As Winter Turns to Spring

DARKNESS INTO LIGHT

There have been quite a few discussions among us humans about what it is that makes us human.

The scientific community liked use of tools, then found monkeys, apes, and even birds that used tools of one sort or another. They liked language, but recorded whale songs and taught a gorilla named Koko sign language. And then we found our human DNA is shared to some degree with every living creature on earth.

There isn't a single religious community, since they tend to fight among themselves a lot. But generally, most religious communities say that every human has an immortal soul. Some say that this soul can be reincarnated into other forms of life, and they don't kill them to eat them. Some say that humans alone have immortal souls, and they don't mind killing things.

Full disclosure: I don't like killing things, but I do like a nice steak, and having looked into a cow's eyes once or twice I feel that cows are to some degree just very large vegetables.

But I have my own opinion. What uniquely makes us human is our amazing imaginations.

We can quite easily travel down from molecules to atoms, inside the atomic nucleus and then inside nuclear particles to envision quarks and gluons and whatever, only to reverse course into outer space above the earth and beyond the solar system to outside the Milky Way galaxy and far beyond to see thousands, millions, billions of galaxies filling the night sky. See how easy that was? Isn't that amazing?

Our ability to dream, to view things that might happen or happened long ago or will happen is what makes us different from other forms of life on Earth. In my opinion, anyway.

Full disclosure: I'm an agnostic, which is a Greek word meaning I don't know if there is a God or not. But I think the Bible has gotten one thing backwards. God did not create man in his own image. Once upon a time, some male tribal patriarch created the Biblical God in HIS own image, probably after getting in a fight with one of his wives or teenage sons.

Our human ability to imagine the future, like most things, is a mixed blessing.

Today, I'm struggling to believe that there is a positive future for this world. Human predators have done enormous damage to the economic and political structure of this great nation, and are unrepentantly seeking to regain power to cause more harm. Critical problems - climate change, energy policy, Orwellian media, insane military spending - are going unaddressed because various powerful interests have corrupted our democracy itself.

So I'm just going to try to escape the nightmare with imagination.

I can imagine a world in which people realize that peace can only be achieved by seeking justice, and that seeking security with violence and weapons is an endless, hopeless road into darkness.

I can imagine a world in which people realize that protecting their own rights and freedoms means tolerance of other people's rights and freedoms, and determined defense of those same rights for every human being.

I can imagine a world better than this one.

And, at the start of a new year, as days lengthen and warm, I can hope that this year is the beginning of a better, brighter future for us all.

A Downhill Run

A DOWNHILL RUN

Hello everyone. Welcome to 2012.

I know we are supposed to worry about the Mayan apocalypse, since a couple of bigger budget films have planted that notion in the popular culture. But I'm not too worried about it. The Mayans have already suffered their apocalypse, after an extended drought made them unable to fill their irrigation channels and feed their large populations.

There are still Mayas around, by the way, living in certain areas of central Mexico. Just not so many as in their glory days.

But I am worried about the imminent destruction of democracy in the United States. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Unfortunately, many individuals born in this great nation do not accept its heritage - all of us created equal with inalienable rights, a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, government of the people, by the people, for the people. Unfortunately, many individuals believe that their own freedoms are not connected with tolerance for others, that partisanship is not unpatriotic, that profit-driven corporations are people too.

Perhaps this should not be surprising. Once we fought a horrible civil war, led by wealthy slaveholders to gain by violence what they could never gain by peaceful means - Constitutional protection for slavery and a requirement that no state be allowed to impose any restrictions on the practice of slavery. States rights? Hah!

( I know a lot of otherwise educated people might not believe this, but please see for yourself. Article 1, Section 9, prohibits every state of the Confederacy from passing laws that impair slaveholder's property rights. States' rights? No way, that's just BS for the unwary, Sorry, bubba, if you feel like a fool. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp)

So now the heirs of this heresy against human freedom and dignity, aroused by the civil rights movement and the election of a black man to the Presidency, have stirred from their dark places. They hate government, i.e., the United States of America. They hate paying taxes. They feel that they - delusional, paranoid, ignorant - are the real Americans.

Sadly, apparently, they are. And this great nation with its great ideals is heading downhill fast. Real problems - the need for new energy sources, consequences of global warming, the destruction of our national manufacturing base - are being ignored. The fools and asses are having their way.

We are in the midst of a new Civil War, and we are all going to lose.

SUNRISE, SUNSET

Normally I spend time writing about things of political importance or philosophical pointlessness. But I finally understood something - I think - that has puzzled me for years, and I wanted to share the explanation that worked for me.

You know that days get longer in the summer and shorter in the winter. You also know that this happens because the Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun. In June, the northern hemisphere tilts toward the sun, so the northern hemisphere is in its summertime while the southern hemisphere is in the dark of winter. The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere this year is June 21, and the shortest day is December 22.

You might think that the earliest sunrise and latest sunset would also occur on June 21, since that is the longest day of the year. You might think that the latest sunrise and earliest sunset would occur on December 22. But that is not true.

In summer, the earliest sunrise occurs about a week or so before the longest day. The latest sunset occurs about a week or so afterwards.

In winter, the earliest sunset occurs a week or so before the shortest day. The latest sunrise occurs about a week or so afterwards.

You can see for yourself by following this link and looking 30 days before and after the summer and winter solstices at your location.

http://www.100tools.com/100tools/pages/calculators/sunriseSunset.asp

What is going on here? I've looked up different explanations that describe analemmas and equations and they've never made sense to me. But now I have a better explanation.

We think of the Earth as orbiting around the sun in a circle. But that's not quite true. Actually the Earth's orbit is an ellipse. Sometimes it is a little closer to the sun, sometimes a little farther away than if its orbit were a perfect circle. It turns out that Earth is closest to the sun in early January, around January 4. That's also when the Earth is moving at its fastest orbital velocity through space. It is farthest away from the sun on July 4. That's when it is moving its slowest.

So from July 4 to January 4 each year, the Earth is heading towards its point of maximum velocity. It is speeding up in its orbit a little more each day. From January 4 to July 4 the Earth is moving towards its slowest point. It is slowing down in its orbit a little each day.

This is important because of the way we define "one day". One day is the time from noon to noon, the time it takes for the sun to appear again at its highest point in the sky. This is not the same as the amount of time it takes the Earth to make one revolution! Since the Earth is moving through space, "one day" takes just a little more than one revolution, the time required to turn the Earth just little more to face the sun again. Imagine being in a moving car and turning a full circle to look at a person outside the car. If you started by looking exactly sideways out the window and then spun around 360 degrees, you would still have to turn a little farther backwards to look at the same person because he appears to have moved backwards a little.

If the Earth moved in a perfect circle, it would always orbit at the same speed, and each day would be the same length. But the Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle. It is slightly elliptical. As I explained, the Earth is speeding up from its slowest orbital motion near July 4 to its fastest orbital motion near January 4. Because the Earth's motion gets faster and faster, the extra rotation required to face the sun again gets larger and larger. It looks to us like the sun is running late - noon is a little later than we expected every day. This effect pushes the whole day later - sunrises are later, noontimes are later, sunsets are later.

But because the Earth's orbit is very nearly circular, this orbital effect is very small. We almost never see it, because the effect caused by the Earth's tilted axis is so much bigger. Except...

Except when the Earth is near its longest day or its shortest day. During those periods, when the effects of the Earth's tilted axis are near maximum and minimum, the day-to-day differences of this effect are practically zero. That's when we can observe the smaller effect of Earth's varying orbital speed. It's like listening to someone whispering next to someone playing a tuba. Most of the time, you can't hear the whispering. But when the tuba player takes five, then you can.

The increasing orbital speed of the Earth around the longest day makes the sun seem to be running a little late. From the Earth tilt effect, sunrises should be getting earlier and earlier, but the small orbital effect takes over before the solstice arrives and starts sunrises on a downward trend a few days sooner. Sunsets should be getting later and later, and the small orbital effect adds to that trend. It takes a few extra days after the solstice before the changing length of the day overwhelms the small orbital velocity effect and sunsets once again start happening earlier.

A similar thing happens around the shortest day of the year at the winter solstice. The effect of the increasing orbital speed of the earth adds to the trend of later and later sunrises, pushing the latest sunrise past the solstice. The orbital effect is opposite to the trend of earlier sunsets, and makes the earliest sunset occur before the solstice.

If the Earth's axis weren't tilted, we'd only see the effects of changes in its orbital velocity. The longest day of the year would be January 4, when the Earth is closest to the sun and traveling fastest along its orbit. The shortest day of the year would be July 4, when the Earth is farthest from the sun and slowest. As it is, we don't even notice effects of Earth's changing speed, except during the two times each year when day-to-day effects of its tilted axis are minimal.

It finally makes sense. And I look forward to experiencing early and late sunsets and sunrises around the solstices, and recalling that they are being caused by the mad 65,000+ mph rush of the Earth through space in its orbit around the sun.

Wow.

A BLANK PAGE

It's been a while since I last wrote.

I felt very distressed by the lies and crimes and thievery and betrayal of the Bush-Cheney administration. I felt hopeful - but still deeply concerned - when this country finally rejected neocon fascism and turned again towards our American ideals by electing Barack Obama.

But I felt extremely sick and disgusted by the return of Congress to the Republicans.

This country had a opportunity to be great. If we had not allowed the election of 2000 to be stolen by political toadies in the state of Florida and on the bench of the Supreme Court, we could have had the sane and effective leadership of Al Gore. There would have been no 9/11, because Richard Clarke would have remained on the Security Council and Al-Qaeda would have remained a top defense priority. There would have been no invasion of Iraq, because Gore would not have been in league with oil companies and the military-industrial complex. And there would have been no economic meltdown in 2008, because the federal government would not have failed in its obligation to regulate economic activities to protect the public interest, would not have taken the position that national economic policy should be set by the greediest, most corrupt and irresponsible sleazeballs in the private sector.

This country may yet succeed in living up to its inspiring ideals, that governments derive power from the consent of the governed, that individual rights of conscience and expression and faith are supreme to every government authority, that freedom and tolerance will prevail.

But many in this generation have failed their test. In response to warmongering and fearmongering and propaganda and scapegoating these Americans fell into line and followed their leaders into darkness and destruction. They are the dark side of the American dream, the ones who use Christian language to don hoods and burn crosses and to murder the innocent. They are the fifth column of American politics, who smile as our Constitutional rights are shredded by the right wing and stockpile guns, ammunition, and paranoid delusions when Their Fuhrer loses an election. They are born Americans, but they are the most dangerous enemies of America.

I thought today, I would try to start writing again, that I would start with a blank page.

But there is no blank page.

Our present is the product of our past, and this country has been badly damaged by the viciousness of these un-American Americans. For my children's sake, I hope the wounds are not fatal.

But every day, I see the powerful becoming more powerful and reckless. I see the future of our country being sacrificed to the greed and delusions of divisive private interests. I see the tenor and truth of our national discourse sinking into oblivion.

Sometimes it seems hopeless.

Today is Memorial Day. It is a day when we honor those who died for our country, and all veterans who served and stood ready to make the same sacrifice. Many of them marched forward into hopeless battles and did not retreat. Their example can inspire us - or shame us - into facing our own national enemies, our enemies from within.

And today I will rededicate myself to that end.

To telling the truth as I see it when the liars and thieves bray their calls to the unwary.

I don't suppose it will make any difference or that anyone will listen.

I will be a small voice in a tempest.

But I will honor the memory of those who created this country, who gave us this noble heritage.

Perhaps we can not escape the past, and start each day with a blank page and unlimited hope.

But we can imagine an America that cherishes and defends its ideals.

And each day we can take one step more into that bright future.

It's worth a try anyway.

OK. Here we go again.

WASTING YOUR VOTE

I would say that if you are voting in a close race, and your vote might make the difference between electing a completely corrupt Republican like Tom Delay or a delusional paranoid like Dick Cheney or a clueless spoiled brat like Rand Paul, then you should vote for the Democrat. You should vote for the Democrat because they are heading in the direction we need to go, instead of digging our country's grave as eagerly as Dick Cheney built his Veep bunker so he could sleep at night.

Otherwise, vote for what you believe - and your vote is not being wasted. Whoever the elected politicians are, they all are impressed by people who actually voted and refused to vote for any mainstream politician. They look for opportunities to pick up those votes next time.

The best example is Ross Perot's election victory. He had been a Republican, he refused to go along with the corrupt expansion of the deficit under Reagan and Bush the Barfer, he spent $25 million to educate the American people about the dangers of running up the federal deficit.

In the 1992 election, he received almost 20 million actual votes. I don't think it's a coincidence that the next administration went on to achieve a balanced budget. Clinton and Gore showed us how to do it - restrain growth of federal spending, create only tax cuts that actually help grow the economy instead of reward political cronies, and wait for steady growth of the economy to increase revenues until a balanced budget is achieved.

I don't think this would have happened without Perot and his 19,741,065 votes.

So go out and vote intelligently for candidates that truly represent you.

Just remember Ralph "The Shyster" Nader and Florida 2000. We would not have suffered the attacks on 9/11 or any of the aftermath if Gore had become our next President.

BIG OIL

Let's not get confused here.

This debate is not about science or education or evidence or hypotheses or data.

It's about money, lots and lots of money.

Opposition to beliefs about global warming doesn't just spring up from nowhere. Global warming and especially public policies to mitigate global warming represent a direct threat to the income levels of the world's biggest and wealthiest corporations. And so we see the backlash - designed to confuse and especially to delay any effective public policies to reduce fossil fuel use.

Is there a controversy? No. It's very clear that adding components to the atmosphere that absorb infrared will trap solar energy and that this added heat will cause temperatures to rise.

Don't believe that? Try a test yourself. Park your car in bright summer sunlight with the windows open. You're now experiencing how effective 100 miles of atmosphere is at trapping solar energy. Now roll up all the windows. And wait. Even a fraction of an inch of solid glass is more effective at trapping infrared radiation than our atmosphere. It just doesn't get out. See how long you can stand it in there. (Don't take any small children or pets with you.)

Nobody knows what the long term effects will be from the energy being trapped by increased levels of greenhouse gases. Will the Arctic ice cap disappear in a few years? Probably. Its total area and average thickness are as small as human beings have ever witnessed. Will sea coast cities see more powerful storms that cause terrible destruction? Probably. Who's next after New Orleans? Will the Sahara migrate northwards to Europe and the Mojave to Sacramento? Maybe. It seems Australia is already running out of water in many places.

So the safe thing to do is to minimize fossil fuel burning and try to keep things the way they are. You might even say that was the conservative approach.

But these days, conservative means selling out to big money, in this case, Big Oil and Big Coal.

There's a better term for an unholy alliance between corporations and government, coined by Benito Mussolini in reference to the Roman fasces weapon.

How sad that one generation of Americans went to war to protect us from fascism, and that the present generation of Americans includes so many who embrace it.

AMERICA THE BOOBYFUL

During the Bush/Cheney years, the Republicans had their chance to show what their ideas meant in the real world.

The rich got richer, everybody else got left behind, the economy was destroyed by parasites from within, the Constitution was shredded, the leaders of the government used their positions and powers for the personal gain of themselves and their cronies.

Things got so bad, we actually elected a black President.

Now it's two years later. Some of the mess has gotten cleaned up. We have started back on a path to decency and strength and prosperity. But we were in a very deep hole and we have a long way to go.

But we elect Presidents, not Popes. Obama has had to work within a political system designed to have checks and balances and limits to power, against a cynical and traitorous political opposition that is PROUD of the damage they did to the rest of us because THE RICH GOT RICHER. That's who they work for after all, that's who owns the news channels and talk radio stations and bizarro right wing pressure groups.

Obama has been more of a centrist than an extremist, and it can be frustrating watching him try to work with the utterly corrupt America-hating GOP. But he is working for a better future for all of us, and we are making progress. He's right that things will get immeasurably worse if the Congress goes Republican.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are too dumb to remember how bad things were and how much worse things were getting two years ago. We like to think of ourselves as Number One, and we were for a while.

But in the end, we get the government we deserve. And if we vote for the liars and thieves and fools and bigots that populate the Republican Party these days, we will destroy ourselves and our future the way many other great nations of the past destroyed themselves.

We have a chance to keep moving forward, with Obama and the Democrats in charge. Or we can hold our noses and jump back down the rathole with the GOP. Who are we? What happens next?

Welcome to America the Boobyful?

Too bad. We had a chance to be great.

GENERATION SCREWED

Sorry, boys and girls.

You won't have what your parents had.

We could get a job. If we finished college, we could get a better job.

Even high school graduates could get a decent-paying job, marry a lovely sweetheart, buy a decent house, and raise an adorable family.

Sorry, kids.

Your jobs have disappeared, because corporate bigwigs have found ways to employ underpaid foreign workers and still sell products at American prices.

This strategy has been pouring money into their pockets for a few years now.

Eventually, foreign companies will realize that self-indulgent American executives are only parasites, and foreign competitors will take over the industries they were so kindly trained to operate.

That's good, if you want to build economies around the world and make human life better in the Third World.

It's a little scary if you are a young American looking for a job, and looking for a career that will last until you hit retirement age. Sorry about that.

Boy, are you screwed.

If you want to make a difference, if you want some hope, I have some advice.

Vote in every election, and NEVER vote for a Republican.

Good luck. You are going to need it.

THE MIDTERMS

I'm hoping that the midterm elections won't turn out as badly as some have predicted.

But the United States has already sliced its wrists and turned on the gas in the oven.

Before WWII, in the 1930's, the United States was nothing special.

After WWI, in the 1950's, the United States was NUMBER ONE in just about everything.

Europe and Asia were devastated, rebuilding their cities and homes.

The wonderfully fortunate Americans were roaring on, profiting from a hugely expanded manufacturing base.

But that's over now.

A corporate class, loyal to profits, contemptuous of national interest, has lined their pockets by shipping American manufacturing overseas. Now it's gone.

The next generation of Americans will have to ask themselves, How long can a trade deficit be financed, when do we have to pay the bill, and how in hell can we do that?

Get ready for the 21st Century.

Get ready for the collapse of the USA.

Unfortunately, the average American was too stupid to vote in his or her best interest. He and she thought TV news and TV ads were telling them the truth.

Morons.

ELECTION RESULTS

There is one reason to expect the Democrats will do better than anyone expects right now.

Cell phones.

There is also a reason to expect that things will be as bad as the super-rich hope for.

Young voters.

Young voters don't have land lines or answer them when they ring. They have cell phones, and they use them to talk and text and play goofy games while they are waiting for the bus to arrive or the class to end. What's important about this is that they almost NEVER get included in political polls.

Pollsters only call land line numbers, and talk to those few people willing to answer their questions. That process reaches many more old people than young people. So young people, and their political opinions, don't get included in polls.

Pollsters get around this by weighting their responders according to how likely they think the responders are to vote. They expect settled older people to vote, so their responses are counted as a lot of real votes on Election Day. They don't expect young people to get their act together, so their responses don't get weighted as heavily.

This is how we get right leaning pollsters and left leaning pollsters, by the weights they choose to use to massage their data.

Right now the polls are heavily weighted by the responses of older voters, many of them still deluded by the notion that Republicans are fiscally responsible instead of shameless liars and thieves.

But young voters aren't even in the polls. Pollsters can't even talk to them, because they don't call cell phones.

If young voters act like typical young voters, the GOP may get back to its usual shenanigans. If young voters actually vote, a lot of people and pundits are going to be surprised.

SYMPATHY FOR THE OUTCASTS

I don't smoke, for two reasons.

For one thing, when I tried my first cigarette, at the age of ten, out in the woods, with a pack of matches and a box of Lucky Strikes that a friend had stolen from his mother's purse, I coughed out that first drag with a howling noise I had never made before. I heard a clear message from my body - Don't do this again.

Also, I knew that smoking was hard to quit and I doubted that I would ever have the will power to do it. So, to me, starting smoking meant smoking forever, and I just didn't do want to do it. Simple, dull, boring.

I've known some people who do smoke, and I have to tell you: smokers are really great people. They're more optimistic than I am, they like excitement more than I do, they aren't afraid to take chances, they seem to be more outgoing and more sociable.

But they got hooked. Probably a friend who smoked got them started. Now it's really tough for them to quit. But every smoker I've ever met tries to quit eventually.

Here's what I would do: add a tax to every cigarette and use the money to buy a stockpile of nicotine patches. Then give the patches away for free to any smoker who wants to stop. Use the rest of the money to run anti-smoking ads to keep kids from starting.

In the meantime, when I walk past the outcasts standing on the sidewalk at work, smoking at least 25 feet away from the doors, sometimes in cold or rainy weather, I don't feel disdain or disapproval. I feel sympathy for good people with a bad habit. I know they are going to try to quit some day, if they aren't trying already, and I wish them well.

Because smokers are great people, and it would be nice if all of them got to lead long, happy, healthy lives.

THE MELTDOWN

Hey, what's going on here?

Didn't we just suffer through a catastrophic meltdown caused by Republican corruption and thievery?

Enormous deficits directly caused by unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy and crony corporate pork barrel spending, relentless attacks on human rights and our own American civil liberties, a determined effort to dismantle any government oversight of every business activity - remember?

We saw a balanced budget turned into enormous federal deficits. We saw SALT treaties ripped up to allow the multi-billion dollar Star Wars boondoggle. We saw Marines sent to grab oil fields for private companies, who sent more six-figure contractors to Iraq than we sent troops. We saw the NSA set loose to spy on Americans, listening to all of our phone calls and reading all of our emails.

And, finally, we saw the catastrophic meltdown of the U.S. economy in 2008. There were plenty of warnings. Foreclosure rates were rising to historic levels, and various economists were warning that a bubble was forming in the housing market. The Republican administration had years of warning that some action should be taken to slow things down. But that was completely opposed to their political philosophy - Let The Rich Get Richer.

And, finally, predictably, things fell apart. Banks failed. GM went bankrupt. Markets crashed. And millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, their health coverage, their hope.

We did the right thing in booting the GOP in 2008, and bringing in new leadership to get us out of the mess. And maybe someday the GOP will reform itself to be a genuine political party again, instead of a corporate-controlled neofascist conspiracy.

They had their chance, and they showed beyond any doubt what they have to offer: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the country goes to hell.

After the last Republican-led meltdown, in 1929, we elected a Democrat in 1932. Things had gotten pretty bad by then, with national unemployment hitting 25%. But we were still struggling to recover for the rest of the decade. When we finally did emerge after WWII, we began the era of American leadership that we all grew up with.

It's 1934. Are Americans dumb enough to stick that screwdriver into the light socket AGAIN?

OMG