Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.
I was under the impression I could import my blog entries into my livejournal account. I see no reason to have two online journals. So I’ve been searching through the settings and finding this is not the case. I’ve read the help about syndicated content but it’s useless.
I guess for now I’ll just post the link to my blog:
http://z8y.48e.mytemp.website/
I’ll keep reading the help and maybe I’ll eventually figure it out. I may add tags, but no mood, no location, though I might add music.
This is not as well written as I’d like, but I get my point across. I probably won’t rewrite it and clean it up. I’m just bein’ lazy. So there. I’ll just call it a final first draft.
I was on my way home from Pei Wei with a take away order. Melissa and our neighbor Christine were waiting for me at home. It was around 5:45pm Sunday evening. I was driving up Lewis from 61st St. when I saw a car facing north on the west curb of the street at 56th St. light. It looks like a car accident happened. I hadn’t seen anybody pulling over yet, so I go past to turn around. As I drove back I saw people going over to the car. I pull into the parking lot. People had pulled out cell phones and called 911. I hoped that’s what they were doing.
I want to say the car was a newer model Pontiac sedan. The driver was an elderly lady. There were two younger women talking to her. Checking on her. One was on a cell phone. I wnet over to the car and the lady is just sitting there in the car. The left front wheel is broken off and I can see a something spinning. So the motor must have still been on. I got the lady to turn it off. I went around the car to the street side and introduced myself. I reached in and turned on the flashing lights. After going back around the car to the others I asked if someone had called 911. They had. A couple of people said they had witness the accident. They said the lady had driven through the light and was swerving all over the road. One had followed her up Lewis.
I kept thinking we ought to get the lady out of the car because it was facing oncoming traffic, and she was in the sun. The car was sitting on top of a street sign she’d run over on the curb. The door was sticking from the bent metal but I pulled it open. It didn’t require any extraordinary effort.
Finally after about five minutes the cops show up, and I’m not sure those were the ones dispatched because they were driving slow. So I waved them over. They flashed their lights on and pulled up. Cop got out came over. I said I didn’t see it happen. He ignored me and that was fine. The odd thing was the lady was fidgeting in the car. While we were waiting for help, she’d been rifling through her glove box. Getting her insurance verification?
One of the two younger ladies waiting said the woman thought her husband was driving the vehicle. I only spoke the driver a few times and she followed my instructions when I told her to turn off the engine, put it in park so she could get her keys. I told her my name so as not to startle her when I turned on the emergency lights.
I’m not saying I was trying to be the good Samaritan, I had hot food that I wanted to get home. If I’d been delayed because of the accident I would have called Melissa for her to come and get the food. But I wasn’t a witness. Fresh in my mind I’d seen stories in the news of people seeing an old man run over and no one rendered assistance and the story about the women collapsing and dying in a waiting room and no one rendering assistance. Hello people! You can never be too busy to help. Thankfully there had been people that had stopped as well. Once the police were there and the fire truck showed up, the situation was under control and I left.
I am totally dumbstruck when I hear or see stories about people not doing anything when others are in distress. The thing is this happens in nature too. I saw National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth. They showed what happened to a monkey population when the top predators were removed. An artificial lake in South America created a bunch of islands that created isolated populations of all sorts of animals. Scientists were studying this accidental experiment.
As more and more monkeys populated the island and stripped it’s resources, the monkeys social cohesion broke down. No longer would they look out for each other, nor help each other. It was almost every monkey for himself. I’ve also heard of studies about rat overpopulation that is very detrimental as well. So my question is are we starting to see a real or perceived overpopulation in humans that is causing a breakdown in social norms? Or is it that we are more isolated from each other because of our car culture and televisions? Does the Internet help break down those barriers or reinforce them? Or is it something else entirely different and people have always behaved this badly? I feel we are seeing something new and disturbing.
There comes a point when a skeptic becomes a contrarian or worse a denialist. Case in point: global warming. How does one find what real skeptics think about global warming? Googling doesn’t help. There’s too much noise.
I suppose my starting point would be Skeptical Inquirer or The Skeptic and to look at what well respected skeptics have to say on the matter. But in the end it isn’t their opinion that matters. What matters are their critical skills that a lay person can use to sort out the evidence and the science. As a lay person I can’t go drill ice cores and measure trace amounts of gas. I can’t examine sediment cores or tree rings. I don’t have time to sort out existing temperature records or greenhouse gas measurements over time.
I think the term skeptic has picked up some negative connotations. In that it is a philosophy that rejects everything. I would like to see myself as a rationalist. Someone who strives to look at the world and science in manner that helps to build up a better picture of the world. The problem is anytime anyone comes up with a useful descriptive term it gets co-opted by assholes. And it gets redefined into meaning the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to be or into meaning whatever they want it to mean. It becomes white noise. They aren’t assholes. They are cocksuckers.
I just finished reading The Sun Kings by Stuart Clark. It’s one of best science books I’ve read in a long time. I heard an interview with the author on The Naked Scientist podcast back in April. The discussion was mainly about this largest solar magnetic storm ever to hit the Earth back in 1859. Auroras were seen as far south as Cuba. Telegraphs were disrupted. Operators were electrocuted. If a storm of equal power were to hit the Earth today the effects would be devastating. There’s a transcript of the podcast and you can just read the discussion with Clark.
The last chapter dealt with Global Warming. The suspected causes of global warming are becoming more and more like the murder suspects in Murder On The Orient Express. Everyone did it. Humans are pumping out an unprecedented amount of carbon into the atmosphere. The Sun is also having an impact. It is well established that periods of reduced sunspots corresponded to periods of global cooling and increased sunspots just the opposite. Here’s the kicker. It’s not because of solar variance.
It seems that with increased sunspots there is increased magnetic activity which blocks the amount of cosmic rays the Earth receives. There is a theory that cosmic rays may help to form clouds or rather create the nucleations necessary for droplets to condense. So if the Earth is not being bombarded by cosmic rays less clouds form and more sunlight gets through thus warming the Earth. Here is an article about a proposed experiment to test that theory. Finding a heavenly key to climate change.
Some people think that man-made causes of increased global temperature is mutually exclusive with natural causes of increased temperature. If increased solar magnetic activity is reducing cloud cover and humans reducing the amount of particulates in the atmosphere are happening at the same time that’s a double whammy. But we are also pumping out carbon dioxide and with increased numbers of factory farms our livestock are pumping out record amounts of methane and nitrous oxide. That makes it a quadruple whammy.
However it is possible there could still yet be some other unknown factor responsible for increased cloud cover when sunspots are at a minimum.
Update – It seems there is no link between cosmic rays and cloud formation. So it is still a mystery as to why fewer sunspots increase cloud cover.
I was trying to figure out how to get evangelicals to vote for Obama come November. Then it hit me. He’s the Antichrist. (He’s not of course, and it would be mindbogglingly irresponsible of me to even suggest it). The evangelical Christians think the world is going to end realsoonnow and that Armageddon is just around the corner. But it’s worse than that. They are actively trying to bring it about. One hopes that Bush’s faith is more lip service than real and that he is cynically manipulating evangelicals. At least his handlers are.
Evangelicals are active supporters of Israel, and the Israelis take advantage of that support even though the support is contingent upon bringing about The Rapture. So I had the thought that well if the evangelicals see Obama as the Antichrist it would mean that realsoonnow is going to be REALSOONNOW and they’ll all get transported to Heaven via the Archangel Scotty’s magical transporter beam. Since some of them are actively trying to bring about the end of the world, they know a vote for Obama would bring them one step closer to God. The only problem with that is in the Book of Revelations the Antichrist suffers a fatal wound and miraculously recovers. Who among us doesn’t think that Obama were he elected POTUS would not be targeted more than Bush?
Now comes the part where I tell you that I googled Obama and antichrist to see if someone else has thought of it. Lo and behold someone has. Not just anyone but Douche Bag Extraordinaire and Assclown Supreme Glenn Beck has. He was interviewing Hagee and asked him if Obama was the Antichrist. Hagee said no, but did he really mean it?
Did I mention that it would be mindbogglingly irresponsible to suggest it? Oh, wait. I’m writing about Glenn Beck. Never mind.
If you google Bush and antichrist you get 141,000 hits. Cheney and antichrist gets 222,000 hits. Clinton and antichrist gets you 548,000 hits. Obama and antichrist gets a whopping 643,000 hits. There’s been so much speculation even Snopes has to deal with the question: Is Barack Obama the Anti-Christ? Sigh.
Of course we all know that Ronald Wilson Reagan is the Antichrist. So once he reappears, we know it’ll be the end of the world. I expect that to happen realsoonnow.
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