Author's posts
Nov 07 2012
Yes We Have No Bananas
Fresh vegetables via AFP
Fish and vegetables grow without soil on Gaza rooftops
By Agence France-Presse
Friday, October 26, 2012 22:30 EDT
Abu Ahmed looks out over a sea of grey, empty Gaza rooftops, and smiles as he looks back at the lush greenery sprouting in tubs and pipes on top of his apartment building.
He is part of a United Nations agency project to introduce cutting-edge urban agriculture to Gaza City, teaching Palestinians to farm without soil in the space available to them in one of the world’s most densely populated places…
Nov 05 2012
There are some differences in democracies
The count of 2,375 distinct fauna species of Gir includes about 38 species of mammals, around 300 species of birds, 37 species of reptiles and more than 2,000 species of insects.
The carnivores group mainly comprises Asiatic lions, Indian Leopards, Sloth bears, Indian Cobras, Jungle cats, Striped Hyenas, Golden Jackals, Indian Mongoose, Indian Palm Civets, and Ratels. Desert cats and Rusty-spotted cats exist but are rarely seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G…
As usual, the very careless Wikipedia neglected to mention one extremely rare semi-carnivore in Gir:
Gujarat Elections 2012: Polling station to be set up for one voterNEW DELHI: When Gujarat goes to polls in December, a polling booth will be set up for just one voter.
The booth to be manned by at least five polling staff will be set up deep inside the Gir forest, which is famous for Asiatic Lion.
http://articles.economictimes….
By comparison certain elected officials in Montana are endangered by the inability to set up polling stations within a hundred miles of the poorest of the poor living on American Indian reservations with only rarely available mechanical means of transportation for lack of funds.
Obviously those AmerIndians should go back to wherever the hell they came from if they won’t take the trouble to vote, thus leaving America to real Americans. After all, America is terribly short of money and needs to give whatever it can borrow to give to rich and middle class elites so they can shower their blessings on the vast bulk of the rest of us should they take a notion to do so.
Best, Terry
Mar 21 2010
Uncle Sam For President
Take that you anti-American Teabaggers and Blue Dogs.
Uncle Sam (Sam Dehne) is entering the fray but first only to put some hell in Rep. Dean Heller's (R, NV-O4) life like he has been doing for years for the Reno City Council.
Sam is no wimpy, mealy-mouthed progressive when he announces his platform:
http://www.renocitizen.com/con…
Some selected excerpts:
As a citizen activist in his state, Dehne has spoken at more
than a thousand public meetings to expose wrongful actions
perpetrated by public officials.
[Man oh man, I’m here to tell you that’s a fact.]
Dehne is also a long-time, world class, volunteer entertainer.
He has performed over 1,000 Charity concerts for seniors and veterans.
[You get what you pay for as far as Sam’s volunteer singing goes.]
Sam Dehne plans to initiate his Grassroots Campaign with some
of his own money and small donations from close supporters.
Dehne will not ask for, nor accept, any contributions.
Any checks sent will be torn up. And any cash sent will
be put in the church collection plate… anonymously.
In other words… DO NOT send money unless
otherwise and subsequently officially advised.”
Sam says that every penny will be spent dearly…
as if it was his own money… which most of it is.
Recognize and honor the sovereignty of the people in no-nonsense terms. (Re-write the oath of office for public servants accordingly ~ and prosecute violators of the oath.)
Implement a national, fail-safe, trustworthy voting system that does not employ machines with secret codes that can be rigged to throw elections. (Use hand-marked, paper ballots that are eyeball tabulated at precinct level before being transported to any other location.)
It will be my goal to help Senator Harry Reid get re-elected … so that he can continue to help Nevada using his seniority. I will offer my services in hopes of providing Reid with the benefits of my knowledge of the things that Nevada needs.
There are 10 very rich men in Nevada who made their massive fortunes thanks to Nevada. An argument can be made that they are at least partially responsible for the disrepair of the state’s budget and should contribute heavily to repairing it.
Make it a capital crime to tamper with the outcome of any election.
[That will open some seats on the Supreme Court in a hurry but Uncle Sam is not neglecting the other branches of government.]
Incarcerate for life any judge who works against truth and justice.
Incarcerate any elected official who swears to support and defend the Constitution without having a working knowledge of the supreme law of the land ~ especially including the Bill of Rights. (Swearing to serve something that you don’t understand is fraud.)
It gets better and better. I leave you to enjoy as you will.
Best, Terry
Mar 16 2010
For Pure Artistry The Bank of Sark Made Goldman-Sachs Look Like Amateurs
It was said giving Will Smith a credit card was like giving a terrorist an atom bomb.
Will Smith was the head pirate of the Poison Pen Gang. If they had been less colorful and had the appropriate connections, one can only imagine the hurt they could have done.
The Gang is best remembered for the Bank of Sark, a post office box on the island of Sark in the English Channel. Their comical escapades with checks written on an imaginary are the stuff of legend but the best was yet to come.
When the Poison Pen Gang was rounded up and jailed, a whole new swindle was started that was run through the sheriff’s office without his knowledge. While mobs were screaming outside the bewildered sheriff’s office demanding their money bank, Will Smith was on a work release program way, far away in a luxurious Florida condominium with a constant stream of well-upholstered secretaries according to a doorman at the joint.
They just don’t make financial scandals like they used to.
The grey-suited stiffs at Goldman-Sachs tale the economy of the entire planet down and offer little entertainment in return.
What a bunch of jerks.
Best, Terry
Mar 14 2010
Blue Green Oregon
“Oregon is a very poor state with the 2nd highest unemployment in the coutry,” said the man I met at the Explosible Man’s demo. Most of the state – my part of the state, it seemed was filled with ignorant wingers. Only Portland and surroundings was blue territory.
The Explosible Man, Dr. James McNight, was demoing and providing lectures on a fantastical new green energy taking dead center aim at the lethal fossil fuel, natural gas, pushed most persuasively by supereme con artist T. Boone Pickens to easy marks like Nancy Pelosi. Nancy has decreed that natural gas is not a fossil fuel. She has made a hefty investment in Pickens’ wonderfully named “Clean Energy” that would convert vehicles to natural gas fueling while Boone is monopolizing an even more important liquid, water.
I have written up the magical explosible powders in the Orange Satan to the usual raging apathy for true green:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
When I took my then fiance from Portland to the Oregon Outback where I had lived and have not for over half a century, I got lost trying to find the house where I had lived the first years of my life. The house had long ago burned down and the road was no more.
We stood on a hill in waist high sagebrush overlooking a large swath of Warner Valley. A buzzard or two circled lazily overhead and a jackrabbit scampered across the desert floor now and then. There was not another sign of life or human habitation except a gravel road that could be seen crossing the desert.
“We lived on the other side of the draw,” I told my beloved.
She was silent for a bit with the wonder of it all. “You lived here?” she finally managed.
Well yes. Lived rather well even though we had no electricity.
Got water from a hot spring. The water was atrocious but it was at least wet. If we had known how to use it, we could have warmed the house with it instead of using wood.
We were actually looking at a monumental ecological disaster, a monstrous crime against nature that eventually chased nearly all the Democrats of old out of the valley.
http://img693.imageshack.us/im…
The Crump Geyser, drilled by the invincible prophet of geothermal power had already become a mud puddle.
Now, a half century later, the Crump Geyser and perhaps the Hallinan Hot Spring, will be developed. The geese are back. In our “big city” [population ~2,000), Lakeview and smaller towns have Goose Lake back. A small wood-burning power plant may rejuvenate an area long ago logged out. In the Basque country of Harney County, a huge wind farm is being born. On the coast, America’s first wave farm is under construction.
The state long ago went blue and now is the greenest state of them all, even in the Outback where once life was nearly as hard to detect as on Mars.
This country bumpkin long resident in the backward wilds of Upstate New York is thrilled for Blue Green Oregon.
Best, Terry
Jun 01 2008
Geothermal Power For Unangans
[crossposted on DKOS]
Life has never been easy for Unangans, an indigenous people of the Aleutians.
Recent archaeological investigation in the Unalaska area provides evidence that the Unangan (the People of the passes, according to linguist Moses Dirks) have inhabited the Aleutian Islands for at least nine thousand years.
The last thousand years seem to have been the worst.
The Russian Fur Traders: The Unangan culture thrived for centuries until the Russian fur traders discovered the Aleutian Islands around 1750. At this time, the Unangan population was estimated at 12,000 to 15,000. At first, they resisted the invasion, even resorting to warfare, but were eventually subjugated by the foreigners and forced to hunt sea otters and fur seals.
In the late 1700’s, the traders discovered the Pribilof Islands to the north were a rich source of hides, and forced a group of Unangans to move there to hunt for them.
The population of Unangan people was greatly reduced after Russian occupation due to disease, war and malnutrition.
World War II: In June 1942, nearly six months to the day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese struck again on American soil. The bombing of Dutch Harbor signaled the beginning of the Aleutian Campaign and was quickly followed by the Japanese landing on Kiska and Attu Islands in the Western Aleutians, over 1,000 miles from Dutch Harbor. On Kiska, the Japanese took a small naval weather crew captive; on Attu, they took the whole village hostage, later shipping them back to Japan as prisoners of war.
In the aftermath of the Japanese invasion, U.S. authorities scrambled to get civilians out of the war zone. As a result, nearly 900 Unangan people were suddenly uprooted, evacuated from their homes with only a suitcase each, crammed onto crowded transport ships, and taken to internment camps in Southeast Alaska. They would remain in dismal, crowded conditions, suffering from disease and malnutrition, for three long years.
Courtesy of the National Archives: St. Paul residents gaze at their homes in 1942 as the U.S. Delarof pulls away from the dock, taking them to internment camps in southeast Alaska.
Somehow I bet most here knew only knew about later arrivals being incarcerated. Native Americans don’t get a whole lot of attention except when they are doing their native dances or something.
Today the total estimated population Unangans is estimated at 2,000.
Those 2,000 Unangans, as well as others who live alongside them, still like to eat and get around. Getting harder these days.
One answer in a place where there isn’t a whole lot of sun or even trees is geothermal. Al Gore may never have heard of geothermal but Unangans have.
The Unalaska Island is the site of deep drilling conducted for geothermal resources. In the 1980’s, there was an Unalaska Geothermal Feasibility Study prepared for Alaska Power Authority by Dames and Moore that comprised of an exploration program, consisting of three phases. The exploration program confirmed the existence of a highly productive geothermal reservoir at a depth of 1,949 feet, approximately 14 miles west of Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.
That’s mighty fine and all but this is way up north where it gets a mite difficult to get around in winter even yet.
VIEW OF UNALASKA FROM SKIBOWL MOUNTAIN (photo courtesy of S. Adams)
Some of the native fauna might help if they weren’t wild and a bit shy:
And too smart to go some places in the wintertime.
More pictures and other information on Unalaska can be found here.
So what to do about tapping the heat of Makushin Volcano where wild horses won’t go when it’s needed most?
Why the answer is so simple Al Gore might have thought of it if he had ever heard of geothermal power.
– Drill way down in the valley where the Unangans are.
Well you got to know where to drill and that is why there are some people who want to help, even a Republican or two who need votes something awful these days.
There is no shortage whatever of green energy.
There is a great lack of intelligence. Good thing there are Unangans who have lots of smarts. Needed it to survive in wild, beautiful country.
Best, Terry
Jan 11 2008
Too Many People Anyway
The Cancer That Shouldn’t Be
Cervical cancer is almost entirely preventable with a new genetic test. Yet doctors still cling to the highly unreliable Pap smear. Something is very wrong here.
Christine Baze and her husband of seven years were planning to start a family in 2000 when she found out she had cervical cancer. At 31 she underwent a hysterectomy followed by three months of drugs and radiation.
Baze was, as she describes it, “the girl who was doing everything right,” getting annual Pap smears that screen for pre-cancerous cervical cells. But the Pap test missed the cancer that had been growing inside her for a decade. Each test had returned a negative result. With early detection, Baze could have treated her cancer with chemotherapy and radiation.”I was devastated, and incredibly pissed at my doctor’s office. If they’d found the tumor three years earlier, I could have kept my uterus and had a child,” says Baze, now 39 years old and executive director of the Yellow Umbrella, a cervical cancer prevention group she founded in 2002.
It borders on the scandalous that cervical cancer, among the few cancers that are preventable, kills 310,000 women a year worldwide. In 2007, 11,150 women in the U.S. were diagnosed with it. Half of them had not had a recent Pap test. Another third did get tested but got false negatives from the 65-year-old Papanicolaou biopsy. The Pap test is valuable, having cut the rate of cervical cancer by 70%, but it is archaic. It calls on a lab technician or machine to peer at a daub of cervical cells under a microscope to spot the abnormal precancerous ones. This artisanal approach yields false negatives between 13% and 45% of the time…
http://www.forbes.com/free_for…
If you read the article carefully, the genetic test wouldn’t totally eliminate cervical cancer but it would make it almost as rare as intelligence in a Republican.
It is hardly the only cancer that could be detected and cured early with newer screening methods but what do we care? Not much money in that compared to treating cancer.
Best, Terry
Jan 11 2008
It’s Amway vs. The Empire
Now that we Democrats have once again been consigned to the fringes and the Republicans are digging up a corpse to attempt to stanch the stench from the former leading confessed Republicans, barring an asteroid striking the earth the race is pretty much between The Empire and Amway.
I don’t know if anyone else here enjoys the titillation of getting political news from Marketwatch (hey, when you get too old for even Viagra). Might tell you something about the primary places I haunt but even ghosts have perversions.
Jan 09 2008
Shoot Out At Democrat Gulch
Sometime in the next few months, citizens of the Wood River Valley could lose one of their most precious resources to development. Hailey Hot Springs, located in Democrat Gulch three miles west of Hailey and the site of the Spring Creek Ranch development, could be developed, and with that goes any access we might have to this magnificent geothermal resource.
How terribly awful.
Hailey Hot Springs has a long history in the valley, going back to the 1800s when it was the site of a large hotel and spa frequented by tourists from as far away as St. Louis. It was later piped into Hailey, where it heated buildings and a pool at the old Hiawatha Hotel, where many of my friends learned to swim.
http://www.mtexpress.com/index…
Past misdeeds are no excuse. One might think that they don’t know there is plenty of coal to burn yet.
The only thing new here by the way is that electricity might be generated as well with newer technology.
Don’t bother telling the politicians. They spend all their time peering at the sun with wind blowing in their ears from lobbyists.
Best, Terry
Jan 08 2008
Before This Day Is Done
it is possible that the contest for the soul of the Democratic Party will be between conservatives and liberals rather than between genders and mythological races.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not forecasting that the Rapture is about to commence. It is little more than a wan hope but I was surprised that even a sodden bastion of the MSM would spy such a wondrous mirage in the intellectual desert. Newsweek asked if maybe the contest would be between Obama and Edwards after New Hampshire.
(I couldn’t immediately lay my hands on the article but try to believe me. I saw it. I swear I did. I had intended this entry as a critique when I started it. Maybe I am delusional. :-()
If any object that Obama is far from an ideal symbol of conservatism and maybe Edwards even less so as a stand-in for liberalism, I admit to the problem in advance.
Still the relative elitist against the mill worker’s son, the man who wants to get along for smooth sailing compared to the man who wants to make waves to rock the boat is a symbolism that only a Chris Matthews or Tim Russert could be blind to.
Could it happen?
“All things are possible,” says the Good Book.
Sometimes I wish I weren’t a committed heretic.
Best, Terry
Jan 07 2008
Metathesiophobia
the problem often significantly impacts the quality of life. It can cause panic attacks and keep people apart from loved ones and business associates. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread, although everyone experiences metathesiophobia in their own way and may have different symptoms.
Though a variety of potent drugs are often prescribed for metathesiophobia, side effects and/or withdrawal symptoms can be severe. Moreover, drugs do not “cure” metathesiophobia or any other phobia. At best they temporarily suppress the symptoms through chemical interaction.
http://www.changethatsrightnow…
[sigh] Life is often hard that way.