It’s never going to end… here is the latest from our local weather guy:
Today’s Forecast
A Winter Weather Advisory is in effect for areas along and south of Route 40 tonight into Friday morning. A mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain is expected. Snow and sleet will be less than one inch, except along the Blue Ridge with up to two inches possible. Freezing rain will bring less than a tenth of an inch of ice. We may see a light wintry mix elsewhere and the advisory area could be expanded. For today, clouds will continue with highs near 40. The rain returns tonight, changing to a wintry mix as temperatures drop to near 30.
I am fingering the safety of my Mossberg…
Dear PtB: That’s a keeper!
Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.
Dr. Ben Carson – We’re living in a Gestapo Age. Very much like Nazi Germany.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/12/dr-ben-carson-america-very-much-like-nazi-germany-video/
He also says he was endured IRS audits for three months after his speech at the prayer breakfast.
– – – – –
Those who long for the days of JFK, are believers in the American Civil Religion, I believe.
I think my tendency to despise anyone from the East or West Coast comes from their generally superior executive brain function and articulateness.
It is in these higher functioning individuals, that it becomes clear to me how deeply and thoroughly I hate any American with even a hint of affection for “his country.”
http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm
The Kennedy Inaugural
John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address of January 20, 1961, serves as an example of the ACR and a clue with which to introduce this complex subject. That address began:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and to abolish all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe-the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
And it concluded:
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice that we shall ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
American civil religion is a sociological theory that there exists a nonsectarian faith with sacred symbols drawn from national history. It is a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
– – – –
In this sci-fi show Real Humans, there is this guy that develops an incredible loathing of Hubots.(human robots) I share his loathing in the real world of adherents of American Civil Religion. Or the state religion of the UK Commonwealth.
I hate Hubots (this probably means you. sorry)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iyMFdR0MBOQ/UtLZYYF–vI/AAAAAAAAE9U/qUis7mnNx-Y/s1600/real-humans-5114c4f2a91ab.jpg
http://www.weekendnotes.com/im/001/04/real-humans41.jpeg
Real Humans – Swedish TV Series
https://archive.org/details/RealHumans-SwedenTvSeries
– Know the truth. It will set you free. Unfortunately it won’t make you wise. Or prevent you from acting like an @$$hole because of this knowledge. Believe me, I know from personal experience:.)
Silver Circle
I thinks it’s $5 to watch on googul/chromecast
“When they control the money, they control everything. In a dystopian Washington of 2019, the Federal Reserve Police, in riot gear, are forcibly seizing houses from homeowners who refuse to sell them to the government.
Gasoline costs $150 a gallon and a local bar advertises “$90 Beer Tuesdays.
After massive economic collapse: tyranny, explosions, and monetary, the film asks where is the last line in defense of liberty?
http://silvercirclemovie.com/comic-page-1/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/silver-circle,1248942.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/movies/silver-circle-directed-by-pasha-roberts.html?_r=0
It’s not legal in all nations to watch online media dubs. Consult your local Plantation Rulebook before watching. It’s only stealing when slaves do it. Rules are different for masters.
_Silver Circle_
http://tvwat.ch/watch/silver-circle/7782
_Helix Season 1_
http://tvwat.ch/watch/helix-season-1/7332
Hiroyuki Sanada – 47Ronin – Probably the most awesome sounding English-speaking actor in the world right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmbqNs4j1lI
I gave Keanu sword advice – H. Sanada
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/film-tv/news/sanada-i-gave-keanu-sword-advice-29869154.html
WOSP – world’s only super power, white’s only-special privilege, white oriental/saxon protestant
– It’s incredible to me, how strategically restrained China continues to be. Incredible economic power continues to accrue, yet an honest assessment of their use of that power leads one to admit they play much fairer than the others in their weight class.
Some of the whitest guys on the planet, by any sensible definition of the term.
– – –
Fushugi – Japanese for “mystery” or “secret” and we finally learned the secret behind the entire Helix series is… Immortality.
Helix Season 1 Episode 10 “Fushugi” surprises by revealing the fact there are 500 immortals living among us. Our silver-eyed overlords are not aliens, mutations, or superheroes – but human beings with eternal life.
http://www.tvfanatic.com/2014/03/helix-review-five-hundred-immortals/
http://www.pekintimes.com/article/20140109/NEWS/301099908
Railway Man – Hiroyuki Sanada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UptDw-9Hsic
The Kempeitai – Military Police Corps – was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was a secret police like Nazi Germany’s Gestapo though institutionally a part of the Imperial Japanese Army,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kempetai
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
Iron Chef Opening Sequence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2e9nTeIwFk
Hans Zimmer- Iron Chef Theme Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrNWLDq0EVM
Arise Iron Chefs! Allez Cuisine!
Dear Tor,
Mainland Chinese are concerned about making their move too soon. If they move prematurely, the chance of a century of getting back on track toward major player status could be forfeit.
They could, as you note, be far more assertive on the world stage, given their underlying strategic clout. But they are “measuring twice, cutting once.”
Thanks for the tip about Helix. I always like to keep up with new futurist oriented TV shows.
For me, it no longer matters whether they are NWO “predictive programming” or not. I treat NWO predictive programming as if it were Orwellian cautionary tales. So it doesn’t really work on me.
Ah–speaking of guilty pleasures, may I recommend the TV series Revolution!
It’s excellent–very, very well produced. Gritty, suspenseful, well-acted…and chock-full of powerful anti-statist memes and revelations of the Elite’s methods.
Good stuff!
Dear Meth,
I watched Revolution until it went on hiatus. Got tired of waiting for it to resume. Apparently it has started up again.
It had some good things about it. Interesting relationship between the two veterans, one of whom goes over to the darkside.
I liked another series more — Jericho.
Interesting how many shows like this have aired. It shows that the idea of the unitedstate breaking up is no longer a fantasy, but becoming quite real.
Revolution is amazing. Just fast-forward through the sword fights and irrelevant fluff to the good stuff.
That last episode, Dreamcatcher, was amazing.
I think the nanotech is a good gnostic allegory for what’s been happening spiritually on Earth.
Certain spirits and humans co-create our reality. The spirits who seek to run things here on Earth, share our dreams, share ideas, feed our fears, though they seem omnipotent, are really not.
They are only a subset of a much greater population. At times, they may be some of the worst of the spirit world. It is probably the right course for those who can, to wake up, and escape their control. Personally, I think that’s sufficient, there’s no call to try to kill them all as depicted in this episode.
We have spiritual powers if the nanotech remain. We would also have powers if the current monotheistic spirits and their artificial christiany/muslim/jew spirtiual matrix was “destroyed”. In this episode, this power not requiring nanotech was the power to manifest swords and guns.
***Spoilers Ahead***
Episode 35 “Dreamcatcher” March 5, 2014
Aaron wakes up in a world were there is still electrical power and he is still married to Priscilla. Throughout the day he is confused with his surroundings because he has a vague memory of all the events that have happened to him but he goes on thinking he dreamt of the Blackout world.
Priscilla convinces him “he’s crazy.” He wakes up the next day believing he imagined everything. At his company, two of his employees ask him to help them with a code which is the code to fix the nanotech. Before he is able to fix it Charlie comes in and kills two employees.
She brings Aaron outside and explains that she is part of his mind that wants to save him from the nanotech. They make a plan to go find Miles, Rachel, and Monroe to help them but then Charlie is shot by Doctor Horn who is followed by a group of Patriots. Aaron runs away, and runs into Nora, and goes to search for his friends in Chicago.
Aaron convinces Rachel to bring him to Miles right as Horn and the Patriots show up. Rachel and Aaron find Miles in a motel room and moments later Monroe enters. The three of them are all skeptical of what Aaron is saying and think he is insane.
When Horn and the Patriots show up, they burst through the door and drag Aaron away. Suddenly Rachel, Miles, and Monroe remember everything and fight against the Patriots. They drive with Aaron back to his company building where he plans to jump to wake himself up.
Priscilla appears and tries to convince Aaron not to but she fails. When Aaron wakes up he is inside the room where his two employees were trying to figure out the code earlier and Horn has him bound to a chair. Horn threatens Aaron to fix the code or else his life will be a living hell, but Aaron fights back.
He wakes up and he is lying on the floor with Priscilla and Peter. He takes Priscilla outside and cleans her wounds. They see hundreds of dead fireflies around them and a fallen streetlight flickers. He and Priscilla go to see Miles and Rachel.
There they see that the power is flickering and then a lightning storm starts. The lightning is out of control and hits Rachel. To save Rachel, Aaron puts in the code to fix the nanotech.
He then realizes that he was still asleep and he had been tricked into providing the computer coding necessary to save the nanotech.
Horn appears to him again and thanks him for fixing the code. Aaron, Priscilla, and Peter wake up and Peter is overjoyed for what Aaron did. Aaron and Priscilla leave and as they are walking toward Willoughby they know that the nanotech is not done with them and has bigger plans. where Aaron.
– This is a good depiction of how at least some minds work when they’ve developed while under religious indoctrination. I don’t claim it to be either a good or bad thing.
But definitely, when dreaming and other times, especially stressful situations, I perceive myself slipping from viewing the actual world that’s the cold world of facts, then into the mystical world, where everything that is happening has many layers of spiritual meanings and unseen sentient beings whispering just beyond my ability to clearly perceive.
Revolution – Dreamcatcher – with several 20sec commercials
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1eyqon_revolution-dreamcatcher_shortfilms
Cheer Up – advice from wikihow
http://www.wikihow.com/Cheer-Up
Leave Me Alone – Today I’m An Owl
http://www.demotivation.us/best/all/filter_all/leave-me-alone-1244033.html
Weather Girls – The Only Good Part About Bad News – Especially the last 2
http://www.demotivation.us/best/all/filter_all/weather-girls-1246760.html
USA vs. Russia
http://www.demotivation.us/best/0/filter_all/usa-vs.-russia-1249710.html
That’s all right, Eminem, – if you move slowly, she won’t atack
http://www.demotivation.us/best/0/filter_all/thats-all-right-eminem-1246581.html
How to ride in a car – wikihow
http://www.wikihow.com/Ride-a-Car
How to ride in a convertible with the top down year round – wikihow
http://www.wikihow.com/Drive-a-Convertible-Top-Down-Year-Round
3 items I’m happy to see in the morning
http://www.demotivation.us/best/all/filter_week/3-items-im-really-happy-to-see-1285641.html
Dumb White Men
An old Indian chief sat in his hut on the reservation, smoking a ceremonial pipe and eyeing two U.S. government officials sent to interview him.
“Chief Two Eagles,” asked one official, “you have observed the white man for 90 years. You’ve seen his wars and his technological advances. You’ve seen his progress, and the damage he’s done.”
The Chief nodded in agreement.
The official continued, “considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?”
The Chief stared at the government officials for over a minute and then calmly replied: “When white man found the land, Indians were running it.
No taxes, No debt, Plenty buffalo, Plenty beaver, Women did all the work, Medicine man free, Indian man spent all day hunting and fishing, All night having sex. “Then the chief leaned back and smiled: “Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.”
The Zen of Sarcasm
1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.
3. It is always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbors newspaper, that’s the time to do it.
8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably a wise investment.
18. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
19. A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative.
20. A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
21. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
22. When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.
THINGS YOU WANT TO SAY AT WORK, BUT CAN’T!
2. This isn’t an office. It’s Hell with fluorescent lighting.
9. How do I set a laser printer to stun?
Wise Adages:
-Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
-In the ‘60s people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
-I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
-Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
-The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
-Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.
2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”
4. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”
9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
-Where does an Irish family go on vacation? A different bar.
-What does it mean when the flag at the Post Office is flying at half mast? They’re hiring.
5 Secrets to a Perfect Relationship:
1. It is important that a woman helps you around the house and has a job.
2. It is important that a woman makes you laugh.
3. It is important to find a woman you can count on and doesn’t lie to you.
4. It is important that a woman is good in bed and loves making love to you.
5. It is Really important that these four women don’t know each other ;->
Dear Tor,
After all this gloomy and frigid weather, the sun finally shines……………………as Tor writes things which make me giggle like a school girl.
Thanks for the uppers!
Linda
any time L !
http://leblow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Rydell-High-School-cheerleaders-Sandy-from-Grease.jpg
― ― ―
“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
― Markus Zusak ―
“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn’t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”
She was the book thief without the words. It’s a small story really, about, among other things: * A girl * Some words * An accordionist * Some fanatical Germans
* A Jewish fist fighter * And quite a lot of thievery
“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you. Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.”
“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
The Book Thief – It’s a Dictionary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t9Y1IhFvIE
“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
“I am haunted by humans.”
“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of. It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.”
“Sometimes you read a something so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you’ve finished just to stay near it.”
“She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist’s suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers…She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on…”
“Even death has a heart. He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. He does not carry a sickle or scythe. He only wears a hooded black robe when it’s cold. He doesn’t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on him from a distance. You want to know what he truly looks like? I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.”
“Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.”
Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.
“I carried Rudy softly through the broken street…with him I tried a little harder at comforting. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”
He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments longer before climbing out and handing her the book. His pants clung to him, and he did not stop walking. In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.”
“The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. ”
― Markus Zusak ―
“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
You missed one, my friend:
-Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime. Give a person a fish, and free health coverage, and amnesty, and WIC, SNAP, and welfare – And he’ll vote Democrat for the rest of his life….
@Jean,
Perennial site favorite Doug Stanhope’s got that covered:
“hey say if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish…. then he’s gotta get a fishing license, but he doesn’t have any money.
So he’s got to get a job and get into the Social Security system and pay taxes, and now you’re gonna audit the poor cocksucker, ’cause he’s not really good with math.
So he’ll pull the IRS van up to your house, and he’ll take all your shit. He’ll take your black velvet Elvis and your Batman toothbrush, and your penis pump, and that all goes up for auction with the burden of proof on you because you forgot to carry the one, ’cause you were just worried about eating a fucking fish, and you couldn’t even cook the fish ’cause you needed a permit for an open flame.
Then the Health Department is going to start asking you a lot of questions about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts. ‘This is not a sanitary environment’, and ladies and gentlemen if you get sick of it all at the end of the day, it’s not even legal to kill yourself in this country.
Thanks again, John Ashcroft, you weird bible addict, can’t even handle your own drug. You were born free, you got fucked out of half of it, and you wave a flag celebrating it. [audience member]: Hey, don’t hold back! [Doug]: You got an argument? [a.m.] No, keep goin’! … The only true freedom you find, is when you realize and come to terms with the fact that you are completely and unapologetically fucked, and then you are free to float around the system.”
More from Doug:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Doug_Stanhope
Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give him a bank and he can rob the world.
Dear Phil,
I never realized just how crooked banksters were until relatively recently.
I knew about the “too big to fail” bailouits, aka welfare for the rich.
But did you know that banking laws passed by legislators in the banksters’ pockets allow banks to engage in “fractional reverse lending” using reserve ratios of 10%, 3%, or even 0%???
Watch this video to see how this legalized Ponzi Scheme works.
Phillip the Bruce, that is my new favorite saying! Fantastic!
If ya’ll haven’t already, I highly recommend….no, I say, it is the bible of understanding the New World Order…
The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin
It’s long but so well-written it’s like reading a mystery/spy novel. It outlines the intrigue, the players, and the plot behind the Federal Reserve–and every other central bank in the world.
If you want to understand how the scam works, this is the definitive book.
It’s exactly as John Maynard Keynes–the Bastard Supreme–said:
Exercise in form of a brisk walk or run can help people adjust to the advanced clocks. Biologist David Glass of Kent State University (cited in ABC News) suggests that a brisk walk or run stimulates the serotonin release in the brain and other types of neurotransmitters that will phase-advance the clock.
Another suggestion is to gain exposure to bright natural light for an hour or two. According to Harvard University Gazette, people can adjust their daily rhythms by sitting in front of “light boxes”, which are banks of fluorescent bulbs that emit two to three times more light than found in a typical room at home. This type of light is bright white light.
Other suggestions are: to take low dosage melatonin supplements to boost melatonin levels, as melatonin regulates cycles of sleep and wakefulness (although it is best to consult with a qualified health care professional on this matter); and to eat earlier – tricking the body to think it is later by eating dinner early (and avoiding caffeine and alcohol) may help to fall asleep sooner.
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/daylight-saving-health.html
Best solution – abandon forced military time regimentation of the planet. Leave people free to create or choose their own algorithmic methods of space time navigation and segmentation. Personally, I prefer the Discordian Calendar.
All Hail Discordia
http://allhaildiscordia.tumblr.com
The Discordian calendar has five 73-day seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath. The Discordian year is aligned with the Gregorian calendar and begins on January 1, thus March 9th, 2014 Gregorian is the same as Chaos 68, 3180 Year of Our Lady of Discord.
The Erisian week consists of five days: Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange. The days of the week are named after the five basic Discordian elements: Sweet, Boom, Pungent, Prickle, and Orange. There are 73 of these weeks per year and every year begins with Sweetmorn.
Holyday Discordian calendar Gregorian calendar
Mojoday Discord 5 March 19
Discoflux Discord 50 May 3
Syaday Confusion 5 May 31
Confuflux Confusion 50 July 15
Zaraday Bureaucracy 5 August 12
Bureflux Bureaucracy 50 September 26
Maladay The Aftermath 5 October 24
Afflux The Aftermath 50 December 8
Mungday Chaos 5 January 5
Chaoflux Chaos 50 February 19
http://klndr.org/data/uploads/discordian_calendar.jpg
Recent Kalispell MT Actual Hi Lo Precip 48North 114West NOAA NWS
Sun
2/23/2014 18° 9° 0.01 in 0.0 in
Mon
2/24/2014 18° 6° 0.01 in 0.1 in
Tue
2/25/2014 28° -3° 0 in 0 in
Wed
2/26/2014 22° 10° 0 in 0 in
Thu
2/27/2014 28° 18° 0.00 in 0.1 in
Recent Houston TX Actual Hi Lo Precip 29North 95West TX NOAA NWS
Sun
2/23/2014 79° 61° 0.01 in 0 in
Mon
2/24/2014 67° 63° 0 in 0 in
Tue
2/25/2014 79° 62° 0.04 in 0 in
Wed
2/26/2014 62° 40° 0.45 in 0 in
Thu
2/27/2014 56° 36° 0 in 0 in
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: Episode 7, “The Backbone of Night”
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/12/exploring-carl-sagans-cosmos-episode-7-qthe-backbone-of-nightq
Hope the new Cosmos is half as good as the original that premieres tonight. Carl Sagan a son of a simple Ukrainian immigrant garment worker.
How Carl Sagan Worked
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/carl-sagan1.htm
– If Carl Sagan is just an atheist, then Karl Benz is just an anti-equestrian.
“The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world.” ― Carl Sagan
From – The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
http://www.e-reading.bz/bookreader.php/148582/The_Demon-Haunted_World_:_Science_as_a_candle_in_the_dark.pdf
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
“The more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.”
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
It is rumored that the old Indian Chief and wise man said of Daylight Savings time:
“Only a white man would think that he could cut off the end of his blanket, and sew it on the other end, and think he had a longer blanket.”
I HATE the time change — on both ends.
Who came up with this ridiculous idea and why is it being continued today?
I think the same thing twice a year…
I woke up this morning with the unnaturally-timed sunlight, and thought to myself–“motherfuckers, they’ve ruined my shower, my toilet, my cars, and they even mess with my time???”
The incessant, insatiable, gnawing, burning HUNGER to CONTROL.
It’s a sickness.
I like daylight savings time with regards to how it relates our arbitrary clocks to the sun where I live. I hate switching between two systems.
Dear Linda,
DST was originally a satirical proposal from Benjamin Franklin in a satirical 1784 essay titled “An Economical Project.”
http://www.snopes.com/science/daylight.asp
Why were 10 dead bodies found in Benjamin Franklin’s basement?
http://io9.com/5901948/why-were-10-dead-bodies-found-in-benjamin-franklins-basement
Well, 60 yesterday, and pretty nice today! It IS getting better, but suspect we’ll see some more frozen precip. in the next month or so – spring always has surprises like that in the Appalachians.
What’ s interesting is that we may be entering a protracted period of colder winters – a mini ice age, as it were. Here’s a good link to a running compendium of articles about this possibility. It’s all connected with solar activity, and this cycle has been a very low one.
http://nextgrandminimum.wordpress.com
Today at the credit union , a woman in another line goes ballistic because some guy had guns and a molon labe type message on his t-shirt. “Well what if it said the N word she said to the black teller, isn’t there some kind of dress code. I don’t feel safe. I’m worried he has a gun in his truck and he’s going to shoot me.”
Two employees ended up escorting her to the parking lot. Funny thing was, the dude didn’t even have any arms.
Later after buying groceries, some grizzled outdoorsman demanded we go back inside and buy him some chicken from the deli. He really needed it now!
Had the wrong car, and was sadly lacking for any means of protection. Foolishly I thought the store in the rich neighborhood would be OK. A quick scan of the giant lot determines there’s maybe a dozen more urban entrepreneurs at work or shuffling about.
Probably he’s just a harmless freelancer ignore him for the 100 feet to the car. No big deal. But where is the guy in an assault weapons t-shirt when you need him? Probably woulda scared him away.
– – –
It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of the human mind, the Ministry of Weather Says Doubleplus Good Days Are Ahead For You Winston!
Sun
Mar 9
Partly Cloudy 54°
Mon
Mar 10
Sunny 63°
Tue
Mar 11
Partly Cloudy 67°
Wed
Mar 12
Rain 58°
What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles, either.
And what is good, Phædrus, And what is not good… Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind , even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid. When it’s this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, I’m wondering what it’s going to be like in the afternoon.
In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs, heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is an old concrete two-laner that hasn’t had much traffic since a four-laner went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air suddenly becomes cooler.
Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up again. I’m happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles.—There’s a red-winged blackbird.
I whack Chris’s knee and point to it.
“What!” he hollers.
“Blackbird!”
He says something I don’t hear.”What?” I holler back.
He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers up, “I’ve seen lots of those, Dad!”
“Oh!” I holler back. Then I nod. At age eleven you don’t get very impressed with red-winged blackbirds.
You have to get older for that. For me this is all mixed with memories that he doesn ’t have. Cold mornings long ago when the marsh grass had turned brown and cattails were waving in the northwest wind. The pungent smell then was from muck stirred up by hip boots while we were getting in position for the sun to come up and the duck season to open. Or winters when the sloughs were frozen over and dead and I could walk across the ice and snow between the dead cattails and see nothing but grey skies and dead things and cold.
The blackbirds were gone then. But now in July they’re back and everything is at its alivest and every foot of these sloughs is humming and cricking and buzzing and chirping, a whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don ’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You ’re
a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You ’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it ’s right there, so blurred you can ’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed farther than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing. Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.
Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don ’t get swung from side to side in any
compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you ’re from and how long you ’ve been riding.
It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious: these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different. They ’re not going anywhere.
They’re not too busy to be courteous. The hereness and nowness of things is something they know all about. It ’s the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find.
I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn ’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I ’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.
But once we caught on, of course, nothing could keep us off these roads, weekends, evenings, vacations. We have become real secondary-road motorcycle buffs and found there are things you learn as you go.
We have learned how to spot the good ones on a map, for example. If the line wiggles, that ’s good. That means hills. If it appears to be the main route from a town to a city, that ’s bad. The best ones always connect nowhere with nowhere and have an alternate that gets you there quicker. If you are going northeast from a large town you never go straight out of town for any long distance. You go out and then start jogging north, then east, then north again, and soon you are on a secondary route that only the local people use.
The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions aren ’t posted. And often they aren ’t. When they are it ’s usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that’s all. County-road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds that’s your problem, not theirs. Moreover, you discover that the highway maps are often inaccurate about county roads. And from time to time you find your “county road” takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmer’s backyard.
So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn ’t show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to “get somewhere” it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.
On Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends we travel for miles on these roads without seeing another vehicle, then cross a federal highway and look at cars strung bumper to bumper to the horizon. Scowling faces inside. Kids crying in the back seat. I keep wishing there were some way to tell them something but they scowl and appear to be in a hurry, and there isn’t — .
I have seen these marshes a thousand times, yet each time they’re new. It ’s wrong to call them benign. You could just as well call them cruel and senseless, they are all of those things, but the reality of them overwhelms halfway conceptions. There! A huge flock of red-winged blackbirds ascends from nests in the cattails, startled by our sound. I swat Chris ’s knee a second time—then I remember he has seen them before.
“What?” he hollers again.
“Nothing.”
“Well, what?”
“Just checking to see if you’re still there,” I holler, and nothing more is said.
Unless you ’re fond of hollering you don ’t make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. On sights and sounds, on the mood of the weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you’re in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you ’re losing time.
What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We ’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it ’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.
What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua…that ’s the only name I can think of for it…like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. “What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.
Up ahead the other riders, John Sutherland and his wife, Sylvia, have pulled into a roadside picnic area. It ’s time to stretch. As I pull my machine beside them Sylvia is taking her helmet off and shaking her hair loose, while John puts his BMW up on the stand. Nothing is said. We have been on so many trips together we know from a glance how one another feels. Right now we are just quiet and looking around.
The picnic benches are abandoned at this hour of the morning. We have the whole place to ourselves. John goes across the grass to a cast-iron pump and starts pumping water to drink. Chris wanders down through some trees beyond a grassy knoll to a small stream. I am just staring around.
After a while Sylvia sits down on the wooden picnic bench and straightens out her legs, lifting one at a time slowly without looking up. Long silences mean gloom for her, and I comment on it. She looks up and then looks down again.
“It was all those people in the cars coming the other way,” she says. “The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one, they were all the same.”
“They were just commuting to work.”
She perceives well but there was nothing unnatural about it. “Well, you know, work,” I repeat. “Monday morning. Half asleep. Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?”
“It’s just that they looked so lost,” she says. “Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession.” Then she puts both feet down and leaves them there.
I see what she is saying, but logically it doesn’t go anywhere. You work to live and that ’s what they are doing. “I was watching swamps,” I say.
After a while she looks up and says, “What did you see?”
“There was a whole flock of red-winged blackbirds. They rose up suddenly when we went by.”
“Oh.”
“I was happy to see them again. They tie things together, thoughts and such. You know?”
She thinks for a while and then, with the trees behind her a deep green, she smiles. She understands a peculiar language which has nothing to do with what you are saying. A daughter.
“Yes,” she says. “They’re beautiful.”
“Watch for them,” I say.
“All right.”
John appears and checks the gear on the cycle. He adjusts some of the ropes and then opens the saddlebag and starts rummaging through. He sets some things on the ground. “If you ever need any rope, don ’t hesitate,” he says. “God, I think I ’ve got about five times what I need here.”
“Not yet,” I answer.
“Matches?” he says, still rummaging. “Sunburn lotion, combs, shoelaces—shoelaces? What do we need shoelaces for?”
“Let’s not start that,” Sylvia says. They look at each other deadpan and then both look over at me.
“Shoelaces can break anytime,” I say solemnly. They smile, but not at each other.
Chris soon appears and it is time to go. While he gets ready and climbs on, they pull out and Sylvia waves. We are on the highway again, and I watch them gain distance up ahead.
The Chautauqua that is in mind for this trip was inspired by these two many months ago and perhaps, although I don’t know, is related to a certain undercurrent of disharmony between them.
Disharmony I suppose is common enough in any marriage, but in their case it seems more tragic. To me, anyway.
It’s not a personality clash between them; it’s something else, for which neither is to blame, but for which neither has any solution, and for which I’m not sure I have any solution either, just ideas.
The ideas began with what seemed to be a minor difference of opinion between John and me on a matter of small importance: how much one should maintain one ’s own motorcycle. It seems natural and normal to me to make use of the small tool kits and instruction booklets supplied with each machine, and keep it tuned and adjusted myself…
Zen&TheArtOfMotMaint
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zen-motorcycle.pdf
I tell ya, you guys gotta come to Texas.
I wear my “Molon Labe” and even more inflammatory “Come and Take It” t-shirt, with an M-4 or AK-47 silhouette, to frikking’ Whole Foods every week in Houston.
Inside “The Loop”–real citified area, just south of West U–the WASPiest area. NOT ONE, I mean NONE, bad comment.
Lots of “atta boy!”‘s. I’d say I get one to two positive comments every second time I wear them.
A new gun shop just opened across the street from the Whole Foods. Two walls full of Evil Black Rifles. A dozen guys milling around, guns walking out the door.
Texas isn’t perfect but it’s economically sound for now, and there’s a real awareness that we’re fighting for keeps this time.
BTW the other day at the range, there was a guy with a nice AR-10 at the 600 yard range. He was dinging the 12-inch steel plate. With iron sights.
Don’t try that Connecticut crap down here, assholes. We’ll come for you.
41 degrees here in NE Wyoming at about 8:30 Am.. It was 35 outside when I got up at 4AM, already exceeded the predicted “high” for today. Daytime temps predicted to get above 50 for the next four days. We could get a few more sprinkles of snow, or start our spring rains instead. Last night frost date is usually around the end of May, but might come early this year. Nobody would complain. 🙂
Snow is mostly melted, and we have the usual spring fling with deep, sticky mud. Most of us would prefer the snow, skip the mud and go straight to the ground becoming concrete after it drys. But, nobody really gets a choice. 🙂
Sisters Tolmachevy Катюша/Katyusha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivASIwtHALM
Red Army Choir Катюша/Katyusha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRWSTmB-QHg
US Drag Queen Brigade “Катюша/Katyusha ” at Kadena Air Base
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3eHX3xZGyw
Funny, to me…
Sochi, Russia couldnt’ keep the half-pipe frozen…
We’re having a RECORD COLD winter. As in, since we started tracking temperatures.
The back yard up here is STILL frozen SOLID. The dog can’t handle it, and he’s got four paw drive… it’s treacherous for a human!
But yesterday, I saw on our viewscreen that it’s across the country… As in, LA, San Fran, Texas (no city), Florida, et al. The entire COUNTRY is frozen solid!
And the controllers/erstwhile rulers want us to believe it’s because of GLOPBAL WARMING…
The HAARP and chemtrail “conspiracy theories” seem all too likely at this point. But I’ve read the core is reversing polarity, too – that will make things even worse. Any ONE of those would be a disaster, but if all three are going? That would be extinction-level events.
Maybe we need to do the same, only do it first? Katyusha the SOBs and take back control of our country? (Would it matter? Maybe it’s just the sun and the core and “that time of the millenium” for mother nature? Not like we have a transparent administration… We’re ALL guessing, ALL indigs, all slaves. I’d like to be able to control SOMETHING in my life again! Not go to the grocery and spend the NEXT paycheck, ya know? Speaking of which – the cold is going to send our food bills through the roof, AGAIN. Avocados are known to be disappearing, for example. Oranges will be frozen. this late frost will make for short growing seasons, too. Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, alfalfa, carrots, etc, all going to be in short supply; this on the heels of news LAST year that feed was getting too expensive for the beef farmers, they were selling off their herds…
The risks of Russia, Lithuania, South American ports of call, all looking better than staying here and HOPING. And I’m 38, without great transplantable skills – computers don’t translate outside trade barriers, the OS is different.)
Six inches down and it’s still coming….
I kinna stan’ much more, cap’n…
Eric,
With all the runoff of snow melt, the rivers and streams in your area are gonna be high this spring and summer. Dump a tropical storm amount of rain during the warm months and you’ll have lots more fun.
Pray for a long dry spell.
Dogs either have snow paws or they don’t.
If they have fur between the pads to walk on snow and the nails to bite into the ice they won’t slide and they largely won’t sink into the snow either. A dog with the right paws isn’t much different on ice than on the kitchen floor… probably better on the ice.
There should be three more days this year with highs below 50. 3/7 3/13 3/16. You could endure or head south.
3/7 6 hour drive to Savannah GA, it will be 50
3/13 2.5 hour drive to Charlotte NC, it will be 52
3/16 2 hour drive to Winston Salem NC it will be 51.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/copper-hill-va/24079/march-weather/2173442
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/copper-hill-va/24079/april-weather/2173442?monyr=4/1/2014
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/copper-hill-va/24079/may-weather/2173442?monyr=5/1/2014
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/copper-hill-va/24079/month/2173442?monyr=6/01/2014
“There should be three more days this year with highs below …”
Geo engineering.
It’s a term.
It’s a fact.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
It does not matter.
It’s what ‘they’ want.
They have The power.
Ha. “They have the technology”.
The public can remain clueless if they so choose, but it’s a fact.
I can understand why people would like to ignore or turn a blind eye towards the likes of Dr. Vermeeren from the Delft University of Technology, who presented in 2010 a 300-page scientific report entitled, “CASE ORANGE: Contrail Science, Its Impact on Climate and Weather Manipulation Programs Conducted by the United States and Its Allies.”
…And the Beat goes on.
Hi Helot,
Hey mang, please register as a Subscriber so your posts don’t go into the Moderation queue (like this one did)… !
Dang it. Because you asked. I’ll not comment again until I do so.
Now, where’s the instructions? A.k.a. R.T.F.M..?
Thanks, mang!
There should be a button on the top left of the main page; very simple to register. Just create a user name (e.g., Helot) and a password. Then, you’re in.
PS: We do not “facebook” info. No “sharing” or any other such nonsense. We only use the registration feature to weed out the spammers…
Certainly, something toxic could be being placed in jet fuel. The solution is to end our current status of powerlessness, to obtain the necessary resources to see for ourselves what is in our homes, and in the air and water all around us.
Aircraft Emissions – from Stanford Aircraft Design Class AA241
http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/emissions/emissions.html
Mick West’s site on contrails
http://contrailscience.com
The total mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5,500 trillion tons, or roughly one millionth of Earth’s mass.
Atmospheric composition (by volume, dry air):
Major : 78.08% Nitrogen (N2), 20.95% Oxygen (O2),
Minor (ppm): Argon (Ar) – 9340; Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – 400
Neon (Ne) – 18.18; Helium (He) – 5.24; CH4 – 1.7
Krypton (Kr) – 1.14; Hydrogen (H2) – 0.55
Numbers do not add up to exactly 100% due to roundoff and uncertainty
Water is highly variable, typically makes up about 1%
Eric, don’t do it, summer will come 🙂
Don K
Yeah, in another two months… and then we’ll get – what? – five months or so of warm weather before the shit starts all over again.
Another winter like this and I think I’m done.
After reading TheHousingBubbleBlog, it seems to me if you don’t sell now, you’ll never get to without loosing your ass, x 2.
Next year may be too late.
I’ve heard good things about the Dominican Republic, it’s like a Wild West there, or so they say. And, it’s not even like in Alaska, the mosquitoes there are not the size of turkeys!
That’s ‘global warming’ for you.
Speaking of global warming… my favorite new blog:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
Documentation of what I’ve noticed over the years but never bothered to do the hard work on. This guy did it, dug out the old data and compares it to today’s data. It’s amazing how Winston Smith has changed the past.
Many years ago I used to argue with the global warming true believers that water vapor was the green house gas…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/
Yes! My bad for not mentioning him before here.
Steven Goddard’s site is just a giant pile of 50BMG ammo against the shaky-kneed warmists.
He gives’em hell!
This is the first year I’ve ever had a snow-thrower (snow-blower) it’s kind of fun. I used to shake my head at the guy down the street who would snow-blow off all the sidewalks on the block and think he was crazy for doing so. ….Now I know.
Anyway, look on the bright side (at least in my area) this isn’t one of those Winters where the Sun didn’t shine for months on end. Now that, sucks.
Eric,
Only good news about your weather report is that it (The bad weather) will stay south of NJ. I am tired of shoveling snow this winter. (I know I am not the only one tired.)
Watch where you point that Mossberg. 😉
It’s 4:37 Friday morning – and there’s a couple inches of frozen sky piss covering everything … and it’s pig-biting cold on top of it. Might as well be Jan. 6 – who can tell the difference?
I am going to have to buy another $400 load of firewood. Third this year so far. I normally never buy firewood. I cut/chop 3 or so cords and that’s plenty for the season.
Not this season. I ran out of my wood two months ago.
Normally, by this time of year, there’s no more need for the fire – and hasn’t been much need of it for a couple weeks. Keep it going, but at a low/slow burn. Let it go out after supper – the residual heat is plenty to keep the house comfortable because the outside air temp is 45-ish…. daytimes are usually in the 50s. It should be feeling like spring by this point.
I’ve had the wood stove running almost continuously for four months now (since mid November) and when it is 15 degrees out at night, that mutha eats wood like you would not believe. In addition to costing me $1,200 this endless winter has also cost me four months of aggravation – every day, carting a couple wheelbarrow loads of wood from the pile to the house; clearing the ashes – repeat.
I’m under siege….
You’re making me doubt again my escape-but-not-to-Chile idea…of moving to “The Redoubt” at Kalispell, Montana.
‘Cuz it’s certainly brass-bra-witch-tit cold up there too. I’m entertaining pastoral visions of home-schooling the kids, doing online contract work while the wife does her ob/gyn practice for cash…wood-burning stove, heavily-armed neighbors, practicing with a 7.62 off the back porch. Kinda like the movie “Shooter” (totally excellent BTW).
Hearing your desperation….in Virginia, which is a damn sight warmer than Montana…makes me really wonder.
How many acres of forest would you need to be sustainable long-term Eric, if all your heat came from the wood stove?
Dear meth,
Ah, “Shooter.”
One of the best sniper oriented flicks made. Lots of gun porn for us gun nuts.
Shooter depicts a number of sniper tactics, thanks to the guidance of former U.S. Marine scout sniper Patrick Garrity, who trained Mark Wahlberg for the film.
Fuqua appointed Garrity as the film’s military technical advisor.[3]
In the special features of the DVD, Garrity is interviewed… Garrity said “At 1,800 yards, because of the hydrostatic shock that follows a large caliber, high velocity round such as the .408 Chey Tac (which is used in the shot), the target would literally be peeled apart and limbs would be flying 200 feet away”. The exit wound on the archbishop’s head would have been too extreme to show in movie theaters. Instead, the movie depicts a much less graphic representation of the assassination.
Yikes!
I don’t know about Montana, but when I lived in Nebraska, folks claimed “the wind pumps the water and the cows chop the wood.” But when it’s this cold and windy, even if you have a sufficient store of ‘white flats,’ it takes 2 people full time to haul the chips in and the ashes out.
17 degrees here last night….