Guesses At Nothing

Here is a messed up story.  A member of the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) named Adam Kokesh who was honorably discharged from the military is now being prosecuted so that he may be re-discharged dishonorably because of his outspokenness against the war.   Why go through all the trouble?  It is a lot easier to defame a former soldier if he has been discharged dishonorably and it just might dissuade other veterans from speaking out.  He goes to trial on Monday June 4th, in Kansas City.  I hope this case gains national exposure in the media.

Here is a sample from his letter to the officer presiding over the hearing:

Dear Captain Sibert and Brigadier General Moore,

As an esteemed US Attorney and a General, you both must have a sense of the potential significance of my separation hearing. The prosecution of a member of the inactive reserve under these circumstances is unprecedented. As citizens, we all have a right to freedom of speech. In the Marines, we often joke that you signed away that freedom, and I understand the necessity for certain restrictions while on active duty. But those who have risked their lives to defend the rights of all Americans have a special claim to those rights when they have completed their service. Is the Marine Corps attempting to strip away those rights from the hundreds of thousands in the inactive reserves?

Good luck Adam.

Here is a quote from George Bernard Shaw that I stumbled across today:

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

Kinda relevant to what I was yammering about yesterday.

It has been a lovely extended weekend.  Just the right mix of celebration and relaxing.  Between this weekend and last I have had more than my share of hot dogs, hamburgers and pasta salad.  My skin is a little red and my swim trunks have seen good use.  Life is good.  I am engaged to be married and I spent today hanging out with my future in-laws.  My soon to be nephew called me Uncle Jim.  It was a good Memorial Day.

Then, driving home tonight while the sun was setting I was consumed by a peaceful feeling.  I realized that in many ways we are living in our own imagination.   As people we build all sorts of physical things like houses, roads and airplanes.  But we build less tangible things too like interpersonal relationships.  We imagine who we are and how we fit in with the world.  It  was an intensely peaceful thought.  I can only hope that everybody in the world gets to experience that peace at some point in their lives but I know that can't be true. 

So I was feeling bored and decided to change up the naked theme.   If you have been on the site and have seen it changing around a lot that is because I have been working on it and am too lazy to set up a development server.  Plus, I am on a shoe-string budget over here.  And by shoe-string I mean zero dollars.  Just my free time.  So I know that the site looks a bit amateur, but I kinda like it.  It is my own creation in all of its I-want-to-pull-my-eyes-out-of-their-sockets glory. :) It will continue to change, and feed back along the way would be appreciated.  And if you come back to the site, and it looks all slick like, well, that is because I sold out and used a pre-fab skin.  :)

So if you got  a second, and you are disgusted, drop a line in the comments.

PS.  I am still upgrading to 1.9.5 tomorrow so wish me luck.

I've gone an done it.  I decided I am going to air out for a little bit.  Feel the cool breeze on my nether regions.  I've gone to the Naked CSS theme because my old theme was getting on my nerves.  It won't stay like this for too long, so enjoy the view while it lasts.  Later I may return to my old theme or I might even go to a new one.  The plan is to upgrade to Subtext 1.9.5 and if everything goes well, I might have some new themes available.

Check out the Guggenheim. 

They grew a jungle in a Madrid subway.

EDIT:  The twitter thingy was garbling up my page in Internet Explorer, so I'll have to work on it.  In the mean time this would be a good time to say "Get Firefox!"   Edit #2:  So the twitter thing has been banned to obscurity down at the bottom of the page.  There it can gather cobwebs.  In the meantime....   GET FIREFOX!!!  If you look now, on the right side of the page is my twitter box.  Twitter is a site where you update what you are doing periodi cally through out the day.  So I'll update it every so often and you can check it if you care what is going on in my life.

Alberto Gonzales is a scumbag. 

But apparently a vote of no confidence doesn't mean to much in our congress except as a historical footnote.

Throw this guy out of Washington if only for the fact that the attorney general should have a long term memory.

Well, we are back from a trip to Maryland.  It was good to reconnect with the family.  Everybody brought a dish and we ate well over the weekend.  It feels good to be back though and I am looking forward to the three day weekend coming up.  Not a lot of plans, but it will feel good to relax. 

100 Posts. Hmm.  I don't know what to say. Mathematicians say that 100 is a one with two zeros after it.  Also known as 100 ones.  Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.  Benjamin Franklin is on the 100 dollar bill.  This is my hundredth post. 

When I bought this domain I never pictured a blog per se, but more a place to put whatever curiosity that crossed my mind.  A virtual notebook.  At the time I was passionate about climate change so it immediately became a place where I could talk about that.  I am no scientist and I don't proclaim to be an expert, it is just something that I think should be discussed.  I have this theory, that speech changes society.  As persons we are beings of sound and the things that we say quite literally makes waves.  So it is important to talk about issues that are bigger than yourself.  So this became a blog.

It is probably apparent to my readers that this blog doesn't know what it wants to be.  Serious at times, goofy at others and sometimes even a little camp.  Sporadic. Disparate.  It is a hobby at best and it gets me to write.  It suffers from my lack of desire to be on a computer when I don't have to be.  Nine hours a day staring at the glow of an LCD is enough.  But I still find time.  The process can be relaxing, frustrating or engaging.  I have learned from it. 

So where to go from here?  This domain is mine for 9 more years.  I'm not even sure where I'll be in nine years.  Married.  That is already in the works.  Kids?  Could be.  A house would be nice, hopefully with some land where I can do something in the physical world like plant a garden, or build a shed.  Will I still be blogging?  Time will tell.

An ambitious project trying to dedicate a web page to each individual species is underway.  It could take as long as ten years.  Here is the promotional video:

Love the world.  Here are some recent green headlines:

Japan Donates to Combat Climate Change -- Physorg.com

Japan has donated $100 million to a fund dedicated to combat climate change and increase emphasis on green technology.

Murdoch Goes Green  -- MotherJones.com

Rupert Murdoch, Australian media mogul, has promised to increase coverage of climate change in his news outlets including the oft controversial Fox News. 

GM Joins United States Climate Action Partnership -- AutoSpectator.com

GM, US auto maker, as well as several other companies including Shell and AIG joined the US Climate Action Partnership.  (USCAP)  Tips to kelly.

Migratory Birds, Whales Confused by Warming, UN Says -- Truthout.org

Animals are ending up in the wrong places at the wrong times according to a UN official.  Species include bats, dolphins, antelopes and turtles.

And in more uplifting news, the American Elm is poised to make a comeback in the U.S.  The elm was virtually wiped off the map by Dutch Elm disease, a fungus that was probably brought here from China.   Researchers identified disease resistant trees in the early nineties, and now almost 18 years later, the Elm is being sold by Home Depot. 

There has been some ruckus recently that is being largely ignored by the mainstream media but it warrants attention.  There is a growing movement to impeach Bush and even Cheney.  You can read more about it here.  Among the supporters are many members of congress and the state legislatures of Vermont, Illinois, California, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington.  A new poll even states that 39% of registered voters support impeachment.  And why not?  When you consider all of the atrocities that have occurred under the current administration it becomes no small leap of the imagination that Bush or more importantly that master puppeteer Cheney could be held responsible.  Guantanamo, electronic eaves dropping, lying about reasons for war, Walter Reed, firing US attorneys and deletion of emails, not to mention general incompetence... the list goes on.  Even retired generals are speaking out against Bush as witnessed in this video. 

Maybe the time has come.

A new UN report states that fighting climate change is not only affordable, but is also cheaper than doing nothing at all.  If left unchecked global temperatures could rise to dangerous levels.

...the UN report spells out plainly to the world's governments what their options are: reduce emissions rapidly at a cost of up to 3 per cent of GDP and at most, temperatures will rise by two degrees. But if they do not act, temperatures will rise to dangerous levels and the economic costs will be much greater. -- ABC News Australia

I really believe that imagination is our most important asset. There are probably thousands of ways for large companies to justify continuing with current operations, but if we can think outside of the box and apply some ingenuity then we can figure out how to turn being green into a profitable experience.

A commercial venture to create a plankton bloom and suck up some carbon out of the atmosphere is being planned by a company called Planktos.  The way it works is that you drop iron into the ocean to encourage a bloom.  I can only hope that this works, but many scientists are in doubt.  And I have to wonder....  it seems to me to be a trial and error sort of approach.  Do it now, ask questions later.  When our environment is in play it seems like a dangerous game. 

Further reading:  International Herald Tribune

Lawyers representing the auto industry are suing Vermont for putting in strict regulations on vehicle emissions.  One of their arguments is "that the regulations could backfire and harm the environment. People would drive more because their new vehicles get better gas mileage, he said, or they would hold on to their older, more polluting cars to avoid a costly upgrade."
That's sound logic.  I mean, if I knew my car was safer for the environment, I would drive to work and back more often than just once a day.    And I would take the long way too. 

Even poorer countries are curbing their greenhouse emissions.  China, India, Brazil and Mexico all reduced emissions over the past three decades.  This was all a byproduct of other policies not meant to curb greenhouse gases, but the end result is the same.  China is still the number two culprit for carbon output but no surprises here, the first is none other than the U.S.  If only we could take a more proactive role like other countries. 

Sometimes it is hard to stay up to date on any one subject.  I have a passion for the climate change issue, but like all passions this one has faded somewhat.  I still believe in it, (It was supposed to be a record day here ion Raleigh) but there is not much I can do about it personally.  I intend to buy a canvas sack for groceries, but have yet to do so.  There has been legislation in San Francisco as well as some small town in Britain banning use of plastic grocery bags, and I am all for it.  They are wasteful.  (As is bottled water but that pigs for pickin' another day) But anyway, here is some climate news for the day.  Arctic sea ice is melting beyond expectations.  And also Prince Charles in all his nobility has compared the fight against climate change to the fight against Nazis. I wish there was some quack with a bad mustache behind global warming. It would be much easier to take care of than stopping a global juggernaut dependent upon earth altering consumption.

This one's for Julie.  This guy mapped out the digits in Pi to 1,000 places on a keyboard with zero being silent.  It isn't perfect as it is based on an octave and there are 10 numerals so it repeats unlike pi.  But I like it.  It reminds me of John Cage.

It is worth noting that there has been no ethics reform in congress. Around election time last year ethics reform was a topic of hot debate and was a key to the Democrats taking over Congress. But fervor quickly died down as did press coverage of the issue and as of this writing there is a whole lot of nothing going on.    Which is a nice segue way into another noteworthy point...

Obama leads in the polls for the first time!!!

Well one poll anyway.  And not by that much.  BUT (And I made that a big but because I can) it may be indicative that a young visionary has more appeal than a seasoned (read crooked) politician in these troubled times. Personally I don't know who I would vote for if I had to do it right now. I like Hillary as she is a centrist and has pragmatic views about the war in Iraq, BUT (another big one) Obama is trying to run his campaign without the influence of lobbyists. A point that was so provocative that I felt compelled to donate to his campaign even though he is green around the collar. I also heard (though I can't find the link) that Hillary or Edwards lead in all the key primary states. It would be interesting to see if a popular third party could arise out of this election. Bull Moose anyone?  

Today Bush voted to cut funding for our troops in the Middle East and to keep them there indefinitely in spite of the popularity of withdrawal. This is also in spite of 3,351 troops killed in the Iraq war as of this morning. (By the way April was the deadliest month for Americans in Iraq) This ad came out today to chide Mr. Bush for being the war mongering profiteer that he is. 

It doesn't get a lot of press, but I don't think that it should go unnoticed that there has been some hubbub about impeachment.  The Californians aren't the only ones.  Vermont and other states have begun the process and Kucinich has pushed forward as well.  Not to mention these fifteen hundred people in San Francisco.  Give them credit.  They all made it out to protest even though a major arteriole melted in the bay area.  

Damn I feel patriotic.