The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein circa 1966

Posted on July 27, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Just when you think the early work of RAH is bogging itself down in frozen-in-time anachronisms he drops a mickey into your martini.  Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one such.

Suddenly he’s taking a close look at political revolutions, at the institutions of marriage, at the relationships between men and women [and why they become what they become], why revolutions don’t work usually, and how to prevent them from becoming what revolutions invariably become.  He throws in a quickie about how you can always, always come out ahead betting the horses.  And an imaginary penal colony on the moon, several generations later when the prisoners are only a tiny percentage of a population composed mainly of the descendants of prisoners.

A society where males outnumber females 10 to 1, where the earth is on the brink of starvation and depends heavily on the labors of the Luna population for wheat production, crops catapulted to the earth surface to land in the Indian Ocean.  Depleting inevitably the water-ice reservoirs on the moon with no attempt to replace, even pay for the labors of folks who physically will never be able to ‘return’ to earth.

This was a great read in 1966, the first time I read it.  2013 I read it again, and aside from pickypickypicky details, it’s still a great read. 

Sheeze, catapults on the moon hurling rocks down the gravity well turning out the equivalents of H-bomb explosions after the earth governments dig in their heels and bomb moon colonies as an alternative to replacing the water required to grow the wheat.  A computer gone intelligent.  Marriages lasting 150 years through dozens of multiple-husbands and wives, always being replaced when one dies. 

I’d rank it one hell of a lot better than Stranger in a Strange Land.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 2013, Book Reviews, Books, Government, Human Behavior, Police, Politics

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Fad science and self-made a monkeyof-ism

Posted on July 27, 2013 by | 12 comments

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

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Posted in 1970's, 2013, America, Current Issues, Education, Government, Grants, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Science, Survival

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The underlying fundamental truths

Posted on July 27, 2013 by | 7 comments

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

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Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Current Issues, Education, Flying, Government, Nature, Police, Politics, Science, Spirituality, Transportation

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Climate Change – A matter of perspective

Posted on July 26, 2013 by | 15 comments

Morning to you, readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Now that the planet’s finally recovering from that last ice age, all the glaciers and permafrost finally melting, maybe things can get back to normal, the way things used to be in the good old days.  All that ice covering things up has been one hell of an inconvenience.

We’re lucky to live now instead of a while back when the Great Lakes were covered by half-mile of ice.  But things are getting better, just as they’ve been getting better all along as the ice receded.  Imagine how tough it would have been for all those automotive manufacturers to turn out cars if Detroit had been under half-mile of ice.  And those super-highways?  Heck, how do you build an Interstate on top of melting ice?  Same with all sorts of other things we spent the past few centuries doing.

Sure, things are going to change when things get back to normal.  And nobody can guess what those changes are going to be, how a normal climate’s going to manifest itself.  Nobody who lived during normal times was writing anything much down about the situation at the time. 

But the good news is that the planet goes a longish while between ice ages usually.  So once things are back to normal folks living then will have all kinds of time to get used to it.  Besides, they’ll be busy as hell working to pay off the debts the people living today are promising they’ll pay.  Maybe they’ll find some new ways of doing it in places where the ground’s covered with ice.

Running around screaming and setting our hair on fire isn’t going to keep this planet from doing what it’s going to do.  Those glaciers are going to keep receding.  No stopping it.

And there aren’t any laws, any human behaviors anyone’s going to change to keep it from doing it.  Any more than humans before this ice age came along could have done anything to keep it from happening.

Might as well relax and enjoy it.  The forward thinkers will find ways to make money from it, get rich off it one way or another.  The stainless steel agers will find ways to exploit whatever’s been hidden under all that ice.

Cultures, religions and civilizations will rise and fall, same as they always have.  Everyone will think it’s perfectly normal.

Nothing to get excited about.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Human Behavior, Science, Survival

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At least nobody calls us the Great Satan

Posted on July 25, 2013 by | 16 comments

Hi readers.

We followers and practitioners of the older, more traditional, more mature and simpler stone and copper age religions are frequently scorned and ridiculed by followers of the younger bronze and iron age religions.  But I’ve never known it to go further than that.  Who ever heard of anyone getting burned at the stake for praying the sun up, or praying the moon up?

Fact is, once the later religions got going well they were too busy killing one another off to bother with anything as simple and harmless as sun worship.  They had important matters of nuance, doctrine, hair-trigger ‘kill-them-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out’ heresies.

Iron age Christians frequently refer to Catholics, for instance, as ‘the Great Satan’.  Iron age Muslims, similarly often refer to Christians as the Great Satan.  Nobody’s ever been called the Great Satan for praying up the sun in the morning and down at night.

Bronze age Hebrews, meanwhile, were slaughtered and dispersed from the Middle East by bronze age Romans following a hybridized bronze age religion.  After which the bronze age Hebrews were accused of killing Christ and treated as criminals and worse throughout Europe and Russia for 2000 years.

Nobody ever accused anyone who prays the sun up in the morning and down at night of killing Jesus.  Nobody ever ran sun worshipers out of any country I can think of.

Fact is, though, someone should do something about the damned moon worshipers.  Those people really piss me off.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, Human Behavior, Nature, Science

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The right tool for the right job

Posted on July 25, 2013 by | 11 comments

Hi readers.

If the Kennedy brothers had owned a floor jack and a half-inch drive impact tool when they attempted to get Vice President Lyndon Johnson assassinated every president then-until-now would have been named Kennedy and the Vietnam War would still be raging.

Okay, those inflated rear tires are on the ground, though somewhat wokkyjawed.  I’m having to skid the wheels sideways into place tightening the lugbolts with a cheater bar.  Couldn’t get the truck quite high enough to leave any room for doubt between them and the ground, so I’m punting.  Lots of good friction but nothing a cheater bar can’t handle.

But at least the whole shebang can’t come down on the brake drum if the jacks collapse. [Parenthetically, two each two-ton hydraulic jacks can be used to lift a 5 ton RV if everything else goes right and  you are dumber than cluckshit enough to try it.]

Still breathing too hard to go back out to finish it off yet.  Got to get the lugs tightened the rest of the way, then get those two jacks lowered and out from underneath.  Then put the blowout on the spare tire rack and watch these black spots in front of my eyes to see if they’re just floaters, or whether I died a little while ago but haven’t achieved Nirvana.

Lessons learned:  A man needs a 3 ton floor jack and a half-inch drive impact tool before he tries anything fancy.  If there are any Kennedys left alive I’m betting they already own some in case there’s another round of dynastic opportunity.  In fact, I’ll bet there’s a walk-in safe in the basement of the White House filled with floor jacks and impact tools.  In fact, I’ll bet somewhere there’s a National Defense Stockpile of floor jacks and impact tools controlled by Homeland Security.

Which is to say, sometime in the next year-or-three Hydrox, Niaid, Tabby and my humble ownself are gonna stick up a Harbor Freight wearing Richard Nixon masks and carrying 3/8 inch cordless drills.  Check out the SPECIALS flyers, then drag us a floor jack and impact tool out the front door at drillpoint.

Watch the evening news.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Transportation, Trucks

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The conspiracy theory of mechanical advantage

Posted on July 25, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi readers. 

I’m here to breathlessly tell you Paul Revere-like about a matter you might need to be aware of if you’re ever the target of God’s punishment.  Physicists, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, unreconstructed NAZIs, Zion Elders and other conspirators will try to convince you mechanical advantage is mere physics.  They lie.  It’s done to lure you into a false sense of uncertainty.

Mechanical advantage isn’t about moment, arm, fulcrums and all that other crap they try to fill your head with when you’re vulnerably youthful and open to big headedness.  Mechanical advantage is about heavy breathing, taking a lot of breaks and not giving yourself a damned coronary.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t rock a 5000 pound RV sitting on the ground with the wheels blocked and the emergency brake on, rock that mama with a long-enough cheater on a lug-bar.  You can practically roll the SOB over the blocks.

But also don’t be gullible enough to believe you can’t eventually break the lug nuts crack  CRACK CRACK.  Eventually far enough so’s you can turn them with a T Bar.  No matter what those people with their fancy impact tools thought when they put those tires on.

It ain’t about mechanical advantage, though.  It’s about taking a lot of breathers, not getting into any heart-stopping hurries.  It’s also about getting them loose enough so’s when that 5000 pounds is poised atop a 2-ton hydraulic jack with a 1-inch diameter knurled coin atop it, you don’t tip it over when you loosen the nuts the rest of the way.

Which is the next step in this conspiracy theory.  During that step I recommend the mantra, “Ahtay Malkuth Vegeverah Vegedula Layohhlum!”  [Four-two breathing if you can manage it]

Being punished by God can be a growth experience if a person holds his mouth right and he’s careful which God he’s going to allow to do the punishing. 

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, Education, Science, Social Security, Spirituality

Old Sol’s sick of pointee-headed value judgements

Posted on July 25, 2013 by | 7 comments

The cats and I were out admiring the pre-dawn moon, gearing up to pray Old Sol up, when he confided some matters he didn’t wish to bring up with the full force of His wrath. 

http://spaceweather.com/

UNDERWHELMING: Solar Cycle 24 is shaping up to be the weakest solar cycle in more than 50 years. In 2009, a panel of forecasters led by NOAA and NASA predicted a below-average peak. Now that Solar Max has arrived, however, it is even weaker than they expected. Look inside the yellow circle to see the shortfall:

It may be premature to declare Solar Cycle 24 underwhelming. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center thinks Solar Cycle 24 is double peaked–and the second peak is yet to come. Also, weak solar cycles have been known to produce very strong flares. The strongest solar storm in recorded history, the Carrington Event of 1859, occurred during a relatively weak solar cycle like this one.

Old Sol:  What is with you people?  I’ve got more things going on in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy.

Me, Hydrox, Niaid and Tabby, chanting:  Think nothing of it yah-de-dah.  Just come on up over the horizon.  Yah-de-dah.

Old Sol:  Who the hell do you think you are saying it’s a lousy solar cycle.  I’ve got my good mornings and my bad mornings. 

Me, Hydrox, Niaid and Tabby, chanting:  Think nothing of it yah-de-dah.  Just come on up over the horizon.  Yah-de-dah.

I’m keeping this in summary form because the WP text editor’s being controlled by the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the International Communist Conspiracy, the Mossad and the American Association of Astrophysicists.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013

Lefty loosee, rightee tightee

Posted on July 24, 2013 by | 10 comments

For all the good it does.

 

That Chinese steel T-Bar doesn’t have the strength to take a cheater.  I should have bought that half-inch drive electric impact wrench at the Midland Harbor Freight when I had the chance, but was too smart and miserly to do it.

I planned to upload some pics of the blessings of trying to get the RV up off the ground high enough to change the tire, and why it ain’t worth doing because of a Chinese steel T-Bar lug wrench.

I think I’m going to have to try to drive this booger to town with a disintegrating tire on the inside rear and cross my fingers that I don’t blow another one, or that this one doesn’t come apart in a way to keep me off the road half-way between here and there.

Seems I’ve managed to piss off someone who has the knowledge and wherewithall to deactivate the functions of the WP text editor.  For now, maybe from now own, WP text editor won’t activate the buttons to allow me to upload image files nor post tags on the blog entries.

Ah well.  My old buddy Rich went through something of this sort a while back, he tells me, when he got crosswise with the same folks I evidently angered with my views on the Bible and a particular modern secular nation.

Life goes on.  They haven’t dragged out the really heavy artillery for me yet, the way they did him.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank – sculpting post-1959 culture

Posted on July 24, 2013 by | 4 comments

Before Alas Babylon hit the bookstores and was made a movie the US population hadn’t yet done any heavy thinking about the implications of Sputnik 1 and hydrogen bomb arsenals capable of being delivered to the US heartland.  Strategic Air Command was centered in Omaha, NE, and B47 bombers filled the skies.  Civil Defense was mostly the local mortuary because they owned the ambulances.  Complacency with having been victors of WWII, affluence, abundance and confidence in the future were the rule of the day.

Then along came Alas Babylon.   The story of a small piece of Florida spared the bombs and fallout from an attack by the USSR and a prolonged nuclear war.   Because it was early in the day the post-nuclear-holocaust genre hadn’t yet decided everyone had to die or turn into mutant barbarians.

The story was subdued enough to be believed.  And Americans believed it.  Beefed up Civil Defense, began the individual preparedness planning that would be required if they were to survive.

The first 20 pages of Alas Babylon describes the days leading to the war, all the usual suspects you’d hear tonight if you watched the evening news, minus the USSR.  A buildup of tensions, a US Navy fighter-bomber pilot mistakenly releases a bomb over a port in Syria destroying an ammunition train.  Secondary explosions and the beginning of mutual destruction for the US and USSR.

The book is a microscope look at the minds of the US citizenry as they existed in 1959, before ICBMs, before the moon launch, before the oceans were filled with attack and missile launching submarines.  Martin Luther King was still in the future, along with the Vietnam War, race riots in US cities, Kennedy assassinations. automobile seat belts, gas mileage and foreign cars.  Women were there to be protected, first into the lifeboats of whatever safety could be constructed during and after a nuclear war.

Alas Babylon is a good read, a great study in sociology and a particular slice of history frozen in time. 

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 1950's, 2013, America, Book Reviews, Books, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Human Behavior, Movies, Survival