The Cataract Monocle

A low vision product which I designed and tested on myself, is called the Cataract Monocle. I have had excellent improvement in acuity in an eye with a moderately advanced cataract. The eye with a more mature cataract was not improved.

But as the eye with the moderate cataract has continued to worsen, I have gotten almost two years of additional good use out of the eye, both for the purpose of reading fine print, and in driving (distance vision). Had I not produced this monocle, I would have curtailed my driving, even under the most ideal lighting conditions, over a year ago.

Although I have discussed the development and testing of this Cataract Monocle on Skin Cell Forum, in the General Health Section, and on my blog Eureka Ideas Unlimited eurekaideasunlimited.blogspot.com
little interest has been generated in the ophthalmological community or among cataract sufferrers.

As for me, I have been overwhelmingly satisfied with the additional time I have been able to put off cataract surgery. Great changes are still occurring in the field which may become available because of the extended time I have been able to delay the first cataract replacement, first scheduled for February, 2007.

It saddens me that there is, so far, so little interest among other cataract sufferers, or among their physicians. In the absence of testing on a wider spectrum of cataracts, little can be determined about the general efficacy of the optical aid, or the amount of additional time delaying surgery will be afforded other users. All I can say is that for me, the additional time is over two years.

Formal Answer To Notice to Vacate

Formal Answer To Notice to Vacate 10-6-08

To: Danny Leon Duvall & Dana Duvall
c/o River Valley Furniture Store
2609 East Parkway,
Russellville, AR 72801

From: H. C. & Ellen Benson
Delete St.
Delete City, AR

Re: Eviction Order

Please be advised that this eviction order does not reflect the true facts.
Please be advised that there is no merit or foundation in any of the
causes you have alleged therein. The order is disputed in its entirety.

If this matter is not put to rest without court intervention, we will list
the various injuries we have suffered in our dealings with you, and will
countersue for damages.

This is not the time to list them all, or to list the serious losses we have
sustained due to your unscrupulous, negligent and willful actions, but
you may rest assured that we will comprehensively list them for the
court and for the public.

Most particularly, we are not tenants and never were. We are buyers.
We are not in breach of contract. Therefore, if you were successful in
evicting us and seizing our real and personal property we would take
vigorous legal action against you for our injuries.

This was a stealth action on your part, with no warning. No demand for
moneys alleged to be due has been presented. Not in writing. Not verbally.
There have been many, many harassment's made against us over these
eight years, in an attempt to get us to relinquish our home. I will list them
comprehensively during any legal action that you bring against us, in a
counter suit against you.

Although you have received several verbal requests over these eight years,
to inform the Tax Assessor of the purchase of this home on two acres of
land, you have, to date failed to do so. I can think of several motivations
for your ongoing delay in the proper recording of this sale. Reasons
resulting in profit to you and substantial loss to us.

Only the seller could do this. Therefore we, the buyers, are entirely
blameless. The assessor's office has informed us that there is no
delinquency in the tax liability on this property. I call upon you once
again, this time formally and in writing, to correct this wrongful and
injurious failure to inform the Tax Assessor of our purchase agreement
and get us properly listed as buyers.

If you do this, the Assessor will be able to determine the actual tax liability
due for the two acres and the dwelling. Until you do this, no correct and
accurate figure can be generated. Certainly you cannot believe that we
were responsible fir the taxes on the entire tract, of which this parcel is
only a part.

To sum up: You have never made any demand with any dollar amount
to us. Never. In over eight years. Our tax liability commences on the
date the Tax Assessor generates the proper precise amount due from
us for our proportion of the larger tract. And a debt cannot be due
before the debt has been properly computed and an actual bill has
been presented. You do not even know what figure you claim is due.
These are essential elements of a debt.

We did not empower or otherwise authorize any party to pay our taxes
without our knowledge or consent, and therefore cannot be held
responsible for any such donations made without our being made
aware of it.

Rest assured that we will pay all taxes on our two acre parcel with
dwelling, at such time as we receive a proper and correct bill from
the Tax Assessor showing precise figures for that parcel only, not the
larger tract that the parcel is on.

The other minor things you allege in your eviction papers are equally
without merit, and certainly don't constitute a cause for elderly
people to be put out on the street and their home wrongfully
stolen from them.

H. C. Benson

Okay, a little background for the blog reader. I bought this place over eight years ago on a private contract from a merchant family, though the calls I made to check on their honesty and integrity came back with -- extremely diversified and contrasting results. You might ask yourself why I would do business with such people. The reason of course is I needed a place to live, and I had the opportunity to buy these two acres with dwelling cheaper than rent, and the sellers were willing to also carry three years of paper on the down payment as well.

It seems clear to me that they figured that one kind of emergency or another was very likely to put me under and that they would reap great reward for the sale by regaining possession of the property. I had originally been led to expect that they would go down and show the sale at the tax assessors office. That did not happen. Not the first year, nor the fifth year, not even now, ober eight years into the contract. It has been a matter of concern to me because I know that they have been borrowing on the much larger tract of land that this property is on. I can't render a legal opinion as to whether this is actual fraud against the bank making them the loans, since they still had the property in their name during this entire time, but certainly it was unscrupulous and improper from an ethical standpoint.

Although the sale was on a private contract, and did not go through escrow, it was still a valid contractual sale. We have never been in default on our payments.

On the first day of this month a Sheriff deputy cane to our home to present us with a notice to vacate in 10 days for nonpayment of the property taxes. Now you have already seen my response in writing. But how else would you handle this? Of course the crux of it all is that even having paid a down payment and over eight years of monthly payments, if the seller went belly up after taking out loans on the property, no matter how fraudulently the Seller had behaved, the bank would have first claim, and I would have little effective recourse. So the question I would put to you is, how would you proceed? You have already seen my written response, but what else should I be doing?

I should also say that the seller alleges that I have not paid the property taxes, which I was obligated to pay by contract. The seller not having informed the assessor of the purchase, and having clandestinely paid the taxes without our knowledge authority or consent, was now claiming that this money was due them and was the basis of our eviction. No court action has been initiated in any court. Once again, what would you be doing if you were me, specifically to reduce the risks that I could wind up losing this property later? And some of you might want to speculate as to how I stopped the eviction action. Another hint: I have not retained an attorney I checked with one who, when asked the broad range of possible costs for legal fees, came up with $1,500 to $15,000. What do you think? Is it worthwhile to hire one crook to protect you from another crook?

It is fitting that this new blog "Anthropositor's Posts" commences on this day, as the sun sets on the world as we knew it.The details are not clear, and won't be for a while, but the impending disaster that we face is completely unprecedented in scope, depth, and probable duration.

The American Taxpayer will almost certainly be forced to bail out, to the tune of $700,000,000,000, financial giants which have played fast and loose for decades on several deregulated fronts. Forced I say, because the alternative is the meltdown of the entire world economy. Forced I say, because whatever the final provisions hastily thumb tacked together, we will also elevate an appointed official to heights which, in terms of raw power, are greater than those of whatever new President takes office.

And the worst of it is, there is a vanishingly low likelihood that it will work. The only argument that it will work is this: It must. Sorry folks, that argument is not persuasive. The truth is that it is unlikely to work even for weeks or months. The security for this bailout is virtually entirely worthless. The notion that valueless securities and mortgages will somehow gain value when the panic subsides is ridiculous. The panic is well justified by the facts.

So that you will have some distractions from this disaster, I have put the archives of my previous blog up here to divert you to a certain extent while I reorganize and make this blog more effective. It remains to be seen if the changes I have planned will do the job, but they have a better chance than this economic bail out.

Let me be more succinct. This economic bail out cannot work. It will ultimately make matters much worse.

New Nutritional Discovery

This is about Shmooo, a vegetable/spice I have been growing with several other experimental crops, employing No-Till farming techniques of my own design. To condense what has already appeared in several of the Nutrition threads on Skin Cell Forum, my original idea was to find the most nutritious, healthful vegetable with which to make up for the shortfall of vegetables in my carnivorous diet. Previously, I had been buying sufficient fresh vegetables. But that does little good if they do not actually get prepared and eaten. Most of the vegetables I was buying wilted and wound up on the compost heap because it was so easy for me to forget to eat it. This is complicated by the fact that most of my teeth are rippers and slicers, not grinders. So I needed a green vegetable, preferably in leaf form, that would be tender and tasty enough to eat raw in substantial amounts.

Not only that, it had to be a really appealing tasting food or it was a long shot that I would actually regularly consume it. And I wanted to be able to eat every part of the plant. And that turned out to be the case. I haven't tried to do anything with the adult root system, but other than that, the entire plant is not only edible, it is delicious and denser with the whole array of nutrients than any other vegetable I have compared it to.

In the past several months, I have done some diet-loading tests, seeing how much of it I could consume over a long period of time. I aye most of it raw and alive, just eating it fresh in the garden. I shredded and dried it under low temperature and used it alone or combined with every common spice in my kitchen. The Shmooo itself is not intense, but delicate in its' flavor. And yet, when mixed with other spices, seems to extend and enhance their affect. And I could find no commercial sources for these greens. Never saw them in the produce section, the farmer's market, or the health food store. To put it another way, no one is selling it, and the general public has no notion that it is even edible, let alone tasty and nutritious.

I have eaten as much as a half a pound a day or more, both fresh and dried. This is really shocking to me. The seeds too are good, but my current emphasis in testing is the greens, raw or dry. They work better than lettuce in a sandwich or salad, or just eaten plain. And dry, I add to soups or sauces or gravies or puddings or gravies or breading for chicken or chops or steak or fish. Whether I used it totally alone or mixed it with all the other usual spices, it just seemed I could do no wrong with it.

My wife has been joining me in this quest to find the maximum amount of Shmooo intake. She recently decided not to eat any just before bedtime. Says she finds it harder to get to sleep. That is not something I would tend to notice. My sleep tends to be on the alert side. As far as the Shmooo goes, my wife likes it best at breakfast or actually brunch. We so often combine the two meals.

But that is when I realized that my metabolism also seemed to be higher throughout the day. The Shmooo is incredibly nutritious and I was consuming a very large amount of it, sometimes even before breakfast.. I often go out with my first mug of coffee and eat some wild Indian strawberries along with some Shmooo. A nice combination. But often, later, my other normal helpings of food, I wound up not being able to finish what was on my plate. Very unusual behavior for me. Now the question is: is it just excellent nutrient content of the Shmooo that is doing this, or is there some stimulant in the plant that I am eating so much of?

My opinion so far is that metabolic rate has increased significantly, but I don't see a corresponding period later of being down. This is the central characteristic of stimulants in general. If a stimulant like caffeine or some similar chemical were involved, this past several months would have seen a lot of "down" periods. I have to conclude that the most likely explanation is that the Shmooo is just exceptionally nutritious and nutrient dense, supplying a great many things which were probably at some deficit when I began.

So the net effect is energizing and invigorating. and tends to blunt the appetite. This may account for the fact that I have lost nearly fifteen pounds in the past three months while doing nothing to deliberately diet.

But since I am not obese, and am not inclined to diet, I guess my next step is to find some testers who do need to drop some substantial weight, perhaps fifty pounds or more, who are ready to add Shmooo to their diet in the same way that I have. Other than adding the Shmooo, no formal diet would be involved. No counting calories or weighing portions. Just eat the Shmooo at the outset of each meal, and incorporate it into as many of your dishes that you can get it into. And weigh yourself once a week. You would only need to keep track of how much fresh Shmooo you consume at each meal, and how much dried Shmooo went into the various dishes consumed. So initially, I need at least a half dozen people who must lose fifty pounds or more to regain good health. And I don't much care if you have previously failed in your diets.

iN a fOG. lOVING THE fOG i'M iN

All this interest in somehow quantifying the ephemeral essence of the mind. What a fog.
Everybody is interested in the numbers, and the curves and if this median value were reduced and so on. I too, transiently toy with these notions. But it really draws attention away from other qualities that count far more.

John Nash saw patterns that would never be apparent to me. He paid dearly.

What I often see are the mistakes or oddities, the anachronisms, or just sometimes things jarringly out of place, even when I am not conversant with the subject. I'm not searching for them. Often I'm not even paying attention. They just seem to jump out at me from nowhere. The movies will provide an example or two.

Before my encroaching blindness, I happened to see a fine movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou," based substantially on Homer's great epic adventure of Ulysses. Who knows? Maybe a little Virgil slipped in there too. But now it is set in the deep and enduring Depression of the United States. A time of great adventure and tragedy. A time when eugenics and other forms of badly disguised hatreds were really growing like crabgrass.

But in this particular confection of a movie, there was never a pinch of despair, let alone the heaping cup put into The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.

I remember having a bit of reverie about Shaw and Twain in each of their depictions of Joan of Arc, and how their sharp contrasts in style and content spoke volumes of the authors. I know not how these thoughts came at this time.

And the translations into the movies! How breathtaking, each for entirely different reasons. The Joans. Would anyone ever keep up with these Joans? Perhaps, but it certainly seems improbable while I am watching either one of them. Since these two black and white movies, I have perhaps seen half a dozen sumptuous productions with lavish sets, vivid color, and in several languages. But never has Widmark's Dauphin been surpassed.

I love it when I don't quite pay attention, when my mind wanders in six or eight different directions, but none of it is strenuous, like a dream, sometimes sensibly illogical.

Now we have our three boys -- no criminals here. No vicious desperadoes. No ghastly gangsters. Just Preening Pup with a great pelt of pride and counterfeit perspicacity, and his associates Pack Dog and Goofy.

They have just opportunistically absconded with some one's idling auto, care free as gamboling jackals. No pressing goals. No gut wrenching hunger. Just living, sniffing, scratching, being the beings they be.

Suddenly one detects the faintest musical scent wafting in the breeze. A scream of a bark bursts from him. The nominal leader of the pack stops the car, Pack Dog bursts into the woods, with the other two bringing up the rear, fully trusting Pack Dog's instincts, with no thought of why.

I too, in the darkness, in that theater of like-mindlessness am no longer in idle reverie. My attention is riveted on the Sirens. I am totally had. My main brain, in it's separate head, has taken full command. My eyes are glazed with the approaching blazing beauty.

Then suddenly, that earthen jug of moonshine, with it's little xxx's, erasing the universal XXX permeating the entire substance of my being, shattered the dream, like a clattering alarm with it's scintillating shards of reality, like Mom yelling the Hell to pay if breakfast gets cold in my slumber.

Angrily, I silently stormed to breakfast, deliberately obliterating the rest of the dream, refusing then to take it in little pieces. I said quietly to Mom, behind the counter,
"A tub please."
"YaWantButter?"
"Yes. Please slime it lightly with the lubricant."
"What?"
"Some butter will be fine."
I sat in the lobby, reading a book. Gum popping, teen-aged Mom, nothing to do, was uncharacteristically curious.
"Not going to watch the movie?"
"Next showing. Missed a scene."
"No shit?" she blurted without thinking, then looked worried. I put her at her ease,
"Yes shit. Some shit with little x's made me miss a scene."
It now dawned on her, I was perhaps more than a little weird.

It dawned on me too.
"Look. The movie is a work of art. One scene has a defect. I have to prepare not to notice it. Sort of like restoring a great masterpiece." I searched for a way to put it in language she would apprehend. "Pretend some idiot flicked some snot on your Marilyn Monroe Calendar. It would no longer be a work of art would it? You would have to carefully fix it before you could once again fully appreciate it."
"What's a Marilyn Monroe Calendar?"
"Sort of like a Madonna Poster, only better."
Now she knew I was nuts. I read.

Half a book later, I saw the scene intact, snot carefully ignored. What a dream! And the jug would have worked with only a glimmer of it in shot five of the scene, in some weeds by the bank of the river.

But how incredible! The pairing of the Sirens with our young dogs, each a dead match. And the culminating illusion!

I have asked several people how many kisses were in the end of that scene. No one I have asked ever got the right answer. There were no kisses. None. And that is as it should be. A kiss would have brought some sense of resolution, some tangible satisfaction. That is not what the Sirens were about.

True beauty is in our minds, and can't be erased if we don't let it. Trachtenberg invented a wonderful math for children amid the horrors of a death camp. It was his refuge. His salvation.

Within every hag or doddering homeless bum still resides the soul of a child. All the beauty that ever was is still there, right below the graffitti of age. You fight the dying of the light! If you don't the young will kill you a little at a time because you are so ready to go along with it. Let us not be lemmings. Even old life is a great gift. And as someone said a couple thousand years ago, Cut them some slack! They are clueless.

Just Another Crackpot Idea About Flu

I want to talk a bit about the good news with H5N1, the strain we currently fear the most, the one that has now shown a clear ability to cross species barriers into humans in triple digit numbers now, and the present day analogue of the strain that caused the world pandemic killing unknown millions at the close of the First World War.

It turns out that there are a number of survivors still living, some of them living with ages in the triple digits, having been older children during the epidemic when they contracted the disease. Our astute and sophisticated medical establishment apparently was not particularly interested in this fact until very recently. A fact which fails to surprise me.

Now though, the interest is keen. These unusually healthy and robust elders in our midst are now the objects of considerable attention, and are being gleefully probed for their blood in the very real hope and prospect that antibodies can be mass produced that will afford real protection even before a new outbreak gets out of control.

But frankly, I wonder how good it is for these centenarians to be jabbed for these samples.

The current procedure throughout the world is, a chicken or two in an industrial chicken house is positive for the virus, wipe out the infected chicken and the whole damn chicken house, many thousands of apparently healthy chickens. Destroyed. Buried. Burned. Who takes these losses? The farmer. Sort of gives him some incentive to button his lip and hope for the best, doesn't it?

I wonder if it would not be a good idea, the next time their is an outbreak, to let it run its' course through a very, very, very quarantined chicken house. Actually take the very best care of those chickens! (No, I don't mean to treat the stricken ones in any way.) I just mean, feed them excellent rations and very good water, remove all corpses promptly, and see how many survivors there are.

Let us say that out of 10,000 chickens, 100 survived. Now you have a hundred chickens you could poke with needles to get some samples to make a vaccine with which a pharmaceutical company could them make billions of dollars. Ah, the wonders of private enterprise!

OR, you could even breed those survivor chickens, ultimately producing tens of thousands, even eventually millions or even billions of chickens, which were totally immune, not only to the deadly virulent strain, but also to a great variety of other common influenza's. Apparently these aged survivors have, more often than not , not subsequently been troubled by colds or flu that they noticed. In other words, the original infection seems to have made the survivors a LOT healthier. Would it not be nice if we could make the entire chicken population of the planet much, much hardier and less prone to disease in general.

Naw, couldn't work. Otherwise, one of those experts with all that formal training, all those diplomas and honors,in cooperation with all the high ranking health organization bureaucrats with their unique expertize om writing protocols and edicts and regulations... they would have already thought of it. Certainly, no self-taught bumpkin from the middle of nowhere could ever come up with anything valuable. What would people think?

A Chess Rant

Brilliant people down through the centuries
have had a strong tendency to be unsound of
personality. They become a little bonkers. It is almost inevitable I think. I am not talking about run-of-the-mill Mensa members here. Those I speak of are really quite alone, surrounded by "normals" who live almost totally as they are conditioned by their social jungle.

These isolated wretches truly do see things that others do not see. And these things are not always hallucinations, although sometimes, in an attempt to make sense out of nonsense, some desparate wishful thinking will actually result in becoming a little delusional.
I could give countless examples throughout the centuries. And I could give countless examples just relating to me alone. It is frustrating to be alone. No, frustrating is not near strong enough a term. I don't know if there is a strong enough term. It is an aloneness that cannot be assuaged, only endured. I was attracted to this place because I got a sense that there was just a scintilla more sense in the comments than could be found in general in the blogosphere.

Mr. Bellows and his cadre are to be complimented on several counts.

First, the general quality and the effort and workmanship that has gone into the essays.

Second, the absolute patience with which they except the utter drivel that characterizes, unfortunately, the majority of the comments. But I can tell that they too are having some morale problems that are hard to overcome.

I can tell this because they regurgitate with the frequency of a bulemic. Something is telling them that they are not really taken seriously at all. That they are casting the best pearls they are able to produce, before mostly swine, metaphorically speaking.

They can tell, I am quite sure, that most of the readership are nothing more than jabbering dillitantes, amateurs, dabblers, in no sense connecting the thoughts and information they have so conveniently been provided, and with those thoughts, generating new and valuable ideas. I exclude a half dozen or so of you from these caustic remarks. I honor you and your efforts.

To the trolls among you, in spite of occasional vestiges of ability, you are quite unredeemable.

When I started my blog a few years ago, I envisioned a thinktank to attract really serious seminal thinkers who really wanted to address the most pressing problems for the species, and all life on the planet. A pretty tall order. And an abysmal failure.

I experimented. I put a lovely Siren in the foyer to attract intellects, because all the intellects I have met in my life, all ten of them that I have stumbled across and who made themselves visible to me, in almost seven decades, have been, down deep, pretty sexy, and lovers of beauty for the sake of beauty alone.

I no longer care that the blog is a failure. That it is now just a storage room, a filing cabinet for regurgitations of posts elsewhere which I have transferred, posts which I thought that perhaps a few of my grandchildren might enjoy, should they by luck or other chance event, turn out not to be aliens.

I do not wish to sound pessimistic here. It is my guess that at least half of them have an even chance, much above the chances for most. I cling to that and thank my very lucky stars that of the children and grandchildren I know of, I am at about that fifty-fifty rate or better. A blessing upon me, and my blessings upon them.

My Honey and I have many cats, and too many dogs as well. Uncritical children who will not grow up. We cannot afford them and cannot afford to part with them. My dogs are mostly brilliant, as dogs go. Our cats range from witless to incredibly sophisticated. These animals have provided us with what old people in general have least. Regular daily affection, touching, caring, dependence and need. We are useful to them when the rest of society has relegated us to the trash heap as obsolete.

My other pets are in my Dojo, where I teach chess. I do not do so to make strong chess players. It is just a vehicle to help young people become better people. I spend perhaps half my time talking about other subjects, and about life in general.

On Monday, after about four years of training, one of my most advanced students, who went to Russia and several other countries to test his new chess skills, clearly one of the strogest two or three players ever to have evolved out of my tutelage, was dishonorably discharged from my Dojo, failed in the course, and discharged from my life. I hold no hope that he is any more redeemable than was Bobby Fischer. An evil little twerp, with greatness in him which never saw the light of day. A stunted freak of a man, whose monumental talent ultimately did injury to the world of chess. There was in him, no honor. I will list no other Grandmaster whores and failures. But let me honor the greats for a moment. Spassky! Benko! Tal! Botvinnik! Korchnoi! Reshevsky! Larsen! And Waitzkin! What a well rounded young fellow. I have had the pleasure of watching all these greats in action except Botvinnik, whose games too were true art.

These men make me truly sorry I played no tournament chess until I was in my forties, and that I had been teaching all comers for a quarter century by then, and continued to do so even while competing. The kiss of death. But I wouldn't trade any of it. No take backs. No regrets. No blunders, without a new lesson learned. No if only's.

Chess. My refuge, my solace, my food, my dream. Thank you.

Warning! Email Reply with Misspelled Bad Word

Hi Muggz,
Not good to use a work Email for personal use.
1. Not really private whatever the illusion.
2. Can be construed (any time an employer wishes to) as an improper use of employer property.

Feeling really blue right now. Not much fit to fight the good fight at the moment, so let me illustrate something related to the above.

In the evolution of cell phones, executives everywhere, (private institutions and corporations and even public institutions like colleges and universities), who have phones provided to them by their employers, have suddenly been descended upon by the rabid dogs of the IRS, who waited quietly without a bark or growl, just waiting and drooling, until the practice was virtually universal.

Now, thoroughly anonymous thugs within the bowels of this "service" have descended like the Sword of Damocles on everyone "guilty" of this practice, saying, if the individual cannot demonstrate that a call was business related on their business phone, paid for by their employer, that this call is personal, and that the value of the call is income and must be declared as such, and TAXED. A multi billion dollar windfall for the government. And entirely unassailable tax LAW.

We can't blame this on any of our carpetbagging, earmarking, trough snuffling swine in public office. This is internal administrative money generating "creativity." But do you think anyone in the IRS is going to check the phone records of IRS employees, going back ten years, as the IRS is allowed to do? I'll give odds that won't happen.

So now, billions of hours and billions of dollars will be squandered in a mountain of extra paperwork for everyone with a phone provided by an employer. Logging the nature of every call.

"Hi honey, how was Tommy's visit to the doctor?" Log it! It's taxable.

"Did you hear what those Mutherfuggers at the IRS just did?" Log it! It's taxable.

Now son, I want you to get a big logbook, and note the time and date of sending me this address. Make it the most expensive logbook you can find. And save the receipt. It is a logically a deductible expense.

But now let us confuse things a bit more. How are things going on the job? Okay now, did this response, have any effect on your sending me your work address? That was your entire message.

Love,
Dad

Oops, that's personal.

Chess Game With A Jester

oldbogeydog said:
"ANTHROPOSITOR — OLDBOGEYDOG
1. d4____________ g6
2. Nf3___________Bg7
3. Bg5___________a
4. e3____________b5
5.Nbd2__________d6
6. b4____________Bb7
7. c3____________Nd7
You know waaaaay too much!

My greatest hope lies in a monumental blunder on your part. I used to play chess on pogo games a lot. You can set the game timer to get an edge for yourself. My favorite was 15/3 for 15 minutes per player and 3 seconds added for a move. The 3 seconds was my edge for the end game. I'd get down to a half a minute to go and the opponent would get complacent with a lead and make mistakes thinking the game was over while I'd move fast and get some ugly fork or pawn promotion.

I think I'm going to have a tough time making that happen here!"

Anthropositor said:
"O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men.

I attend a great purge. My driver is gone. My key retainers, gone. But I stand now, feet solidly planted, with no retreat in them. My sword may be broken, but my dagger is dipped in venom.

Those who wish only for blunders from the besieged King, beset on all sides, serve themselves not.

If there is no Regent on this field but me, then sink to your knees, put your forehead in the bloody mud and retire from this battle. Then rise and be my jester when I return from my joust with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and gird myself to do battle with the god of Presbyteria.

ANTHROPOSITOR — OLDBOGEYDOG
1. d4____________ g6
2. Nf3___________Bg7
3. Bg5___________a6
4. e3____________b5
5.Nbd2__________d6
6. b4____________Bb7
7. c3____________Nd7
8. Be2___________Ngf6
9. Qc2

Answer to a post about the toxicity of alfalfa

This is an answer posted on a blog called Winters Day about alfalfa toxicity.

A considerable amount of material, some of it perhaps misleading or incomplete. You can find something toxic about many seeds and plants which we have been eating for centuries.

I happen to eat a few plates of sprouts per day. Depending on my mood or the other food I am serving, there may be seven to eleven different varieties of
sprouts. I also blend them into a variety of herbal seasonings for red meats, seafoods, poultry, wild game, and eggs, as well as baked goods.

The point is, I have been eating alfalfa sprouts, constituting probably a third of all the sprouts I consume. In other words, about 2/3 plate per day.

I have known of these rumors of toxicity for some time. I have not reduced the proportions of alfalfa sprouts at all.

Another sprout which is avoided by some on the basis of toxicity is Red Clover, also a legume. Quite a bit of oxalic acid in them, which is regarded as toxic. But spinach and rhubarb also has substantial oxalic acid.

It is the AMOUNTS that make the difference. Clover sprouts are about one fifth of my sprout consumption.

With these sorts of proportions the oxalic acid is actually helpful. The intestinal tract senses the presence of oxalic acid and increases the speed of peristalsis, the rythmic constrictions which push the consumed food through with greater rapidity, thus reducing the time of transit, reducing putrifaction and other forms of decay.

I am 67. Aside from being close to blind and having a half dozen teeth I repair with superglue, I am disgustingly healthy. My blood pressure was once, at highest reading, 191/110. I did not go to the doctor. I fixed it.

I take no prescriptions whatsoever. Had I gone to see a doctor, I would have been started on a virtually lifetime regime of Toprol XL or some other useless chemical; this in spite of the fact that, while these medications WILL bring the blood pressure numbers down, there is statistically no effect on the actual death rates from stroke and heart attack, So while the NUMBERS have come down, the risk of death has not. That is idiocy.

I was able without "medication" to bring the numbers down to a systolic range of 115 to 125, and a diastolic range of 72 to 84. Very rarely do I exceed these numbers. How on earth was I able to do that without a physicians close ongoing supervision and a pill regime forever? Must be luck.

A last comment about the tests that are the basis for much of the fear contained in the assessment of the dangers of sprouts. Many of the tests were in vitro, or dealt with rats or other animals. This is the style of science, which always strives to limit variables, for obvious reasons. But you cannot always look at things in simplified form and come up with valid, useful conclusions. I may or may not have time to come back here, but I will post this on my blog as well, in case anyone wants to debate these points.

If you can't readilly find my blog by googling my name, you can find 1400/1500 of my posts on Skin Cell Forum, and perhaps another 30 or so on Damn Interesting. You can argue or agree with me on any of these sites.

Pardon any typos that got past me. I am unable to see the print in the response window, and I am unable to enlarge it.

Intelligence and Happiness

The premise of the discussion on a different forum is that unusual intelligence tends to be fertile ground for almost inevitable unhappiness.

Chronic unhappiness is not held in high esteem anywhere that I know of. It is held to be highly destructive, and in the extreme, it is. I don't understand why it is of so little interest for those who find eugenic manipulations acceptable and appropriate. No one is trying to genetically engineer for happiness. It seems much more of a central issue to me.

I differ with the author of the two page essay in support of the position, a fellow named Bill Allin. And the other commenters seemed to find his essay comforting, the notion that a surplus of intelligence carried some inevitable baggage of misery.

So even though I did not agree, I chose not to join the little group to disagree. But being, or having once been, a little to the right of the right margin on the Gaussian Curve, I am loathe to internalize the inevitability of chronic unhappiness.

The point was supported with a single isolated example, Hemingway. In one sense that's okay, since one good opposing example is enough to draw Mr. Allin's conclusion into question.

His position is a widespread belief, and it is a notion that damages the prospects of increasing the development of unusual intelligence.

Hemingway had a singular talent. He certainly broke new ground in writing. When we hold him to be a genius, it is because his writing caught our attention, it pleased us, resonated with something within us, something very important. But the vibrations are more and more muted as time goes on. Hemingway was a product of his times. By mid-century he was already becoming an anachronism. And he was too sure of himself to change.

But times were changing explosively, and people were drawn to anyone who could supply a sense of coherence. A palpable certainty about the way things were. The style of thinking, the volatile social structure within which he lived, and with which he coped, was the crucible that made him what he was. The present time would be very alien to him. If anything, change and complexity have increased sharply since those turbulent times. And crisp, simple answers are harder to sustain.

Hemingway was not designed to be happy. He was not designed at all in that sense. He just became what he was in empirical fashion. Most of us do. But in that generation, there were some pretty serious challenges and people were pretty overwhelmed by it all.

Nothing like the Spanish Revolution and the first World War had ever been seen before. Oh, the carnage of war was not new. But the scope of it was far greater than anything in history, and even for those distant from the battles, it was shatteringly real. No longer was World War One naively justified as the "war to end all wars." And the reality of it was brought home vividly as never before. Just as the war was ending, and the victors were plundering and humiliating the vanquished, setting the stage for the next conflict, an influenza pandemic swept the globe.

The war had made it clear that politics by these other means had no real winners, and left us globally in such terrible shape as to set us up for the pandemic.

Hemingway exemplified an intense need for simple answers and a hope for an impossible return to simpler times. In essence he said, it is not about solving the problems besetting us. All we need is guts.

So at one and the same time, Hemingway was sensitive and empathic enough to brilliantly portray the dramatic turbulence of that world and those people, while exhibiting a toughness which was beyond normal human capacity. This was not a blueprint for happiness and contentment. It was a blueprint for intense turmoil, with peaks of triumph and elation, and chasms of despair.

I would not characterize Ernest Hemingway as a failure, as in, … "four wives and an unknown number of failed romantic relationships." Only one measure of a relationship is its’ length.

Even his suicide, which I personally have a certain tendency to disfavor, does not so much represent failure to me as much as, in this isolated case, … prudently leaving the field of battle before his thinking, style, and relevance were not just faded, distant memories, but forgotten.

Perish the thought that this was cowardice. It was not. Everyone presumes he was "clinically depressed" and therefore he committed suicide. I think it is more likely that he could not allow the ultimate anticlimax to his own story, of an eventual lingering, aging, decadent death, in a life known throughout for its’ adventure; a veritable dervish dance with death.

The Hemingway quote, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know," was not a lament. Not a rueful admission of suffering from depression, today's epidemic disease. It was not seeking ministrations from some "expert" medical consciousness-manipulator or a change in brain chemistry with the taking of some daily pills.

No, it was just a statement reflecting his perspective, that of a man who could hunt wild game or the most dangerous drama with equal courage.

Drama is unresolved conflict. If it is happy and serene, it is not drama. Even the ending need not be joyful. When we vicariously experience the tragedy of others, if there is some sort of perceived moral or lesson for us at the end, that is enough. Even if the story has a tragic ending, we can still bask in our good fortune in being better off than the character in the story, particularly if that character came to realize something as a result of what happened.

And look at all the brilliant writers of the period whose muse and constant companion was distilled yeast pee. Considered by many at the time, to be an indispensable tool of the trade.

But Hemingway had an existential dilemma. Slow descent into further deterioration, and more loss of the sharp edge of his prime. Few of us can avoid a certain sadness about that. But most of us are not "larger than life" in the sense that Hemingway was. And it wasn't only physical infirmity that troubled him. He could see it in his writing as well. It was becoming — longer and slower paced.

No. What Hemingway did was more consistent with his life. I doubt he was jolly at the time. But he wasn’t depressed. The ending worked, except for the mystery of it. There had never been anything mysterious about Hemingway.

But his end was fitting. It worked. And it had the energy and vigor of his prime prose. Stark, spare, Spartan.

Another compelling writer of the period was Somerset Maugham, who poses quite a contrast. Also deeply involved in the wars and espionage, the Depression and the European devastation, the pandemic. But his focus was different. Hemingway's key characters knew what they were doing, even in chaotic circumstances. They were decisive and direct. They knew what they needed to do, and they did it.

With Maugham's central characters, there was at least some introspection, and maybe even an epic quest for meaning and wisdom. Hemingway's heroes thought they had all the answers already, if they thought about such things at all. He and his characters were confident and assured. They did what they had to do because that was the way they were built. We all tried to internalize that image, at least for a while, to whatever extent we could.

No meditative odyssey, no quest for the ultimate answer. Hemingway men knew what reality was all about and knew what they had to do.

Maugham was drawn to the idea that there were universal answers, accessible to those earnest, wise, and diligent few who could make sense of life's lessons. Hemingway never thought to look for contentment. I doubt that such a hope ever lurked in his mind.

But it certainly did with Maugham. My point is this. Comparing the two writers, I would be hard put to tell which was the more intelligent. Certainly Maugham was more sophisticated, more intellectual. So why do I have the distinct impression that Maugham was essentially serene and in good spirits most of the time, and was perhaps the smarter of the two writers. I certainly never got the sense that he was driven by a struggle to fit into his own idealized notion of manhood.

Someone may notice that I am essentially mixing apples and oranges here. Mailer would have been a better example. Tumultuous, aggressive, mercurial, always taking the challenge of life head-on. And adapting. And continuing to struggle. Even old, crippled enough to need a cane, he lived in a fourth floor walk-up apartment. He was a man who would ultimately let time catch him, as we all must. But he never let the future pass him up. And I think he too was happy a good part of the time.

To Write Or Not To Write

I just came across a blog called Junk Food Science, run by a nurse with a lot of initials after her name, Sandy Szware. I was moved to comment on one of the stories and found that there was no provision for doing so, nor for even Emailing her. No Email address. Yet she clearly solicits sponsorship, and donations through PayPal. In spite of all the letters after her name, her reasoning does not seem entirely in lock-step with either the mainstream medical community or Big Pharma. I wonder why she chose not to allow comments or provide an Email address.

My blog has been up almost the same period of time. The number of comments has not been as great as I would have anticipated. I have gotten more Email about my perspectives than people posting comments to the blog. But sparse though this input is, particularly if you also consider new informational or theoretical value, rather than just acknowledgment or annoyance, the very possibility that people can say something if they wish, is a motivating force that draws me back to the keyboard.

Not only that, there are times when a comment points me in a direction I probably wouldn't have taken without the input. So I can only wonder how Ms. Szware keeps it going in the face of absolute dead silence. I don't know if I would continue in such a solitary pursuit. In earlier years, when I did some ghosting, editing, and script doctoring, I noticed there was never any writer's block. While I preferred to write my own material to editing or ghost writing other work, I definitely liked never staring at the blank page, even for fifteen or twenty minutes.

I guess I would have continued that work, if not for two exasperating celebrity clients in a row. I suppose I could do it again if my first focus was only the potential merit of the project.

Of course, writing on the net is a sloppier activity. It is much more unedited "stream of consciousness," conversational. The guidelines of style have taken a back seat to a casualness and spontaneity that is a small blessing and the great curse of the net.

My previous post was unedited, written in about twenty minutes. No doubt I should look at it in a few weeks to see how it may be polished or smoothed out. This was a regular habit in the old days. I must not miss it too much. I do little editing anymore. I have some intention to do it, but don't.

I think that we tend to be more literate than a generation ago, but the distractions continue to grow. I don't know if the quality of the writing, even in commercially published work, has improved. I would have thought that the sheer volume of writings available at our fingertips would improve over-all quality. Has quality been devalued? Will audio/visual eventually take over entirely? I don't know.

Doing Creation

Before the Beginning was Nothing.
Since that is all there was, there was a lot.
And with no space yet, there was no room.
All this was very difficult for God,
Particularly with no light, even though
There was only nothing to see.

There was only the agony of aloneness.
A desire for a fracture in the sameness.
For something! It could not not be.

In a flash beyond Brilliance
Growing out of the Singular Suddenness
Came Light and Space,
In that first nick of Time.

God delighted in the newness of Now
Even though Then was in everlasting retreat
From that first moment
God was eager to see When, the child of
Now and Then.

How magical and playful was When!
Where all the possibilities are still hidden.
The surprises and solutions yet to come.

God did not just say Let it Be,
But Let it Do!
And God was well satisfied
Because it Did.

Thanks for the Email

I appreciate those who have pointed out that I have not been adding to the blog recently. It is a clue to me that the stuff is being read now and then. I have a much clearer idea now than I did in the beginning, what to expect of a blog. My first notion was that some extended dialogues would form, and that new ideas would come about and be polished by group conversation. I had some faith that this would happen.

Not much evidence that it will though, based on the comments so far. There have been a few flames, some appreciative notes, and the most recent comment posted here, chiding me for the attractive greeter in the foyer. I suppose I could put her in a burka, but somehow, that is not the same. She was supposed to be sort of a siren, enticing those gifted with both imagination and a libido. Newton aside, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Still, the faith is not gone. It is just somewhat more subdued, as is the notion that really complex and worthwhile work would erupt from the interplay of these conversations.

The odds of that happening are clearly low, yet the faith persists. In my other travels, I have had productive dialogues which went on for perhaps a dozen comments. The only ones that went longer were flame wars which rarely stimulated anything other than irritation and further polarization. So, while I still have a vestige of faith in the possibilities of this medium, I no longer expect that really productive conversations that actually accomplish anything are likely to happen much. Even so, Like Diogenes, I shall continue to carry the lantern, looking for an honest (and curious and creative) individual. I know one will pop up sooner or later. It has happened to me a few dozen times in my life. I see no reason it couldn't happen in cyberspace as well.

In the next post, I will try to sum up what I have learned, and what I am currently thinking about cataracts and how to deal with them.

Cataracts are of almost universal importance. Presbyopia and cataracts go hand in hand. If you intend to extend your useful lifespan, this is as important as any other limiting disorder of age. It is not a disorder which should be the exclusive domain of surgeons. Those of us with cataracts need to do our homework and assess our options. The field of eye health is turbulent with change, particularly with regard to cataracts. In the next few days, I may be able to open your eyes to a few possibilities, some of them experimental.

Governmental Lead Poisoning

I have found that, if you find a simple answer to something, it generally turns out to be wrong. Sometimes it is very wrong, but almost never is it totally wrong. The trouble is, we all are compellingly drawn to simplification. It is why we so frequently choose very simple, uncomplicated people as our leaders. People who inspire; who move us emotionally; people who exude utter certainty about their positions and courses of action. Fanatics.

Life, reality, the universe are all complex beyond any possible imagining. So what do we do? We imagine a creator who/which can embrace all of that; an all-knowing, omnipotent god.

Then, on top of that, we imbue our governments with ideal characteristics, with a “rightness” which cannot be easily challenged. It is obviously (at least to us) the best government there is. Maybe the best government there ever was. To suggest otherwise is a bit like bumping a beehive. It may be exciting for a short time, but soon becomes unremittingly unpleasant.

These remarks began as a preamble to some comments I wanted to make in response to an essay about the history of the use of tetra ethyl lead in vehicle fuel. The essay was written by one of perhaps a dozen or so skilled writers, writing on diverse subjects, which seemingly had little in common, other than being damn interesting.

One thing I noticed very early on, is that the essays, while they were not short, and treated their subject beyond the “sound bite” level, did not express strong opinions. And even if they were not exhaustively comprehensive, generally managed to be quite thought provoking, and yet, always refrained from coming to any firm conclusions. There was no obvious advocacy of a position. My hat is off to them for being able to manage that. It is something I find very difficult to do.

Another thing that I noticed was the sheer number of comments. Oh, they were often short and without much informational value. But sometimes they were longer, with good ideas and firmly held, sometimes acrimonious opinions. Collectively they were often more than ten times the length of the original essay. Remarkable.

And I repeat, the original essay was not written from the position of any sort of obvious advocacy. It did not matter to me that so many of the responses were blather or at least not well thought out. In terms of the average of posts on the internet, the batting average of these comments was still remarkably high.

Now a few observations about the tetra-ethyl lead story. What stands out to me is that, as early as the 1920’s there is persuasive evidence that the world at large, and specifically authorities in the U.S. government knew the grave dangers posed to the public by leaded gasoline. The authorities ignored it. As a result, we all absorbed this toxin, slowly but continuously for a half century. I find it really hard to be neutral about that.

Another point that really grabs me is that this irresponsibly creative chemist, Thomas Midgley also brought the world chlorofluorocarbons. It is perhaps a fitting irony that he was murdered by one of his own inventions.

Conspicuously absent in the article was any mention of any adverse consequences to the politicians, judges, and businessmen who contributed to the duration and severity of this disaster. As far as I can tell, none of them were inconvenienced in any way, other than breathing the same air that we all did.

This lack of consequences has consequences. Our leadership knows they can trump up reasons to wage war, for example, and will never be held accountable. Not just because of scandals of this sort, but more directly from history. Weapons of mass destruction: trumped up to wage war. Gulf of Tonkin: trumped up to wage war. The sinking of the Battleship Maine: trumped up to wage war. Was the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor truly a surprise to all elements of the American government? There is some evidence to the contrary.

Will the shrub or any of his weeds ever be made to account for their actions? Not likely.

Colonization of Near Space

I posted this comment today on a blog called Damn Interesting. The thread was Transforming the Earth (December 2007). While the idea presented was not really feasible, I was most impressed with both the large quantity of comments and the serious thoughts that some of the contained. I have not looked at any of the other threads yet, but they are on my to do list.

Having worked as a production manager in an aerospace supply company during our original moon program, I was exposed to some compellingly idiotic actions increasing the costs and reducing the probabilities of success in our first efforts to land a man on the moon.

In spite of that, I feel great pride in having played a tiny part in the ultimate success in the first human departure from the Earth, landing on another astronomical body, albeit not even a quarter of a million miles away, and then returning the explorers safely back to Earth. That project took about a decade from start to finish. We sacrificed mightily and the rewards have certainly been commensurate with our efforts. Still, we skirted many disasters and had some as well along the way. Good luck outweighed the bad.

It is hubris in the extreme to consider such a fantasy project which would require such a long time frame and have so many insurmountable problems. We have not even shown the ability to sort out regional and political differences on the globe as it exists and a runaway extinction is underway.

There are solutions for mankind in space. We should be tackling short term projects like our original moon program. And we should do them in some sort of reasonable order. In spite of some notable exceptions, NASA set some priorities very well, particularly with the examination of the outer solar system.

Priorities are the issue. And costs. Each effort we make in space should not be a bottomless pit of expense, without fairly immediate potential for profits clearly in prospect. It is those potential profits which will drive a successful effort to colonize and utilize the solar system. The first step is the mining of the Amore (Earth approaching) asteroids. I will stop here and discuss this further with anyone who has a serious interest in such matters at
eurekaideasunlimited.blogspot.com.

Anyone with something interesting to say on the Colonization of near space may comment here.

Open Casting Call

Auditions now being held for a one act, multi act improv for two to six actors. This is the film noir version. Bring your own props.

Edit: How silly of me. I forgot to mention that the name of the production is the final line of the comedic production... The Aristocrats. But we are looking for a better title, since this one gives away the punchline.

A Thread Locked On Skin Cell Forum

My feelings are not as strong as the usually are when a thread is locked. I believe that there are other effective ways of dealing with differences. I went to the Rant and Rave section to express my opinion. But Rant and Rave is a section only open to the membership, not to guests of the forum. So readership is limited. The original thread which was locked is open to all and is worth a look. It is called "Wild Kingdom." For now, I will post here only my comment on the locking of the thread:

A thread has been locked, with a certain apparent justification. It may be that when things cool a bit, it will re-open under the watchful eye of the sheriff and his able deputies.

Allow me to just say this, with all respect, and without addressing directly the issues that the thread was examining. It is a useful thread on an important subject. And in spite of the rather surprising heat that has been generated it is worth eventually reopening when it is not at a rolling boil.

My blog, on the other hand, is more of a rough and tumble place, and anyone who wishes is certainly welcome to express themselves there, even if that expression is that I am a hate monger, or that I am wrong, or that I am an idiot, or that I stick oil up my nose, or drink beverages and eat foods replete with wild yeasts and bacterias as I do, or am goofy in any other way.

I cannot say that I will get around to this subject right away, due to my current schedule. However, if anyone is impatient to get started without me getting the ball rolling, they are invited to post their comment on any of my current threads or any thread in the archives, and I will figure out a way to start a new thread with the comment.

Viva la free exchange of ideas! ...even if some of them are wrong or hateful. Being wrong is nothing more than a stepping stone to being right, once the wrong is recognized. I suspect that cooler heads will prevail. I would sooner that a person who disagrees with me or hates me, expresses that, rather than use an ignore button, or to have the thread permanently locked because of a certain "rudeness" or even more extreme hostility.

Democracy is untidy. It is cumbersome. Participation is the magic component. Not politeness. The Challenger explosion was caused by politeness! The politeness of several engineers in NASA and employed by several different contractors that prevented them from "rocking the boat." Tragedy which could have been averted was the result.

Our deeply felt differences generate enthusiasms that get us involved. We are seeing the best of that today in American politics. For the first time in decades people are coming out in record numbers and getting deeply involved. Young, old and in the middle. How exciting! If we revile a Shrub and some Weeds and the effects that they have unskillfully wrought, let us not get so overwrought that we pick our next leaders as unskillfully as we have done on some previous occasions.

I am Anthropositor and I approved this message.

A Thread llocked on Skin Cell Forum

A Political Lament

Life is complex beyond understanding. Each of us has a notion of reality. An illusion of course, but a pretty compelling one. The contradictions within our own mindsets, these are our disturbances. There is no contentment within paradox. Only in illusion. In fantasy. In our dreams. When these things seem consistent, we are happy.

There are so many ways to illustrate this point, I don’t know were to begin. So let us talk about some political “realities.” Take for example, our current political drama. It doesn’t really matter which party we look at. The differences are largely imaginary.

Some time back, I posted a picture of Ron Paul on the blog with a half-hearted complement. It wasn’t really that I liked him. His voice grates on my ears a bit, and his appearance is a little reminiscent of Pat Paulson. It was rather that I liked the sign on his desk, “Don’t steal -- the government hates the competition.” Why did I like the sign? Because the government had stolen from me, or defrauded me, or failed to act on my behalf when they should have, in a variety of different ways, at a variety of different times. The tax court, the IRS, the Army, law enforcement. And every time I say me, I really mean us, because what has happened to me has happened to many, and continues to do so.

In neither party is there a single notable leader who would be likely to extricate us from the extremely serious difficulties we are in. I know people who are rather fanatically in favor of Obama. He is facile with words. He is inspirational in ways that haven’t been seen since JFK.

He has won their hearts. But their minds are disengaged. I know this in part because I have seen it before. And it happened to me. I experienced the same sort of fanatical phenomenon during the Kennedy campaign, and during his presidency. I just liked him!

I liked his attitude. I liked his style. I liked his confidence, his apparent certitude that he and his team could put us back on the right path into the future. And he did inspire us. He had us believing in his Camelot. He told us we could go to the moon. And though he was cut down by a cabal of diverse enemies who had only one thing in common -- the intense desire to kill him -- we actually did go to the moon. And we did it within the time frame of ten years. I can hardly contain the pride over that, since I had a small part in it. Then our space program lost its’ direction and got bogged down. The rate of our progress slowed sharply. One administration focused on the idea of taking the high ground militarily. It was the “Star Wars” mentality. Now that I have brought it up, I am going to digress for a few moments because of a recent event: the destruction of a satellite in decaying orbit by missile.

Since the beginning of the space effort, we have managed to clutter near-earth space with an incredible amount of debris. Big chunks, little chunks, loose screws, paint chips, all traveling at terrific speeds in orbit. Most of it was accidental. We don’t know what to do about it. And it increases the danger of everything we do up there. A billion dollar satellite can be taken out by the high speed impact of a screw that may have been orbiting for decades.

But in spite of our being fully aware of this ongoing problem, which promises only to worsen for the foreseeable future, we just impacted a satellite the size of a bus that was getting close to re-entry. True, we resisted the impulse to do it with a nuclear warhead. But the combined speeds of the missile and the satellite at the point of impact were many, many thousands of miles per hour. (The exact speed is, of course, classified.) But it has been likened to hitting a speeding bullet with another speeding bullet, head on.

Most of us have seen photographs of cars after head-on collisions at the comparative snails-pace of sixty or seventy miles each. We know from our study of physics that even an additional increment of speed of ten or twenty miles an hour multiplies the carnage many times over.

But this was all in the name of saber-rattling, and scientific curiosity, and showing military muscle. Oh, we said it was necessary. Hydrazine is dangerous stuff. Do the math! But it was not so. Even though it was frozen solid, the re-enty heat would have blown it up with a virtual certainty. You won't be able to find a NASA engineer who will argue against this point. There are no heat resistant tiles on the satellite. The idea that this satellite's hydrazine posed a danger on the ground is an absolute fiction. A spurious excuse to do what we wanted to do for other reasons.

If we keep doing this sort of thing, it may not be much longer before we have shrouded the planet with so much high velocity debris that it will be impossible to even consider the ultimate colonization of the rest of the solar system.

So, what we have done, not accidentally, but with full knowledge of what we were doing, was to perhaps double the debris in the orbital zone, with one deliberate and premeditated act. An act we can’t take back.

But let us get back to politics, which by comparison seems like it could even have some reason involved. (This is largely illusion.)

I am a fairly observant fellow, and I like to think fairly deeply about what I observe. But with Kennedy, I too threw caution to the winds. I just wanted him to be bigger than life. It was hero worship, pure and simple. I didn’t consider the fact that his father was among the crime Lords who made is fortune during, and because of the Prohibition era.

Nor did I consider his relative youth and inexperience, and how that would be perceived by his enemies, both here and abroad. In other words, I was feeling a lot more than I was thinking. It wasn’t until the attempted assassination of Castro, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the near destruction of the entire planet during the Cuban Missile Crisis that I truly realized the error. An error that pervades democracies and dictatorships alike.

Part of all this was his contrast with Nixon, who was running against him, and who I really reviled. I had been watching him with varying degrees of disgust and revulsion, all the way back to the McCarthy witch hunts, which tore the country apart for four years. Nixon was cut from the same cloth as that junior Senator from Wisconsin. He was also Eisenhower’s vice-president.

I was not yet old enough to vote, but I liked Ike pretty well. About the only thing that I really didn’t like about Eisenhower was that he had chosen Nixon to be on the ticket. I was even ready to overlook the fact that he was a Republican. I still remember two of his speeches; his Farewell to the Nation (which is in my archives, and is still worth reading) and a very short one he gave after the weasel from Wisconsin had been neutralized by a very few other courageous men. The most notable of them was Edward R. Murrow, a radio and TV journalist without peer. A true American hero.

Senator John McCain too is an American patriot and a hero. And he certainly has staying power. Only a few months ago McCain was considered by all the pundits to have no chance at the nomination. What happened? He is, or very likely will be, the Republican nominee. Now, some of those same pundits, who you might have bet, at long odds, would be staunch supporters of his, are showing dissatisfaction in the extreme.

Now I personally like his stance opposing “earmarks,” the practice of squandering vast amounts of taxpayer dollars on pork barrel projects without substantial real value and without the direct approval of their fellow legislators. The projects are embedded in laws which often have no connection to the pork barrel project at all.

That having been said, it appears that McCain gets a whole lot of financial support, in the form of campaign contributions from major lobbyists. He has even been accused, by the New Your Times of having an affair with one attractive lobbyist. The point is, earmarking is only one way a politician can enrich himself or his district. And it is very visible when the earmarking makes no sense. So why is it such an entrenched, even traditional practice? But to go on.

I have a bit of a prejudice against Hillary. She is a lawyer. But she also has a certain grace and charm. I do like the fact that she didn’t visibly fly off the handle when Monica polished Bill’s knob. And I liked Bill. I feel that, on balance, our nation was stronger at the end of his leadership than before or, certainly, since. He seemed to me to be the smartest president in recent history. And lucky to boot. When he left office, employment was in good shape, there was a surplus, not a deficit, and the only thing clearly looming on our horizon was the shrub about to take office.

In the recent debates, there has been an incredible amount of nonsense. NAFTA is one example. Senators Clinton and Obama have both said they would strongly oppose the continuation of NAFTA in its’ “present form.” This was pandering to voters who had felt the impact directly. I doubt that will happen.

I think they are just telling people what the want to hear. The states they are campaigning in have taken some heavy hits due to NAFTA, and the hits are very visible. Closed factories. High unemployment. Dying cities.

The truth is, the economies of the US, Canada, and Mexico have all benefited in less visible and tangible ways by NAFTA. We can't blame NAFTA for what the war profiteers and the Real Estate lenders and speculators have done. But there is just no good way to say that to the people who are suffering in the more highly impacted states. The companies that sent the jobs to Mexico or to other more distant lands, the municipalities and states that were impacted, and the Federal Government as well, could perhaps have done a great deal more to make a coordinated effort to provide retraining and other alternative employment programs to soften the blow. They apparently didn’t do much in a timely way, and now the candidates are indicating that Canada and Mexico can anticipate some heat that perhaps they don’t deserve.

Another catchword in the campaigns was “change.” Meaningless. But both parties have embraced it. The war in Iraq, the trillions it has cost, the hundreds of billions which have just evaporated, without anyone having a clue where the money went, the devastation of our economy, the sharp debasing of our currency, the sub prime mortgage disaster, these things are change. Do we really want more of that?

If you look over my archives, you will see that I am not obsessed with politics. I have written much more about creativity, innovation, ideas. I had really expected some substantial dialogues to evolve. The didn’t, or at least they haven’t yet. It will be interesting to see what response I will get from this. We seem to be in a time of thoughtless political frenzy once more.