structure in the world today... but the Chinese are planning on building on even taller at 220 stories very soon..

As mentioned in the previous post, I did visit the United Arab Emirates for the first time earlier this month.  Many shiny new buildings, rising out of the edge of the desert along the Persian Gulf in Dubai.  I taught a training class on a Sunday morning, while jet lagged, before heading off to India on Monday. 

It was my first trip to a majority Muslim country, and a but of a culture shock to hear the call to prayer while in the airport, and seeing many people simultaneously kneel down and begin praying as I walked silently by.  It was my first time seeing women in head-to-toe black burqa, 3 or 4 to each white robed male, walking through the airport.  It seems the "most favored" (or perhaps oldest?) wife has gold patterns embroidered on her black burqa, while the 'other wives' don't get this distinguishing insignia. 

Waited an hour to get through an incredibly slow immigration line where they required biometric data to be given to them (either facial recognition for men and westerners, or retina scans for the burqa clad).  The whole time, the white robed immigration officials glared and leered at every western dressed woman who walked past them. Yeah, welcome.

The Western hotel in which I stayed was nice, clean, and inordinately expensive, but the company made the reservation and was paying the tab, so I shouldn't be too shocked at a $30 glass of Jameson or a $75 breakfast. (the picture below was taken from my room, looking East, towards the Atlantis resort in the distance - and Iran another 100 miles beyond that)

Muller v MacCracken, Climate Rumble

Diane Rehm had a great show this morning (link here, transcript here).  Two of her guests were renowned scientists.  Professor Richard Muller - former Climate Change skeptic, converted to a Human Caused Climate Change schooler after his Koch brothers study could not prove conclusively that Human Caused Climate Change was a Hoax (professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines."), and retired scientist Mr Michael MacCracken, chief scientist at Climate Institute and lead editor for the book “Sudden and Disruptive Climate Change: Exploring the Real Risks and How We Can Avoid Them.”  I've heard both of these scientists speak before on television and radio.   They're both very smart guys, and they each stuck to their guns.

They debated how fast the climate has been and will continue to change.  They sparred with scientific facts and their interpretations like:
Muller "Leaking natural gas is terrible 'cause it's 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide."
MacCracken:  "Richard's number, when he says it's only 23 times as much as CO2, is based on its warming influence over 100 years. If you think about its warming influence over 20 years -- its lifetime in the atmosphere is 10 to 20 years, assuming -- it's 75 times as important as CO2."
[Both are correct... it's important on what Time Scale one considers it]
...and causes of intense hurricanes, melting of ice caps, el ninos, solar flares, Earth orbital variations, and many other aspects of climate change.  It was an informed intellectual debate.  A battle royale.  And they were both right, most of the time concurring, but with slightly different interpretations.

And they both agreed, most of the time.  They disagreed on data selection bias, poor station quality, and other aspects, but they are both excellent scientists, and respected pillars in their fields.

Why climate deniers, Tea Party activists, Roger Ailes, Quick Creationist Fundamentalists, and hardcore Republicans who listen only to the misinformation that Fox broadcasts refuse to listen to them, I do not understand.  I mean, I get the massive energy companies wanting to preserve their subsidies and the status quo, to grow the US Economy into a "Hunger Games" dystopia, sure, that's understandable.  But I don't understand how they want to destroy the future for their grand children, their church congregations (unless they're all hoping to be Raptured [TM]), their supposed legacy.  

I am a red blooded American male who doesn't enjoy watching boxing.  Two guys with gloves, beating the hell out of each other.  So what.  I don't enjoy mixed martial arts very much, though it is incrementally more useful than boxing, since in a coal powered, resource poor, future dystopia, MMA would help to determine who leads which tribe, once all the ammunition, food, and fuel runs out.  But I DO enjoy a lively scientific debate, and one that relies upon massive amounts of data, from thousands and thousands of data points, with n= (very big), is irresistible in its draw upon my thinking mind.  Kudos to Diane Rehm for putting such a battle royale together on her show this morning, and moderating it beautifully.

The BBW I admire

As a Public Service reminder, this week is the American Library Association's "Banned Book Week" (BBW). Did you think that "BBW" was referring to something else? =) lol

It's truly ironic that the home schooler fundamentalists are some of the most frequent users of public libraries - where they ask my librarian friend Jill questions like "where's the REAL books about Dinosaurs, that show them alongside people?"

It's truly wonderful that my friend Matt makes it a point to take his kids to book stores frequently, and tells them they can get one book each, every visit.

It's sad that when we moved our household from IN to SC, and then from SC to AZ, that the movers said things like "you sure do have lots of books!" and "are you some kind of professor or somethin?" and labeled the boxes containing the printed materials as "buchs". In reality, we don't have THAT Many books, just enough to fill several shelving units, but not a whole library's worth.

The ALA's BBW brings to the forefront the underlying issue of religious beliefs and political affiliations attempting to dictate access to knowledge. I don't think it's possible to encourage awareness of the BBW enough.

(this was written several years ago..  but got stuck in my "Drafts")

Thanks Jesus, For This Food

Thanks Jesus, For This Food

De nada.

Extremely Accurate Label

One man's holy book is another man's computer monitor shim / spacer.