The fires are raging over an enormous swath of the Angeles Forest north of Los Angeles and one can’t help but consider if this record breaking fire will soon lose its record.

Global warming has created severe droughts throughout the world, huge fires are on the rise and there is no end in sight to the continued drying up of the planet Earth.

What was inconceivable a decade ago, the north pole melting completely, is now commonly accepted as a matter of when not if. The Earth and human society are at the top of the rollercoaster and just beginning to roll into a big dive.

This is not doom and gloom or end of the world crazyland, this is documented science. As water continues to become scarce, massive wildfires become more common, people die from a lack of potable water (and corporations continue to buy up water rights worldwide to create a stranglehold over civilization), crops and food become more scarce, countries lacking resources resort to invading countries that have them, it is a vicious and destructive spiral.

And thankfully, we are pouring great amounts of news coverage and energy into Sarah Palin, President Obama’s birth certificate and Dancing with the Stars.

Rome is burning and society is seemingly playing a cool iPhone app as it burns.

This is life and death, maybe not the survival of the planet but a worrying future that could be a lot more brutal for a majority of the planet’s population…including Americans.

Health Care Reform is critical but taking swift steps to combat and prepare for further global warming can’t wait. We need Health Care Reform for Planet Earth or Grannies will have a lot more to worry about than imaginary death panels.

Well Dick your lawless administration offended anyone in this nation that believes in the rule of law.

Fucquis Chenem Diquat^TM

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, claimed president Obama was allowing Attorney General Holder to investigate allegations of torture for partisan political reasons and restating that the president’s policies are making us less safe.

Fist let’s make one thing perfectly clear: DICK CHENEY YOU DID NOT KEEP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SAFE FOR EIGHT YEARS!

In fact Dick Cheney and his administration gave up the largest terrorist attack in world history and started a criminal war that led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.  Furthermore Dick Cheney created an environment of torture tactics that did not keep us safe.  These torture tactics only spurred on the enemy which used pictures and knowledge of Dick Cheney’s torture squads as their major recruiting weapon.

Dick you do no know your Constitution either.  The President of the United States in not the chief law enforcement officer in the land.  The president’s job is to act withing the law and uphold the law, however the president upholds the law by appointing an INDEPENDENT Attorney General as the chief law enforcer in the land.  This assures the president is not ABOVE the law like emperor Dick Cheney was as Vice President when his administration was in power.  If we lived in Dick Cheney Land and not the USA we would be living in a quasi-dictatorship where the exalted emperor Dick Cheney was above the law.

No president Obama did not want these investigations even though most of his base wanted him to lead these investigations.  Unlike Dick Cheney’s tenure in office when he did not do anything the base of his party did not applaud whether it was legal or not.  President Obama did the right thing by appointing an independent AG, Eric Holder, who went beyond his president’s and the CIA’s wishes to enforce the law which is his charter.  Again unlike Dick Cheney’s administration who politicized the Department of Justice and enabled for the first time in our history a unitarian Vice Presidency to rule the executive branch.  Another extra-Constitutional mockery of justice perpetrated by Dick Cheney.

America is safer now because the world hates us less since we no longer torture and hold the rule of law as something to aspire to and not work around.  However, we all know what your game is by now Dick.   Like most right wing Republicans you only care about this country when you feel like you have control of this country.  Dick Cheney does not really care about the safety of this nation.   Instead he is making a political calculation that if we are attacked when Obama is president he can say “I told you so” in order for his party to regain power.  The faux patriot who got at least five differentials to avoid fighting in the war of his generation that he suppository believed in is hoping for more American blood to be spilled just to be proven “right”.

“Cheney Accuses Obama Of Launching “Intensely Partisan” Torture Investigation

Dick Cheney left little on the table during a taped interview Fox News Sunday, accusing the Obama White House pursuing an “intensely partisan” investigation into the use of torture under the Bush administration.

Calling the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorist suspects “absolutely essential,” the former vice president deemed any decision to launch an probe into the possible illegal use of these EITs an “outrageous political act” and a “direct slap at the CIA.”

“We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’” Cheney said.

“Instead, they’re out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions — threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They’re going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.”

Saying the move to launch an investigation “offends the hell out of me,” Cheney accused Obama of succumbing to the political pressure of his progressive base.

“We had a president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn’t be an investigation,” said Cheney. “Now, they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party and they are reversing course on that.”

Asked to respond to this charge in the past, the Obama White House has noted that, unlike the Bush administration, it does not put political pressure on the Department of Justice. The decision to pursue an investigation into the authorization of torture — which will be preliminary in nature and narrow in scope — was made by Attorney General Eric Holder alone.

“The president is the chief law enforcement officer in the administration,” Cheney said. “He is now saying, well, this isn’t anything he’s got to do with. He’s up vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard and his attorney general is going back and doing something the president said some months ago he wouldn’t do.”"

In a rare instance Senator McCain and I agree on this issue.

“McCain Whacks Cheney: Torture Violated Law And Helped The Terrorists

In a strong pushback against claims made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain insisted on Sunday that the use of torture on terrorism suspects violated international law, didn’t work, and actually helped al Qaeda recruit additional members.

“I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan,” said the Arizona Republican. “I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq… I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members.”"

Bill Moyers is possibly the last of the breed of journalists who carry the trust and respect of the people.

If you didn’t see it last night, he used his show to host a screening of the film, based on the book, “Money Driven Medicine”.  As much as I’ve tried to educate myself about the state of medicine in this nation, I have a feeling that you will learn a few things you didn’t know by watching this as I did. I highly recommend it:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/watch.html

What does multi-dimensions look like?  (Calabi-Yau Model)

There are scientific discoveries and then there are scientific discoveries that rock our reality. Some of the major scientific discoveries that changed our perception of reality are listed below more or less chronologically.

1. Fire sure it probably just gave you a good chuckle mentioning fire but for the first time man could control a tiny sliver of nature for light, warmth, protection and cooking food.
2. Early math including Euclidean geometry and algebra which were the basis for all modern architecture.
3. Discovering the planet was round was not the center of the universe thanks to Kepler, Galileo and many others.
4. Newtonian physics and calculus where humankind discovered that everything on earth and in the heavens worked in a beautiful symphony of clockwork type movement.
5. Freud who was the first to develop the science around human behavior and motivations.
6. Darwin’s theory of Evolution which for the first time gave us a path to how humans and other species develop.
7. Electricity and magnetism that not only fuel the industrial revolution to this day but established the first science of the unseen.  While Edison gets the most credit by inventing the light bulb for applied electronics Tesla was the real genius that gave us alternating current that we use today.
8. Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity that set in motion modern astrophysics and was the first highly anti-intuitive scientific theory which predicted things thought to be crazy before like black holes.
9. Einstein’s most famous equation of all E=mc² which first predicted the tremendous power in the atom.
10. Hubble whose work in modern astronomy discovered the red shift and lead the way to Big Bang Theory first proposed by Georges Lemaître which gave us the first idea of how the universe came into being.
11. Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s discovery of quantum mechanics which just turned the world of classical physics on it’s head saying anything is possible but nothing is certain.
12. Watson and Crick who discovered DNA which is the basis of most life on this planet.
13. Plate tectonics that is now the basis for all global geology theory discovered by Wegener when he discovered that the Atlantic Ocean was getting larger.
14. String and M-theory where multiple dimensions are seen not only as possibilities but required to explain things like the relatively weak force of gravity.
15. Mapping the human genome.  I was simple ecstatic when President Obama chose the head of the genome project Francis Collins to head up the NIH because gene therapies (like stem cell treatment) are the next big advances in medical technology.

The mountain of scientific understanding that the last five major advancements in physics opened up are simply incredible because once the boundaries of determinist and intuitive physics were broken the possibilities literally remain endless.  Quantum field theory, Steven Hawking’s microscopic black holes, the unification of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, variable gravity and speed of light, multiverses, super conductors, wormholes, chaos theory, nanotechnology, etc.  Humanities understanding of science is growing exponentially and projects like the Hubble even though it’s coming to an end, the JET plasma induced fusion reactor and the new LHC at CERN will continue to fuel new discoveries.

My list is probably skewed towards physics discoveries so please feel free to add to my list of discoveries that you think changed our perceptions of reality.

One of the THCs just because I can.

Four years ago 1600 of our citizens were sacrified to prove a point:

That government is the problem, not the answer.

And how true that is.   When you hire reactionary assholes whose whole purpose is to destroy the citizens’ faith in government.

That is the Republican  party today.   Kill as many poor Americans as fast as possible to prove that govenment is flawed.

Flawed.   Duh.  We Dems have no choice but to hire human beings to run the government.    There is nobody else applying for the fucking job.    But if we don’t give the job to a clod whose whole resume was organizing horse shows, perhaps, just perhaps we will find people who WANT  to make government work?

What the hell else do the Republican assholes have to offer?

Jack shit.

Yesterday I wrote a post on people who steal shopping carts and their possible rationales for where they leave them.  I was surprised that so many folks felt they had to comment on such a small little corner of an urban reality.  I see that responses get sorted somehow into “strings,” if that’s what you call them, and everyone gets to banter on various aspects of the post. - OK, I’m still just trying to figure this all out. - On the other hand it seemed as if the responses took on a life of their own with ruminations about kids on drugs, hot breakfast cereals and a long chorus of multiple entries where everyone spent WAY too much time trying to create clever acronyms.  Things like; Shopping Cart Return Efficiency Workers (SCREW), Sanitation Tackling Department (STD) and Professionally Unionized Shopping Industry Engineers Society (PUSIES) were painfully delineated for the possible delight of those who invented them.  Oh, aren’t we clever.  Now I like hot breakfast cereals and drugged kids as much as anyone but there’s one thing I don’t need and that’s more acronyms!  There are way too many and they’re just not funny.

I work for a company that loves its acronyms.  I am constantly having to look in the acronym dictionary to try and understand what they are trying to tell me.  I get confronted by CAP (Contracts Approval Process), LOI (Letter of Intent) and MOU (Memorandum of Understanding).  I have to look each of these up and apply the various possibilities based on the criterion that fit with my line of business.  If I did not do this, there is the possibility that I would think they were talking about the CAP (Civil Air Patrol, Consolidated Appeals Process or Community Acquired Pneumonia), LOI (Limiting Oxygen Index, Local Operator Interface or Lunar Orbit Insertion) or MOU, (Master of Universe, Minutes of Use or Minnesota Ornithologists Union).  And these are just the first example I could come up with.  Who needs this?  Just spell it out!

There’s also the other dual acronyms that lead to tons of confusion.  IBM, International Business Machines, right?  Well, it’s also Irritable Bowel Movement, International Brotherhood of Magicians, Inclusion Body Myositis, Injection Blow Moulding, Indian Bureau of Mines, Initial Body Mass and Ich Bin Müde (how the hell did that get in there?),  just to name a few.  Every acronym now has so many definitions that one must be sure of the meaning within the intended context.  Although once, early this decade, I told my stock broker that my Enron stock was giving me IBM which he mistook for a sell order on Enron and a buy order on International Business Machines.  I actually meant that the stock was giving me Irritable Bowel Movement.  I just love this shit.

Let’s start to use fewer acronyms.  They add to confusion, uncertainty and are vague.  There are civic minded organizations that think a cute acronym will further their cause like MADD; is that Mothers Against Drunk Drivers or Mothers Against Deadbeat Dads? (both real entities)  It might as well be Mothers Against Dirty Dishes.  We all know they are against them and it fits.  Mothers seem to be against a lot these days.

I think that we need to stop this madness, it’s a trend whose time has come and passed.  It’s a trend that is no longer helpful in streamlining our communication it, instead, is adding to the uncertainty of modern life.  It is a trend that needs a movement to curtail.  I propose a new group “Let’s See Maybe Fewer Trends” to end this insanity.  We’ll call it LSMFT.  It’s clear, simple  and will stop the confusion over misleading acronyms.  LSMFT, ask for it by name.

What age do most adult Americans seem to act?

That is, when they’re not playing with their Wii, gobbling down comfort foods, throwing tantrums at Town Halls, entranced with the fairy tale lives of celebrities, adopting the latest “cool” fad, going to Dave and Busters (the adult Chucky Cheese’s), watching movies based on toys and calling their home their “crib”.

And let’s not forget the most effective marketing “toy” to entrance and attract the stares and drools of consumers, to get them roaming through malls like in “Day of the Living Dead”…sex. The media, commercials, etc. are flooded with promotions of sex, it’s used to sell shampoo (with moans of ecstasy), cars, beer and even directly to make Viagra the unnecessary drug of choice for insecure Baby Boomer men.

The infantalization or at least adolescentization of the American public has been a goal for the corporate interests that have been usurping our democracy for two main reasons.

1. Children are naturally egocentric and self-indulgent.

This is not a bad thing, for children that is, it is natural and a starting point for emotional development. A starting point, not a place to reside in for the rest of one’s life, building a mega mansion on it one can’t afford and having a family one doesn’t have the time, wisdom or resources to raise properly.

The corporate message has been to convince the public, “Hey Sport, you like that car? It’ll get you laid, make you wittier and enlarge your penis! Honest! Just get it! You can have it all!”

This is very convenient for the corporate world because people become Matrix-like batteries, drained of all their assets while restrained their whole lives by the credit card and mortgage debts they must spend their lives servicing.

How many people do you know who don’t owe on a credit card and haven’t been paying on one the majority of their adult lives? How many people do you know who believe that they will have all of their credit card debt paid off this year? Or next year? Or any year? And no fair counting the people who merely consolidate their debt by paying off credit cards with home equity loans, that’s still indebtedness for the same amount (then what often happens is credit card debt is rebuilt).

We have come to take for granted that part of life in society is being in debt one’s whole life and paying towards that debt one’s whole life. Isn’t something wrong with that? Do we really need all the “things” we are encouraged to become indebted over? I mean, how often are you using that Thighmaster or that George Foreman grill nowadays?

America has become crippled because of the sophistication of market research. Corporations have invested mountains of money dissecting why people decide to like things, how to make them like things and in the big picture, how to condition them through repetitive and omnipresent marketing, to be the most addicted consumers they can be.

In other words…convince and encourage adults to regress into being kids in a candy store with little self restraint, grabbing everything off the shelves that looks yummy. As long as the majority of this society remains in such a mindset, which unfortunately is continuing despite the recession, we are only being human batteries that provide greater and greater power to the  Matrix of the dominant corporate machine out there.

2. Children are easy to manipulate, control and dominate.

If you condition a dog to jump when you say “jump”, when anyone says “jump”, the dog jumps. Even if it’s at the edge of a cliff.

By the corporate community surrounding the public with media that conditions them to be “good consumers” (ie. being easy to manipulate into giving corporations their money for things they don’t need), the public has been wired to gobble up instructions, desires and “facts” from the media without fully processing all of it.

Thus, the other key agenda is achieved, a pliable public that can be “sold” on what corporate interests are also marketing in the political world to benefit themselves. Iraq war anyone? How about Death Panels? Perhaps I can get you a socialist-marxist-Kenyan-antichrist-Hitler-president appetizer plate?

Poor people who live in run down trailers were furious that the “Death Tax” (The Estate Tax) would only allow the first $3 million of assets to be untaxed.

Married couples were furious that gays getting married would destroy their marriages (they may have had a point in Larry Craig’s case). Yes, the same married couples of which over 50% will get divorced…destroying their own marriages with no assist from gay couples. This, not to mention how many of these “family values” people cheat on their wives and husbands, right Gov Sanford and Sen. Ensign and…well…I could go on and on.

And poor people without health insurance along with elderly people on Medicare…fiercely opposing the government providing health care for Americans.

Point being, so many people are so conditioned and child-like in their inability to use critical thinking, reasoning out conclusions for themselves from information they receive instead of simply swallowing whole POVs that come from a source they see as authoritative, that they frequently speak and vote against their own interests.

Some propose that the government’s neglect of education funding, more under Republican administrations (remember, No Child Left Behind was an unfunded mandate that drained time, money and resources from teaching kids various subjects to training them to pass the test) fits hand and glove with this agenda. An uneducated population is easier to dominate than one that has learned enough to know better.

This is a social tar pit, very hard to extract our society from it and the more some of us struggle to do so, the deeper the corporate interests seem to pull us down. As is in the news today, the banks that were too big to fail that destroyed our economy…are now bigger and have a greater monopoly.

So I have one message to all the “good consumers” out there of merchandise and political opinions, if they can put down their McDonald’s Flabby Meals, “Transformers Meet Tickle Me Elmo” DVDs and Rush Limbaugh inflatable dolls for a moment…

…GROW THE FUCK UP!

I’ve been invited to blah, blah, blah … blog.  I don’t know where to begin but I do know I don’t have much time for it.

I was going to blog about working through a famous sushi cookbook and relating my experiences, my failures and my triumphs but I figured I couldn’t cut it.

I was driving through my neighborhood and I noticed a few shopping carts distributed along the sidewalk in a strictly residential neighborhood.  I wasn’t taken so much by the fact that the carts were there, as I have grown accustomed to that, but I was wondering how they came to rest exactly where they were.  I think that those that feel entitled to take a shopping cart from a store and abandon it are just slightly lower than those people that think they can drive on MY ROAD but I wonder when and how they make the decision to park it at a specific place.  Is it something that is a conscious decision or is it random?

If I were to guess, I would think that the cart is never abandoned in front of the offender’s house.  That would make it too easy to track who the culprit is and therefore some punitive action could be taken.  The cart thief, if vindictive, might leave it in front of the neighbor’s house who called in the drunk and disorderly complaint a couple of nights ago, perhaps even leaving it on the porch.  Or the drop could be random; when done with it, just give it a push and let momentum take its course.  OK, I’m spending too much time on this.  The folks that steal these things don’t put as much time into their “crime” as I have just spent musing about it.  I say these scofflaws should be rounded up and forced to blog about their experiences in stealing carts so I don’t have to take the time to do it.  That would serve them right!

If you did not know, the dining room table that Barney Frank refused to debate was a LaRouchie.

LaRouchies are present all across the nation, including the town hall I attended a few weeks back in Pasadena, CA.

LaRouchies are deranged lunatics.

They have attached themselves to the Dem party like barnacles. Possibly because the Rethugs have the good sense to not tolerate them.

Here in CA the club system is the hub of the party. I am a charter member of one of the livelier clubs here in CA.

The LaRouchies have managed to charter a club with the party. No one can call themselves a Democratic Club without a charter. Check with a lawyer on that one!

Another critical layer of organization in the party is the Assembly Committee. Each assembly district has a committee, any registered Dem can attend the election of delegates every two years, the delegates attend the state conventions, etc.

The LaRouchies make themselves a presence every time we hold one of these elections. They have a slate of candidates.

I am going to join a growing movement to strip them of their charter. And I am going to make them horrifically unwelcome at the next AD election

All the clubs have a duty to advance the interests of the party. Obviously the LaRouchies are failing to adhere to that standard. They must be purged from the party.

Every state party has the rigtht to organize itself as it sees fit, and as a consequence there are ten or fifteen differnet models of organization.

Find out how your state party works, get involved, and please please do all you can to purge the LaRouchies.

One of the GOP’s most diabolical tricks is to dumb down any debate in effect making it’s orthodox right wingers believe that any government system that a high school dropout cannot understand is too complex a solution for American’s problems. So they love to put up these complicated looking flowcharts showing how all complex solutions are bad.  After all the GOP thinks the solution to every domestic that involves money requires only tax cuts and deregulation.  The US healthcare system is about 1/6th of our multi-trillion dollar economy and there are no overly simplistic solutions.  “The New Republic” did a great job countering the illogical Republican argument by developing their own flowchart showing how complex our current disaster of a healthcare system is.

Worst of all again conservatives are being totally hypocritical.  Conservatives love complicating systems when it comes to their pet endeavors like developing a whole new spiderweb domestic security apparatus  after 911 and of course Republicans love the convoluted military industrial complex.  The big difference is conservatives like these opaque and intricate systems to enrich their true base the haves and have mores.    The truth is the simplest healthcare system by far is single but never in 100 years would Republicans support the simplest system of universal healthcare because it does not fit their ideology.

Sarah Shive from “Campaign for America’s Future” put out an excellent complex flowchart of their own depicting the complex financial and AstroTurf structure behind killing healthcare reform.  Ironic how Republicans hat complex systems until they need them to hide their real intentions.

Real Universal Healthcare Reform. Let’s Do It for Teddy!

BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, a towering figure in the Democratic Party who took the helm of one of America’s most fabled political families after two older brothers were assassinated, has died, his family said. He was 77.

“Edward M. Kennedy, the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port (Massachusetts),” the Kennedy family said in a statement.

One of the most influential and longest-serving senators in U.S. history — a liberal standard-bearer who was also known as a consummate congressional dealmaker — Kennedy had been battling brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

“We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever,” the family statement said.

“He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him,” the family added.

His death marked the twilight of a political dynasty and dealt a blow to Democrats as they seek to answer President Barack Obama’s call for an overhaul of the healthcare system. Kennedy had made healthcare reform his signature cause.”

Sorry I have no words of my own to say right now.

The Hubble Telescope Deep Field surveys into the previously thought darkness of space opened our eyes to how expansive our universe really is. If the following video does not humble you and help you understand what a limited place we take up in the grand scheme of the universe nothing will.  It is important to be humble because one of our biggest faults as individuals and as a species is to overestimate our importance.  This arrogance leads to people believing we are more important that the Gaia, every other species and our fellow human beings.  If people had more humility about our place in the universe we would not be as fixated on our petty differences and cherish our existence.

Enjoy!

Hi all!

If you’re not a social networker, you should consider investing a little more time to it.  I am not a tweeterer, and this is my first attempt at bloggering, but I have taken a stab at the FaceSpace pages to reach out to my long distance friends.    One of the benefits of these network sites, for me anyway, is that  since I’m sitting in front of a web terminal for 9hrs a day already, I’m communicating more with friends “virtually”, than in person.   One particular friend is a fellow I knew only in passing when he lived in my city.  He had recently moved to Seattle for employment purposes.  I remember thinking what a shame, as I perceived him to be a bright guy with a different background, but with similar world views; and when he left I thought I had lost a chance for some good conversation.  Thanks, internet; because apparently Atlanta to Seattle is not too great a distance for valuable discussion.

Today he posted a link to an article, which I found very enlightening.  So much so, that I was compelled to share it with YOU as well.   This article, by Lisa Zyga @ physorg.com, includes a discussion with Derek Abbott, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia.   He offers a concise summary and comparison of what we now refer to as “alternative energies”: those which will finally eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

The white paper Abbot has written, which is the basis for Lisa’s article, is compelling in that it does not approach the topic of alternative energy in the typical trend of GREEN think.  His analysis is very well based in a practicality/sustainability, cost/benefit viewpoint.  The link is here:

http://www.physorg.com/news170326193.html

The key points of the article are:

Abbot believes that a solar-hydrogen economy will be our salvation.  He addresses all of the other sources of alternative energies, including a more widespread use of nuclear. Most major energy players want to move to nuclear next, simply because of the short term cost advantages.  But if we are to learn anything from the recent financial collapse, it’s that short term thinking is simply no good.

Abbot demonstrates that solar is the clear cut way to go for one, indisputable factor:  SUPPLY.  Here’s some numbers for the crunchers:    “Today, the world’s energy consumption is currently 15 TeraWatts (TW) (15 x 10^12 watts). The total solar energy that strikes the Earth is 166 Petawatts (PW) (166 x 10^15 watts). Even with 50% of this energy being reflected back into space or absorbed by clouds, the remaining 83 PW is more than 5,000 times our present global energy consumption. In contrast, the [other] sources of renewable energy (wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal) can supply less than 1% of solar power potential.”

Abbott calculates that, in order to supply the world’s energy needs, the footprint of such a system with pessimistic assumptions would be equivalent to a plot of land of about 1250 km by 1250 km – about 8% of the land area of the hot deserts of the world.  With less pessimistic assumptions, the land area could be reduced to 500 km by 500 km, corresponding to 1.7 billion solar dishes that are each 10 meters wide. At massive volumes, if these Stirling engine dishes could be produced at a cost of $1,000 each, the total world cost would be $1.7 trillion – “which is less than the going rate of a war these days.”

Abbot then drops the cherry on top, and this is what got me: “…The point about solar energy is that there is so much of it that you only have to tap 5% of it at an efficiency as tiny as 1% and you already have energy over 5 times the whole world’s present consumption…what are we waiting for?”

5%, at 1% efficiency = 5x our present consumption.  Total world cost: $1.7 Trillion.

What are we waiting for INDEED.

I’m afraid I have some scary news about fear…it’s terroriffic!

Fear and gold are two of the best investments you can make in tough times. Oh, and I hear Astroglide stock is doing pretty well too.

Killing Grannies is up astronomically, America becoming Russia is getting a “recommend” from Jim Cramer and Obama being a socialist, Kenyan, Muslim Hitler is hotter than a burning cross.

We’re unfortunately all too familiar with the cheap knockoff of Fear that is the cologne of choice by those desperately clinging to their guns, bibles and few remaining teeth.

But has all the wasteful usage of Fear created a shortage in the commercial sector?

I pondered this as I rushed to my doctor’s office to get a combo Swine Flu\Avian Flu\Mad Cow shot with a Flesh Eating Bacteria chaser.

I recalled that there is one use of fear on TV that is so casual, prolific and offensive that  it deserves a special place in the Terrorist’s Truck Bombed Hall of Shame.

ADT commercials.

Have you seen them? It’s always an upscale white mother and daughter or young white woman just coming off a pleasant time when an Evildoer smashes like an idjit through her door like a linebacker. She (and sometimes her daughter) screams, the alarm whines and this genius burglar/rapist/tea bagger who had no problem with the decibels of crashing through glass windows or heavy doors, is terrified by high pitched beeping and runs away like someone who’s just been invited by Dick Cheney to join him on a hunting trip.

It is the banal nature of this long time advertising theme of ADT’s that makes it most offensive.

“Hey Ladies! Be scared! Men are coming to break into your home through doors and windows like the Kool Aid Guy!! AAAH!!!! They’re a comin’ for ya! We know you never hear about this as a serious concern but it’s serious for us. Seen our stock price?! Now that’ll curl your hair!”

The idea of convincing people to be terrified that they are not even safe in this world in their own home and are likely be attacked when they’re while lying on their couch in their underwear, eating Cherry Garcia and watching CSI…is pretty fucked up.

Makes you want to hire a company to protect your loved ones from the ads of protection companies.