Here we go again......

I might have taken notes if I had known that this was going to be on the test. Then again, maybe not. I seldom took notes in school and I usually did pretty well on the tests. Of course, I was a lot younger then, and the tests weren't years later. Anyway, I think this was on PBS. I'm sure that it wasn't one of those "Red Necks versus Bigfoot" atrocities, or anything like that. I'll see if I can find anything on Wiki about it this weekend.

What they said was that NASA has gotten pretty good at sending things to Mars, but they haven't tried to bring anything back yet, so they don't want to make any promises that they might not be able to keep. Like you said, it would cost an arm and a leg to get them there, and at least as much to bring them back, so they're not going to bring them back. They plan to send some equipment on ahead of them and, once they got established, more equipment would follow. These first guys would be charged with assembling the equipment as it arrived. Once they had enough stuff assembled to support more people, they would send more people. I'm not sure what they were going to do for water, maybe they still hope to find a natural source on Mars. I think they were going to get their air from the Martian atmosphere and thicken it up with some kind of process. Eventually they might be able to grow some of their own food under some kind of greenhouse structure.

Like I said, it would not be my cup of tea. When I wanted to go to Mars, it was with the understanding that I would be living in the wide open spaces, not under some kind of plastic bubble. If I wanted to do that, I would have stayed in Chicago. Like I have also said, Alaska had more wide open spaces than I knew what to do with, so I ended up where I'm at, and I'm happy to be here. I own everything for a half mile to the south of our house, and an eighth of a mile to the east and west. My neighbors are about a hundred feet straight to my north, 300 feet if you follow the driveway, and there's a thick screen of vegetation between us. If our house burned down in the middle of the winter, I'm pretty sure we could make it to the nearest neighbor in our bathrobes and slippers. We have called 911 three times since we moved here, and they got here in a matter of minutes each time. We have the best of both worlds here, solitude when we want it and access to help when we need it. We also have lots of trees and other greenery that we didn't have to plant, water, or weed, and we even get to see wildlife out the window occasionally. What's not to like? Well, the winters are kind of long but, if there's any truth to this global warming thing, that problem might take care of itself.

A lot of people still think that we shouldn't be spending all this money on space travel when we have problems here on Earth that are not being addressed. They might have a point there. Other than the satellites, what has the Space Age brought us? Rocks! If Columbus had brought nothing but a bag of rocks home from his first voyage to the New World, I doubt there would have been a second and third voyage. Still, you never know what they might eventually find out there: gold, silver, diamonds, or even those dilithium crystals. Now that's something we could put to good use!

Have a nice weekend.

the red planet

Ah, the Red Planet. I was more a Venus guy, probably just because the red planet got all the press and I was always a contrary guy. There was some thought that there was some kind of jungle under those mysterious clouds. It would be pretty hot for sure, but that just meant scantily clad native women. What’s a third eye to a horny teenage boy?

That sulfuric acid rain killed it. Oh sure if you stood on the surface of Mars you would die from lack of air, and probably freeze to death pretty quickly if you had some kind of oxygen mask, but it beats being melted in sulfuric acid rain.

I guess the Indians thought there were the right amount of people in the Americas, but we white guys showed them there was plenty of room for more, plenty of room Jack, move over into these dry lands, but if they have oil you’ll have to move again.

So I imagine you have plenty of room now, or do you ever go the border of Beaglesonia and twitch your nose and squint your eyes and think your neighbor is too damn close. Of course I don’t mind that my neighbors are on the other side of the wall and the ceiling and the floor and the next building over to the north, south, east, and west, until the mind boggles. One thing about the city is you are kind of free as what to what you do because nobody cares unless it holds up traffic. Hunting and fishing are pretty impractical though.

Whoever is talking about sending people to the Mars to colonize it is either loony or a mountebank. We can probably rig up a rocket to get there and maybe land safely, which would cost an arm and a leg, but as far as establishing a colony of anybody who is going to anything more than starve to death in a few years, that is not in the foreseeable future. As long as we are on the subject of doing things that we can’t do, why don’t we establish colonies near those deep sea cracks where there are all those strange animals and minerals galore? Hey wouldn’t that be more fun to visit than playing space solitaire for years and then looking at red rocks when you get there?

These guys who think they want to go to Mars, what I’d do is march them all into this space capsule and then we would take away the cardboard that made it look like a capsule and it would be a bus, with chicken wire on all the windows, and headed straight for the loony bin, and I’d lock them up and throw away the key.

It’s not like even if their fondest wish came true, they would be like Dan’l Boone, having adventures with Indians and shooting rabbits and roasting them over campfires, they will be cramped into some little glass and steel thing tighter than a submarine and the only thing to see when they looked out the window, if they had a window, was nothing, because that is all there is out there. They would be a lot happier in their nut house, which we would call Mars, just to make them happy. I am not a cruel man.

1955: A Space Fantasy

I seem to remember that there was a lot of talk about Mars back in the 50s. It wasn't all science fiction either but, looking back on it now, it was highly speculative. In those days, Mars was thought to be at least semi-habitable. The air was kind of thin, but you could get used to that, just like the people who live in high mountainous regions. There were supposed to be polar ice caps that expanded and contracted on a seasonal basis, suggesting that there might be enough liquid water to support some kind of life style. Then there were the canals, which might not be real canals that contained water, but they were supposed to be fairly straight lines, which suggested that they were constructed by intelligent beings. Whether these intelligent beings would welcome visitors with open arms remained to be seen but, since they hadn't invaded us yet, they must be fairly peaceful, or at least so primitive that we could easily conquer them if we had to. There was also the possibility that whatever civilization had once flourished there had since become extinct. If so, there was probably a reason for that, but we might be able to figure out where they went wrong and not repeat the same mistakes ourselves.

I never aspired to be an astronaut, too technical for my taste, but I was hoping that, by the time I grew up, I would be able to go to Mars as a passenger on one of the regular shuttles that surely would be operating by then. I liked the idea of being a pioneer in a new land, just like the brave souls who had pushed the American frontier all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Growing up in Chicago, I always had the feeling that Earth was way too crowded for my taste. I had nothing against people, but I thought they should be sufficiently spread out so that nobody would get in anybody else's way. Years later, I found out that there were plenty of places like that right here on Earth, but there was a reason for that. Either there were no jobs, or the climate was so uncomfortable that anybody who went there to make their fortune soon left, with or without their fortune.

There was also a lot of talk about over population in the 50s, they called it "the population explosion". The way things were going, it wouldn't be long before everybody on Earth would be standing shoulder to shoulder, and there would be no places left to hunt and fish. Again, living in Chicago, I could see how that was possible, even likely. It seemed to me that colonizing Mars was the simplest solution to that problem. By the time Mars filled up, they would surely have found another habitable planet somewhere in the vast regions of space. If I wasn't too old or dead be then, I would have volunteered for that mission too. Just like Daniel Boone, I would lead the settlers to the land of plenty, and then move on in the eternal search for more elbow room.

I saw on TV once that they are now planning to send some people to Mars, in the foreseeable future, on a one way mission to establish a colony there. They will not be coming back, but will stay there for the rest of their lives, making improvements to prepare for those who will follow them. I understand that they already have a substantial list of volunteers who are eager to go. If they had done this 50 years ago, I might have been on that list myself. It's probably for the best, though. There are no trees or grass on Mars, and any liquid water remains to be found. I doubt that I would be happy on Mars the way it is now. As my old paper mill colleague said, "You see one fucking red rock, you've seen them all."

we ain't going nowhere

I thought you might have already known that about the universe, but I wanted to talk about dark energy and I wanted to start at the beginning. I once heard somewhere, I don’t remember when or where, or maybe I read it or someone whispered it into my ear, or maybe it was in a book, a movie, or a dream, but it is something I have always thought, and that is that you don’t really know anything until you can write about it, and not just repeat it verbatim. So some of my writing is just getting something straight in my mind, and I think you do the same, especially in those long stories about the bible and ancient history that you give me.

Black holes are the stars of tv science shows. They are always introduced with this ominous music and then these strange cgi effects like some huge bowling ball roiling through mist looking for innocent planets or suns, like half-naked screaming damsels who they swallow up like a Pac man thing and burp out the stray matter they don’t wish to eat at the present time. TV has to make a good guy and a bad guy out of everything or else they don’t think anybody will watch. If it’s about wildebeests then the lion is the bad guy and the wildebeest escapes. If it’s about lions the wildebeest still escapes, but the narrator sounds a little disappointed, poor hungry lion. Maybe the narrator will tell us that surely the lion will catch a wildebeest on the next try, but it’s nothing they want to show in person because most viewers are city boys like me who think of animals as Porky Pig and Donald Duck, and want to be shielded from nature red in tooth and claw, though we don’t mind at all seeing the dead bodies hauled away on stretchers on the evening news.

2001, it was de rigor for all us hippies to take LSD before we went to see it, because that is the only way it could be truly understood. But then of course we would have to see it again straight later in the week to figure out what was going on in it. Arthur C Clarke was one of my favorite authors from my science fiction days. I think I was close to 18 before I ever read a book that I didn’t have to for school that wasn’t science fiction. There is always this thing where people act like science fiction foretells the future, but the ideas are flying around already and they just pluck them off and put them in their stories. And of course most of what the stories predict never comes to pass.

How about those little tv/phone wristwatches that Dick Tracy was predicting when we were knee high to grasshoppers? Well anymore we have the phones that have wiped out wristwatches, but it turns out nobody wants to look at a little image of the person they are talking to when they are trying to navigate some difficult traffic situation, and now I’ve noticed that cell phones that used to brag about how little they were, are now getting bigger and bragging about that.

I’m not a big fan of spreading mankind across the stars like they used to say in the science fiction books. I don’t see what good that does mankind or the stars.

It’s pure speculation but I think the reason that we haven’t had alien spaceships landing on earth, or heard alien sitcoms with our big eared telescopes is that in order to reach a technological state much beyond what we have now you have to have a pretty aggressive organism, and an organism that aggressive is going to do itself in before it ever gets to oh, dilithium crystals.

Down the Drain

What you said sounds familiar, I think I have heard most of it before, except for the part about the dark energy. I had heard of dark matter before, and I figured that dark energy was just another way of expressing it, since matter and energy are now considered to be consubstantial. From what you said, it doesn't seem like we will be able to harness dark energy any time soon, so I guess we can cross it off our list of potential power sources for our home generators. This leaves only antimatter, which  is too unstable to be of practical use to us, unless someone comes up with something like the fictional dilithium crystals. It would appear, then, that our project is at a dead end for now. I'm not giving up on it, but let's put it on the back burner for awhile.

I think that gravity is what holds the galaxies together. National Geographic had an article about black holes awhile back, and it said that they appear to be at the center of most galaxies, which might explain their spiral configuration. It looks like everything in the galaxy is going down the drain, but the opposite may be true. As material approaches the event horizon, most of it is flung back out because it approaches at an angle and accelerates as it does so. Only the stuff that approaches perpendicular to the event horizon gets sucked in, and it may be flung out the other end. Nobody knows for sure, because we can't see what the other end of a black hole looks like, if it even has another end. Black holes are another one of those speculative theories that make sense only because they explain a bunch of other stuff that wouldn't make sense without them.

That's why it's so hard to work with this stuff, we have grown up on a diet of science fiction and futuristic speculation, and it can be hard to glean anything that might be actually useful out of it. The other day there was a question on the TV snow "Jeopardy" pertaining to a patent infringement lawsuit that was filed by Apple against Samsung. Apple claimed that Samsung had copied the design of their I-Pad when they came out with a tablet of their own. Samsung claimed that they had gotten the idea from a movie that was released in 1968, and we had to guess the title of the movie. My guess was "2001: A Space Odyssey", which turned out to be correct. I don't remember seeing anything like an I-Pad in that movie but, since it was a movie rather than a TV show, that ruled out Star Trek. There were some Star Trek movies that came out later, but not in 1968. That was the year I met my future hypothetical wife, and I remember seeing "2001" with her before we got married in 1969, so that pretty well narrowed it down.

It's kind of depressing to think that the year 2001 came and went without anything happening that remotely resembled the movie. In 1968, 2001 seemed like a long way off into the future, and now it's ancient history. It was in 69 that they put a man on the Moon, and we were supposed to be on the threshold of a wonderful era of space exploration. Whatever became of that? We've got lots of satellites in Earth orbit, and they do great things for us, but I was hoping for a habitable planet, like a second Earth, where we could start all over again fresh. I suppose there's no guarantee that they wouldn't screw up the second Earth just like they have the first one, but it would have been fun to start all over and see if we could get it right this time.

dark energy

When Einstein was putting together his theory of general relativity (gravity) he ran into the problem of why hadn’t the whole universe collapsed long ago. You had all this matter in the universe, all of it attracting each other so why didn’t it all result in a big ball of mass? He didn’t have a good answer for this so he came up with the cosmological constant which was that along with the attraction mass had for other mass there was also a repulsive force, the cosmological constant, which kept the universe from collapsing into itself. It was basically a fudge factor, he didn’t have any proof for it except that the universe hadn’t collapsed into itself and there must be some reason for that. He was never very happy with it, but it was all he had.

A little later Hubble discovered that almost all galaxies were receding from our galaxy, and receding from each other as well, so the fact must be that the universe was expanding and working backwards from that they came up with the big bang which explained nicely why the universe wasn’t collapsing on itself and Einstein was embarrassed that he had ever invented the cosmological constant. He called it the greatest mistake of his career.

It took awhile for the big bang to be accepted. There was still opposition to it in the science world when we were in high school. The opponents came up with theories of some other reason why the universe wasn’t collapsing on itself and was not expanding either, but none of them were very good, and they all gradually faded away.

There was some debate about the fate of the universe. Some scientists thought that eventually the power of gravity would overcome the power of expansion and the universe would indeed collapse on itself into an infinitesimal point just like at the beginning of the big bang, which would probably result in another big bang, and this cycle would repeat itself throughout eternity. Others thought that the powers of expansion and gravity would be equal and the universe would settle into a steady state and this would go on forever. And some thought that the power of expansion would be greater than gravity and the universe would become less and less dense and eventually we would not be able to see any other galaxies.

Why would the galaxy hang together? I’m a little weak on this, but I think that the expansion takes place in the empty space between the galaxies where there is not much mass, and a mass-heavy area like our galaxy is immune to the expansion.

But scientists have been probing with their telescopes and computers and discovered that the universe is expanding far faster than they thought it was and the power of expansion is accelerating. They don’t know why, but it is, and they have named the force that is accelerating the expansion dark energy. It’s just a name as far as I know, it is not energy in the sense that electrochemical and the nuclear forces and gravity are.

The theory currently is that this force will eventually attack our own galaxy, stars and planets will be hurled from the galaxy and then they in turn will break up into smaller masses and finally even the subatomic particles will be blown up and eventually we will just have this thin energy field pervading the universe, growing thinner and thinner all the time for, well I guess eternity.

This is what I have been able to take away from what I have read. I think it is substantially correct, but I could have some parts of it wrong. If you did your wiki research I would be interested in what you took away from that.

"The Poet, the Lunatic, and the Lover"

That was the title of a sonnet or something by Shakespeare. If I remember correctly, the gist of it was that all three of them are nuts. He could have included the artist and the philosopher in there too, but he didn't. I know of at least one philosopher (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844-1900) who ended up certifiably insane, and I'm sure there were others that nobody ever caught up with. Representing the artistic community, we have Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890, who cut off one of his ears and mailed it to a lady friend he was trying to impress. He eventually committed suicide, which inspired a really neat song ("Vincent", by Don McLean), so it wasn't a total waste.

The knowledge that we carry around in our brains is cumulative, each new piece has to fit in with the pieces that are already there, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense. Our natural impulse is to reject anything that doesn't fit, I suppose because that's easier than throwing out everything we have already learned and starting over again. With practice, though, we can learn how to make it fit by trimming it up a bit and weaseling it into a crack between two other things. Generally, the first time we hear something new, we're likely to doubt it but, the more times we hear it repeated from different sources, the more we tend to think that that there might be something to it. That's not all bad, but sometimes those different sources are merely quoting each other so, for all practical purposes, it's really only one source. A person needs to watch out for that.

Just because a theory has a few holes in it doesn't necessarily meant that the whole concept is worthless, maybe it just needs a little fine tuning to work the bugs out of it. I looked up dilithium crystals while you were away, and it seems that it is indeed a fictional substance. There is such a thing as lithium, and even dilithium, but neither of them resembles the crystals of Star Trek fame. I also found out that dilithium crystals aren't the power source in the warp core either, they're used as sort of a buffer to enable the controlled use of the matter-antimatter reaction, which is the real power source. So it seems that the warp core has the same problem as nuclear fusion, they can make a weapon of mass destruction out of it, but putting it in a bottle and controlling it is a whole nother story. Is antimatter a real thing, or is it just another pie in the sky theory? How about dark energy? I'll have to look that up too someday, but maybe you already know about it and can save me some time.
I still believe that the idea of stand alone power plants, not connected to any grid, is a good concept, we just need to figure out how to make it work.

My daughter showed me something the other day on her little magic telephone, and I think we can  find it on our regular computers too. It's called "Solar Freaking Roadways". (I'm not making this up.) There was this video, which she said she found on You Tube. The guy doing the narration sounded like he was on speed or something, but that doesn't necessarily mean the whole thing is fraudulent. Come to think of it, I seem to remember seeing something like that on TV awhile back, but I had dismissed it as more pie in the sky. Anyway, this doesn't fit in with my independent power plant concept, but I think it's something worth looking in to. It seems like the cost of installation would be prohibitive. Indeed, they can't afford to put regular paving on the roads in my neighborhood. The guy said it would pay for itself, and it probably will eventually, but we still need to locate a source of funding for the start-up costs. Of course, it doesn't cost anything to think about it and talk about it, which is necessary in the beginning stages anyway.

what does it all mean Mr Natural?

Well what did we learn of science at good old Gage Park high? As I recall it went from biology with Ms Tichy who used to speak of her little beasties, then a guy named Purcell who I think was prematurely bald, anyway not much hair on the top of his head back in the day when half the men in the country didn’t shave their heads and what is with that anyway? Doc Small for physics who I idolized. Gruff Fulton for chemistry who I think used to talk about how he played football for the U of Chicago back when they had a team, talked a lot about stuff that wasn’t chemistry, and anyway what he knew about chemistry seemed to be from whenever graduated from school, maybe the thirties or forties. Wasn’t too crazy about him.

Well I remember the line from Paul Simon, “When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” I guess we must have learned a bit, we were there for four years, we did papers, we took tests.

Maybe it’s like you say, we just pick up things, don’t really remember where we picked them up, just stuff we seem to know, like you say that I give you trouble over, read it somewhere, heard it somewhere. There is a thing where when you hear something, in addition to analyzing it logically we compare it to what we already know and if it fits in with that we are more likely to accept it, which is good enough I suppose, but what if what we already know is wrong? How will we find that out if we only accept things that agree with what we already know? When I took a philosophy course I tended to think oh this philosopher has it right and this other guy is full of shit which was maybe not fair, but what are you going to do?

We had a textbook and we went from this guy to that and it would tell us what they believed. These guys had all written books, and you could read them, but they were generally so big, and if you think well I already read what he believed in the textbook and it wasn’t all that interesting why am I going to read that whole book?

There was this guy Wittgenstein, who all the philosophers at the time thought was the smartest of them all and he wrote this big dense book called the Tractatus, but nobody but he, we assume, could understand it. But that didn’t matter too much because later he said he had been thinking about it and he realized that it was all wrong. I’m not sure if that was exactly how it worked, but I think I’m pretty close. You will have to take my word for it.

I’ve been thinking that he committed suicide, but it turns out that I’m wrong on that, it was cancer. I did get this from wiki though: when his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, "Good!"

Most of the philosophers, especially the ones about that time seemed of be anguished souls, trying to make something coherent about an incoherent world. I guess religion is a little easier because you can always answer because God wanted it that way, but after the bible He hasn’t had much to say, and even in the bible people disagree on what exactly he is saying, so I guess you just accept the parts that fit in with what you already believe and the rest you just say He must have been misunderstood.

Wherever you go, there you are.

What We Need Is...........

I believe in the scientific method, the way they taught us in school, but that's not always what scientists do in the real world. Scientists are people after all, they have their preferences and prejudices. I remember what you once said about trends in teaching, how they come and go from time to time. It seems that something similar happens with the scientific community. If a new idea goes against accepted practice, it's resisted at first, and then it eventually may or may not wiggle it's way in among the old stuff, eventually displacing some of it. That's why I say that I don't believe something just because a scientist says it. I don't exactly not believe it either, I like to wait and see if it establishes itself. Meanwhile, I try to keep an open mind, but that's often easier said than done.

I used to believe that they were all in it together, but now I'm not so sure. They do seem to squabble among themselves a lot, but that might just be a front that they put up to lull us into a false sense of security. I'm still pretty sure that they are indeed all in it, just not necessarily together.

You brought up an interesting point about electricity transmission costs. You don't hear people talk about that a lot, but it must be a significant chunk of the total price of power. Plus, every time there's a tornado or hurricane, the power goes out, sometimes for days on end. It has occurred to me that we would be better off if each of us had our own power plant. City dwellers like you could have one big one for the whole building, or maybe a square block in neighborhoods with single family dwellings, but swamp dwellers like me would need a smaller one of our very own for just our houses.
Windmills only work when the wind blows, and solar panels only work when the sun shines, so we would need something more consistent. Of course they already have gas and diesel generators but, while those are fine for emergency backup, they are too expensive and too noisy to use all the time. What we need is something like the warp core on the starship Enterprise. It gives off a steady soft hum that I'm sure we would get used to and not even notice. The one on the Enterprise was powered by di-lithium crystals, but I don't think that exists in the real world, so either somebody would have to invent it or think up something else that works. How about plasma gas, don't they already use that for welding or something? You could have a big tank in your yard, similar to a propane tank, and a guy could come around in his truck once a month to fill it up. I suppose you could pipe it in too, but then we're back to being dependent on some distant source that could be cut off at any time. What do you think of that, my friend?

The reason I told you the story about Sheldon and String Theory was that it reminded me of that cold fusion thing. They have been working on it for a long time, and are no closer than when they started. It would seem that, at some point, somebody would throw up his hands and say, "To hell with this, lets go find something that really works!" I suspect the reason they don't is that there are people with a vested interest in fusion, and they don't want to give it up, just like there are people with a vested interest in fossil fuels, except that fossil fuels actually work. Of course, we're going to run out of that stuff eventually, so somebody needs to be working on whatever is going to replace it, whether climate change is real or not.

I don't roll my own cigarettes like the cowboys or the Hippies. I buy these tubes that are basically cigarettes without the tobacco in them. Then I have this machine that stuffs tobacco in the tubes, one at a time. It takes less than a minute, on average, to make one cigarette, even allowing that some of them don't come out right and have to be re-worked. I went through several cheap manually operated machines before I settled on the electric one that I now use. I paid about a hundred dollars for it, and I made that back from the savings on the first four cartons that I produced. One of the first things that Obama did after he took office was raise the tax on bulk tobacco, doubling the retail price. He forgot to raise the tax on pipe tobacco, though, and before long, most of the cigarette tobacco brands had magically changed into pipe tobacco. Ah, the wonders of modern science!

Don't worry about being too argumentative, it doesn't bother me anymore, I'm used to it. If potential newbies don't like it, let them go out and start their own blogs.

Have a nice trip.

string theory

I loved your first paragraph. That is kind of my ideal for this blog, we know we disagree, but it is interesting to see why the other guy thinks the way he does. I wonder too, if I hadn’t gone to college and had been hanging with other people if my opinion of the war would have been different.

I suppose I have an enemies list, but I always name them, I don’t call them the mysterious THEY, and I have allies too, and I think they are always fighting it out between them and I don’t think that there is any one group calling all the shots. I don’t think of the govt as a unified power calling all the shots. It’s my friends and enemies duking it out and sometimes my side wins and sometimes the other side wins.

The main problem with windmills is that we could cover the world with them and still not have enough power. Solar power seems more promising, but I think the main problem with it is transporting all that energy from the deserts to the city. It’s not like we can decide to go for fusion and get it. We all want a cure for cancer, but deciding we want is not enough.

That string theory thing is an interesting issue. When Galileo first matched math with science it was a great step forward, and thereafter math was applied to science with great effect, and then at some point, around relativity, they tended to do the math first and then look to see if it matched the universe. Some of the subatomic particles were predicted by math and when they looked for them where their math said they would be, they found them. With string theory they just did the math and they discovered that they could describe the universe with math alone. Well sort of, there were always these things that didn’t work out, but then they did more complicated things to explain that. It was sort of like the elaborate math that was done to explain the path of the planets in terms of a stationary earth, until Copernicus showed that they could be more easily explained if you just assume that the earth moves around the sun.

I guess science was impressed about the way that string theory almost explained the universe so they decided to follow that path, and scientists who were not string theorists were looked upon as heretics and they had a hard time getting their degrees and funding. Lately there has been a backlash against that because string theory never quite explained everything, and they couldn’t find any way to test it, so maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it didn’t make any difference as far as the universe was concerned. I know this goes against my somewhat fanatical belief in science, but I have to add that they did correct themselves eventually.

The main thing you do when you roll your own is you avoid the taxes on store boughts since materials are taxed at a much lower rate then manufactured cigarettes. There was a sort of scam going on for awhile with these roll your own stores where you selected your tobacco and then they put them into the machine and the buyer pushed a button and the cigs were all rolled. When they became popular and the state wasn’t getting its taxes the state stepped in and put a stop to it.

I’m a little short today because I am leaving for Missouri this morning and won’t get back until Monday.

One thing I wanted to say was the other night I went to Beaglesonia and saw a short posting from you and I thought oh no now I’ve done it, I got too argumentative and now I have pissed off Beagles and this might be the end of the blog. When I came back to the blog in the morning I saw that you had added more to your posting and I was relieved. I just want to say that I’m sorry that I am always trying to turn this into debate club, but I can’t help myself, but maybe I should try to be more civil.

Ideas Come from Somewhere

When we first got into that Vietnam thing, I guess I was trying to fight the war all over again, but at some point I changed my focus on the issue. I became interested in how it looked from your perspective. I'm sure that somebody who was actually in the combat zone would have a different perspective than either of us, but most of those guys don't want to talk about it very much. Anyway, I began to see how you could believe what you believed about it and wondered, had I gone to college instead of the army, if I might not have fallen in with the same crowd and came out differently than I did. Last night I compared it to a couple of old vets, who had been in different theaters of operation, swapping war stories. Actually, it's more like two war veterans, who had fought on opposite sides, getting together years later and comparing notes. If they could do that without getting mad at each other, they might both come away with a different attitude than they had during the war. All we can do about the past is talk about it, we can't go back and change it, but if more people talked to each other like we do, it might help prevent the next generation from making some of the same mistakes, assuming they would listen to us. Ha! Ha! Who's living on Fantasy Island now?

Most ideas come from somewhere. We may think that we have a totally original idea but, if we think about it for awhile, we can usually trace the inspiration back to some outside source. We may toss it around in our minds and put our own spin on it, so we think of it as our own creation. In a manner of speaking, it is, because the end product might hardly resemble the original inspiration but, in another manner of speaking, it's not, because, without the original inspiration, we wouldn't have been thinking about it in the first place. When I say that I read something somewhere, it's just my attempt to trace my thought back to it's original source so that we can have some idea of where it came from. The original source might have been full of shit, or my memory of it might be imperfect, or I might have drawn a totally illogical conclusion from the original source, even if it was true. It seems like it would be easier to decide those things if we had some idea where the thought came from.

Speaking of enemies, you seem to imply that people like the Koch Brothers are part of the reason that we don't seem to be getting anywhere on this alternative energy thing. I have also heard you say similar things about the "gun lobby". While there may be some truth to that, how is it different than me blaming the government or "they" for all the troubles in the world?

Truth be known, we, or they, have actually made some progress with alternative energy. If you can believe anything on TV, windmills are sprouting up all over the country like mushrooms, and vast areas of the desert are being carpeted with solar panels. Nuclear has been kind of a disappointment, but that's largely because they haven't perfected the fusion thing. If I remember correctly, the original plan was to have fission and fusion reactors burning each other's waste products. I think they should decide once and for all if cold fusion is attainable and, if it's not, move on to something else. But that's just my opinion.

Okay, this a fiction story, I'm just telling it to illustrate a point: On the "Big Bang Theory" TV show, Sheldon, who is a theoretical physicist working for a university, recently came to the conclusion that he has been wasting his time all these years trying to prove String Theory. He confided this thought to one of his colleagues, who replied: " I don't think I'm wasting my time. They are paying me good money to work on this stuff, and I spend that money on booze and broads." Nevertheless, Sheldon, who has more money than he knows what to do with and has no interest in booze and broads, approached his boss and asked to be reassigned to some different field. His boss refused, saying that Sheldon is being paid from a grant that was issued specifically to study String Theory. If he doesn't want to do that, then they don't have any other work for him. The season finale left Sheldon, having taken a sabbatical from his job, boarding a train with no particular destination in mind. He plans to ride the rails indefinitely unless he can figure out what he should do with the rest of his life. (Sheldon really loves trains.) Hopefully, he will resolve his issues over the summer and inform us of his decision at the beginning of the fall season.

All I wanted to say about smoking was that I make my own cigarettes for about $1.50 a pack. It's not just that I don't want to spend the money, I don't want them to have it. In this case, they are both the government and the big cigarette companies, who are probably in it together. My supplies come from smaller companies which, I hope, are not in league with either big government or big tobacco but, of course, you can never be sure about things like that. I have gotten used to not smoking in buildings, even in my own house. I smoke less than a pack a day, which is bout half of what I used to smoke before all this foolishness got started, which is probably for the best. I'm not getting any younger, you know.

for the purposes of discussion only

It has been a central disagreement on this blog that you want it to be like two beer drinking buddies in a bar, and I want it to be the debate club. And I know I am way to argumentative, people tell me that often, and in fact even with my beer drinking buddies I am pretty argumentative. Probably I am not so relentless at the bar though because there are all these breaks to order another beer, or somebody new enters the bar, or something, whereas sitting here in the rising sun fueling myself with coffee, there is nothing to stop me.

There’s this whole thing about the KBW which I know is just a fantasy, this is just two old guys flapping their gums at each other, and everytime I try to entice some innocent bystander by dragging them into this blog, they take a quick look, utter a quick, “Verynice,” and quickly change the subject.

But you know I am curious. I’ve always been curious about why people think the way they do, and KBW crap aside, that’s why I ask these questions, and if their answers don’t make sense to me I want to ask more questions, and if they say something that I don’t think is true well I have to argue about that. And mostly I am talking about facts here, not opinions. I think you have to have your facts straight because I also believe it is an objective universe and facts can be determined to be true or false. I would be much happier if you said when sitting in my duck blind suchandsuch occurred to me, rather than I read suchandsuch somewhere.

I’m somewhat reluctant to even accept you for the purposes of discussion only premise, because I like to follow something to a conclusion, but we have pretty much banged this up to the point of boredom, and in truth we are just two old guys flapping our gums at each other, so okay.

As for your solution I would like to say first that everytime my dems want to spend money to develop alternative fuels your reps shoot them down, secondly all the money spent on these studies is probably less than the Koch brothers rake in in a week, much of which money goes to elect pro coal and oil pols, third hydrogen fuel cells don’t capture any energy they just transfer it from one source to another, fourthly cold fusion is pie in the sky at the present time, fifthly what you are saying is a little like saying let’s take all the money spent to promote Obamacare and spend it all on curing every disease known to man.

We can spend a gazillion bucks and successfully send a spaceship to the moon, but we can spend a gazillion dollars to invent something but there is no certainty that the invention will take place.

I am curious about your phrase of allowing somebody to take it to market. This sounds like all those rumors that went around when we were kids, but I don’t hear them that much lately, that some kind of energy source has been discovered, but THEY are holding it down because THEY fear it will hurt THEIR profits somehow. Actually you always see an enemy somewhere, usually the govt, but it could be anybody because THEY is everybody but you.

How about this for tossing something into the conversation because like that bar vs debate club, I think it is a fundamental difference between the two of us. When something goes wrong you think there must be an enemy doing it, whereas I think it is a bunch of assholes who don’t know what they are doing.

So what’s my solution then? Well I am a little weak here, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, solar, wind, unlike most of my ilk I could go with nuclear, cleaner smokestacks, more efficiency, almost all enforced by those hated gov regulations because nobody is going to do it on their own. I think this last plan that the eco people have proposed included a blueprint which they figured would not hurt the economy too much, but I confessed I haven’t even skimmed it because it will never happen.

Smoking anyone?

Everything I Say is Not an Argument

I thought I explained this to you before. When I present something to the Institute, it's not always an argument. Sometimes I just throw something out there because I think it might be a subject of mutual interest, like the Vietnam War. I don't expect that either one of us will ever change our opinions about that and, even if we did, it's too late because that ship sailed a long time ago. It's kind of like we are two old veterans, who were in different theaters of operation, swapping war stories. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting discussing it with any of those young whippersnappers running around today who weren't even alive at the time.

I thought I made it clear that I was not doubting your word when I didn't believe something you posted. It's not you who I am doubting, it's your source that I am doubting. I often doubt my own sources too, especially when I don't remember what they are. I recall something that I believe to be relevant to the discussion, so I throw it out there to see if it will fly. I'm here because I'm interested in this stuff, and I don't always have an axe to grind.

Anyway, I think I have a solution to our impasse on the subject of climate change. I will accept your assertions for the purposes of this discussion only to enable the discussion to move forward. Whether or not I accept them in real life remains to be seen. Like I've said, I try to keep an open mind about stuff like. For all I know, your assertions may be correct, since I'm in no position to conclusively confirm or refute them, but that doesn't matter for our purposes here. So let's assume, for the purposes of this discussion only, that the global climate is changing and it's all our fault. The next question would seem to be: What do we want to do about it? I know that your people want to raise the price of fossil energy to encourage us to use less of it. I'm not crazy about that idea, so let me propose the following alternative:

As I understand it, a lot of brilliant scientists have been studying this problem for a long time. I have seen it on the TV news (NBC, CBS, and The Weather Channel. Certainly not FOX!) several times over the last few days that an esteemed panel of these guys has recently submitted a conclusive report to our president, and anybody else who will listen. It would seem, then, that the subject has been studied enough, and no further studies should be necessary. I therefore propose that they take all the money and other resources that they have been using to study the problem and redirect them towards developing a clean, cheap, and efficient energy source that works. Once this source has been developed, require them to release it to the public and allow somebody to produce it and put it on the market. No fair sitting on it for decades like they have done with hydrogen fuel cells and cold fusion.

I was going to say something about the smoking issue, but I seem to have forgotten what it was. No matter, if it's important it will come back to me, maybe tomorrow.

I read your link on the gun issue, and I think I can address your questions about it. I am not grinding any axes here, I'm just trying to explain what these people are about. Theoretically, it has always been legal to openly carry a loaded gun down Main Street, as long as you don't fire it in the city limits, most municipalities have a law against that. Just try it, though, and you will likely be stopped and questioned by the police. They will claim that you are creating a disturbance and frightening people and ask you to take your gun home. If you argue about it, they will arrest you for disturbing the peace or something like that. They probably won't file charges, because they know it won't stand up in court. They will just take you to the station and hassle you until you agree to leave your gun home next time you come to town. This is the main reason why the push was made for the concealed carry permits. Previously, most jurisdictions would not issue a permit unless you had a good reason for it, like you need it for your job because you routinely carry large sums of money, or something like that. The new laws generally say that they have to issue you a permit unless they have good reason not to, like you're a convicted felon or a mental patient.

I think what's happening now is that, flush with their concealed carry victory, the gun people are now focusing on the open carry issue. I doubt that they plan to shoot up Dodge, I think they are just trying to prove their point. It seems, though, that they wouldn't need to prove their point with loaded guns. I was always taught that you should keep your gun unloaded whenever you don't have a good reason to keep it loaded, and then treat it as if it was loaded anyway.

smoking guns

I am at a total loss as to why you would report something that you didn’t believe, and that you may not have read either. If you just made something up I would much rather you said so rather than claim you read it somewhere. Normally when people say they read something somewhere they use it to bolster their argument, because clearly then somebody else also believes it, but if it turns out that they can’t say where they read it, then their whole argument is dead in the water before they can even argue it. I would much rather when you make something up, that you say that you made it up, rather than that you heard it somewhere.

I am disappointed to hear you say that you don’t you don’t believe some of the stuff I say. Sometimes when I am writing an argument I see that I have said something that I am not sure is right, and then I generally go to the google or the wiki and if it’s true I leave it in, and if it’s false I take it out. Okay sometimes, very rarely I assure you, I will leave something in that is doubtful but hard to check, and just see if Beagles picks up on it.

Again it depends however on whether it is a fact or an opinion. The idea that concealed carry increases murders is an opinion, the murder statistics from before and after it was implemented are facts.

You mention cigarette smoking and this might be an interesting subject. I was watching an old movie, A Gentleman’s Agreement, last night and everybody was smoking like a chimney, but anymore the only people who smoke in movies are vicious psychopaths or really cool guys. That’s one thing smokers have going for them in the face of all those statistics and photos of lungs like lumps of coal, it’s still cooler, even cooler the fewer people do it. Every day they decrease the area where we can smoke and put another buck tax on a pack, and is that fair?

You did indeed say that you didn’t think concealed carry could be credited with a already declining crime rate, I may have misread you on that one. And I was indeed one of those guys who thought that if concealed carry was implemented guns would be ablazing everywhere and that has not happened. I was wrong on that one.

And I realize that you are not one, and don’t have any interest in carrying concealed, but I do wonder what is up with these guys. Before concealed carry were they walking a delicate tightrope between fear of their fellow man and the fear of being arrested by the cops for carrying the only instrument that could protect them? And now do they stride confidently into previous danger spots like restaurants and movie theaters? Did you read about those guys that took their AK 47s into the Chipole ?http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/20/chipotle-arms-guns-carry-demonstrations/9317569/

Well that’s not concealed weapons is it, but you know the guys who fought for concealed carry are now fighting for carry it anyway you want (except unloaded). Some of these guys are just looking to stick a finger in the eyes of their opponents, but people like that are common on both sides, my side has the embarrassing flag burners.

Those holsters look uncomfortable to me, but then I hate to carry an umbrella on a likely rainy day.

I Suppose You're Right

I suppose you're right about quoting sources. I can't do anything about the stuff that I read 20 years ago, but I can try to remember to write down the specifics about the current stuff so that I can be more accurate about my sources. Nevertheless, just because I read something and report it here, doesn't necessarily mean that I believe it myself. That hasn't changed. Conversely, just because you quote a source, doesn't mean that I have to believe it myself. Please understand that I am not calling you a liar when I do that. I'm sure that you believe what you say you believe but, since I don't believe half the stuff I am reporting, don't expect me to believe all of your stuff either. The reason I say things like "I read that somewhere" is so you don't think I just made it up. Would you rather that I didn't put that disclaimer in there? Then how will you know what I made up and what I got from somebody else?

I do not own a handgun, and I have no interest in getting one, therefore I have no use for a concealed carry permit. The only reason I support handgun owners is so that they will support me if the government goes after my rifles and shotguns. That's also kind of why I support legalizing pot, so that the pot smokers will support me if the government goes after my beer and cigarettes. I don't know how much luck I would have with that one, though. I have met people who allow pot smoking in their house or car, but not cigarette smoking. Still, I think it would be harder to pass anti cigarette legislation if pot smoking was legal. (I don't have a source for that, It's just my opinion.)

Anyway, I was not saying that the increase in concealed carry permits was causing the crime rate to go down. I have been reading for decades that the violent crime rate in the U.S. has been generally trending downward. The next time I read that or hear it on the news, I'll try to remember to write it down. I didn't think that was a controversial statement to make, I thought everybody knew it. Have you read or heard anything to the contrary? I have not heard or read anything that said the crime rate has gone up since most of the states liberalized their concealed carry regulations. Have you? I remember, when they were debating the proposal in Michigan, that there were a few letters to the editor published in our local paper that predicted gun violence would increase if the law was passed. To my knowledge, that hasn't happened. The point I was trying to make was that, even if it had happened, it wouldn't necessarily mean that the concealed carry permits caused it, anymore than they caused it to go down, if it indeed did go down. What would be more relevant is if somebody had some numbers about how many people with concealed carry permits were committing gun crimes. I don't know if I would believe the numbers or not but, to my knowledge, those numbers don't even exist. We can't argue about numbers that we don't have, now can we.

back to the crucible

You’re right, I am taking somebody else’s word that the CO2 in the atmo has been increasing over the last couple hundred years, but unlike those gentleman scientists of yore, I have no basement laboratory to take a reading myself, and even if I did I’ve only been around for the last seventy years. And as I wrote in that paragraph from my last posting, since we can’t be everywhere and do everything we have to depend on things we hear from other people, or else we can’t have a discussion at all. How can we discuss this issue of whether murders have gone up or down due to concealed carry since the only way we can get any information is by listening to other people, and if we follow your declaration that when two different groups disagree there is no way to determine where the truth may lie, then all we can do is list the stuff that we believe and there is no discussion.

I think we need to drop the whole global warming thing for a bit here to discuss the validity of things we hear of second hand.

Let’s say we have person A and person B. Person A says he heard that Michigan is tightening up on gun control, and person B says he heard that Michigan is getting looser on gun control. We ask person A where he heard that and he says he has no idea, person B says he read it in the Cheboygan Times of November 17, 2013. We can track back to that newspaper and see what it has to say, and say it does indeed carry an article of that nature, but since we are distrustful of that commie hate rag, we can check the state record, the people who have been quoted in the article to see if they said what it says they said, we can look through other Michigan newspapers of the same date and see if they carry a similar story. So now who do we believe person A or B? They are just two people who told us something after all? Do we choose the guy with the better haircut? Do we throw up our arms and say, well there is no way of knowing whose story is more likely true?

I think this is that crucible thing. Do we say well both these guys are equally apt to be correct or do we put it in the crucible and find out which one is more likely to be right?

I think we need to resolve this issue, to wit, presented with two opinions from two different people, there is a way to determine which of these guys is more likely correct. If you think this statement is false, I don’t see how we can discuss anything.

You know who else is paid by the government besides scientists? Beagles. Why should we believe anything he has to say?

Volcanoes can and have erupted and thrown dust into the atmosphere and cooled global temps, so have meteors hit the earth and done the same, probably other things could do the same, hell man could blow himself up and that would certainly cool the earth. This is all true, but irrelevant to the discussion.

t's only recently that I've been hearing about the theory that the increase in concealed carry permits has anything to do with it.

You’ve been hearing? You are person A. I dismiss whatever you say you have been hearing out of hand.

If somebody did a study about anything to do with gun control and it’s findings were that it is a good idea, you would say, ah, you can’t believe something just because somebody says it, but if the conclusion was that it was a bad idea you would embrace it as the absolute truth. So why should anybody do a study since you are going to believe the same thing either way?

Maybe

You say that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is rising exponentially. How do you know that is a fact? I assume that you read it somewhere, and all that proves is that somebody else said it before you did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's not true, I'm just saying that you have no direct knowledge of this, you're just repeating what somebody else said. You said that you can't believe everything you read on the internet, but then you go to the internet to check out your facts. Is the printed page any more reliable than the internet, or the television? It all comes from other people.

Of course, some people are more reliable than others, but how do you know which ones? You put your faith in scientists, and I guess I do too, more or less, but most of those guys are getting paid by the government, directly or indirectly. If one of them came up with some data that contradicted what the government wants us to believe, would his funding be cut? I don't know for a fact that it would, but I think it's a pretty likely possibility. This doesn't mean they're all lying through their teeth, but it doesn't mean they are beyond reproach either. All I'm saying is that you should take everything you hear or read with a grain of salt.

I noticed in the email conversation you sent me that the subject of water vapor came up. Funny, but you don't hear much about that in the usual climate change discussions. (They are calling it "climate change" now instead of "global warming". That way, whether the Earth gets hotter or colder, it's still our fault.) I know that atmospheric moisture has a lot to do with weather and climate, but I'm not sure if it's a cause or an effect, maybe a little of both. All that stuff is cyclical in nature anyway. What goes around comes around, sooner or later.

Then there's the volcanoes. I remember, the year that Mt. St. Helens blew its top, there were also a couple of volcanoes that erupted in Asia too. The following summer was kind of cool and cloudy, but we didn't get a lot of rain out of those clouds. This bartender I knew (How's that for a reliable source?) said that a lot of what looked like clouds in the sky that year was really dust and ash from those volcanoes, and it was blocking the sun and making our weather cooler. I had no reason to doubt his word, and it made sense to me. Of course he probably didn't make it up himself, he probably read about it or saw it on TV. Then again, volcanic eruptions must put a lot of carbon into the air too but, if the sunlight is blocked from hitting the ground in the first place, maybe the greenhouse effect never gets a chance to take effect. Somebody should look into that.

Over the last several decades, I have read numerous times that the violent crime rate in the U.S. was generally trending downward. This has been attributed to a number of factors, not the least of which is the aging of the population. It's only recently that I've been hearing about the theory that the increase in concealed carry permits has anything to do with it. If the crime rate was already going down, I don't think it's fair for the gun people to take credit for it. What I would like to see is some numbers that tell us what percentage of violent crime is committed by people with concealed carry permits, and if that percentage has been increasing or decreasing. That would be more relevant. Some body should look into that too.

the difference between facts and opinions

Let’s make a distinction between facts and opinions. That man is causing global warming, or is not, is an opinion. It is the result of weighing facts in Ye Olde crucible, and figuring out what seems more logical. That CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing exponentially is a fact, as is that throughout history the temp of the earth has varied considerably. You can argue with me that global warming is not being caused by man, but not about the rate of CO2 in the atmosphere, and I can argue against your saying it is not, but I can’t deny that the earth has gone through many temp variations.

Actually I am having a similar email argument right now with one of our classmates. So far we are just talking about CO2 and temps, but at some point I know that we are going to get to the 9 out of 10 scientists believe global warming is caused by man factor, and then we are going to get to this thing where this person says this and the other person says that.

This is what I said in a letter to him:

This is an argument I often have with Beagles, where he says some people believe this and some people believe that, and he thinks that makes the two sides equal and he is justified in choosing one side or the other as he chooses. I think you need to examine both arguments and see which is most logical, and also examine the credentials of the people making the arguments and I generally rate the more educated higher, but this can lead into some fuzzy territory. Science has gotten so much bigger than it was in the days when an English gentleman scientist could discover things in his basement, that you can’t examine this issues for yourself, and at some point you believe something because somebody you respect says so, and at that point you are taking something on faith, which is never good.

So basically I am saying that if two people have two different opinions, and isn’t that always the case, then you weigh the facts and the reasoning of both and one will probably outweigh the other. If that fails, or maybe as sort of a shorthand, you can judge the credentials of both and again one will outweigh the others.

As far as having to judge our objective realities by our subjective senses, well that is a whole other story. I think if we are going to have discussions with other people we have to accept objective reality, on faith as you say, but it almost never devolves that somebody says there is a telephone pole in the middle of your house and you don’t see one.

In the case of states, or maybe municipalities that have tightened their gun control, if you knew the names of the states or municipalities, or where you had read this, we could look it up, and there it would be a hard little fact that we would both have to agree on.

I assume you know that the fact that somebody says something on the internet means absolutely nothing. Look, here I am on the internet, and I say there is a giant telephone pole for space aliens in the middle of Beaglesonia. Now what if I say here is a satellite image of the pole in the middle of Beaglesonia, and Beagles has said on his blog that little green guys are taking his truck for joy rides?

Well here are a couple things we can check, we can go to Google Earth and see if that pole is really there, and we can go to Beagle’s blog and see if he actually said that. Of course the fact that it was on Beagle’s blog doesn’t do much to verify the fact, but if we learn that he is a prof at the university that will give more credence to the existence of the pole than if we learn he is an inmate in the nut house.

I think it wouldn’t be too much trouble to look up whether the murder rate in Michigan has gone up or down since concealed carry, but if you are not going to look it up neither am I. But I am going to concede you the point. I was one of the antis when it first started going through the states who thought that murder rates would soar, and I have indeed been proven wrong.

I’m equally sure it has not gone down. Okay just to practice what I preach I did go to the Google on this, mostly I got pro gun sites and mostly wherever the murder rate has gone down they claimed it was because of concealed carry, and where it has gone up, well they ignored those cases. Everybody has concealed carry now, and the murder rate has not gone up or down by much.

This Explains It

I looked up Nevada over the weekend and copied the following from Wikipedia:

"Over 80% of the state's area is owned by the federal government. The primary reason for this is that homesteads were not permitted in large enough sizes to be viable in the arid conditions that prevail throughout desert Nevada. Instead, early settlers would homestead land surrounding a water source, and then graze livestock on the adjacent public land, which is useless for agriculture without access to water (this pattern of ranching still prevails)."

I think this is also probably why so much land in the other Western states is federally owned. Nothing conspiratorial here.......Pity!

An Open Mind

I'm sure we've discussed this before, but we never get tired of those old classics, do we. There are very few things in this world of which we can be absolutely certain, but uncertainty makes people uncomfortable, so they try to convince themselves that they are certain. I like to think that I've progressed beyond that point but, of course, I'm not absolutely certain of that. I have opinions, but they aren't engraved in stone. I try to keep an open mind about most things, but there are times when an action is required, like voting, and I have to make up my mind one way or the other. Since I've been on the internet, I have come to lose faith in what people call "facts". One guy says one thing, another guy says the opposite, and they both claim their statements are facts, and that the other guy's statement is just an opinion. Maybe one is right, maybe the other is right, maybe they're both wrong, or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. I am an objective realist, I believe that objective reality exists but, of course, I'm not absolutely certain of that either. The only way we can observe that reality is through our perception, and reality is defined as that which exists independent of perception, so there you go.

A long time ago I was involved in an online fantasy game in which we all made up fictitious countries, and mine was The Republic of Beaglesonia. The game didn't last long, but I kept the Republic of Beaglesonia in my repertoire because I liked the sound of it. In my conversations with you, we decided that you can't really call something a republic if it has only one citizen, so we changed it to The Freehold of Beaglesonia. It doesn't really matter, since it's all just bull shit anyway.

I don't remember which states the news people said had recently tightened up their gun laws. Maybe it wasn't states, maybe it was municipalities. Whatever! I have heard people claim on the internet that murder rates have gone down in the states that have passed concealed carry laws, but I don't know if that's true or not. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that gun violence in Michigan has not gone up dramatically, which is what the antis said would happen if the law was passed. I think that most people who have guns keep them to themselves, at least in my neighborhood.

My hypothetical wife and I watch movies at home, and also old sitcoms on DVD. We haven't rented any in a long time, we just buy the ones we want. Like I said, we never get tired of those old classics. Maybe that's because we are a couple of old classics ourselves. We don't like most of the modern offerings, most of them are either too disturbing for our taste, or just plain stupid. I haven't seen the show that you mentioned about the old folkey days.

When we were kids, most of the cowboy shows were targeted for the younger audience. Then, I believe it was in the 60s, they started coming put with what were called "adult westerns". They weren't anything like what they call "adult entertainment" today, so I made that little joke about pornography. Truth be known, I don't watch that crap anymore either.

Speaking of the Wild West, I picked this one up on the internet a few years ago. The guy who posted it lives in California, so he ought to know: "When California first became a state, most of the people who lived in it were Mexicans, the state didn't have any money, the people didn't have any electricity, and there were gun fights in the streets. So it was pretty much the same as it is today, except the women had real boobs and the men didn't hold hands in public." I believe it was the same guy who also said: "We have four seasons in California: The fire season, the mudslide season, the earthquake season, and the riot season."

Have a nice weekend.

modern media

Earlier you had said that you didn’t have to have justification for what you believed, you could just believe it because you did. You could, dare I say it, refuse to submit your beliefs to the Sacred Crucible of Truth and go about your merry way. I thought I saw a softening of that attitude and hence my impromptu performance of that Aquarian love fest even though I have no love for those showbiz hippies, or astrology for that matter.

I thought it was the Freehold of Beaglesonia, when did you become a republic?

I’m still going to challenge you on the notion that some states have tightened up their gun laws, in this nation prostate now before the whims of Wayne LaPierre, I think it would be headline news if such an event transpired.

I don’t think the murder rate has gone down anywhere now that everybody can conceal carry. Let me know if you read somewhere that it has, but please note where you read it so that when you see the light and join the KBW movement we can submit it to The Crucible.

John Denver. I remember there was a Doonesbury comic strip where Duke, the Hunter S Thompson character, moved to Colorado and as it turned out, next door to John Denver, whose songs filled the air which pissed him off and he shouted, “John Denver, why don’t you change your name to John Akron and move to Ohio?”

Most movies these days, particularly the box office boffos, are still the good guys are always all good, and the bad guys are always all bad, and even though they both lead legions of followers, who are all armed to the teeth, the final battle is always the ace good guy vs the ace bad guy punching it out on the top of the mountain, and of course the good guy always wins. And that’s pretty much the same for romcoms, less shooting, more, ugh, kissing, and pretty much all genres. In the first scene the good guy gives a baby a lollipop and in the second scene the bad guy snatches it away and right away you know at the end of the movie they will be punching it out on the top of that mountain and that the good guy will win. Drives me nuts, why even watch something like that? Why not just play solitaire? At least there is some suspense there.

Speaking of movies, I think I have learned that while you would never be seen in a movie theater (does Cheboygan even have movie theaters these days?), but I think you rent DVDs or something from time to time, and I am wondering if you have seen Inside Llewyn Davis, kind of about the pre Bob Dylan folk scene, very loosely based on Dave Van Ronk.

That whole adult thing for pornography is strange isn’t it? A space alien seeing an adult book store would think it is full of high toned classic literature. I guess they mean adult as opposed to children. But that has also seemed odd to me. Is some kid going to be scarred for life by seeing people fucking? I don’t think so. But I am not going to run for congress on that platform.

What you talkin bout man?

I haven't changed a bit, I'm the same reasonable person that I've always been. I've been a  seeker of truth for as long as I can remember. Maybe I still don't understand what you mean by KBW, or maybe you still don't understand the Republic of Beaglesonia. They are both just hypothetical fantasies, aren't they?

The thing I saw on the news mentioned that several states are in the process of tightening their gun laws, but I don't remember them identifying them by name. They talked about what Georgia has just passed, and I know from other news articles I have read that there has been talk of doing something like that in Michigan, although it's not a done deal yet. I remember when Michigan made it easier to get a concealed carry permit a few years ago that they exempted certain public buildings like schools, churches, and movie theaters. Since then, those are the very places that have experienced the mass shootings, so some people believe that's where they need their guns the most. I don't know if I agree with that or not, but I know that prohibiting guns in those places certainly hasn't stopped the bad guys from bringing them in. Personally, if I felt the need to carry a gun around town, I would move to a different town, but that's just me. I haven't been inside a school, church, or movie theater in a long time, not because I think those places are particularly dangerous, it's just that I have no reason to go there.

Cowboys smoke pot now? I never heard of such a thing but, like I said, I don't get around much anymore. Now that I think about it, maybe that's what John Denver meant by his "Colorado rocky mountain high". He wasn't a real cowboy, though, I think he just bought a ranch for a tax deduction or something. You know, Denver wasn't his real name. I have an old vinyl record album somewhere by the Chad Mitchel Trio, and Denver was one of the trio but, in those days, his name was something like "Ducheldorf". I could try to find it, but I would just get all dusty, and I've already had my shower tonight.

I used to like cowboy movies back in the days when you could easily tell the good guys from the bad guys, and the good guys always won in the end. When they started coming out with those "adult westerns", though, I lost interest. If I want to watch something labeled as "adult", I'll stick with porn the way God intended.    

the age of aquarius

After all, what's more important, putting your opponent down, or bringing yourself closer to the truth?

There, spoken like a true convert to KBW. I can see now where my relentless reasoning has converted the hardest nut in the land. We can now take down the old Beaglesonian flag with the crossed hunting rifles over the deer’s head and raise the proud KBW flag with the letters in bold blue over a gleaming gold crucible, and probably a cat in there somewhere because I like cats.

As Beagles hath spoken: it seems like the Hippies have taken over the country And all I can say is that it is about time. This is, my friends, the Age of Aquarius.

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the minds true liberation

And hordes driving to to that charming Beaglesonian bed and breakfast

To celebrate their gay marriage with zest.

Well maybe we are not quite there yet, last word from the Top O’ Michigan is that Beagles still holds some renegade opinions, but surely bringing him closer to feeding his beliefs into the sacred crucible of reason which shall reveal the truth.

Trouble with cutting and pasting, it screws up your formats and makes everything look goofy, let’s see if I can get back to normal, well normal typefaces anyway.

But for now back to the debate. I wonder what state has tightened up their gun laws. I can’t think of any. I know that Georgia, which used to be seen as the relatively enlightened state of the south has recently gone hog wild with carrying guns into churches and bars and college classrooms, and still the nuts are grousing that they are not allowed to bring their babies into government offices like the DMV. I saw one guy quoted as saying having to try to renew his driver’s license without his big iron on his hip, will make him feel naked and unsafe, and the only thing I can say that if you feel unsafe entering your local gov offices without packing heat, you should probably move.

The west has always been more libertarian than the rest of the country. Where other settlers looked at the verdant fields of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, and thought it was just fine, the sires of the current westerners thought it was too damn crowded and full of busybodies and they would rather live in the Goddamn desert where nobody would be around to tell them what to do and they could smoke their pot and fire their guns till the cows came home, if they hadn’t died of thirst amidst those big red rocks.

"This land is your land, this land is my land"

In a way, it's good that the government owns a lot of land because, as you said, we all own it, in a manner of speaking. We don't own it like I own Beaglesonia, we own it collectively, which is not such a bad thing. Of course I would rather own 88 acres of prime swamp land by myself than a tiny share of millions of acres with millions of other people, but that's just me.  On the other hand, public land use policy generates some bitter controversy from time to time, while I seldom argue with myself about Beaglesonian land use policies. If I want to do anything within sight of the house I have to clear it with my hypothetical wife, but she's usually pretty reasonable about it.

I usually think of Nevada as being one big desert, except for Las Vegas, which I have never been interested in seeing. I once spent a week in Phoenix, Arizona on company business and it was  nice, in an urban sort of way. On the last day, our business was completed by noon and my colleague and I took a ride in the country, which was mostly cactuses and big red rocks. It was interesting for the first hour or so but, by evening, we were happy to be back in Phoenix. As my colleague put it, "You see one fucking red rock, you've seen them all." Anyway, Nevada couldn't be all desert like that if they graze cattle there, some of it must have some grass on it. I did drive through Montana on my way back from Alaska. There was grass there, and some cattle, but not as many as one might think. In Michigan or Wisconsin, an acre of good pasture will support a cow and a calf, but it takes a lot more land than that in the West. I suppose that's why nobody wants to own a lot of land out West, they would rather rent it from the government for a nominal fee. Besides, if they owned it they would have to pay taxes on it and fence it to keep their cattle under control. Most Western states have open range laws, which means that the cows can go anywhere they want, and it's your job to stay out of their way. If you hit a cow with your car, it's your fault because livestock has the right of way over motor vehicles. If you don't want them to come on your property and trample your garden, it's your responsibility to fence them out.

I saw on the news the other day that some states have recently been loosening their gun laws, while other states are tightening theirs. They said it was because people have given up expecting Congress to get anything done, so the states are taking the initiative. When you think about it, the pot laws are being changed the same way. I never would have expected Colorado to be the first state to legalize it for recreational use. California maybe, but Colorado? I never thought of Colorado as being a Hippie state, but I suppose, like all the Western states, it's not the same all over. Those states are pretty big, and there's a lot of vacant land between the settlements. In some ways, it seems like the Hippies have taken over the country, but maybe not the whole country, just parts of it here and there. I suppose you could say the same about the Red Necks, otherwise where did all those right wing nut congressmen come from? 

I have had my own arguments turn around and bite me from time to time, but I don't think of it as losing an argument, I think of it as gaining a different perspective on the issue. After all, what's more important, putting your opponent down, or bringing yourself closer to the truth?

Sorry, I got nuttin

The Federal Government owns most of the land in Nevada because it is crap land, and nobody wants to pay anything for it so why should the gov give it to them for nickels, and a lot of it is parks and even though you and I will probably never go there, I am glad they are there for my fellow Americans to cavort and whatnot therein, and not for conman Bundy to feed his cattle for free. I assume you have read up on Bundy and now know how flimsy his claim to be able to freeload on the rest of us is.

I am happy the American gov owns a lot of land, because I am an American and that means in a slim way I own it too. I can vote and oh, write letters to the editor and whatnot to urge the gov to do whatever it wants and that’s a small voice but if some big corporate monster or some weasel conman like Bundy owns it I don’t even have that small voice.

And that map neither illuminates me nor infuriates me. You say Bundy raised some interesting points, but I think you are mistaken. The only one you bring up is that the fed owns a lot of crap land in the crappiest state in the union, and I say so what? Case closed.

You think the hippies have overtaken the government? Well I don’t think so much, we still have wars and gun laws are laxer then they have ever been since the 60s, economic equality is also on a downward slide. Gay rights are big, but affirmative action is going down the tubes. I suppose dope is more legal, but geeze it took fifty years, and even now either of us could be arrested for smoking it on our front porch.

Speaking of which, an odd story I just read in the New Yorker. When they were running through that apartment building looking for El Chapo, they busted into the apartment of some California tourist who thought they were busting him for pot, terrified at all these heavily armed guys he brandished his California doctor’s permission to smoke dope.

So

I’m sorry Beagles I just don’t have much today. I had to get out early for the cleaning lady and I went out to the garden store and got tomatoes and hot peppers which will bring me pleasure this summer if it ever comes. Along the way I had thought up this great argument against you, but it kind of all fell apart on the way back, because I realized that the arguments I was going to use against you could be easily turned around and used against me. Did that ever happen to you?

Sensitivity and the Hippies' Revenge

The only thing like sensitivity training that we had at the paper mill was that sexual harassment training. We were all making jokes about it beforehand, but I think most of us got some good out of it. I was recruited to do a role playing thing with this lady. Clarence, my boss, took us out in the hall and laid out the scenario for us. The guy was supposed to be coming on to the lady in an inappropriate manner, and the lady was supposed to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she was not interested. Then, just as we walked through the door back into the room, the boss informed us that the lady was going to play the guy and I was going to play the lady. I remember saying, "I'll get you for this Clarence!", but it was only in jest. It was actually quite an enlightening experience. I don't think I've ever had to turn something like that down, before or since, and it's not as easy as one might think.

Another thing we learned was that any unwanted touching constitutes sexual harassment. I asked if that included guys touching other guys. You know how some guys go around grabbing and goosing other guys? I never went in for that myself, and there were people who I deliberately avoided because they did it a lot. I always suspected there was a sexual component to that stuff, even though the guys who did it insisted that they were just kidding around. It occurred to me that, if it was not okay to touch a woman like that, even if you're just kidding around, it shouldn't be okay to touch a guy like that either. The instructor informed us that the law makes no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual harassment, it's all illegal. I said, "Thank you, that's all I wanted to know." I never said another word about it to anybody, and nobody ever touched me again.

You're right that the Hippies didn't have the opportunity to be intolerant of other people back in the day, but they made up for it once they grew up and took over the country. Truth be known, a lot of the old order needed to be overthrown, but some of the new order goes to the opposite extreme, like  affirmative action and political correctness. By the way, Michigan voted to outlaw racial discrimination in college admissions some years ago, it was challenged in the courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the law, saying that it was the right of the Michigan people to decide the issue. You win some, you lose some.

Bundy is certainly a loose cannon, the type that makes the rest of us look bad, but he did raise some interesting points along the way. Like, what's the federal government doing owning almost all the land in the State of Nevada? In Michigan and, I suppose, the other Eastern states, the feds transferred ownership of most of their land to the states and/ or to private citizens when the states were admitted to the union. Wiki says that the feds retained ownership of most of Nevada since they got the land from Mexico in 1848. I assume it's a similar case with all the other federal land in the West. I found a couple of maps on Wiki that illustrate this situation. I will try to post them here and see how they come out. Then we can discuss it further if you are so inclined.

The red map shows all the federal land, while the multicolor map breaks it down by what federal agency controls it. That one is too small to read the key, but you can find it on Wiki under "Bundy Standoff" where it is more legible.