Category Archives: 2012

The Sophomore Scientist – Philosophy by Limerick

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 3 comments

Absent-mindedly played his Nintendo
While debunking by innuendo.
Everything his gut feel
Said thereby wasn’t real
He denounced in constant crescendo.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Relationships, Science

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Waldo – Robert A. Heinlein – Book Review

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 19 comments

My first introduction to science fiction came in the Portales Junior High School Library around 1958.  One of the first of the hundreds of Sci-Fi books read over the course of a lifetime was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein.  Probably Keith, one of the readers of this blog, stood beside me in PJHS Library and argued over who’d get to check it out first. 

The library didn’t include a lot to select from and we pored over them all.  Thunder and Roses, by Theodore Sturgeon.  City, by Clifford D. Simak.  The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.  The Stars are Ours, and Star Born, by Andre Norton. And anything by Robert Heinlein.

Written in 1940, Waldo must have been one of Heinlein’s earliest novels.  By the late 1950s it was still too early to be profound.  Most of the setting, plot, concepts Heinlein visualized in 1940 hadn’t yet come to pass.  Hadn’t made their way into human reality in a form more concrete than a pleasurable indulgence in imagination set to words.  My memories of reading it were vague compared to hundreds of other works by Heinlein and other visionaries who hammered and blasted the new genre into mainstream readership. 

So when Waldo showed up in a box of books in the Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Kerrville for a dime each and I bought them all, noticing Waldo among them, I was only mildly interested.  Another couple of hours of something to read before dropping off to sleep, I figured.

I was wrong and discovered how wrong I was roughly 20 pages into the book.  Squinted, read and re-read it far past my normal sleep time.  Read it again the next day.  Twice.

Aside from a goodly other phenomena Heinlein described in 1940 that eventually came to pass decades later, he discusses others that haven’t yet made it into mainstream thinking.  One of which includes something I’ve been examining with insane intensity during the past several years, began experimenting with during the late 1990s.  Dropped, partly because of Y2K, partly because the Internet and home computer RAM didn’t yet allow the accumulation and examination of sufficient evidence to arrive anywhere beyond conjecture and assertion.

Thankee, Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.  And thankee Robert Heinlein, particularly for this one.

I keep Waldo close at hand, thumb through it when I’m pondering where things are going as I go through my daily downloading rituals, working my way through the maze to the center. 

You mightn’t, probably won’t be as impressed with this tome as I am.  But I’m betting if you can find it you’ll be more than mildly surprised.  Find yourself asking, “How the hell did Heinlein figure all that out in 1940?”

If not, you’ll at least enjoy a fun plot, good characters, a couple of hours of science fiction back when that’s what it was.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 2012, Book Reviews, Books, History, Reading, Science

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Philosophy by Limerick – Big News of the Day

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

They read their stock pages and rant
“Juan, down at the sewer plant
Got a five percent raise
From the taxes I pays
On my TVs and Pizzas and grants!”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Politics

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Earth in Upheaval – Immanuel Velikovsky – Book Review

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 10 comments

During the last 18 months of Albert Einstein’s life, November 1953 until April, 1955. he sat around with Immanuel Velikovsky on numerous occasions mulling over the implications of the historical/geological evidence described here.  Largely ignored, met with a shrug by the scientific community because no explanation within accepted scientific theory could account for the massive physical evidence, the two men examined other possibilities, no matter how unconventional.

Mountain ranges yanked from their roots and moved laterally, sometimes as much as 100 miles during a short passage of time.  Megafauna stacked like cordwood in cracks from southern Asia to the Arctic Circle by the millions, perhaps hundreds of millions.  Countless among them quick-frozen rapidly enough to leave them relatively undecayed for examination by modern man thousands of years later. 

Entire tropical forests uprooted, moved by massive waves and left to petrify when the water receded.   When Bad Things Happen to Good Megafauna

If Einstein had lived to see the publication of Velikovsky’s book his interest, prestige and comments might have provided the momentum to carry the discussion into the overall scientific community and more widespread recognition.  Might have forced the unpalatable conclusions to which examination of the evidence leads without leaving many alternatives.

Instead, Planet in Upheaval was published quietly, largely ignored by science, Velikovsky vilified and often denounced by his peers.

But the book’s still out there, used.  Probably available from Amazon for pennies.  I bought my copy in a thrift store in Kerrville for $.25.  I couldn’t have afforded it, wouldn’t have bought it had it cost a buck.

But I bought it for quarter and have now read it enough times to make up for a lot of the people who never did.  Pick up a copy somewhere and you can make up for a few others.  I suspect you won’t be satisfied with a single reading.

If you do read it you’ll be forced to conclude, Stuff Happens.  Sometimes it happens fast and big.  And it doesn’t need man to push it along, make it happen.  Doesn’t even pause to explain itself and why it happens for the benefit of the best minds of humanity to carefully ignore.

Old Jules

Afterthought – Edited in to avoid confusion:

The book referred to here is not Chariots of the Gods.  The author is not Erich von Daniken, of whom you probably have a vague recollection as a discredited ‘scientist’, author of half-truths, incomplete truths, and fig-newtons of the imagination. 

Erich von Daniken.  Immanuel Velikovsky.  Two entirely different individuals.  They even spell their names differently.  Admittedly both foreigners by heritage, but they had little else in common.  Von Daniken actually had a following and readership.  Velikovsky, on the other hand, was a scientist.

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Posted in 1950's, 2012, Astronomy, Nature, Science, Thrift Stores

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The Occasional Crisis of Values – Philosophy by Limerick

Posted on July 21, 2012 by | 24 comments

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

Eavesdropping on a conversation between young adults at a nearby table in a restaurant Thursday led me into a lot of pondering afterward.  All these rosy-cheeked youngsters believed they had long lives ahead of them, believed a human life can be lived performing occupations and activities to give it value and meaning.   They wanted this for themselves and were searching the databases of wisdom available among the young for answers to where it might be found.

They didn’t want to waste their lives, as they believed their parents, other older folks they observed, were doing and have done.  They examined and discarded dozens of avenues of human endeavor as meaningless, having no worth. 

Buying and selling almost anything from automobiles to insurance to consumer products found no home with them.  Lawyering, law enforcement, engineering, health care, drew closer examination, but were found wanting.  They’d had been damned by close observation of these fields as manifested in their own homes and the homes of acquaintances.  

They’d seen the inside of the lives of people who spent their days doing these things, experienced their interactions with their children and other family members.  Judged the professions to be worthless as a way of passing time because the dysfunctional home lives of so many served as a testimony no relationship existed between earning an affluent lifestyle and anything admirable in personal behavior outside work environments. 

But underlying the entire conversation was the assumption some profession, some job, some means of earning a living, could provide value to their lives in ways they’d be able to recognize afterward.  The unspoken determination that when they reached, say, the age of that old cowboy-looking guy over there reading a book, they’d be able to look backward with confidence and satisfaction their lives had been worth the effort of living.

A few years from now they won’t be thinking of those things anymore, most likely.  They’ll become involved in trying to scratch out a living, satisfy a mate’s desire for a new car, trips to Europe, big house.  Keep kids in new clothing and whatever else people buy for their kids these days.  There’ll be no place left, no niche of yearning they’ll be able to allow.  The value of the lives they’re living will be manifested in the cars they drive.  The homes they sleep and entertain themselves inside.

By the time they arrive at the age of that old cowboy-looking guy over there they’ll be so far removed from concepts of life being worth living the default position will be a habit of thinking assigning it intrinsic value.  Worth prolonging at any cost, no matter how it’s been spent, how it’s currently being spent.

They’ll mercifully be spared asking themselves whether they’ve wasted their lives doing things that didn’t need doing, might well have left the world a better place if they hadn’t been done.

What’s important in life is official
Sign-painters declare, and initial,
“Portfolio sums
When we die, keep the bums
From the ponderous and superficial.”

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Parents

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Long Humor vs Short Humor/No Humor

Posted on July 19, 2012 by | 25 comments

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

I dunno.  I suppose I’d have to call the previous post successful in the sense a few people must have read all the way through it.  The testimony’s in the several subscribers who cancelled their subscriptions.

But generally I think my particular brand of BS as it manifests itself in attempts at humor works better if I keep it short.

On the other hand, the lead-in probably escapes a lot of readers, no matter how short the immortal prose happens to be.  Causes the occasional reader to think I might be wanting to seriously discuss politics.  A couple of the comments led me to think that might be the case.

All in all, probably the Universe is a better place if my attempts at funny just zip off into the ether and don’t hit anything on the way to Galactic Prime. 

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Boom-Towning the US – Economic One-Upsmanship by Texasizing

Posted on July 18, 2012 by | 11 comments

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

When the neighbor from up the hill described a business boom going on around Edinburg, Texas, [his previous home] the other evening it got me wondering why.  According to him, the entire Texas coastline is a beehive of manufacturing concerns, either operating, or under construction.  Even a Chinese owned gigantic steel plant.

After considering why this might be for a couple of days I concluded there’s a middling chance the Texas tax structure’s probably a major piece of it.  Texas doesn’t have a State Income Tax.  It relies almost entirely on sales taxes and property taxes for revenues.

That mightn’t sound too important at first notice.  But consider the implications more closely. 

  • First, workers employed in Texas can enjoy a higher take-home pay than those employed in states where income taxes are the revenue source.  This allows employers to pay the employees less than they’d have to do elsewhere.  Workers pay more when they spend their checks on consumer goods, but it doesn’t come out on profit and loss statements of the companies paying them.
  • Secondly,  CEOs, plant managers, high-ranking professionals living within the State, but who enjoy salaries high enough for investments of their incomes pay taxes only on their property holdings and consumer purchases.  Same as the legion of minimum-wage workers they employ.
  • Thirdly, all the nearby suppliers of raw materials, parts and labor for the industries enjoy the same tax-free status and are almost certainly able to offer their products and services more cheaply than they could do located in areas where State Income Tax exists.

For states with stagnant economies, especially those with coastal port facilities, but not limited to those, seems to me the answer might be to take a page from the Texas book.  The most immediate and obvious answer would be eliminating state income taxes and making it up in sales and property taxes.  But that would take a while.  Meanwhile, Texas booms and everyone else continues to lose jobs.

Naturally each situation would require site-specific solutions for immediate competition with Texas for new industries.  But several options come to mind:

  • Locate your port facilities here and we’ll do whatever’s needed to make absolutely certain your construction costs are lower than they’d be in Texas.  Whatever corners Texan regulators would allow you to cut in construction, environmental and safety standards, our regulators will allow more.
  • We’ll reduce our spending on our State vehicle fleets by putting a moratorium on buying any new vehicles for five years.  That money will be delivered in suitcases full of un-marked $100 bills to the people charged with the decision for your location.
  • We’ll make special interim provisions in our income-tax laws exempting dividends to stockholders, CEO and other high ranking professional employees from our State Income Tax.
  • We’ll lower our minimum wage to lower-level employees to the Texas minimum wage, minus the amount of the State Income Tax.  That will allow you to hire minimum wage-earning workers at the same rate it would cost you if you’d located in Texas.
  • We’ll overlook any hiring of illegal aliens you might do involving jobs good Americans don’t want.  Outdoors, heavy-lifting, that sort of thing.
  • We’ll provide lists of the names and families of all your high-ranking employees to all law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and provide a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card for each family member.  If you, or family members are busted for illegal drug possession we’ll make certain the arresting officers are suspended or otherwise punished.  Your executive employees will enjoy the same privileges in that regard as any State, local, or Federal politician.
  • If your executives are non-white, non-Anglo, non-protestant they’ll never overhear themselves referred to at the country club as Chinks, slopeheads, zipperheads, Mescins, mackeral-snappers, ragheads, camel jockeys, or sand niggers, as they certainly would in Texas.

Naturally they’d have to develop other business-friendly encouragements over time, but those would, at least open the door for a beginning.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Damned Environmentalists vs It’s All About Money

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | 22 comments

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

The neighbor up the hill drove down to sit awhile yesterday evening.  We discovered once again, as we have before, there are areas where we’re rigid enough in our certainties so’s there’s no room for civil discourse.  We found two of those more quickly than it takes to tell it.  One involved multi-national corporations.

Neighbor:  Sure.  They’re shipping jobs and industry overseas because labor, costs of production are cheaper.

Me:  That’s what I’m saying.  They’re indifferent to the well being of US workers, the US economy. 

Neighbor:  It’s still jobs.  Still people working, making a living.  Africa, South America.  They’re all people.

Me:  Yeah, they’re people.  But why should a guy in Minnesota trying to scratch out a living favor losing it so’s someone in Asia can have a job?

Neighbor:  He can buy products cheaper.

Me:  He can’t buy products at any price if he doesn’t have a job.  Part of the job of his government is to make sure his job stays inside the country.

Neighbor, clamping jaw:  We aren’t going to talk about this.  You and I see it differently.

Then, a few minutes later:

Neighbor:  They want to build a pipeline to bring oil from Canada to the Texas coast.  Damned environmentalists are protesting, keeping them from it.

Me:  So why don’t they refine it up there.  Canada, northern US?

Neighbor:  No shipping ports.

Me:  What they need shipping ports for?  Nobody in Canada, Minnesota needs gasoline?  Cities don’t need hydrocarbons to produce electricity?

Neighbor:  They need to sell it overseas.   It’s all about money.  They can get better prices selling it to China or somewhere.

 Me:  Who needs to sell it overseas?  The people living on the land they’d take by government mandate to  put in a pipeline?  The people in the US who’d be heating their houses and running their cars on the gasoline if it’s refined close to where it comes out of the ground?  Who?

Neighbor, getting up:  Sorry I brought it up.

Luckily, neither the neighbor, nor I, depend on any sort of agreement between ourselves.  Neither has anything invested in the opinion of the other.  And whatever we might think about it, that oil’s going to arrive where the people who burn it pay the highest price.  The Canadian sands producing oil belong to people who might be anywhere, but who own stock in a company who bought the mineral rights.  They want the most dividends so they can buy more stock and get more dividends.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation

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Advice and Consent

Posted on July 16, 2012 by | 10 comments

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

Ring

Me:  Wassat?  The damned telephone?  Where the hell is it?  Ahh!  Under that.  Get off there, cat!

Ring. 

Me:  [scowling.  Into the phone.] This better be good.

Telephone:  Old Jules?

Me:  Who’s asking?

Telephone:  This is George Armstrong Custer MacGruder.  I’m calling for the president.

Me:  President of what?

Telephone:  President of the United States.

Me:  What?  The black guy?  Tell him I don’t vote.

Telephone:  He knows you don’t vote.

Me:  Then why the hell are you calling?

Telephone:  He reads your blog.  Hopes you’ll answer some questions.

Me:  I don’t want some president nosing around in my affairs.  I don’t stick my nose into his business.  He needs take care of whatever it is he does up there.

Telephone:  Nothing he’s tried so far is working.  He’s casting around for ideas.  desperate.

Me:  That’s laudable, anyway.  You’ve got the wrong number.  I don’t have any ideas.  Tell him to take up Zen.  Learn to use the I Ching.

Telephone:  I Ching?

Me:  Yeah.  The Book of Changes.  Chinese.  Divination.  Confucius.  All that.  The John Richard Lynn translation of Wang Bi’s the best one I’ve found.  Yarrow stick method.  Damned coins will throw you off.    Tell him to pay close attention to the changing lines.  You still there?

Telephone:  I’m taking notes.  Sorry.

Me:  Anything else you need?  I’ve got things to do here.

Telephone:  So you’re saying the President needs to consult an oracle?

Me:  You said nothing else is working didn’t you?

Telephone:  Can you think of any other advice you’d like to give the President?

Me:  I don’t give advice.  Except I advise you not to call me again.  I get pissed off sometimes when people bother me.

Telephone:  Could he send you an email?

Me:  As long as he’s not trying to sell anything, persuade me to vote, or ask my advice.

Telephone:  Thanks.

Me:  Sure.  Anytime.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Books, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Reading, Solitude

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Whirlwinds

Posted on July 15, 2012 by | 15 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  Someone sent me the pic above and I figured I might as well share it with you.  My guess is that it’s some artists depiction of how Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Keith and Chuck will look if they don’t OD or die in plane crash before they get old.

Inadvertently found myself on a Yahoo News page when I was trying to check my email this morning.  At a glance it appears different things are happening all over the place. 

  • 17 people died of something or other in China, which was a shocker.
  • Wossname’s wife, or maybe ex-wife, is explaining to Egyptians what they ought to do about something, which they doubtless find fascinating and helpful.  She’s still one hell of an unpleasant looking lady.  Glad I was never married to her.  I’ll add that to my gratitude affirmations today.
  • Various countries are waving guns around at one another out in the South China Sea, which came as a surprise.  Article said they all want the same piece of geography and are working up to shooting at one another about it.
  • Shocked to see some people killed some other people in Mexico, must have been around the time some other people were killing some others in Syria.  Maybe some other places too, but you get the idea.
  • Some guy’s divorcing his wife after five years, which is cause for concern to someone, doubtless.
  • Exciting news in politics:  Various politicos don’t like other politicos and are probably telling the truth about them, while most likely lying about their ownselves.

A nice young man named Tom Timbo
Admired one king for his bimbo,
Next one for his wardom
Next one for boredom
But got all his ideas from Rush Limbo.

On the other hand, the sky was a looker this morning at daybreak.  Jupiter, Venus and the moon put on a nice show.

Old Jules

 

 

 

 

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Posted in 2012, America, Human Behavior, Politics, Solitude

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