Tag Archives: Education

Christmas morning assumptions to all

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Old Jules | 7 Comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I assume all of you are responding to the Universe in whatever ways suit you best this morning, and I wish that on you with profound enthusiasm and cheer.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, things have changed a lot here on earth since last Christmas. For instance, the barycenters of earth and moon:

                                   Earth

                     Barycentric Equatorial Positions
                    Mean Equator and Equinox of J2000.0

   Date        Time               X                Y                Z
        (UT1)
             h m   s             AU               AU               AU
2012 Dec 25 00:00:00.0    - 0.059985055   + 0.898520188   + 0.389478777

                                   Earth

                     Barycentric Equatorial Positions
                    Mean Equator and Equinox of J2000.0

   Date        Time               X                Y                Z
        (UT1)
             h m   s             AU               AU               AU
2011 Dec 25 00:00:00.0    - 0.048871098   + 0.900279920   + 0.390286717

                                   Moon

                     Barycentric Equatorial Positions
                    Mean Equator and Equinox of J2000.0

   Date        Time               X                Y                Z
        (UT1)
             h m   s             AU               AU               AU
2012 Dec 25 00:00:00.0    - 0.058478965   + 0.900591248   + 0.390372982

                                   Moon

                     Barycentric Equatorial Positions
                    Mean Equator and Equinox of J2000.0

   Date        Time               X                Y                Z
        (UT1)
             h m   s             AU               AU               AU
2011 Dec 25 00:00:00.0    - 0.048617062   + 0.897988672   + 0.389385589

Nothing to be alarmed about, at least not yet, but still something to keep in mind. I’m a lot more concerned about Old Sol and that Frosty The Snowman carrot he’s got for a nose at the moment. That can’t bode well for any of us.

However, on a more cheerful note. Or less ominous, anyway.

I just got around to opening my latest Hawaii KONATE bulletin from December 19, expecting to find out what time it was somewhere sometime. Instead, I got this:

I’m not certain what to make of it. The time might be ten minutes until twelve somewhere, or what? Ten pm?

Then there’s this thing declaring time is valuable and what I ought to do with mine. What the hell do these people know about time? If it’s so valuable, what the hell are they doing lying around pretending to be a clock?

Here I was wanting to know what time it was in Hamburg sometime last week and might be in Peking day-after-tomorrow. Last thing I wanted Christmas morning was a lot of cryptic meaning telling me what to do with my time and people lying around somewhere sometime on an upside-down clock.

But I hope you’ll all respond to it in whatever barycentric way you choose.

The New Old Jules and the Enlightened Cats

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Astronomy, Current Issues, Hawaii, Human Behavior, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Solitude

Tagged animals, Astronomy, country life, culture, Education, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, Nature, psychology, science, society, sociology

Tilting Windmills Out The Window of an RV

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Old Jules | 7 Comments

Hi readers.

Once these damned cats croak I have one project left to complete before I fall into a burning ring of fire Johnny Cashwise. I want to find a hubcap to use for a helmet, a garbage can lid for a shield, and a long piece of 2 inch cast iron pipe and open a can of whupass on one of those windmills they’re foresting the plains of West Texas with.

Not to suggest I have anything against them. In fact, I respect them and whatever engineer with an Asian surname designed them.

No, I want to prove to myself and to future generations of mankind that whatever else Cervantes might have thought, he was wrong about windmills and their place in the overall scheme of things as it applies to the human condition when it’s challenged by a man of vision.

And I’m just the man to do it.

The New Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Books, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Science, Senior Citizens

Tagged culture, Education, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, philosophy, psychology, Relationships, science, senior citizens, society, sociology, technology

La Cantina

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Old Jules | 12 Comments

Hi readers.

A man who reads this blog sent me an email a while back offering to allow me to hook up and park mi casa where he lives in far-west Texas a night, or more if we found ourselves simpatico. So after the WalMart parking lot in Midland, we trucked up there and said hello.

Eddie and Val, their names are. Fine, fine, fine people. The Coincidence Coordinators blessed me once again with an unexpected shot of reminder I’m the luckiest man alive.

I’ll digress a moment and suggest you notice the birdnests on the vigas and the droppings on the orno below. This is the entryway into the section of their home Eddie built where they evidently spend most of their time and entertain guests.

I spent a few days parked in their yard, hours of every day submerged in conversation with Eddie, Val, various relatives and neighbors, digesting my life, the flood of new learning I was doing, and a lot else, thanks mainly to Val, who was forever worrying whether I could drink some more coffee, eat some more of the fare she constantly provided, putting more wood on the fire.

Val’s an ex-school teacher, biologist, and interesting lady. Eddie’s an electrical engineer who spent much of his lifetime travelling all over the planet, first as a private contractor, then in a corporate capacity, then decided screw-it. I ain’t doing this no more.

I met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of intriguing world-views in that cantina while the wind howled outdoors. I’ll be telling you more of that later.

But one question I was asked over and over during my stay. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Soaking it up,” is the only answer comes immediately to mind.

Maybe I’m working up to continuing wossname, John Ernesto Hemingway Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie – The Brave New World For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The New Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged culture, Education, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, personal, philosophy, senior citizens, society, sociology

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – Magnetar – The Mechanism

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Old Jules | 16 Comments

“This image shows a ghostly ring extending seven light-years across around the corpse of a massive star. The collapsed star, called a magnetar, is located at the exact center of this image. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope imaged the mysterious ring around magnetar SGR 1900+14 in infrared light. The magnetar itself is not visible in this image, as it has not been detected at infrared wavelengths (it has been seen in X-ray light).”

Good morning readers. I’m aware most of you won’t have any interest in this and my sense is that the folks who once did read here and did have an interest no longer visit the blog. I’m just posting it in case someone ever happens to be chasing disbelief down the same corridors I’ve been following the past several years and type the right words into a web search.

SGR 1900+14, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. After a long period of low emissions (significant bursts only in 1979 and 1993) it became active in May–August 1998, and a burst detected on August 27, 1998 was of sufficient power to force NEAR Shoemaker to shut down to prevent damage and to saturate instruments on BeppoSAX, WIND and RXTE. On May 29, 2008, NASA’s Spitzer telescope discovered a ring of matter around this magnetar. It is thought that this ring formed in the 1998 burst.^{[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar}

SGR 1900+14′s not the magnetar I’ve been testing against. I just used this one on the post today to illustrate it’s actually possible for something 20,000 light years away to exert a subtle influence on affairs in this solar system. That, and the fact the image is particularly impressive as it bounces off the human mind.

The one I’ve been testing things against is

1E 1048.1−5937, located 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The original star, from which the magnetar formed, had a mass 30 to 40 times that of the Sun.

The Spin-down Rate and X-Ray Flux of 1E 1048.1-5937 http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/475/2/L127/fulltext/5676.text.html

If I live long enough to do it, I’ll be testing the other 20 magnetars to try to discern whether they’re involved in what’s going on here in the solar system.

I’d been trying almost all this year, and on-and-off for several years to isolate a source and a mechanism inside the solar system. About a year ago I began to suspect the magnetic fields within the solar system were behaving as something akin to lenses for whatever the mechanism was, changing focal lengths in relation to earth as they followed their orbits. Those changing focal lengths bore a direct relationship to specific, repetitive, securely recorded events on the surface of the earth.

The most obvious source would seem to be Old Sol, but exhaustive testing never provided any indicators that was where it was originating. But recently someone who knew I was interested in such matters sent me an email forward concerning a particular magnetar. Before recieving it I’d never been aware they existed.

But I’d been having a rough time making myself continue chasing the solar system down every path imaginable, coming up with intriguing, argumentative, persuasive results along with the arrogant statement, “Screw you, bud! You still ain’t looking in the right place for the source.”

So I pulled up the coordinates for the nearest magnetar and began running through the routines, testing it against the lenses of the planetary magnetic fields.

Voila, thinks I.

The problem with a project of this sort is that a person’s constantly having to discard everything he believes he already knows in favor of possibly learning something he doesn’t know yet. As the song says, “You push the little key in and the music goes round and round and it comes out here.”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Science

Tagged Astronomy, Education, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, magnetar, physics, psychology, science, technology

21st Century King-Election Weenies Got Nothing on 1968

Posted on August 18, 2012 by Old Jules | 5 Comments

No way you could manage it.

The Vietnam War raging in a daily bodycount to see if we were winning right now; half- the cities in the US on fire with race riots. Decision time for America:

So the Democrats ran Humphrey Dumprey, pledged to keep the War going, continue with LBJ strategy counting bodies.

The Republicans ran Tricky Dicky Nixon, pledged to get us out of Vietnam, but only with ‘honor‘. [Same as he ran on four years later.]

And on a third party campaign, pro-segregation, former Alabama Governor George Wallace ran to ‘Take Back America’. And get out of Vietnam in 90 days if it couldn’t be won. And he carried five Southern states. I’ll leave it to your imagination identifying ‘take it back from whom’.

Hell, Humphrey Dumprey only carried eight states that election.

So the outcome was we got peace with honor for four years with Tricky Dixon and the war killing them off like flies, counting bodies. Dixon elected again, four years later and everyone in sight fleeing Vietnam hanging from helicopters off the top of the US embassy in Saigon.

But honorably.

I think I voted in the 1968 King Election, but my mind won’t allow me to examine the memory in enough detail to recall whom I voted for. Seems clear to me today I should have just given it a miss. I think I’d remember that.

One of my favorite Playboy limericks of the time:

There was a young man named Hollis
Used snakes and snails for his solace
The offspring had scales
And prehensile tails
And voted for Governor Wallace.

Wish I’d written that.

Yeah, we were weenies in those days, but REAL MEN weenies. We knew how to do it up right.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 2012, Education, Government, Politics

Tagged culture, Education, election, george wallace, History, Human Behavior, humor, philosophy, politics, psychology, richard nixon, society, sociology, Vietnam War

A Perspective About Unions

Posted on August 18, 2012 by Old Jules | 5 Comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming for a visit.

My biological father, Raymond Waxey [Red] Purcell, was a union organizer for 45-50 years. [One of the Fascinations of Christian TV]

I can’t think of a single thing I admire about him. In fact, I sincerely believe in a well-ordered, well-meaning, sane world he’d never have been allowed to reproduce. And most especially not allowed to combine his gene-pool with the gene-pool of Alice Eugenia Hudson.

However, I can thank him for a lot of what I know about unions in the United States. During the years I knew him it was mostly the only thing he cared about, generally the main thing he talked about. And I do believe he cared about the workers he organized, their dismal wages, long hours, dangerous working conditions. He was a fighter, and he fought hard for them at considerable physical risk to himself.

Especially during the early years getting thrown in jail, beaten up, harassed by cops and company goons was a way of life for him.

I’ve been a union member myself, longshoreman, construction worker, taxicab drivers, teamsters, and I’ve seen the sweetheart contracts, the corruption, the sellouts, and I’d want nothing to do with unions if I were a member of the work force today.

So when I was eavesdropping on a couple of Texas geniuses in a restaurant the other day explaining to one another how the unions have driven all the industry out of the US I found myself asking myself,

“Could any US worker make a living on 13 cents an hour? Would the multi-nationals have kept the operations here if only workers would work for the wage they’ll be paying in the country where they’re sending the jobs?”

To suggest organized workers have ruined this country is to turn a blind eye to the sacrifices and risks they chose to take to organize, and why they made those sacrifices, took those risks.

Jeanne’s granddad owned a lumber mill in Oregon during the 1930s. It was burned down by unions, it’s said. She says she was talking with her cousin about it and he explained it was at a time unions where at the pinnacle of corruption.

“But then of course,” She went on, “He was a man who didn’t care anything about anyone, or anything but himself.”

That probably just about sums up why we had unions, why workers organized. What it doesn’t explain is why, having done it, they became so corrupt so pervasively.

The nearest Red Purcell ever came to getting actually homicided as a result of his job, he often said, was when he was hiding under the table in a locked house with union goons from a competing union trying to get in.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Government, Human Behavior, Police, Politics

Tagged culture, economy, Education, employment, Human Behavior, humor, jobs, labor, Life, lifestyle, out sourcing, politics, psychology, society, sociology, unions

Philosophy by Limerick – Billboard Confession Booth

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Old Jules | 2 Comments

The woe-gunning sloganning wienies
So frightened of commies and greenies
Would sell their own grannies
And illegal nannies
To hear themselves venting their spleenies.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, limericks, Politics

Tagged billboard, communists, culture, Education, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, limerick, limericks, marxists, poems, poetry, politics, psychology, senior citizens, society, sociology

Philosophy by Limerick – Slammer Sensitivity Training

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Old Jules | 2 Comments

Aryan [alien] Nation
Inhibits their re-education
By Crips and by Bloods
And by Hispanic studs
For rehab and recreation.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Education, Ethnic Supremacy, Government, Human Behavior, Police, Politics

Tagged bigotry, criminal justice system, culture, Education, gangs, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, penal institutions, philosophy, politics, prisons, psychology, Relationships, society, sociology

Philosophy by Limerick – Still Scary After All These Years

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Old Jules | 1 Comment

We miss those damned Marxists, so please
Find Commies behind all the trees!
Ain’t nuthun’ so thrilling
For shouting and shrilling
Ignoring the rot and the sleeze.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Government, Human Behavior, limericks, Politics

Tagged communists, economy, Education, government, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, limerick, limericks, philosophy, poems, poetry, politics, psychology

Book Review – Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Old Jules | 11 Comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

If any of you are bored, or maybe a bit ashamed hearing yourselves parrot to one another how much you hate Muslims, or Arabs, or one of the numerous other epithets you apply to people of Semitic ancestry without knowing a damned thing about them, you might find this a cleansing read. [Long sentence, eh?]

I found it in a ‘free’ box in a thrift store held together by rubber bands, but there’s probably another read left in this copy. If any of you can’t find a copy and want this one I’ll send it to you, rubber bands and all.

Lawrence was a young Englishman assigned early in WWI to go into the desert and try raising a rebellion among the Beduins against the Turkish Empire. The allies were having an awful time with those Turks, getting themselves made monkeys of, their cannon-fodder reduced to cannon-fodder without seeing any positive results. Someone got the idea a revolt in the background might help.

So young Lawrence found himself a camel and headed out to make friends of the tribes, to try arranging dissatisfaction among them. To offer money, weapons, military advisors, explosives to weaken the back door to pesky Turkey.

Lawrence lived among them several years. Became trusted by them, successfully stirred them into revolt, led them, came to respect and understand them. Earned their trust, I should have said, to the extent any representative of a European power could be trusted. And trusted them in a more-or-less realistic way.

These are his memoirs, his exploits, his observations about the people. The events that came to be important as an influence on the future running right to the present. And changed his entire perspective about loyalties, betrayals, patriotism and individual responsibility.

In some ways what happened to Lawrence is reminescent of what the Templars were accused of and slaughtered for by the European powers. Becoming too familiar, dangerously understanding of the fabled, demonized enemy.

Lawrence could probably offer an Eighth Pillar of Wisdom if he’d survived until today and had a chance to offer his thoughts about what he’d see around him.

A worthy read, worth the rubber bands holding it together. 655 pages with introduction and remarks by his friend, George Bernard Shaw.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Book Reviews, Books, History, Military, Politics

Tagged Arabia, Book reviews, Books, culture, desert nomads, Education, History, Human Behavior, humor, Lawrence of Arabia, Life, lifestyle, Middle East, Reviews, society, sociology, T.E. Lawrence, Turkish Empire, wisdom, writers, WWI, WWI in Asia

Tag Archives: Education

Christmas morning assumptions to all

Tilting Windmills Out The Window of an RV

La Cantina

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – Magnetar – The Mechanism

21st Century King-Election Weenies Got Nothing on 1968

A Perspective About Unions

Philosophy by Limerick – Billboard Confession Booth

Philosophy by Limerick – Slammer Sensitivity Training

Philosophy by Limerick – Still Scary After All These Years

Book Review – Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Old Jules

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