Coincidence: No Such Thing ?

It has been a lifelong problem.
Knowing or feeling these or them before they are.
Asking for dispensations or favors and having Grandfather listen.
It is is something I shy away from.
It is not something I practice.
When it happens I always tell myself it is coincidence.
In the rationale world it must be random and coincidence.
Grandfather Raven is a clan totem. I don't belong to a clan.
My totem has always been the water bird.
Always?
Since I was 11and I killed one with an air rifle.
Something happened when I did that.
After that things changed.
Things came to me.
Projectile points were found--
A large white mate and mano--
A buffalo skull--
Animals came to me--
I could hear voices in the wind ---
I could feel the presence of things.
Dancers in the night of red and blue.
When I was a warrior I used it a lot.
I would hold things and listen to them to know of those they touched.
All I want then was to be what I was and do what I had to do.
I did that.
After some time I knew it was not a coincidence.
But when I left, I left it too.
Then Grandfather would find me.
Let me find...see...feel...and he did.
Spotted Owl feathers...stones with soul...particles of God.
Things that dropped from the sky, trees, or off the mountain.
I could climb stairs to the mesas that were invisible to others.
An Eagle would visit and and leave a thing of power for me.
The sea would call and the open space sing.
Even when I crawled into solitude, I could feel it all around.
Even when balled up in hate and anger it hovered peacefully out there waiting for me.
Just synapses firing, just coincidence, random, wouldn't that be convenient .

The Dream That Died In 1968

The Scam that will cost America its Faith.

All of this in pursuit of a lie.

Student Loans: Debt for Life - Businessweek

www.businessweek.com

(Corrects the 20th paragraph to provide a more recent total for student loans owed by people 60 and over: $43 billion rather than $36 billion. Corrects position of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators on legislation introduced by Senator Al Franken.)

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  Junior Bear You know what the big lie is? College Pays? Yes it does, but not enough or as much as the big lie says. Take matched students: make the same H.S. GPA and the same entrance examsscore for college. One goes to college and one goes to work. Over a project lifetime of earnings the college grad with the bachelors makes 14% more than his matched counterpart from high school. 14% that's all, not a million dollars, just 14 %. It may be true that the college graduate makes a million dollars more than the average income of all those high school graduates some of whom could not read or write on graduation. But according to this study that matched high school graduate would also earn $860,000 more than the average of all of his non college going class. 
  Yes the Higher education officials know this. But they do not serve the students they serve the institutions, and in America success is growth not product.

  4 hours ago · Like
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  Junior Bear To put this in perspective the current lie is that a college grad make 74% more than a high school grad, or than five times (500%) more than the actual. So we are borrowing money to pay for a product that is inflated by five times.

  4 hours ago · Like
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  Junior Bear http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

  

  The disposable academic

  www.economist.com

  ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to

   the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those day

  
  

  
  

  When I started my career of desegregating Oklahoma Higher  Education the Dream was real for everyone. Over time I could feel in gut that it was changing.  Minorities could still grab the golden ring, but for most it was becoming a scam.

  Most of the degrees in higher education are bogus and even the valuable ones are over priced and over subscribed.  By the time we calculated cost benefits in 1993 the ratio was so miserable that it never saw the light of day.  20 years later is is much much worse.

  
  

Walt Disney and Man In Space

It was 1955 and the number one TV show in my world was "Disneyland".  Airing on Sunday evenings it was in direct competition with God and his Baptist Training Union and Sermons.  But often I managed to see the program anyway, especially during daylight savings time. It was there I saw "Man In Space".  I was blown away.  My ten year old mind was bent double.  I of course assumed they would all these things in the next few years.

                                   Doctor Wernher Von Braun and the proposed three
                                   stage passenger rocket to take us into space.

I was cleaning out 35 years of storage a few weeks ago when I discover a model of this rocket and of the proposed moon lander from 1955.  Remember these were not the ones that actually went into space.  They were the concepts.

Three Stage Manned Rocket 1955

Moon Lander 1955

I wanted to do this.  I watch both "Man In Space" and "Tomorrow The Moon" as many times as I could in that era , that was just three times on TV and once in the movies.  The time in the movies was just a short companion film to a Disney Feature.  I had it bad.  I bought the Comic and wore it out reading and re-reading it.

The Comic book 

I even found the original books they use to make the movie.  Willy Ley's  "The Conquest of Space" 1949 (with Chesley Bonestell) and The Conquest of the Moon (with Wernher von Braun and Fred Whipple, 1953.

Von Braun was the star of eventually three Disneyland Space programs.

The Germans, of whom Von Braun took the lead had a three step plan.  

One: They would send a space ship into orbit.  

Two: They would built a  Space Station.

Three: They would go to the Moon from the Space Station.

Perhaps I would have become a space engineer but things interfered.   I was after all going to be a Missionary for God and you remember the feature film that the film short  "Man In Space" played in front of?  Well that was "Davy Crockett."

I lost my vision of Space and returned it to the Old West of the man from Tennessee.

Then in 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik and all the careful plans of a systematic exploration of space were lost in Cold War panic.

An Amateur Hypothesis on Sperm Whale Buoyancy

Here is the deal.
Hardly anything is none of my business.
That is why I went into Geography.
Geography is to life as the stage is to the play.
I've live my life that way, studying life as a Geographer and have never really worked as a "Geographer".

                                           How Low Can You Go

An Amateur Hypothesis on Sperm Whale Buoyancy:


How do Sperm Whales dive miles into the ocean depths to feed on squid and then return to the surface, all on one breath and in 90 minutes.

All of those problems have been answered except one. How do they surface?
How do they get the spermaceti to expand to provide buoyancy when they at the bottom of the ocean and it is a cold hard wax?

At first it was thought that the cold wax version of spermaceti was warmed up by its blood and as it warmed up it expanded and brought the whale to the surface like a balloon. But there is not enough heat exchange for the blood to do that.

"The spermaceti organs may also help adjust the whale's buoyancy. It is hypothesized that before the whale dives, cold water enters the organ, and it is likely that the blood vessels constrict, reducing blood flow, and, hence, temperature. The wax therefore solidifies and reduces in volume.^[34][44] The increase in specific density generates a down force of about 392 newtons (860 lb) and allows the whale to dive with less effort. During the hunt, oxygen consumption, together with blood vessel dilation, produces heat and melts the spermaceti, increasing its buoyancy and enabling easy surfacing.^[57] However, more recent work^[47] have found many problems with this theory including the lack of anatomical structures for the actual heat exchange.^[58]"

How does the stuff heat up and expand?  Sound.  That's my hypothesis.   The whales organ containing the wax/oil is direct connect to the right nostril which is used to make sound via phonic, aka monkey, lips. Subsonic sound vibrations would heat and expand the wax to oil and up comes the whale.  Problem, well one is that all that biological mechanism has been claimed as imperative territory by the whale talk/sonar imaging biologist.  So that  alone puts a "do not trespass" sign on the whole organ.  I communicated directly with some Sperm Whale experts.  They were kind, but told me that this was outside their expertise and try so and so.  So I'm probably full of bullshit.

I just want to post this here in never blog neverland, maybe to give someone an idea to pursue.  If nothing else, it was an interesting thought exercise.

PTSD, Have I Mentioned This Before?

Anger has been festering in me for a long.  Betrayal does that.  Ask any divorcee about long term anger.  That wasn't my problem, divorce that is, my problem was Vietnam.  Me and about 2.4 Million in-country military that found out that, well our own country betrayed us six ways till Sunday and is still doing it.  A couple years ago I notice that I was losing my cool when I encountered fools, like the men painting my house watering down my $60 a gallon paint and a guy repairing the corner roof of my house like he was out in a white trash trailer park making a repair.  My home you see is 100 years old, and it is my home.


On the other side of the equation my friends who had served in Vietnam with me were dying from things connected to Agent Orange and I was carrying profile diseases also presumed to be caused by the toxins in the herbicide.  Within 18 months, first one vet friend died, and then one closer to me died and then one very close to me died.  I was reading about several things related to their deaths and Nam in general when it came to my attention that independent ex-Navy researchers had determined that the mean survival age for in-country Vietnam Vets exposed to the dioxins in Agent Orange was 63.  Shit I had just turned 65 and was screwing with Medicare and feeling old anyway cause my body was betraying me left/right in the ass and otherwise.  If they could be believed then only about 800,000 of that 2.4 million were still alive.  I had been using the Social Security age 73 in my longevity calculations and for long term financial planning, now I was 10 years short on the numbers.


Well, at this same time I bumped up against the incredible phenomena of the Vietnam Vet "wannabees".  Those are guys that like to pretend they are Vietnam Veterans.  I guess the taint must be off us now.  Well maybe if you know how to present yourself as a warrior saint  then it would be worthwhile.  Anyway the fact that some close associates over the years had drilled into my Nam experiences made more sense to me now.  So now I had a couple douches  who were taking my memories and playing soldier with them other venues.  Somebody called that "stolen valor".  To me it was just, well, sick.


So I was angry. Temper, I lost it with my builders and painters and others who blatantly lied to me.  Or at least I thought they had.  Then I lost it with one of my outlaws.  Lost it big time, bigger than big time.  Whoops.  OK, now I was a pariah in my extended family.  Hell, now I was disowned by my extended family.  The wife was hurt and shamed by my behavior and let me know it.  So off I went to the mental health world guided there by my Internist whom I trusted.  Yes, PTSD, hum yep PTSD, most definitely PTSD.  When I left the Army P-T-S & D were four letters that meant nothing. Probably had it, but hey, a problems not a problem until it is recognized and labeled before that it is just a personal flaw in your character.  So more pills, different pills, more pills from the psychiatrist, and therapy from a psychologist and the wife got parallel help to get on my side again, and get over being totally pissed at me. (still I was totally disowned by the extends however, not all together that bad)


Now they tell me that retirement caused part of my problem.  Say what?  I thought it was the crappy war and the shitty way I was treated when I came and and and and god damn it!   I may be drugged up but I'm not happy yet.  Can you tell?

You Can Not Save Yourself From Tomorrow, For Tomorrow Arrived Yesterday

All of these pictures are real and all of these pictures are a metaphor and all of these pictures are a prediction and forecast for all of our lives.  It isn't dooms day, unless you are where it is.

For example here is an out of control fire on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  The fire is a direct result of Global Warming and Climate Change, yet nobody reporting the fire has balls enough to say that.  Indeed in most of America they don't even know the fire is burning. Lady and Gents, ain't no reason why this can't be Denver itself.

 
This one happens to be in Brazil but it is a perfect display of rising salt water into a city.  On 12 inches of salt water and the whole infrastructure is completely gone.  Now imagine a 20 foot rise in the Great Salt Lake from increased rain.  No?  Well maybe not.

This fire is at Ruidoso NM this month.  Home, Ranches, roads, trees,...
Here's the rub, It won't be coming back.  Seriously, those trees can not grow there any more.

Now this little island is from last summer.  I'll just build my own dike and save my home (this time).  Did you know that his precious black bottom land is now under several feet of sand?

 Here we go from Southern California this month.  Parking lot along the Pacific Coast Highway.  Right up the hill behind these cars are homes and homes and homes.....  California has finally come to the realization that the change is so great they can not save all of the stuff along the coast.  They are going to let the sea have it all.  Hell, as though they could beat the pacific Ocean anyway.

Another little hopeful island, I'm safe for now.

Colorado Fire again.  Them pines are dead or dying.  Perfect fuel for a catastrophe. Pine beetles size of a rice grain caused this.  Or, rather the warm winter let the pine beetle cause this.  Do you know these idiots plan to rebuild and re-plant this area?  Pipe dreams.

Water water everywhere, but not on mine.

Whoops that view is flooding in on me.

My levee is leaking some.  If the electricity doesn't go out the pumps can hold it back.

Ah shit the electricity went off.

That saltwater city again.

We can build our levees against water and even fire.  But they can't save us the next time or the next or the next because everything that is will not be no more.  It will be something else.  What/when/how is all guess work.  The systems involved are to large and too many to model a reliable predictive schedule.  But here they are and we have or shortly will begin to have to deal with them.  I was a State Geographer For Research for the State of Oklahoma for four and a half years once upon a time (under a Democrat Governor).  I talked about all this back then 20 years ago or so.  But then we were thinking maybe 2060 or 2150 for the first true effect.  Wrong!  Boy were we wrong.  No body paid me any no-never-mind back then and sure as shit they wouldn't now. (The current State Geographer has a smaller audience than even I had.)

But ladies and gentlemen, (all three or four of you) readers of my blog, no matter where you are in America don't make any long term plans base on anything climate will change, and that kidoes is everything.

A New Environment: Whitewater-Baldy Fire Gila Wilderness June 2012

These places are places from my younger years.  Back when I backpacked and camped in wilderness places.  Could it be that long ago really?  There is the Gila National Forest.  It surrounds the Gila Primitive Area.  The Primitive Area surrounds the Gila Wilderness Area.  Built along many of the stream and canyons are houses and cliff dwelling from the Mogollon Indians 100-800 A.D. and before.  Before it is finished all the Climate Change dead trees will be burned off or will be charred standing trunks.  It will be a new place here.  One of the first new place of the Climate Age.  Wonder what it will look like.

Remember, click the picture to see the larger view.

Mogollon, New Mexico

Doc's old place now Henry's

The Ghost Town /Art Colony of Mogollon is saved as is Little Fanny and the road in, everything East of that is burned over all the way to the fire tower.