That Back To The Future Crap

Space Shuttle watchers were given a spectacle reminiscent of the dark ages when the plague raged through Europe because of poor sanitation:

The beautiful trail in the sky looked like a mysterious celestial event. In reality, it was urine. Some skygazers were treated to the unexpected view of a bright sparkling glow Wednesday night, created when astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery dumped the waste out into space. The water dump was a scheduled task for STS-128 pilot Kevin Ford, who poured out urine and waste water stored aboard the shuttle in preparation for a landing attempt Thursday.

(Space). So now that we have contaminated the Earth with at least two continents of floating garbage, we can now get into the process of polluting space as well? That must really impress the world as we fly overhead seeming to be dumping refuse on them, because our urine is so sparkly and futuristic but theirs isn't? The symbolism of a ring of refuse around the Earth, perhaps meaning we rename the planet to "Urine-US", alone makes it not worth the few bucks being "saved". After all, the shuttle can land with quite a load more than 150 pounds, and it could be recycled into brown water. Bottom line, the space sewage could be disposed of decently as if we were a bit more civilized than the world is beginning to think.

America - The Days The Music Died

Many will remember the song American Pie by Don McClean, Pearl Harbor, and "9/11" eight years ago today, on September 11, 2001.

The lyrics of the song American Pie clearly depict a loss of the intangible because the song depicts a poetic, musical notion that there was a day when the music died:

In a voice that came from you and me
And while the King was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
...
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in hell
Could break that satan's spell
And as flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw satan laughing with delight
the day the music died.
...
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

(American Pie, Wiki). The Pearl Harbor Episode before that, and the 9/11 Episode after that caused loss to our nation too.

In both cases a part of the music of the U.S. Constitution died.

After Pearl Harbor thousands upon thousands of Americans were put into concentration camps because of their race.

After 9/11 thousands upon thousands of Americans have been put into media (TV, Newspaper, Magazine) built mental concentration camps where they are not allowed to question the government, on pain of being ridiculed and scorned by the main stream media controlled by corporations that are influenced by the government.

Thus, in these two examples of national dementia, the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution were and are violated.

The government gets by with it, in the 9/11 case, because they have the lackey media to do indirectly what they could not do directly.

In the Pearl Harbor case the courts upheld the illegal and unconstitutional detentions like they once had upheld racial segregation and slavery.

There are thousands of professionals and millions of non-professionals who do not believe that the 9/11 Commission got to the truth concerning the events of September 11, 2001, eight years ago today.

These people are not given their rights, just as the Americans with Asian ancestry were not given their rights following Pearl Harbor in the early 1940's, some sixty or so years ago.

What has replaced the constitutional rights is unwarranted wiretaps, torture, invasions, wars the majority reject, economic disaster due to wasteful spending, and an increasing sense that the government is inept and corrupt.

The recent Birther movement is seen as a conspiracy theory, but at least they were able to go to court, even to the Supreme Court, to have their petition heard.

However, even though the two bipartisan chairmen and the legal counsel of the 9/11 commission say they now know that perjured testimony and testimony from individuals who were tortured prior to the Commission coming into existence, gave information which the Committee relied upon in reaching its conclusions.

The Birthers got their hearing and so should the Truthers, because the Constitution guarantees the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Many of these Truthers are grieving family members who only want a more honest Commission report, which is something we all deserve.

Check out their website and give them support if you are so inclined.

UPDATE: The public is not hoodwinked by the press as much as the press would hope:

The public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans' views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.

(Pew Research). Good, stay sceptical until the press stops being the lackey for the neoCon far right.

High Technology Boll Weevil

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology Blog.

GOP Demands The Right To Be Rude - 2

A short while back we did a post GOP Demands The Right To Be Rude.

Last night during the formal address to a joint meeting of congress, the GOP demanded that "right" again. The scene they made was more like a mob than it was a gathering of decent, well meaning legislators:

Fresh from a month of acrimonious town halls, House Republicans arrived for President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night with signs, props, and a lot of attitude ... at least one congressman went way too far. Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" after Obama denied that his health care proposal would cover illegal immigrants ... Wilson's wasn't the only disruption, though it was the most extreme. Throughout the speech, Republican members of Congress repeatedly held up stacks of papers that appeared to represent ideas they had for the bill ... Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) held signs that read "What Bill?" and "What Plan?" ... When Obama told the chamber that the "death panel" lie was, in fact, a lie, a Republican member said loudly enough to be heard in the press gallery, "Read the bill" -- a common refrain at August's angry town hall meetings ... When Obama told the chamber that he had "no interest in putting insurance companies out of business," a Republican member responded with a loud, "Ha!"

"Nineteen years, never, never have I seen anything like this," said a furious Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) after the speech.

"I thought it was very inappropriate behavior, to hold up signs. None of us ever would have done that," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). "I don't think in the Congress of the United States there ought to be catcalls, or people standing up and yelling comments or holding up signs."

(Wilson Apologizes, HuffPo). Such activities do infringe upon the rules of congress which is said to be the envy of the world legislative bodies when it comes to formal civility.

Once more the world looks on as the U.S. looks more brutish, and especially since it is in the context of health care, where the U.S. lags way behind the other industrial democracies it wants to be leader of.

El Cid vs. Joe Six Pack - 2

Torture: Abu Ghraib

We covered the saga of El Cid vs. Joe Six Pack a while back but the story has recently gained some strength.

Imagine the irony when one of the places of the old inquisition may end up prosecuting those who did a modern inquisition in the name of the U.S., but contrary to the will of the people.

Be sure to read the Spanish version of the story or if not fluent in that language, read the translated English version.

The Obama Administration is straining hard not to do anything like what Spain is doing, in this age of decline in the United States.

Great Speech By President Obama

There won't be many presidents who can speak as effectively as Barack Hussein Obama did before the joint session of The United States Congress.

Even though our recent degeneracy has not dampened his speaking ability, our national degeneracy (not the fault of any one department of government alone, any one state, any one cause, or any one reason) will limit what he can do.

Likewise, the time in our national history when he took office has not dampened his speaking ability, but will limit what he can do.

We could work our way out of it, except that we are not what we once were; we are in decline.

We may be better off as a result of no longer being the world's beacon on the hill, and the world may be better off, but all that remains to be seen.

Tail Evolution & Political Science Tales

A recent post discussed the origin of a species of politician.

What we have now discovered in political science, that tales have a life of their own, has now been discovered in biological science. This may be another case of biomimicry gone bad. Scientists did some experiments and have concluded that:

Geckos and other lizards have long been known for their incredible ability to shed their tails as a decoy for predators, but little is known about the movements and what controls the tail once it separates from the lizard's body.
...

The scientists demonstrate that tails exhibit not only rhythmic but also complex movements, including flips, jumps and lunges, after the tails are shed.
...

"What we've discovered is that the tail does not simply oscillate in a repetitive fashion, but has an intricate repertoire of varied and highly complex movements, including acrobatic flips up to three centimetres in height."

(Science Daily). Could it be that we are seeing evolution take place right before our eyes? The tail of the lizard has become the tale of the politician?

Dick Cheney and his revisionist historian crew have fostered tales that have a life of their own, an energy causing those tales to flip flop all over the place, leading the media into an abyss of frenzy.

Hey, survival of the fittest tale?

Obama Must Prove Gender

The Birthers only have it half right.

According to the "GENITALS", the right wing of the Birther Movement, Obama must be fully right and prove gender like Caster Semenya was required to do.

One lefty, "Pat" of Saturday Night Live (SNL) fame, was allowed to get away with it, so no one ever found out about Pat's gender.

It is a national scandal depriving us of our constitutional right to be way, way right.

Bring back warrantless wiretaps and indefinite prison terms for the heathen.

We must not let the doubt of Obama's gender bring down our great republic.

We know many people think that Pat became Pat Buchanan, but many others think Pat became Patty Duke.

No matter, The Genitals want long birth certificates and pictures ... yeah that's the ticket ... lots of pictures.

9/11 Causes Job Loss Up Until Now

The news controlled by the same "News Corp" that controls Fox News (a.k.a. Dick Cheney's news outlet) falsely reported "the pancake theory" for the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01:

As the steel columns at the core of the Twin Towers collapsed, the floors they supported fell on each other like two stacks of pancakes.

(National Geographic, 2001). Like it was falsely reporting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Iraq and al Qaeda worked together to do 9/11, and many other falsehoods.

The National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), which was bossed by the Bush II Regime at that time, did not subscribe to that false theory advanced by Murdock's Fox News outlet:

NIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system — that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns — consisted of a grid of steel “trusses” integrated with a concrete slab ... the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.

(NIST, 2006). But you never heard that probably, because the Fox News Empire does not apologize for its falsehoods; their motto is Cheney's motto: "never apologize".

More often than not they instead make up another falsehood to wrap around it, you know, the onion technique. That is why all neoCons, together with most other people who do not do their homework, still believe the "pancake theory" falsehood.

But some do apologize for their 9/11 mistakes. Van Jones, who used to work for the Obama Administration, apologized for signing a petition requesting a new investigation of 9/11 because he did not believe that The 9/11 Commission did an adequate job.

Fox News complained about his "9/11 wrong", never mentioning theirs, and for that Van Jones lost his job while Fox News got a pat on the back by the "birthers".

Phase Three Of The Currency Wars?

Uncle Tad

We have been asking a simple question for awhile now about the signs of a currency war that may be taking place behind the scenes, yet in our face.

The knee-jerk reaction from some media pundit economists to all of this heretofore has been to brush it off as some kind of "conspiracy theory".

That is the folder where that type of media pundit puts everything it can't seem to emotionally or intellectually handle these days.

In this case, as the linked stories above point out, this idea fostered by China and other competing nations, has now made its way to the UN:

The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, the United Nations said.

UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said today in a report.

China, India, Brazil and Russia this year called for a replacement to the dollar as the main reserve currency ...

(Bloomberg)[Bloomberg "lost" the page, no Way Back machine copy, so here, here, here, and here are other mentions of it]. Those nations comprise more than half of the world's population, so the pundit poo-pooing of this is brain dead.

The UN was branded as useless and treated like a stepchild by the Bush II regime so our reputation went down into the mouldy cellar during those invasion years.

Then came the Bush II economic disasters which put the icing on the toxic cake the bushies had cooked up.

There is little wonder that the world is reacting this way, and it is past high time for major diplomacy to assure the world we intend to correct the right wing's egregious behaviour flouted as enlightenment during the Bush II darkness.

The Undiscovered Side of Science & Life

Scientists were working in ho-hum mode at an excavation site where they though they knew, in general, everything they would find.

That state of mind tended to make the project a bit ho-hum at most any particular moment.

But lo and behold, all of a sudden they discovered a massive wall which was of the sort that had not been glanced over by preconceived notions to, thus there were no preconceived notes with which to write scripts of procedure.

Yes, even after all the dogma was searched through, all the canned retorts pondered, they were forced to wonder how the ancients built this human work without modern, industrial grade, heavy equipment:

An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say.

The wall is built of enormous boulders, confounding archaeologists as to how ancient peoples built it.

Standing 8 meters (26 feet) high, the wall of huge cut stones is a marvel to archaeologists.

"To build straight walls up 8 meters ... I don't know how to do it today without mechanical equipment," said the excavation's director, Ronny Reich. "I don't think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it."

Archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority added, "You see all the big boulders -- all the boulders are 4 to 5 tons."

(CNN). The wall had been there all the time waiting to be discovered, as empires rose and fell, for thousands of years.

The birthers / president haters were talking about what they would find in a "socialist speech" until they opened up the speech of President Obama only to realize how good the speech was for students.

Especially kid students.

Putting the mouth in gear before the brain has engaged is more likely than not to lead to a fork in the road; one leading to an apology, the other leading to denial.

Likewise, when we think we know it all and our science, formula languages, computer languages, space vehicles, and our plethora of theories can't be beat, that fork in the road is on the way:

A lost world populated by fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures has been discovered in a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea.

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

The discoveries are being seen as fresh evidence of the richness of the world's rainforests and the explorers hope their finds will add weight to calls for international action to prevent the demise of similar ecosystems. They said Papua New Guinea's rainforest is currently being destroyed at the rate of 3.5% a year.

(Guardian, UK). Preservation of species is the type of thing where the bad side of the fork in the road could lead to catastrophe, but the other and good fork in the road leads to biomimicry's many helpful discoveries which help humanity.

The next post in this series is here.

Pop A Cap For Jesus 'n Justice

A while back we looked in on the Arkansas debate over whether the legislature of that state should allow guns in churches:

"A minister who was shot in the back in church immediately after a sermon does not want worshippers carrying guns in church.

Another church goer and leader in a movement which advocates carrying concealed firearms does want worshippers carrying guns in church."

(Pop a Cap for Jesus). Evidently this "enlightened movement" is spreading to other parts of Arkansas:

"It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court."

(Huffington Post). Yep, the good ole boy cops who take their guns to town, church, and to court, had to put down this anarchist, in open court, to save freedom in the homeland.

Some of them I am sure are listening to politicians. One such politician said that if the voters did not elect her she would have to resort to guns to put down tyranny:

"We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box," Crabill said. "That's the beauty of our Second Amendment rights ... Our Second Amendment rights were to guard against tyranny."

(Hate Crimes & Terrorism Merging). Does this imply that she will shoot voters who do not vote for her?

These are a few cases among very many that inspired the post a while back asking the question "Is There a National Dementia?"

You Labour In Vain & Get Plundered

Bush II brought us two wars we did not want, an economy rife with loss of homes and jobs, and a dishonesty that would make Pathological Liars Anonymous blush.

So comes another Labour Day when we ponder the fruits of our labour.

While the neoCon bushies increase their lies to the max, trying to lie out of their crimes and blame it on the current administration, soldiers labour in Afghanistan under the guise of bringing democracy to an ancient nation at the point of a gun, hoping against hope to succeed where every other empire has failed.

Meanwhile allegations of a massively fraudulent election in Afghanistan spread around the internet and international press, blaming the U.S. inserted figurehead Karzai for election fraud.

But the Dick Cheney of Afghanistan is the behind the scenes winner, while the U.S. Treasury containing the people's money is plundered.

Is election fiasco, environmental fiasco, and financial fiasco what we have laboured for all these years?

Have a HAPPY LABOR DAY and don't let them bring you down too far.

Fuse Tautologies & Algebra For Godel

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology Blog.

Change Is Not An Option - It Is A Must

This post has been moved to the Ecocosmology Blog.