OH GREAT! NOW I GOTTA WORRY ABOUT THAT TOO

Blog number eighty-eight                                  08 May 2007

Every species of organisms have within it, it's own destruction, from microbes to rabbits to humans.  Every species will, if left unchecked by predators or epidemics, die of its own refuse, or by eliminating its food source through overuse.  Rabbits will, if left unchecked, eat all of its food source, for instance.

So I worry.

Ironically, humanity seems to be the only species that has the ability to consciously regulate its population.  All the other species are stuck with what they have, or with whatever humans allow them.  Irony comes from the seeming fact that humans will never do this.  Humans seemingly will never regulate their population explosion until it is forced upon them by disease or starvation. 

Or dehydration.

Or mass murders.

So I worry.

Asteroids swarm about us, almost any of which, if impacting the earth, will wipe us out.  Same goes for comets.  

If the sun changes temperature by two or three degrees either way, that will destroy most of life on earth, including us.

So I worry.

Now I find out that the moon is receding from the earth an inch and a half every year, and when it gets far enough away, it will lose its stabilizing power on the earth, causing the earth to wobble on its axis such that the poles will be directly under the sun's rays, melting the polar caps, inundating greater portions of the land, and the equator will be darkened for most of the year, resulting in ice covering the rain forests.

I wonder which way would be the most interesting way to die.  Probably the wobbly earth, wouldn't you say?  Least interesting way would be to drown in our own waste, I imagine.  Nasty nasty.    

Being in the middle of an epidemic wouldn't be all that great either. 

Dying of thirst is reportedly not too pleasant either.

Neither is having people try to kill you, I hear.

Better get an assault weapon I guess, with a trunk full of ammo.

Maybe an APG or two also.

And trail mix and a large canteen full of water.

And underlings.

And several large vicious dogs.

And a sharpened Kbar.

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! THAT AIN'T SUPERMAN!

Blog number eighty-seven                                  12 April 2007

If you drive a car into a fence so that the headlight gets cut straight through by a wire, the cut that is made is a parabola.

The figure that is made by the planets going around the sun describes an ellipse.

Most comets - Haley's Comet, the Hale Bopp Comet that came around in 1997, et al, describe an ellipse around the sun, so they return century after century.  The planets describe an ellipse around the sun, as does the moon around the earth.

There are some comets that describe a parabola through the heavens, which means that they have never been here before and they will never return.

So I ask you.  Where did they come from and where do they go?

HEY BUDDY. GOT A DRINK?

Blog number eighty-six                                  12 April 2007

Was watching "Cops" yesterday.  They pulled a woman over for driving erratically. Cop peers in the passenger window, asks the driver if she'd been drinking.  She says, "No."

He tells her to get out of the car and come to the front of the cruiser.  Halfway there, he tells her to tie her shoes.  She bends over, ties them, then falls flat on her face.

He has her do a DUI test, walking heel to toe.  She staggers all over the place.  The cop hooks her up, tells her she almost ran into a "lot of people."  She says, "Normal people?"

"Yeah," the cop says, "they were normal people."

Later he says, "Looks like you threw up out the window.  Did you get any on the seat?"

"Oh, she says, "that was a coupla days ago."

GOT WOOD?

Blog number eighty-five                                  10 April 2007

I took a Biblical Archeology class one summer and one of the things we learned was that during the many wars in Palestine during Biblical times, whole cities were burned by the enemy piling up wood next to the walls of the cities and setting the piles on fire.  Since the houses and shops were built right next to the walls, the heat from the wood fire would set the buildings on fire and burn the entire city.

Now that sounds like maybe an interesting story, but think.  Where did all that wood come from?  Remember, these cities were burned maybe ten or twenty times.  Must have been large forests in Palestine back in the ages before they got dark.  Forests, where now is desert except where farms have been planted.

I learned that due to improper soil conservation, the rich land on the hills in Italy ran into the sea and now, in order to have the dirt to grow crops, the people have to go down and pick up the soil and carry it back up the mountains, up the hills.

I watched a documentary on India a few years back.  The people in the village had to go way far away to find wood that they could carry on their backs to their houses in order to have fuel for cooking.  Whole families would carry dinner with them so they could eat before they started back with their load.

One old lady told of spending an hour or so gathering wood from the forest when she was a child, but now the pickings were so slim that they had to spend all day at it.  Every year they had to travel farther and farther just to get wood for cooking.

One interesting thing in this documentary concerned a Peace Corps volunteer - a young man, who was living with this one family.  They were building a methane "factory" using excrement as the source of the methane.  The young man had a book on how to build one, but he had never done it before.  When they produced their first methane, he about went crazy.  I can imagine that all the time they were working on it, he never really believed it would work and he would disappoint his hosts.  he ran all around the "pond." yelling and waving his arms.  That was one happy fella.

I couldn't help imagining the family, used to traveling miles for a back-load of kindling that, stretched, would last maybe three or four days, now being able to simply turn a switch and start cooking.  They didn't say, but I can imagine that other families started building their own methane factories.

IF YOU WATER IT, IT WILL GROW

Blog number eighty-four                                  21 March 2007

I was watching Keith Olbermann (interesting guy) on television yesterday and one of his topics was this cube of gold on display in Japan, It was about ten inches cubed, sides rounded off, Japanese characters stamped on each side.

It was housed in a Lucite plastic domed cover with several holes large enough that visitors could reach in and pet the cube.

There was no alarm system, no guards, and the entrance to the "museum" was through a natural cave.  Mr. Oberman's last words on the subject was, "You guessed it.  It's gone."

Then today I'm reading a book about this mercenary in Java, and this sentence comes up, " ...he had always paid his bills with cash on the nail, usually small cubical gold ingots ..."

Java is in the Pacific Rim, Japan is in the Pacific Rim.  Was this huge ingot on display in Japan just a large Pacific Rim "common currency?"

FUNNY GIRL

Blog number eighty-three                              20  March 2007

I was just rereading my blogs and I ran across the one that describes my bout with vertigo.  In that entry I wrote about asking my Dad what his stroke had been like, and I described how it had changed him.  It reminded me of something I should have put in that entry but didn't think of it.

Dad was in watching television and I was out in the kitchen talking to Mom while she cleaned up.  Out of nowhere she said, "I think Dad's losing his mind."

I thought she might be talking about how different he was, because it was dramatic - from a bombastic extrovert into an introspective silent thinker.  But that wasn't it.  Probably part of it, I think.  It probably got Mom to thinking something wasn't quite right, though.  

I asked her, "What makes you think that?"

She replied, "He asked me if I wanted him to wash the dishes.  He never does that!" 

She was serious.
                                 *********************

One time earlier I was visiting right after getting married to Teresa and I was washing the dishes and one of my sister's kids saw me, and in a wondering voice said, "I didn't know daddies did dishes." 

MY GOOSE WAS COOKED

Blog number eighty-two                               19  March 2007

It's July 4, I'm seventeen years old.  The city fathers are about to let a duck and a goose loose onto Emmetsburg Lake.  Whoever swims after them and catches them gets to keep them.  Good deal.

We're standing on the dock, poised to dive in.  The city fathers are over to the left, by the edge of the lake.  They let the duck go.  We all dive in.  The duck heads out toward the middle of the lake, then makes a right turn and goes toward the dock we left a few moments before.  I am not a good swimmer, I am at the end of the pack.  The lead kid finally catches the duck.  We all go back to the dock to await the release of the goose.

When the goose is released, everybody dives in.  Except me.  I wait on the dock and sure enough, the goose follows the duck's path.  He goes toward the middle of the lake and veers right toward the dock.  Where I am waiting.

By the time he gets close to the dock, the rest of the kids far behind, he is tired out.  I jump in and pick him up.  Success!  I got me a pet goose.

I take him home, put him in a pen I make out of loose boards left over from the pen I made for two kit foxes that escaped because I made the cage bigger for their comfort and inadvertently or negligently made the space between the slats large enough that the two kits could get out.

My friends come over and we leave for parts unknown.  I don't come back until late the next day.  I find out my Dad had killed and cleaned the goose, my mother cooked it and the family sans me, ate it.  I never got a taste of my new pet.