Michael R. Taylor, former Monsanto Lobbiest, is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the United States Food and Drug Administration(FDA).
Genetically engineered fodder?
Put trust in your bottled water,
While FDA lures you
Monsanto assures you
You won’t get blind staggers and totter.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Animals, Current Issues, Education, Government, limericks, Politics
Tagged animals, consumer protection, economy, Education, environment, fda, food and drug, genetic engineering, Human Behavior, humor, limerick, Nature, poems, poetry, politics
Hi readers. Got a news flash here on the bumper-sticker issue that has all of you breathless and on the edge of your chairs.
Jeanne, the administrator for this blog, just returned to Kansas from a 10 day, 4300 mile motor trip to Washington and Oregon. During the trip she was careful to tally the political bumper stickers encountered on the highways both ways. Finally finished tallying them up last night and faithfully reported the results to me:
The current King of the US: 3 each. Two for this election, one for the last one.
The Wannabe King of the US: 1 each.
Looks like a landslide victory for Long Live the King. You can’t fight a popular movement.
Remember where you heard it first.
Welcome back, Jeanne.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Government, Politics
Tagged candidates, culture, election, elections, Events, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, politics, psychology, society, sociology
Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
The people for whom climate change is central to their countless grant and research applications, and the people for whom NO climate change is central to their business models are probably both grinding their teeth in frustration.
Sooooo. All the academians, school kids being trained to believe they can do something to ‘save the planet’, other people who just enjoy the feel of shrill proclamations, jeremiads and threats of doom briefly danced in the streets. Whoopteedoo! Everybody’s going to die!
And the people with business models demanding they fervently deny climate change looked around for buildings high enough to jump from.
However, core sampling of the Greenland ice soon revealed this happens occasionally, last time maybe 150 years ago at a time when nobody claims human beings were causing climate change.
Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn. Cry the people desparately wanting the ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise and all the coastal cities of the world to drown.
Ohboyohboyohboy! Applaud the folks with the business models requiring a continuation of the kinds of behaviors the other folks think cause man made climate change.
Changing horses in mid-stream isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s necessary. Fact is, whether climate change is happening, is man made, is going to result in a disaster is just too large an object of comprehension to convincingly argue. Suggesting academians and school kids can do anything to influence it one way or another is too patently absurd to convince anyone besides a grant review committee from the US Department of Environment.
Besides, there’s Genetic Engineered corn out there growing hair inside the mouths of test hamsters. The same corn those school kids and academians are having for lunch. http://aaemonline.org/gmopost.html
There’s a middling potential for glow-in-the-dark halibut, salmon and whales swimming up out of the north Pacific with butcher knives clinched in their teeth doing a mutant invasion of Alaska to California coastlines. Time will argue a lot more convincingly and rapidly whether those happen, and if they do they’ll render questions about man made climate change more-or-less moot.
As for business models, there’s a lot of new potential for speculation and investment in new inventions. An inside-the-mouth electric shaver, for instance, might represent the wave of the future. Live flashlights made from mullets caught off the Oregon coast, not requiring batteries. No need to stamp them, MADE IN JAPAN. That will be obvious enough.
[Insert, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, “It’s time to look on the bright side of things,” and other appropriate quotes here.]
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Creative Writing, Current Issues, Education, Government, Grants, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Survival
Tagged animals, climate change, culture, economy, Education, environment, global warming, Human Behavior, humor, ice melt, Life, lifestyle, Nature, politics, psychology, science, society, sociology
Hi readers. Grocery stores always make my mouth water, but I actually got started thinking about calamari at the tire store. Wandered over to the Chici Pizza Buffet, Senior Special $5, while I waited for them to mount and balance my new tire. Thought an uncomfortable amount of pizza might rid my mind of calamari.
Went to the AutoZone for brake pads, found a pair for $10 and change, mind still in orbit around calamari. Bent down for a look under the car to check out the oil leak as a precaution. Going up the hill the lower clearance because of the donut sized spare caused a rock to puncture the oil pan, so I was keeping an eye on it.
That oil pan leak’s going to be a blessing until I can lift the car and whittle a wooden plug to stick in the hole. Keeps me from having to change the oil. I’ll just add oil, top it off as it goes down. Voila. Automatic oil change constant.
Anyway, went to the HEB and bought a few essentials, actually went by the fish department to have a look at the calamari, thinking actually seeing it might help rid my mind of it. But it didn’t.
Meanwhile, I was over on the isle for bread and tortillas and a guy with a hand-carry basket walked up pretending he didn’t know his wife as she studied a shelf, took a big chuck roast out of his hand carry basket and stuck it in her backpack. Looked me right in the eye. Snake eyes.
His wife, kid in her shopping cart, edged to get around me.
“Hey man! Let me show you something! You like to barbeque?”
He gave me a what-the-hell look while I reached inside her backpack and took out the roast. “See this crap?” I held the roast out to him. “Shoplifting meat is a felony in Texas. They’ll barbeque her if they catch her.”
“Asshole!” He mumbled and turned back toward the meat section.
“You going to stick around and take care of the kid, hotshot?” I stayed on his heels. “While she’s doing time you going to change the diapers?”
He ignored me, kept walking.
Screw it.
I cashed out and headed home. Still thinking about calamari. Calamari over saffron rice. When I arrived I checked the freezer, but there wasn’t any calamari in there. Must have used the last of it sometime before Y2K. And I’ve been trying to cut down on my saffron intake. Since around Y2K, as I recall. Coincidence Coordinator thing.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Police, Politics, Relationships, Senior Citizens
Tagged culture, economy, Human Behavior, humor, lifestyle, Police, psychology, shoplifting, society, sociology, theft
Hi Readers. I just got back from the County Seat in Junction, Texas. Nice little Texas town and I managed to get the title on the $400 stolen car transferred into my name successfully.
But it was a strange experience, not only because it was raining. The whole town’s festooned with variations on the US flag and signs declaring they’ll never forget.
As nearly as I can figure, they must be celebrating the Cease Fire for the Korean War, July 27, 1953, and declaring the US ain’t ever going to bring our troops home from Korea.
Maybe the only town in the US still remembers that Cease Fire, celebrates it, and is overjoyed 25,000 US troops are still over there keeping the commies from taking over South Korea if they could.
Junction, Texas. Time Warpville, USA
Old Jules
Posted in 1950's, America, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas
Tagged country life, culture, Education, Events, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, politics, psychology, society, sociology
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
Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Politics
Tagged economy, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, poems, poetry, politics, psychology, society, sociology
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
Posted in 2012, Adventure, Communication, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Parents
Tagged affluence, careers, culture, economy, Education, environment, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, limerick, philosophy, professions, psychology, society, sociology, value, wisdom, worth, writing
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.
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:
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
Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas
Tagged business, community, economic incentives, economics, economy, environment, Human Behavior, humor, industry, jobs, Life, lifestyle, manufacturing, minimum wage, national, politicians, politics, psychology, society, sociology, tax structure
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
Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation
Tagged culture, environment, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, miscellaneous, politics, psychology, Relationships, science, society, sociology, technology
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I was walking around in the Dollar Tree Store [Everything’s a dollar or less] when the manager came on the intercom:
“Dollar Tree shoppers! Don’t forget to pick up an item of school supplies for military dependents starting school in the fall. Pencils, pens, tablets, erasers, any item related to school. Dollar Tree will make sure it reaches the dependents of active military personnel.”
My hand stopped midway to a jar of Kosher dills. “Eh? My hearing’s really going to hell. For a minute I thought she said something about donating school supplies to military kids. Sheeze!”
But when she finished ringing up my purchases the cashier smiled and met my eye. “Would you like to buy some pencils or a tablet for military dependents starting school?”
I went snake-eyes. “You think I’m stupid for shopping here, don’t you?” I slid my hat back exposing my forehead. “Do I have a sign saying STUPUD tattooed up there?”
She tried to say something but I butted in. “Got a program so’s I can buy schools supplies for kids of crack whores? Kids of people in prison? Likely they really need it.”
The lady blushed. “They make us ask. I didn’t do it.”
“Here!” I pulled a dollar bag of flour out of one of the sacks. “Give them that if you can find one who knows how to cook something. Otherwise give them shopping carts and point them to your dumpster.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No problem. I give food to beggars. Not something they can sell or trade for drugs and whiskey.”
Soooo. Evidently the military folks aren’t even giving their families money for school supplies these days. Shouldn’t be long before their kids are darting out of alleyways surrounding people waiting at bus stops or traffic lights. “You wanta buy watch? Ring? Skivvy pictures?
Learned it from mom and dad who learned it overseas. Nice scam.
Back when they had the draft, conscripting people for $100 per month, wives and kids moving in with relatives, nobody thought of that one. Now they’re all volunteers for undeclared presidential wars, helping bankrupt the federal budget with their salaries and benefits, they’re panhandling. Trying to mooch off hamburger flippers and other minimum-wage-earners scrimping by shopping at Dollar Tree.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Government, Military, US Army
Tagged beggars, charity, culture, Dollar Tree stores, economy, Education, financial assistance, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, military, pan handling, politics, school supplies, society, sociology, us airforce, US Army, us marine corps, us navy, Welfare
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
So Far From Heaven 