In fact there was no life at all.

Scientists now believe life began in a far more hellish environment than some kind of Frankenstein laboratory with lightning somehow creating life in primeval soup.

Most likely life was created by thermal vents deep in the lightless, airless recesses of the ocean. Cracks in the ocean floor opened to a hellish heat created by nuclear fusion that will continue until a dying sun engulfs the earth.  

Today such vents are still alive with alien life that cannot survive the sun and oxygen-rich environment of the surface.

Anaerobic archaebacteria created that oxygen-rich environment from the poisonous methane that filled the atmosphere and then died from their handiwork.

Nitwits who call themselves environmentalists and pay no attention to science would return much of the stored methane to the surface and the atmosphere and call it clean energy.  

They revere the distant sun, which will eventually destroy the earth, with its relative dribble of sometime energy and mostly ignore, or even denounce, the massive energy available from Mother Earth herself and her prodigious production of vegetation.

These fine folk even prefer to fill the land and waters and air with their own waste rather than recycling it for energy.

What kind of environmentalism would that be?

Best,  Terry

El Salvador Will Not Allow Lifesaving Abortion For Young Mother

http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-…

Die, woman, die.  The orphan you leave behind doesn’t need a murderess who would abort a brainless fetus.  

What would the world do for politicians if all brainless fetuses were aborted?

In Nicaragua the dashing, heroic, incestuous dictator Daniel Ortega, beloved by many liberals, will never be investigated for his crimes because he is after all a dashing, heroic dictator.

To appease the Nicaraguan church hierarchy, the incestuous, beloved dictator made the law against abortion absolute so the prelates wouldn’t concern themselves so with crimes against the people.

While there is much to celebrate among the younger generation in America, the rising intolerance for abortion is most assuredly not one of them. Men have never had anything to fear from the fix women can get into unless they give a damn about their mothers, wives, daughters and other females.

I have wondered if the rise of the so-called hispanic population and reverence for coathanger medicine are coincidental or a show of cause and effect.

Regardless of all other considerations, this is a horrendous retreat from common decency, commonsense and respect for individual rights IMO.  

It is abortion that converted me from a Catholic to a true believer in the Vikings’ religion.  Where else on the planet can one find a religion that decrees women goddesses are fully equal with male gods?  I frankly rebelled at thinking Viking males were sensitive souls but who can figure all the contradictions in life?  My Viking-Cherokee bride of nearly half a century has me confused too but then all women do that.  I am only a mere male. We are all dumber than whale blubber because we can only think with the gray stuff.

Best,  Terry

It was not an idle boast.  

It was an understatement.

If you have not read The Rape of Nanking, you perhaps are incredulous that the atrocities matched any horrors anywhere ever with a bizarre twist that was beyond even the imagination of Kurt Vonnegut.  A Nazi was the lead hero of a true story (“I will tell Hitler on you.”).

How does a fiendish mass murderer who excelled in killing contests become a gentle doctor?

The answer is quite simple and has been extolled and explained over and over but you wouldn’t listen would you?

[“You” is generic for the other people.  Certainly not you and I.]

The doctor was a member of a cult, in this case the Japanese Imperial Army.  Separate the members from the cult and they become human again.  It is pack mentality that afflicts us all.

My impression – impression only mind you – is that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is more like a cult member than a psychopath.

A two-member cult?  

Why not?  There are bizarre, chilling stories of twin language that has twins in a world of their own on occasion.  They even speak a language unintelligible to outsiders.

Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto.  The actor even carried out the role to his end.

Those outside the club are never really human.

Just speculating about the dynamic duo, the Boston bombers, that are not remotely the international conspiracy portrayed earlier from the evidence available.

Best,  Terry

It has struck me that the old timey folk wisdom easily explains the darkness of Obama.  

No, not Obama’s skin pigmentation, racists, but the contempt for ordinary people. Racism blinds and reveals nothing at all.

There are no black, white, red, yellow, pink, purple, fuchsia races.  That is silly and always has been.

My sister got the palomino and I got the common sorrel.  I think my brother’s horse was black, a small step above the commoners but only a small step.  I would remember if it was a large step like the palomino.  

I wasn’t jealous.  You will have to take my word for that because there is no way I can change your mind if it is made up.  You see I had the bestest horse in all the world whatever it’s color.  The color made no difference whatever.  Dad asked me more than once if I would sell Lizzie when I could no longer ride Lizzie because we were off in another place a long, long way away in those days after the divorce.  Dad knew we needed the money real bad but who would sell the bestest horse in all the world?

Color be damned.  It is nice to have pretty colors but that is not all there is.  

We lived in a gray house once.  Why did people paint their houses gray?  Because the paint was a dollar a bucket like the horrible barn red and dark green.  Gray was probably the pick of the lot but what an awful color.  First chance we got, we painted the house pastel.  Didn’t make it a better house but it did look better.

Somehow black isn’t a good color either for a house but a black roof is so admired that all the hurt from black roofs that suck up heat when it isn’t needed and deteriorate faster is set aside when people choose black roofs, the cost and inconvenience be damned.

OK, OK, so color does matter and sometimes even beyond pleasing and prejudice but there are far more important things in life.

Like money.

And power.

And money gives you power even if you are an idiot like some of the comical dunces that surfaced during the last presidential sweepstakes when they were trying to buy a winner.

So money can give you power to make a spectacle of yourself and destroy yourself as well as do something good for someone if you take a notion to help the no accounts that are beneath you.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Ernest Hemingway that the Second of the Great Fallacies was that the rich considered you their equal.  I will always wonder what the first great truth was.  Must have been a true revelation if that was only the second.

The very rich don’t hate working folk.  They get annoyed with them.  They tolerate them but they mostly just don’t concern themselves.

The nouveau riche on the other hand have reason to actively despise the working class because that is part of the past they wish to bury.

Best,  Terry

and resume a normal life after all her cancers disappeared?

How much would you pay for yourself if you are a woman or for your daughter or for other people’s mothers and daughters?

How much then would you for your Great Dane not to have his leg amputated because of a common sarcoma in big dogs and then almost certainly die anyway?

If you have no dogs, how much would you pay so that other dogs might live?

Obama and your Congress will pay nothing at all but will pay handsomely to delay such a drug from getting to market.

There is trillions for bankers to confiscate your home even if you never borrowed a penny from them, there is more trillions to kill Americans and others with warfare.

There is billions for Big Pharma and hospitals and insurers to sell you worthless and often harmful medicine and treatment.

But for small biotechs developing such a drug that actually exists, there is nothing at all but trouble.

NOTA BENE:  I have an investment in such a drug – a whole $300 or so – and it has only shown such results below the expected therapeutic level in a small proportion of patients in safety testing.  It is a blue sky gamble because of the huge funding required in hard times.  Banks need to keep their money and others prefer safety above all.  I will not go beyond this description for fear some other damn fool will risk the kids’ milk money.

Best,  Terry

And soon he may do hearts and lungs and other parts and pieces.

Despite liberal gospel, Dr. Frankenstein, under the alias Harald Ott with all his Igors and Igoresses under various aliases, cannot create Frankenstein tomatoes or pound sense into actual liberals, but he may be able to replace worn out parts, even some day maybe a brain that works.

Implantable, Bioengineered Rat Kidney

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re…

The baby lab rats aren’t as lucky as all that since they lost a good kidney to get a replacement of Dr. Frankenstein’s artificial kidney that don’t work real good – yet.

Around 18,000 kidney transplants are performed in the U.S. each year, but 100,000 Americans with end-stage kidney disease are still waiting for a donor organ. Even those fortunate enough to receive a transplant face a lifetime of immunosuppressive drugs, which pose many health risks and cannot totally eliminate the incidence of eventual organ rejection.

Hey wouldn’t that be swell if all the people with failing kidneys and failing hearts and failing lungs and failing brains – er, maybe not the latter – could get parts made for them that don’t have to have Igors and Igoresses robbing graves?

I never thought this dream would move this fast but science is funny that way.

We never seem to get to things that are just around the corner but stuff that is way off beyond the horizon suddenly smacks you in the face.

Why can’t we put an end to corners?

Best,  Terry

PLEASE NOTE: “We” is used in the broadest sense to include all of the Americas.  I haven’t bothered with the AmerIndian distinction or Native American semi-obscenity.

Wonk war has broken out again with publication of Napoleon Chagnon’s latest ouevre:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

Wonk wars rarely claim a casualty among the participants but often exacts a huge body count among the targets and collaterals as Iraq, above all, symbolizes today.

The book’s subtitle perhaps sums up [Chagnon’s] attitude to both groups: “My life among two dangerous tribes – the Yanomamö and the anthropologists.”

🙂

Whatever faults or merits one might find in Chagnon’s scholarship matters not a whit.

I was taken long ago when somehow I knew even less than I do now by a constant raging wonk war in far more tolerant times between the fire breathing liberal Alexander Cockburn and the dinosaurs on the facing page over the attempt of the Russians to quell the Afghani rebellion against the Communist dictators.  

We know now how that turned out but never got the message.

More to the point the wonk war was over purported scientific evidence of germ warfare that turned out to be false, if not fraudulent.  As far as I know now nobody cared enough to do a truly definitive study.

War is what embroils the brain, not so much science.  Truth is of little importance in such contests.

I was then confused by Cockburn’s denunciation of Tibetan culture and semi-approval of conquest by China.  Cockburn’s portrayal of the brutal treatment of women and children in Tibetan culture was directly opposed to the praise showered on a portrayal of an idyllic peaceful culture that persists to this day.

Things are seldom much like opposing viewpoints.

The wonk war brought up memories of an anthropologist who married a Yanomami woman and installed her in a house in an American suburb where they had two children.  The two girls were still in school when the Yanomami woman escaped her unsatisfactory situation to return to the Amazon jungle.  She found a mate who beat her, life was hard, heat and insects and the usual discomforts of the jungle bore down on her but most anything was better than the lonely life in an American suburb apparently.

At least she escaped before having to endure the internet.

Best,  Terry

Paul McKinley Victory Party and Press Conference 6pm in Dolton, IL

Tue, Apr 09, 2013

Join us for the McKinley for Congress victory party and Press Conference at 6PM in Dolton, IL.

http://mckinleyforcongress.com/

Don’t suppose it was much of a party since Paul lost but he should be used to losing considering he spent almost 20 years in prison as a young man.  Paul says he was innocent the last time but they were just used to convicting him.

I expect I would have voted for Paul had I been able to vote in the Chicago district but it wouldn’t have mattered much.  Robin Kelly beat him real bad.  

All most people knew about Paul before and after the election was that he was an ex-con.  Wouldn’t it be better to vote for an ex-con than a should-be-con?

Maybe Robin Kelly will be a great congresswoman but I bet she doesn’t have the life experience and knowledge of a man who spent nearly 20 years in prison and now reportedly works to get jobs for ex-cons.  

That can’t be an easy job.  Probably doesn’t pay well.  Maybe that’s why Paul owes a ton of money to IRS.  At least that’s what IRS says.  Hard to figure how an ex-con working at getting other ex-cons jobs could owe a ton of money to the IRS.  Wonder if they figure the periodic free room and board compensation on his numerous arrests for protesting in more recent years?

Anyway I am glad there are people like Paul that still occasionally run for office.  I used to get a chance occasionally to vote for people like Paul McKinley but these days I have little choice beyond voting for a Ralph Nader or such for president instead of choosing between two liars who are owned by corporations.  

Syracuse is in big trouble.

Maybe not from Michigan.  The game could be a barn burner or one of Jim Boeheim’s patented defensive awfuls.

That is not what this is about.

Syracuse is reportedly being investigated for abuse of children by an assistant coach but at least some of the accusers are dubious and one has confessed to lying already.  Boeheim has escaped from a defamation lawsuit for having offered only a “personal opinion.”

But that is not what this is about either.

This is about the barrage of advertising locally that Boeheim has survived prostate cancer because he got a worthless PSA screening test.  The inventor himself says men chosen for biopsies on their prostates by the PSA test might as well be selected by the color of their eyes.  But it makes lots of money for the doctors and hospitals and medical labs so under they knife they go.  Most survive but they risk death (rarely), incontinence, impotence, heart disease, diabetes and more. So the doctors and hospitals and medical suppliers can make lots of money.

But since Jim Boeheim has been saved from prostate cancer he may, or may not, have had and may, or may not, have killed him if he had it, Coach Boeheim is now onto supporting a new way of saving people from cancer:

Coach Jim Boeheim Putting Up His Best Defense Against Michigan… and Cancer

Research by Cellceutix has shown Kevetrin to re-activate p53, a protein that has earned the nickname, the “Guardian Angel of the Human Genome” because of its ability to command other proteins in the body to destroy cancer cells. In nearly all cancers, p53 is muted from its normal function, but Cellceutix believes that Kevetrin has the potential of correcting the damage, returning the protein to its role as head coach of the cell cycle.

“I put 100 percent into everything that I do, whether it is preparation for a game or working to find a cure for cancer,” said Boeheim.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/…

Well that can’t be bad can it?

It has been very bad news for Harlan Waksal and his efforts to cure [cure, not just treat] multiple myeloma – a rare and horrible blood cancer.  In 18 months, after years of testing and filling out forms to get approval to test his novel genetic drug on multiple myeloma, Harlan and his company managed to get one patient for trials.  The others have gone to Jim Boeheim’s pumped pill mill that has about the same chance of all those that went before and failed to squeeze out a few extra hours of life.

Maybe it will work.  Sure hope it does.  Multiple myeloma is a horrible disease as mentioned.

But I would rather bet on Boeheim’s success against Michigan.

Best,  Terry

Have you or yours been nearly got by pink slime?  Remember when all we had to worry about was mutual assured destruction by nuclear warfare?

Now we have learned that nuclear irradiation may even be good for you.  

But how could pink slime be good for you?

From the ultimate authority, Wikipedia, there is this on “pink slime”:

The heating process liquefies the fat and facilitates the separation of lean beef from the fat and other meat by-products [of trimmings]. The recovered beef material is then processed, heated, and treated with gaseous ammonia or citric acid to kill E. coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. When gaseous ammonia is used, after coming in contact with water in the meat, it forms into ammonium hydroxide. The product is finely ground, compressed into pellets or blocks, flash frozen and then shipped for use as an additive.

Not pretty but just how does one get a superbug normally acquired in a hospital from such an ishy thing as pink slime?

What brought this up was one of those personal emails to myself and only 1000000000000000 other people begging for help eliminating pink slime from factory farms.  Is pink slime from organic farms better somehow?  

The sender seems to be a high-powered lobbyist with her own firm and, I expect, probably does have a real concern about a lethal threat to one of her own children that was, also I expect, not connected with the ishy pink slime.

I tried to find an email address.  I refuse to do tweets and whatever.

No doubt the lady’s testimony to the slimes in Congress will elicit horror from those honorable ladies and gentlemen who are only too familiar with slime but not so hot on science and technology along with the reporters covering such an event.

Why am I writing here about it?

You want I should bore the wife and dawgs with this?

Best,  Terry

Thanks to Bill Black via ek hornbeck and Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, I fell off my horse and saw the light after hitting my head.  

Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly posted with Benzinga

We are in the midst of the blame game about the “Sequester.” I wrote last year about the fact that President Obama had twice blocked Republican efforts to remove the Sequester. President Obama went so far as to issue a veto threat to block the second effort. I found contemporaneous reportage on the President’s efforts to preserve the Sequester – and the articles were not critical of those efforts. I found no contemporaneous rebuttal by the administration of these reports.

In fairness, the Republicans did “start it” by threatening to cause the U.S. to default on its debts in 2011. Their actions were grotesquely irresponsible and anti-American. It is also true that the Republicans often supported the Sequester.

The point I was making was not who should be blamed for the insanity of the Sequester. The answer was always both political parties. I raised the President’s efforts to save the Sequester because they revealed his real preferences.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com…

It wasn’t much like the time I was kicked off a real horse when I was about 8.  Had Eleanor, a cranky little mare who was intelligent enough to hate everything and everybody, connected a mite lower I would have been a girl instead of a boy.  Truth be told, Eleanor was aiming at my horse but her aim was as horrendous as when Bill Clinton  shot a missile at the House Judiciary Committee and hit an aspirin factory in The Sudan.  All I learned that time was that Eleanor probably was part Shetland as rumored, that I didn’t want to be a girl and to watch out for girls even though they appear smaller and weaker.

This time I saw the ancient Canons of Dort still firing from ancient times as I had known from my own childhood they still do but from an unexpected source.

You see my mother was a Lutheran like my wife.  Neither were ever good Lutherans, praise the Lord [snark], but the mark of understanding how the heretical Arminians could differ from Calvinists, even though never voiced, would never occur naturally to one raised in the faith of the Whore of Babylon (Catholics).

A man is visiting from the old country [Finland], our mother told us young ‘uns, and you should be very careful not to raise your voices or run and jump and laugh and smile.  He is a real Lutheran and thinks people must only look grim and think about their sins.

Irish Catholics spend an enormous time thinking and talking about their sins but seldom grimly.

From the handy but often inaccurate Wikipedia, here are the Five Points of Calvinism fired by the Canons of Dort:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…

Read them if it gives you pleasure but simply stated the elite (the rich and middle classes in today’s parlance) only for whom the Redeemer died are allowed because they are instruments of the Lord while the working classes are sinners who must be forever controlled and punished.

Thus it is absolutely mandatory that Obama must leave as his legacy the path to final destruction of the primary elements of the safety net (Social Security and Medicare). Who knew Obama was a true Calvinist like the Republicans.

The sequester is a fine start and was the Obama Administration’s idea despite denials.

Best,  Terry

Iranian News Agency Adds Sleeves To Michelle Obama’s Oscars Gown

The saintly ayatollahs added a lot more than sleeves in order that the citizenry not be scandalized.

Best,  Terry