Category Archives: Big Thoughts

Hoofbeats

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The End is nigh. The hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen have sounded. I am about to agree with Gary Trudeau. A couple-three years ago, his Doonesbury™ strip introduced Dr. Nathan Null, the Situational Science Adviser™. Here’s an excerpt from that strip:

Young Republican College Kid: “Drat! These pesky scientific facts won’t line up behind my beliefs!”
Situational Science Adviser: “Then Challenge them, Stewie!”
—–
SSA: “Situational Science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by the facts!”
—–
SSA: “That’s why I always teach the controversy like the Evolution Controversy or the Global Warming controversy …
—–
YRCC: “You’re right, Situational Scienceman–I’ll never trust science again! “It’s just too controversial!”
SSA: “Stewie gets it now, folks! Do you?”

Trudeau likes to pound the Bush administration (ya think) but there is a similar effort going on the Far Green camps to use science to forestall and obfuscate rather than simply to report.

Once upon a time I thought this wasn’t a wholesale attempt to discredit science, merely a concerted effort to ramp up tiny observations into generalized Truths to serve their agenda. After all, we are told the Far Right agenda tries to use common folk as cannon or environmental fodder so, situationally, the Far Green agenda must try to shut down one business segment after another.

That worries me, but not as much as what I now see as the wholesale drive to gain power over every facet of your life and mine. How? By discrediting science whenever it appears in public. It has been going on for years.

Big Tobacco tried mightily to discredit Dr. Koop as a poopyhead.

Natural Life Magazine tried mightily to discredit childhood vaccinations.

The Far Right tried mightily to discredit Evolution for 80 years.

Trudeau’s Situational Science Adviser pushed the pesticides controversy, the coal slurry controversy, the Everglades controversy, the acid rain controversy, the mercury controversy, and more.

I know very little about mercury other than its toxicity and ubiquity. And its distance from the Sun. I did read that if you lose a single mercury filling in a ten-acre pond, the EPA would have to ban all fishing, swimming, bathing, and boating in that pond. Makes you wonder why we still have “silver” fillings–or why Al Gore pushes mercury-laden fluorescent light bulbs–innt.

Now, of course, everything from the unnaturally high snowfall in the winter of 2007-08 to the unnatural temperature rise of the Atlantic Ocean is caused by Global Warming, and all a result of Carbon Dioxide.

Heh.

Anybody want to guess the agenda here?

It’s almost the same as mine.

I want you to read this, decide I am brilliant, and do what I tell you is right.

The Far Green wants you decide they are brilliant and do what they tell you is right. But they want more. The Far Green wants to force you and you and you to do what they tell you is right And they are developing the tools to enforce their whims.

One of my correspondents related a story from the historical times after the Tet Offensive when gasoline cost 40 cents per gallon. His friend, a Quaker, had received Conscientious Objector status and was assigned to a group called “Environment!” After working there several months, he said “These guys don’t care a bit about the environment. This is all about power… We, the great and stupid unwashed, needed to be doing what the folks at “Environment!” said we should be doing.”

That was more than 35 years ago.

I think the group Environment! has joined the Extinct Species list but other Far Green groups are growing stronger.

Today their tools include taxes, criminal penalties, and news attacks on science.

Our Quaker friend said then that “if the environmental movement could define Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant, they would have total control.”

OK, everybody inhale … and hold.

Next up will be the ban on that other dangerous chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide.

Your Carbon Footprint
NASA and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the earth has entered a natural cooling phase that will last decades.
OTOH, Al and Tipper Gore’s Tennessee home uses about the same amount of electricity as a dozen or more average American homes or at least 156 Swahili villages. The Gore’s Nashville residence is just four times the size of those average American homes and the Gore’s consumption has jumped yet another 10% since their “energy-efficient” home renovations. Do as I say, not as I do, eh Al?

Memorial Day

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country.

Although the recognized birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York, many Vermont Towns including North Puffin marked the end of the Civil War with a day and ceremonies to decorate the graves of the fallen soldiers. Today, in addition to parades and remembrances, Vermont offers Memorial Day Weekend Specials (3 nights and Sunday brunch for just $150 for two people) and an Open Studio Weekend with artists marking the beginning of summer. Other areas really do treat Memorial Day as the first day of summer. The Indy 500 today has run on Memorial Day weekend since 1911.

Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off, kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women and would then turn around and kill their own. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did and die they will.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words. And you get to read them.

Press 1 for Spanglish

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I paid $3 to wash my truck in a $2.50 carwash over the weekend. That irritated me because I needed an extra few minutes to finish rinsing the thing and the Car Wash sign said “Add quarters for extra time.”

Of course, when I added the two extra quarters for extra time, it simply swallowed them and blinked at me.

Where are the illegal aliens when you need them? I would gladly pay $3 to some illegals to wash my truck. I went searching for some and got 3,170,000 hits in Google alone. Outraged Patriots leads that list.

Thirteen motel owners in Mesa, Arizona, were sentenced last week for catering to human smugglers and conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens. UPI reported that a US task force raided several Latino commercial establishments and arrested 49 people alleged to be illegal aliens who worked for a security company.

Huh. My great-x8-grandfather, Richard Barnard (ber-NARD), was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, and sailed for the New World about 1642. Richard accompanied William Penn to the fertile southeastern counties of Pennsylvania (1). I guess that means that to the Lenni Lenape, my great x 8 grandfather was an illegal alien. Good thing the Lenni Lenape had less Homeland Security than we have today. And that conquerors don’t have to learn the Algonquian language known as Lenape (now “Delaware”).

I can think of a few reasons we don’t want people coming here from other countries to do the work we apparently don’t want to do. After all, they might change the way we live, change the foods we eat, change the way we manufacture things, and teach our wimmens a thing or two about love.

I’m all for it. After all, I come from alien stock. Just ask my kids. So do you, and you, and you. That fresh blood is one part of what makes this country great. I say we should spend our security efforts filtering out the peeps who want to rob and rape and maim and kill us and then invite the others in for a good party.

As long as we quit telling them they don’t have to learn English.


Want more detail? I wrote the op-ed Norman – French – English – Italian – Dutch – American for the Burlington Free Press about a dozen years ago. You can read it here.

Big Thoughts, Part I

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I had a (lower case) epiphany.

This is neither the user friendly GNOME web browser nor the Christian feast. It is not a revelatory manifestation of a divine being. It is, however, a sudden intuitive realization that gave me a little flash of political reality.

I’ve been reading Maslow today because I’ve been thinking Big Thoughts. The readings reminded me that our political candidates always, always, always promise to provide health and well-being to every living American; to secure our borders and stamp out crime; to bring the Financial markets back under control when they are not or boost them even more when they are; and to improve the safety net we expect from our gummint against illness and accidents and the impact of hurricanes. The promissory order depends on their polls.

We are affluent and relatively safe. Most of our physiological and safety needs are met. So why would a political candidate promise us this stuff?

  • It is safe to promise what we mostly have
  • They figure to motivate us to choose them because they can scare us into thinking we aren’t fed and housed and safe.
  • They aren’t smart enough to promise what we really want.

What do we really want? Really?

I already have a chicken in my pot. In fact I have more than one. The army got it right; I want to “be the best that I can be.”

John F. Kennedy didn’t electrify two generations of Americans because he delivered universal health care. After all, he promised the Moon but didn’t actually accomplish much here on Earth. He electrified two generations of Americans because he showed us Camelot.

Can John McCain deliver that passion? Can Barack Obama?

If that wasn’t clear enough, my friend Bob reminds me that the election year question I asked is this: what do we voters really want? What new goal will captivate two generations or three? Have we settled for smaller and fancier widgets and lost our passion for inventioneering on a grand scale?

We make grand choices when we have great passion.

And vice versa.