Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I trekked up to Gale’s yesterday for a while to talk wind and see whether his face had gotten over the baboon butt similarity it had the previous week. He had a good photo of it during the worst stage I begged him to allow me to post for you, but his refusal didn’t appear to leave it open for discussion.
But he told me about a project I’m feeling uppidy about working on during the year. This place has been overgrazed, probably since the invention of barbed wire, and it shows. I’ve thought from the time I arrived here I’d like to do some cheap but time consuming erosion control, but it never had a priority.
Seems to keep his agricultural tax exemption on the land, though, Gale could go back to having three cows fighting over every blade of grass in the traditional Texas fashion, or he could switch to wildlife management. He had a lady from Texas Parks and Wildlife out here going over the place with him the other day helping devise a plan to submit to the County.
Assuming it gets accepted, I’m figuring something I learned in one of my professions, at least, will finally get put to some worthy use. Between now and my departure from here I’ll have rock and brush dams collecting water and soil into every channel on the place.
I truly love erosion control, but it had slipped my mind how much. I hate to admit the urge to dance naked in the meadow celebrating.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
A nice little coronal mass ejection hit the earth magnetic field last night. I might have heard it hit the roof, but it was probably just a big tree limb, or one of the sheet-metal roof panels blowing off. The high wind during the night had more going on around here than I could keep track of and I decided to wait for daybreak to go out and make sense of it.
CME IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field on March 7th at approximately 0400 UT. The impact was not a strong one, but it could stir up polar geomagnetic storms anyway
I let my curiosity carry away my good sense just now and went out there with a flashlight. Turns out it was nothing amiss. Just a big tree limb. No big chunks of shattered magnetism lying around messing up my waning-anyway-and-somewhat-neglected magnetic field experiments. Most of that’s located out east of the cabin where there are no trees to fall on it, but one piece of it’s strung out across the meadow. I was needing to guy up the post over there and hadn’t. That might be on the ground.
But it’s time I was winding down on all that anyway because I’m figuring it’s part of what I won’t be following through.
Lots of noise from the Rooster Containment Center, though, when I went out. They’re probably remembering and regretting what a nuisance they made of themselves last night when I was trying to get them and the Commie Americauna penned up before dark.
I’m thinking today might be a busy one. That wind was doing a lot of bragging in the dark. But you can’t tell about winds, that way. They’ll stomp around, boast, make little things sound big and big things sound bigger, then you find it was all just a lot of bluster.
Maybe more later if there’s anything worth mentioning.
The bottom oven-mitten is your brain if you’re not on drugs. The top oven mitten is your brain if you are on drugs.
A cheap antibiotic normally prescribed to teenagers for acne is to be tested as a treatment to alleviate the symptoms of psychosis in patients with schizophrenia, in a trial that could advance scientific understanding of the causes of mental illness.
Scientists believe that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses including depression and Alzheimer’s disease may result from inflammatory processes in the brain. Minocycline has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects which they believe could account for the positive findings.
The first account of minocycline’s effects appeared in 2007 when a 23-year-old Japanese man was admitted to hospital suffering from persecutory delusions and paranoid ideas. He had no previous psychiatric history but became agitated and suffered auditory hallucinations, anxiety and insomnia.
Blood tests and brain scans showed no abnormality and he was started on the powerful anti-psychotic drug halperidol. The treatment had no effect and he was still suffering from psychotic symptoms a week later when he developed severe pneumonia.
He was prescribed minocycline to treat the pneumonia and within two weeks the infection was cleared and the psychosis resolved. Minocycline was stopped and his psychiatric symptoms worsened. Treatment with the drug was resumed and within three days he was better again. Halperidol was reduced but he remained on minocycline. Two years after his psychotic episode, he was still well.
The article describes at length how and where the tests on patients are going on all over the world.
But Mad Scientists, meanwhile, have another alternative. If you’ve been noticing you are crazy, you can order some of the stuff online from India. A lot cheaper than if a Medico wrote it down on a slip and you trucked to a drugstore for a bottle. And do your own scientific testing.
Or you could just make up some colloidal silver and take an eyedropper-full of it every day. Which is how I keep me and the cats and chickens free of insanity.
Japanese scientists with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology claimed this week that they have developed a novel new weapon by combining two specialized technologies in such a way that they are now capable of rendering someone unable to speak.
While it’s not technically a weapon, their “portable speech-jamming gun” could certainly be used as one, especially against political leaders or others who speak to large audiences for a living.
Combining a directional microphone and a directional speaker, the “Speechjammer” records and quickly plays back whatever words someone is uttering, making it very difficult for the speaker to focus on what words come next. The effect is called “artificial stuttering.”
First off, The Invader Cat’s not becoming a fixture around here. It’s just hanging around getting meals and paying the fare by being bullied by chickens and the other cats. It has a home somewhere. I’m certain of it because sometimes it vanishes for a couple of days.
But it’s not a fixture and it’s not becoming a fixture. Even though when I was putting the piece of the can of feed I’d saved for it down last night, it came within a couple of feet of me scratching it behind the ears.
Secondly, if you’re among those trying to figure out what’s not happening by tracking Ganymede, you’re a day late and a dollar short. Ganymede looks great at first, but the further you hone things down the more you’ll conclude something’s missing. I’d suggest doing some dizzying calculations correlating Ganymede positions with with the position of Mercury. Which, if you run through enough ways of measuring where they are, will give you a lot clearer view of what’s not happening.
Thirdly, I worked a lot on the brush dams in the ruts on the road coming down here yesterday in hopes of further rainfall runoff forcing the hill to give up more of the dirt it’s been bringing down from above. Over the years it’s gradually been filling the worst blow-out-a-tire, high-centering ruts. Now if we can keep getting a few of these male rains I think this will finish it off.
Which is to say, spectacular erosion won’t be happening and past erosion will have reversed itself somewhat.
Lastly, despite your hardheadedness on the issue if you’ve got any, cold weather isn’t happening.
If you’re going to be a part of what’s happening you’re going to have to switch from felt to straw. If you try to hang on to your outdated good-times idea about felt you’re going to have sweat running down around your eyelids and getting into your ears next time you go to town. And you won’t be happening.
Just saying.
Old Jules
Edit 8:37 am: I neglected to mention earlier while talking about Mercury and Ganymede that Saturn seems to be happening a little bit. Even though it’s way to hell and gone off the other side of things where you’d expect it to have to be.
A legendary man in the Quemado/Reserve area nicknamed ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo had a good working claim down near Queen’s Head in the Gallos near Apache Creek in the 1940s through the 1960s. Maybe that’s where he came across a skeleton, and probably just figured he might as well take it home, so he put it in his truck.
Driving up those winding mountain roads he lost control of the truck and rolled it. Squirrelly was thrown clear and the truck caught fire. He must have been out of his head, maybe with a concussion, because he evidently wandered into the mountains in a daze.
The police arrived and found the burned out truck with a skeleton inside and assumed because the truck belonged to him the remains were Squirrelly’s. He was pronounced dead, an expensive funeral held, and he was buried.
Twelve days later Squirrelly wandered out of the woods several miles away, which was a source of, first joy and awe, then suspicion. Initially it was thought he’d killed the person the skeleton belonged to. Then the lawsuits began, the Armijo family and the Funeral home arguing heatedly about who owed money to whom for burying some anonymous skeleton.
The story is so well-known it was used in a book about forensic pathology in New Mexico during the 1990s, the forensic pathologist explaining such a thing could never happen these more enlightened times. Journey in Forensic Anthropology, Stanley Rhine, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998. Author Rhine elected to change Squirrelly’s surname to Aramando to avoid any sort of civil action. The Armijo family’s been herding sheep in that country since the time there was nobody out there but them and Mimbres Apaches. A lot of them are still there.
“A Premature Funeral
“Bones and Fire “On June 4, 1959, Forest Service lookouts reported smoke rising from what was assumed to be a small forest fire just east of the Arizona state line, among the 8,000-feet peaks of the San Francisco Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. A firefighting crew dispatched to the scene discovered no forest fire, but an automobile burning furiously on the side of a gravel forest road. Dousing the flames, they found a mass of burned flesh, a skull, some other bones, and some teeth resting inside the burned-out hulk.
“The car was found to belong to a Mr. Armando, well known in the lightly populated region. His fiery demise prompted the organization of a six-person coroner’s inquest in Catron County. According to former Catron County Sheriff and now Washoe County ( Nevada) Coroner Vernon McCarty, the “six responsible citizens” required by 1950s New Mexico law were most easily found by the justices of the peace at a local bar.
“McCarty observed that an insufficiency of able-bodied citizens could be remedied either by visiting several such spots or by prolonging the official quest at one of them for as long as it took to empanel the necessary six people.
“The resulting coroner’s jury in this case was made up of ranchers, Forest Service firefighters, two bartenders, and a service station attendant. It concluded that the remains were “badly burned and charred beyond positive identification,” according to the Albuquerque Journal for June 17, 1960. Nonetheless, an identification was made by Armando’s two brothers-in-law and the district attorney, apparently functioning in his multiple roles of death investigator and skeletal “expert.” That it was Armando was attested to the by the fact that the human skull was accompanied by some impressively large upper incisors. These prominent choppers had . . .”
Probably Squirrelly never paused to wonder about any moral or ethical issues when he put that skeleton into his truck. He just did it absent-mindedly the way any of us might. Probably somewhat as Mel did on Gobblers Knob:
I suppose the Squirrelly story came to mind because it’s a synopsis of the possibilities carried to the ultimate extreme, accompanied by the fact I recently had an email from his great-nephew wanting to ask some questions about my mention of his Queenshead claim in my lost gold mine book.
Old Jules, if someone had a mirror from 40+ years ago, could something be gathered from its backing?
Old Jules replies: The pastametric pressure of all that stored history would almost certainly explode backward opening a hole into a parallel universe carrying with it the identities and souls of everyone who ever looked into the mirror. Read more …..
Good morning readers. Thanks for stopping by for a read this morning.
Those of you who haven’t been getting enough magnetism in your areas will be glad to know we’ll be having a nice little geomagnetic storm today.
CME TARGETS EARTH, MARS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the sun on Feb. 24th appears set to hit both Earth and Mars. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 1330 UT, followed by Mars two days later.
The CME was hurled into space by a filament of magnetism, which rose up from the sun’s northestern limb and erupted on Feb. 24th: SDO movie. Although much of the cloud headed north, out of the plane of the planets, the cloud’s lower edge will dip down low enough to intersect Earth, Curiosity, and Mars.
It couldn’t have come at a better time here. The ranchers have been complaining something awful about the magnetic drought.
Meanwhile, it’s mostly business as usual here. When I went out onto the porch to say my hellos to the felines it was all present and accounted for except the invader cat. It was out there last night, but I figure it’s commuting to whatever place it has real people somewhere, keeping them on edge, then hurrying back here where things are really happening. But that leaves it open to the possibility of missing something both places.
I’m thinking it will carry on this game as long as it thinks it can get by with it at both ends.
Those of you who believe radio waves are messing with your heads will be gratified to know there’s a place in the US where you can get away from it.
There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it’s hardly anything new — as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick — a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn’t stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent “every other week or so” to inquire about a place in the zone.
For those who don’t want to migrate to West Virginia, however, experts suggest a person might just hit the switch at the power pole and see whether it results in any improvement.
One body of opinion leans to the thought that radio waves have a lot more influence on the human mind when they’re allowed to enter an antenna, swoop down through some receiver to an amplifier, then out to a speaker. Then back through the air where they encounter a human ear.
Making sure those radio waves don’t get passage through and convert themselves to something the human mind can interpret into pictures and words, those experts say, interrupts the damage they can do, or at least reduces it.
Almost no one here is qualified to tell you how not to blow yourself up, but one of our favorite members and one of the Group’s founders, Art Corbitt, would rail about ammonia in lraches being explosive. Keyword fulminate.
Cyanide tailings are the wirst offenders, so one really has to process that out before extraction.
Geology degrees I am told could have morr chemistry and mechanical engineering, so this may be normal for the industry.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Socorro, New Mexico, isn’t long on good restaurants. But during the several years I lived there, I had a favorite restaurant, and a favorite menu item. The place was owned and operated by an elderly Chinese man with whom I was on friendly, bantering terms.
This lasted until the discovery that MSG in food causes my blood pressure to skyrocket. A few times per week I’d sit myself down, they’d bring the usual, and a couple of hours later my pulse would be visible almost anywhere a blood vessel showed. This was accompanied by a pounding in my head, maybe audible, maybe only seemingly so.
After I figured out the connection between my favorite food item and the blood pressure problem I attempted to discuss it with the owner, though we had a language barrier. The result was an outburst of anger and indignation. I didn’t know yet the MSG was the cause. Just that particular menu item.
I solved the problem by eating elsewhere, but eventually learned that Chinese restaurants, particularly, lean heavily on adding MSG to their foods, and that a surprisingly large number of people have reactions to it similar to mine.
I also began watching the labels on food I bought to prepare at home. What I discovered was that a person sensitive to MSG had best carry a magnifying glass in his pocket and read those labels carefully. Almost everything a person might buy in a can is loaded with it, but especially soups and soup-bases. If a label slips past and gets inside the vehicle it notifies the owner by the rods knocking.
But I was going to say, I love oriental food, and I was in town yesterday, so I clenched my teeth and decided it was a day for risk-taking. There’s an Oriental buffet I’d never tried, so I pulled in. I tried asking whether they had MSG in their food, but it was clear she didn’t understand me. So I went root hog or die.
The food was mediocre, but I didn’t die. I took a couple of extra blood pressure pills when the pounding in my head started, and by the time I got home my blood pressure was so low I didn’t have any business being alive.
I found myself wondering why the FDA cops who faint and revive themselves over one-in-a-billion risks to human health otherwise haven’t jumped on this like ugly on a monkey.
I just got to say I love that word, disambiguating.
Anyway, here’s Old Sol today.
And here he is October 23, 20o5.
Planetary positioning today
Planetary positions October 23, 2005, with particular emphasis on Saturn, Uranus and Earth/Mars positions.
Please don’t in any way interprete this to mean I believe you’re interested, or that I’m offering any sort of theory, opinion, statement or hypothesis. I’m just posting some images of Old Sol’s face and the concurrent locations of celestial bodies relative to one another.
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/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
