Category Archives: Current Issues

Terrorists on airliners prior to 9/11 – the cost of thinking we’re worth killing

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Back before 9/11 the airline flights over the US almost always had a few terrorists aboard.  You’d see them hanging around DFW or Atlanta, or LAX wandering around the boarding areas looking hopefully at the other passengers.  A couple of typical Turks, or Iranians, or Arabs, or Israelis, or Northern Irishmen.  Just wandering around watching people in hopes some of their fellow passengers would be worth killing, or even getting themselves into trouble, wasting a bomb on.

Aside from an occasional hijacking they mostly never did anything.  Fact was, the people sharing their flights were just a bunch of bureaucrats, bleating women, corporate zombies, and people going somewhere to meet people of the opposite sex they’d become acquainted with on the Internet.  Just typical Americans.  Worthless as hell, and certainly not worth the life of a highly trained terrorist.

But when 9/11 came along it made all those non-terrorist passengers feel a lot better about themselves.  Nothing changed with the terrorists, but the typical Americans were generally elevated by the whole thing.  Suddenly it seemed to them that someone thought they were worth killing.

Turned out it was such an uplifting experience for them the government decided they liked having all the spinoff benefits …. trotted out a lot of airport security, Homeland Security, 87 new layers of cops and surveillance, and legions of new guys wearing berets carrying machine guns to go off places terrorists came from and blow away anyone who might think Americans were worth killing.

Worked out fairly well, all in all.  Win-win-win.  Only downside is that so many of the Americans who use to be not be worth killing decided it might be better not to get on airplanes if they could avoid it.  Those people over there where terrorists come from might begin to be pissed off, eventually.  Might start killing some people who aren’t over in those countries they come from and aren’t just wearing berets, battle dress uniforms, and dropping grenades into the market places full of women and kids.

Going back to not being worth killing might be nice.  But you can’t get there from here, I reckons.

Old Jules

Old Sol: “Quit trying to play God!” – “Move Israel to Puerto Rico”

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

This pre-dawn Old Sol laid it on fairly thickly.

Old Sol:  With this procedure I’ll be going through I need some quiet time.  I don’t need any unexpected emotional upheavals nor any drama to add to the stress.  I’m depending on my Chosen People to keep things settled down.  You don’t have anything in the works to rattle things do you?

Me:  I don’t think so.  The Japanese seem to have the Pacific Ocean fairly well taken care of so you won’t have to concern yourself with it much longer.  I suppose Israel might nuke someone and get itself wiped off the map, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise.  They’ve been working on that fifty years.

Old Sol:  I swear!  Things were calm in the Middle East for almost a thousand years.  Then you people and the British had to play God.  Moved those people back there and I haven’t heard about anything but trouble there for half a century.

Me:  Just trying to do what was right.

Old Sol:  What was right?  If I wanted those people living there making trouble I’d never have allowed the Romans to run them off.  If you wanted to give them a homeland why there, where they were sure to make trouble?  Why not Puerto Rico?  You OWNED that.  Water on all sides.  Nobody to piss off except the people already there.

Me:  They didn’t want Puerto Rico.  They thought you wanted them where they used to be.

Old Sol:  Why would they think that?  I haven’t even hinted they’re Chosen People since a long time before the Romans ran them out.  If they want to be Chosen People they need to be in the US or a US territory.  Give them Puerto Rico.  They’ll be part of the Chosen People again.  Part of the United States.  And the only borders they can violate will be salt water.  End of problem.

Me:  But what about the Puerto Ricans?  They think they already own the place.

Old Sol:  Send them to Texas.  Put them to work in all those new oil fields I just gave you.  No trouble.  Those Zionists will have a homeland and get to be part of the Chosen People again, and the Puerto Ricans will have jobs.  Besides, I always intended Texas to be mostly for Mexicans.  Puerto Ricans are mostly Mexicans.

Me:  I’ll pass this on, but nobody’s going to like it.

Old Jules

Tooth Fairies, Trouble-Makers and Japanese Nukes

2013 Tooth Fairy with Radioactivity Sniffer Dog

2013 Tooth Fairy with Radioactivity Sniffer Dog

Hi readers.

If you’re like me you probably wonder why the Tooth Fairy changed so much since we were kids.  It was the Baby Tooth Survey did it.  Here’s what happened:

When the Commandant of the National Tooth Fairy Regiment died of cancer in 1963 a lot of traitorous whining wimps in Missouri started crying about the fact the US Government was dropping hydrogen bombs on itself to pre-emptively protect itself in case someone else should drop nukes on Nevada and New Mexico. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey

Baby Tooth Survey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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The Baby Tooth Survey was initiated by the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information in conjunction with Saint Louis University and the Washington University School of Dental Medicine as a means of determining the effects of nuclear fallout in the human anatomy by examining the levels of radioactive material absorbed into the deciduous teeth of children.

Founded by the husband and wife team of physicians Eric and Louise Reiss, along with other scientists such as Barry Commoner, the research focused on detecting the presence of strontium-90, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope created by the more than 400 atomic tests conducted above ground that is absorbed from water and dairy products into the bones and teeth given its chemical similarity to calcium. The team sent collection forms to schools in the St. Louis, Missouri area, hoping to gather 50,000 teeth each year.[1] Ultimately, the project collected over 300,000 teeth from children of various ages before the project was ended in 1970.

Preliminary results published by the team in the November 24, 1961, edition of the journal Science showed that levels of strontium 90 in children had risen steadily in children born in the 1950s, with those born later showing the most increased levels.[2] The results of a more comprehensive study of the elements found in the teeth collected showed that children born after 1963 had levels of strontium 90 in their baby teeth that was 50 times higher than that found in children born before the advent of large-scale atomic testing. The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground nuclear weapons testing that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.[3]

Follow-up analysis
A set of 85,000 teeth that had been uncovered in storage in 2001 by Washington University were given to the Radiation and Public Health Project. By tracking 3,000 individuals who had participated in the tooth-collection project, the RHPR published results in a 2010 issue of the International Journal of Health Service that showed that the 12 children who later died of cancer before the age of 50 had levels of strontium 90 in their stored baby teeth that was twice the level of those who were still alive at 50.[3][4]

After that things seemed to settle down okay for a while.  Then came Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl.  Tooth Fairies were dying off like flies.  Gums rotting away, skin peeling off them like overcoats.

Fact is, we almost lost the whole kaboodle of Tooth Fairies when the Japanese started dumping all the radioactivity they could scrape together and sending it into the atmosphere headed for Alaska, California, Washington and Oregon.  Pumping water hotter than a two-dollar pistol into the Pacific Ocean.

Tooth Fairy recruitment programs went to zilch.  Finding new Tooth Fairies to replace the ones getting the blind staggers was tougher than the Mother Church trying to find women willing to be nuns.

Luckily, the US Military and the National Academy of Multi-Layered Police Forces, comprising about half the US population, came to the rescue.  Provided pistols to be held to the temples of potential Tooth Fairies who were trying to take French leave from the job.  But to compensate, providing body armor and radioactivity sniffing dogs to help the ones still able bodied enough to slip into a bedroom at night and reach under a pillow for a tooth stay alive longer.

Saved again by the police and the US military and mercenary forces.

Old Jules

Getting had by Indians – taking the long view

homeland security2

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Europeans thought they were getting a fairly good deal when the Indians snookered them into paying a bunch of beads and mirrors for Manhattan.  As historian John Wayne once pointed out, “The Indians were selfishly hoarding the whole continent.”  They were in a position to demand unreasonable prices for real estate. 

Later on they demanded even higher prices for the land east of the Mississippi River and so on, always pretending they didn’t want to sell.  Cheating white men and the government every time they turned around.  The Black Hills.  The Rocky Mountains.  Florida.  Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Washington.  New Mexico, Arizona, Texas.  Those aboriginals were shrewd businessmen, turning white people every way but loose.  Nevada.  Utah. Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, wheeling and dealing every step of the way.

Worse than a bunch of Chinamen.  Those Indians were taking the long view.  What they wanted was casinos.  Tricking white men into giving them choice spots along the highways where they could open up gambling joints.  Trinket shops.  Clay pots. 

And they got it, too.  They still have some nice real estate up in the Dakotas, down in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and other places.  And some of that land has oil, coal, natural gas and other things white people need to fire up the hair dryers, air conditioners and clothes dryers mornings. 

It’s time for white people to realize we’ve been had.  There are plenty of big power companies, mining companies, real estate developers and other white people who’d love to have that land if they could get it for a reasonable price.  Pay for it in slot machine tokens, maybe, or table chips. 

Time to cut off all that free health care and commodity cheese, break up those reservations right down to the pavement on the casino parking lots.  It’s time for white people to quit getting had by Indians.  Those corporations would gladly keep them from selfishly hoarding all the stuff nobody knew was there when the original deals were made to let them stay on that land.

And after all, we’re all Native Americans now.  If we’re not, what the hell are we?

When the Mexicans were selfishly hoarding the whole southwest US we had to shoot a lot of them before they’d give us a reasonable price.  How the hell are we going to stop all those illegal aliens from Mexico  sneaking into the land we took away from them if we keep getting had by other Native Americans?

We need to send some tanks and drones and helicopters to take care of our problems right here at home before we go off to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.  There’s nothing on those reservations and in those casinos a few thousand mercenaries and enough explosives won’t cure.

The Visionary President Ronald Reagan wanted to give all the National Forests, National Parks and Bureau of Land Management lands to the real estate developers, mining and oil companies.  But he didn’t go far enough and it serves him right he’s remembered as a failed lunatic.  He had the Army and he had maps of the US.  If he didn’t know where the reservations were he could have asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  White people could have finally gotten a good deal on something.

Old Jules

Old Sol’s Flipping Magnetic Field Crisis

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

The Sun’s Magnetic Field is about to Flip

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/

http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/08/06/splash3.jpg

So here we are again, human beings screwing things up from hell to breakfast in the solar system.  Back a few decades ago before anyone had ever noticed the polarity of the sun reverses itself every eleven years [it’s assumed, because we donealready saw it happen three times already] nobody realized how badly human beings were messing things up.

This polarity reversal seems to correspond to Jupiter being at a particular place in its orbit, similar to the sun spot cycle doing it roughly then, also.  Pure coincidence.

The reality is that human beings are creating too much various stuff in their lifestyles and some laws are going to have to be passed to keep this sort of thing from happening.  Won’t be anytime at all before the academians calling themselves scientists will be lining up for grants to study it all and make recommendations about what laws need passing.

Because those solar reversals are just another sign that man needs to mend his ways.

I consulted Old Sol about it while we were praying him up this morning, but He seemed to have a cold, runny nose or some such thing.  Kept sort of sneezing I reckons, making funny noises.

Guess he didn’t want to talk about it.  Probably something personal.

Old Jules

Those silly little Japanese

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

My friend Rich was telling me on the phone yesterday the “Hey! Looky over there!” technique for dealing with nuclear meltdowns is coming apart at the seams:

fukashima nuke

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/07/22/38294/fukushima-nuclear-plant-leaking-radioactive-water/

“We are very sorry for causing concerns. We have made efforts not to cause any leak to the outside, but we might have failed to do so,” he said.
    
Ono said the radioactive elements detected in water samples are believed to largely come from initial leaks that have remained since earlier in the crisis. He said the leak has stayed near the plant inside the bay, and officials believe very little has spread further into the Pacific Ocean.
    
Marine biologists have warned that the radioactive water may be leaking continuously into the sea from the underground, citing high radioactivity in fish samples taken near the plant.
    
Most fish and seafood from along the Fukushima coast are barred from domestic markets and exports.”

Other articles are finally describing the levels of radioactivity in the steam one of the plants has been producing since the day one.  Luckily for Japan the prevailing winds will mostly take that cesium and whatnot into US and Canadian waters and over Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.  And the radioactive fish migrations down the California and Mexican coasts.

Got me thinking about the US love affair with Japan that’s been sneaking off to cheap motels and consumating itself in the back seats of limosines for the past half-century following their enthusiastic surrender.

Which got me thinking about love affairs in general, and how they tend to end.     [So Long, and Thanks for all the Valentines https://sofarfromheaven.com/romance/That’s the source for the ‘little Japanese’ thing.

A few years ago there was a big flap about whether one of the US presidents ought to apologize to Japan for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasakaki.  The logic being that Japan wasn’t quite ready to surrender yet, and that dropping those bombs forced them to quit fighting prematurely.  I don’t know whether one of the US Chief Executives apologized, or didn’t. 

But that’s the sort of thing happens all the time in love affairs when they begin going stale.  Next thing you know something else will come along to stale things some more.  Such as the Japanese sending cesium into the sky so’s the wind can take it to Seattle and Portland.

Japan, of course, could send us a lot of valentines or roses to make things better, maybe.  Or maybe they could just admit what they’re doing and apologize.  They could actually say, “Hey!  Lookee over here!  We shore could use a little help, advice and friendly ideas.  From anyone who has some.  We loves you Americans and everything else being equal, like you better not glowing in the dark.”

Or maybe it’s just time to lay aside that romance and tell the Japanese, “So long and thanks for all the valentines.

Old Jules

Texas Gals Kick Ass

Tastefully tattooed on the inside of the thigh of the Goldilox behind me in line at Walmart.  She saw me trying to read it and lifted her leg to make it easier.  “Awsome?”

I’ve seen worse.”  I was a lot younger and mostly drunk, but a number worse ones still came to mind.

She frowned at meand I squinted my brain trying to figure out just what the hell “Texas Gals Kick Ass” could be intended to communicate to readers.  Luckily the cashier interrupted.  “You want the two-year return plan for $5 more?”

Me grabbing for straws welcoming any distraction, “Yeah.  Sure.”

A person gets a statement tattooed anywhere there’s bound to be meaning hiding in it.  Something intended to happen in the mind of the person who sees it.  From now until she’s my age.

Hell, maybe she’s into Kung Fu, or plays soccor.  Maybe she’s a wild-burro rider on the rodeo circuit.  I was surprised by the ‘gals’ part… wasn’t my impression young women today would sit still for being called gals. 

The ‘Texas’ part?  I count it a relief.

I honestly don’t like to think about gals outside Texas going around kicking ass, or saying they do.  Thinking they do.

Not bad in the thigh department, though.

Old Jules

If you can’t trust the Japanese, then who?

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

Most of you will probably agree the Japanese are the most intelligent, advanced, scientifically advanced, politically and economically savvy people on the planet. It’s the reason most of you are driving Japanese automobiles.

Think about it: Japan invaded and raped East Asia for a decade, was bludgeoned to death by a costly sea war followed by two atomic bombs before they’d surrender. And within half-decade the US was at war defending Japan. “Korea,” Doug MacArthur declared, “is a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan!”

Obviously the Japanese were one hell of a lot smarter than those governing the US. The bombed-out Japanese industries were rebuilt by US taxpayers, providing them with decades newer steel mills and manufacturing capabilities than those on US soil. Ultimately the result was decline in US production and the slippery slope decline of US economic stability.

Think about it: Today the Japanese have a better space program than NASA:

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl.t10.6/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=27&q=japanese+space+program&ql=

Japanese Space Program
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (former Nasda) is Japan’s version of Nasa.

  • Hayabusa was launched 9 May 2003. The probe sent to gather samples from asteroid 25143 Itokawa. After numerous glitches, the probe returned to Earth. Scientists have not yet opened the sample container.
  • In 2006, JAXA launched Akari, an infrared astronomy satellite. Its mission is to survey the entire sky in infrared. On 6 August 2007 it has surveyed 94 percent.
  • Selene was launched September 14, 2007. Selene was the largest lunar mission since NASA’s Apollo, Selene orbited the moon for 20 months. It provided data used to improve topological and gravity maps.
  • Oicets – This experimental satellite was designed to demonstrate optical communications between distant satellites. Launched in 2005, it was retired in 2009.
  • H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) first flew to the International Space Station on 10 September 2009.
  • In 2010 IKAROS probe was the world’s first spacecraft to use solar sailing as the main propulsion

The best engineers in the world are Japanese. Agreed? The most competent scientists in the world are Japanese. Agreed? The most savvy politicians and economists in the world are Japanese. Agreed?

If any scientists and engineers anywhere can be trusted to be right about important matters involving human science, engineering and environmental issues, the place to look for affirmation should be Japan. Agreed?

Japanese science and engineers designed and produced the three nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima power plants.

Are the most competent, advanced scientists and engineers in the world concerned about manmade climate change? Are they concerned about contaminating the North Pacific with radioactive cooling water? Obviously they are not.

After the disaster, then until now, have the most advanced, competent scientists in the world bothered to do anything to contain the cascade of environmental problems supposedly associated with nuclear fuel rods exposed to the atmosphere and sea water? They have not.

Japanese scientists and engineers knew everything they could know about the tectonic environment of Japan. They designed those plants and built them with all that in mind, took the worst possible scenarios into account. Obviously.

So how is it the populations of nations with less competent scientists and engineers, the people who drive Japanese automobiles, come to believe anything their own scientists postulate concerning other matters involving advanced science?

The most advanced, most intelligent, the most savvy scientists and engineers on the planet proved themselves capable of ignoring the obvious, of assuring Japan their nuclear power plants were safely constructed.

How can anyone bring himself to believe what any scientist, any engineer, any politician says about manmade climate changes? Particularly any scientist or engineer who isn’t Japanese.

Old Jules

Fad science and self-made a monkeyof-ism

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

Some of you thought I was joking with my recent post about climate change and the current yakyakyakyak by the excitement industry concerning ‘manmade global warming’.

Some of you probably also didn’t notice the comment by Trapper Gale remembering a time four-or-so decades ago when the previous generation of the same institutional experts ran in increasingly small circles setting their hair on fire predicting a coming ice age.

AmericaLaurentideIceSheet.jpg

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/AmericaLaurentideIceSheet.jpg

The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood.

Which is an understatement.

Academians have a vested interest in manmade climate change today. They get their names in the journals and newspapers through the power of positive speaking. If they can stir up enough fear by presenting what they don’t know as ‘not yet well understood’ they generate government grants, jobs, power and prestige within their fields. Further study of what they don’t yet well understand, it’s assumed, will provide better understanding in the direction of their assertions.

Somehow the fact their disciplinary ancestors also didn’t yet well understand similarly the precise opposite interpretation of the data. Mined it for all it was worth at the time in study, grants, power and prestige. Opened new frontiers for their progeny when the time came, by reversing what a few decades later remained not yet fully understood.

I’m not suggesting there’s no manmade climate change. Maybe there is. And I’m not suggesting that if there is, it won’t speed the natural progress of planetary warming.

What I am saying is that anytime scientific observers examine data with an expected, hoped-for outcome, [especially when power, money, career advancement and prestige are factors] they have a way of observing selectively.

Same as human beings are prone to do in all other walks of life.

What I’m also saying is that three, maybe four decades from now there’s a reasonable possibility they’ll have mined this crisis dry and be setting their hair on fire with a new crisis to be mined for power, prestige, money and career advancement. Humanity induced plate tectonics, maybe. Earth’s decaying orbit because of atmospheric drag created by airliners.

Maybe they’ll be right. Hell, there’s even a remote chance they’re right about of what they’re saying today. Some piece of it-or-other.

The damned problem is you can’t trust them. They watch the same television you do. They know which way the wind’s blowing and muddling along trying to sail downwind getting the most out of it while it’s hot. Joining the gold rush with the knowledge when this one plays out there’s another lode in Alaska or Nevada they can move to.

Same as the rest of us.

Old Jules

The underlying fundamental truths

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

If you’re like me, you are probably asking yourself why Johnson grass, crabgrass, beggars lice, goatheads, thistles and, say, salt cedar, thrive through the most difficult of times while all the stuff you deliberately planted requires care, nurturing by various means, irrigating.  You’re probably wondering why skunks can overwinter with rabies, throwing off the virus to all their kinfolk, while almost everything else dies within days of manifesting symptoms. 

Yeah, you’re probably wondering also why the skunks in Homeland Security run you about as you’d figure,  and the entrepreneurs in the private US penal systems are wallowing around in profits without ever getting their lives dirtied by contact with inmates.  Wondering why faceless ghosts in places such as the NSA would, not only wish to know the intimate details of your life, but actually be able execute a plan to do it.

You’re probably wondering why classy, wonderful aircraft with glide ratios and whirling propellers are rotting in hangars and on airstrip tiedowns while unnatural aluminum monsters incapable of manned flight zoom around carrying people places they didn’t need to go.  Why the only damned propellers anyone cares around are horizontal wings beating the air to death and crawling over the carcass.

Well friends and neighbors, if I had more time I’d explain it to you.  Because it’s one, or part of one of the fundamental truths of the Universe.

Unfortunately, this has gotten a bit long and there’s no point in me doing it right now.  It’s a proven fact that people don’t read long blog posts and that they click somewhere else the moment anything gets fundamental, or truthful.  Or if there are no pictures of naked dancing girls, celebrities, politicians, or tsunamis.

And hells bells, part of one of the basic truths of the Universe is that I can’t upload a damned thing.  So you’ll have to figure it out for yourselves.

Old Jules