CANES vs WALKING STICKS

A chance encounter today with my one time cardiologist at a local restaurant. He is 89. I am 90. I use a walking stick and he uses a cane. From an engineering standpoint, I believe a walking stick is better than a cane. It gives the body something to hang on to. The arm is in tension. With a cane, the arm is in compression and because it is hinged at the elbow, it can buckle.

REPUBLICAN DEBATE

Two Comments on the Debate:

1. I would like to see Carly Fiorina get the nomination, if only to hear them sing at the Republican Convention:
CarlyFiorina Here I Come!

2.  Trump’s disingenuous quality was revealed in bragging that he made a big deal, but fully within the law, when it is likely that the law was changed by big money to accommodate men like him in making big deals.

SEND MONEY

      Nearly every day a telephone call arrives from the Democratic National Committee, begging for money. Were I foolish enough to contribute in that manner instead of directly to those whom I support, the DNC may or may not  support candidates I favor. Specifically, I would rule out spending any money to support Hillary Clinton.
-    Hillary Clinton comes from a gene pool of corrupt politicians and corrupt financiers who,  at the end of the  20th century, set the stage for near-collapse of the US economy in 2008.
    The critical event occurred in late 1999 when Senator Phil Gramm of Texas  inserted a 254 page amendment into a budget bill that Bill Clinton was about to sign.The amendment gutted  the Glass Steagall Act. This law, enacted in 1933, served the country well by preventing bankers from using their customers’ savings to finance risky investments. Mellow and inattentive in the waning hours of his administration, President Clinton signed the bill.
    Phil Gramm did not write the two hundred fifty-four page amendment by himself. One can be certain that it was crafted by experts, bent on pursuing their own agendas,  confident that in the event of failure, the Federal Government (that is,we the people) would bail them out. They wrote the bill and devised a crafty way to get it approved without debate, or even any knowledge of it by most members of Congress. No one in the Media was smart enough to raise a red flag.
     President Bush was happy with Clinton's  action and confounded the public further by reducing taxes on  the wealthy. Topping that, he led the nation into a trillion dollars added indebtedness by conducting two wars on borrowed money.
    Gutting Glass Steagall  opened up the gates of hell, allowing bankers to free-wheel with their customers’ savings, luring them into all kinds of high risk investments. The collapse came before the decade was out, the highlight of which was the Treasury Secretary informing President Bush that too-big-to-fail banks needed 750 billion dollars to remain solvent.
    The President caved,  the ransom was paid, and the American people were stuck with the bill. The financial firms were back in business. No one was prosecuted. No one went to jail. The principals involved collected their huge salaries, and even took home bonuses that year. But individual investors were left high and dry..
    How much is 750 billion dollars? Enough to build a World Trade Center II every fifteen miles from coast to coast across the United States.
    Word is that Senators Sanders and McCain are teaming to get Glass Steagall reinstated. Opposition will be strong. The President has as yet not taken a position, but  action is absolutely necessary if the nation is to prosper without fear of reversion to the oligarchy that ruled during  the 1920’s before the Great Depression.
    I’ll not ever send a nickel to the DNC, nor the RNC either.

EARTH WARMING

Author’s note. Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible for me to write in  what is for me a comfortable style, on virtually any subject.


My Dear Trill,

    How did I know that some day you would be asking me about climate change?.After all, the media is full of  self-styled “experts,” mostly global warming deniers, pontificating on the subject, comfortable inside their skins with things just as they are, and confident that Earth will experience climate changes  every few thousand years and there is nothing we can about it. I am not an expert, Trill,  admittedly, but I do have ability to separate  hard scientific data from mere conjecture and am happy to pass on what I know.
    What I do know is that vast changes have taken place ever since humans have sought ways to ease manual labor, increase production of goods, and travel far and wide. The revolution (often called the Industrial Revolution) began rather recently, around 1775, when in England James Watt made improvements to the Newcomen steam engine that  accelerated its application to all kinds of things, from powering the machines in factories, to trains and ships. Long after that development, another engine that burned gasoline and similar fuels was invented, called the Otto cycle after the inventor,  that underlies the operation  of gasoline engines in the millions of cars, buses and trucks that cruise the highways. The Diesel engine was a further development on the gasoline engine. All of this, in addition to stationary power plants for generation of electricity as well as  a development of air travel, led to enormous consumption of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. The burning of these fuels produce huge quantities of carbon dioxide.
    In earlier times, natural processes on Earth like plant growth, which consumes carbon dioxide, and absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, were able to consume the carbon dioxide as fast as it was produced. As consumption increased the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere grew beyond the ability of natural processes to handle it. Carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas. It hampers the ability of Earth to radiate into space some of the heat gathered from the sun. Methane has similar properties. Sulphur dioxide, on the other hand, shields Earth from the rays of the sun.
    There are people who downplay the the contribution of humans to global warming, arguing without basis that a single volcano emits a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to the output of all the automobiles in the world. The truth is quite different, All the volcanoes in the world , according to the U.S. Geological Survey, emit a total of .26 giga-tons of carbon dioxide in a year, (That’s .26 followed be twelve zeros). In contrast, the automobiles, ships, trains and aircraft emit a total of 30 giga-tons, a hundred twenty times as much.
    Here’s something for you to ponder. Where does all the carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emitted by volcanoes come from? One theory is that the gases were present when Earth was nothing but a huge gas ball. Then the rocks started to pour in, forming the hard planet with an atmosphere around it. As Earth cooled, fissures and cracks appeared that got filled with gas from the atmosphere and then got sealed in by further crustal movement.  Volcanic eruptions are largely caused but pressures generated when the gas is heated to high temperatures by Earth’s magma.
    Trill, there is no doubt that climate change is upon us, and some think that we have already passed the tipping point and it is beyond the capacity of humans to reverse it. If true, you will be witness to some enormous changes in your lifetime, with the snow caps, icecaps and glaciers  melting, ocean level rising, regionally some very hot weather, violent storms, and entire civilizations moving to safer ground. Your home, given its location, unfortunately will probably be under water.
    These observations will, I hope, help to guide you and place limits  on how and where you plan to spend your days and years on Earth. It will be quite an exciting time. Not bad for the planet. It will simply be in transition to another form. But very sad for most of its occupants. Sea creatures may be the only survivors and we will begin all over again, when the first ones crawled onto the land. 

SAYINGS

Sometimes, instead of pressing the reset button on your brain (it's so hard to find!), it may be useful to review the thoughtful words of others that  have stood the test of time, or are recent.
 


Intelligent people are the unhappiest ones I know. - Hemmingway

No matter how wealthy a person is, abandonment of a friendship leaves
one irredeemably impoverished. - anon.

Feeling bullied may be needlessly bullying yourself. - anon.

Ego does indeed, in many cases, equate with evil. - anon.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without affection. - Dalai Lama

History is the presentation of facts in the order of their appearance.
Interpreting it is self serving -  anon.

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Self regard goes a long way. It can be mistaken for wisdom. It can masquerade as vision.With enough of it, the clown transforms himself into a ringleader.The dwarf looks like a giant. -  Frank Bruni, NYT

SPACE STATIONS

The following letter  appeared in the July13 issue of Space news under the title: REPLACE ISS WITH SPECIALIZED STATIONS

To the Editor:

       Though well reasoned, Hugh Cook's op-ed: "Humanity's Outpost on the Edge" appears to recommend that America average about one astronaut in space for years into the future, as we have for the past fifty years.That's no way to capitalize on space.
      It's why I have been in favor of, and promoting a  practical phase-out of the ISS and replacing it with numerous, Skylab sized, turnkey stations that may be specialized in configuration (i.e. research, manufacturing, tourist destination).
      Progress will come with  a larger population occupied in space. Stations can be leased to nations with little space access.
     Development of cheap transportation will be stimulated.  Incidentally, it  would also be a steady use for the Space Transportation System.


Sincerely,


Edward Hujsak

DOES EGO EQUATE TO EVIL?

My Dear  Trill,

(Author’s note: Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who, with her questions, makes it possible for me to write in a style that is for me both different and comfortable.)

     How amusing. The guest of honor at the annual meeting of the Lithuanian Club, a Peter Kashilinus, who turned out to be a mere office clerk, though a senior one, at the local slaughter house, while the real Peter Kashilinus, Phd, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize nominee, was somewhere in Montana, fishing for trout. I imagine  your program  chairman had some things to explain.
    So you ran across my poem which asked the question: “Does ego equate to evil?” It could have been a rhetorical question, but it happened that it was aimed at a one-time friend, who, an admitted egotist, said the question left her reeling. I did not intend to offend her. I intended only  to lure her into an interesting discussion but she did not take the bait.
    Still, it’s an open question when you restrict the word ego to ally with terms like conceit, narcissism, overly self assured, or a hunger for recognition, accolades, or for power, no matter what the circumstance.
    It’s my contention that everyone  possesses a finer sense of self and a less-than-finer sense of self. The eternal problem is which is allowed to, or made to, triumph over the other.
`    It follows, in my view, that evil can easily result in egoists who exhibit the second trait. This is manifest in the numerous despots who take over entire populations through the strength of their ego.....Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Peron, Mussoline, Gaddafi, Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great .....the list goes on and on, throughout history, and has prominent membership to this day. A living example is Donald Trump, candidate for the U.S presidency, whose ego is so strong that he feels no need to prepare speeches, but babbles away instead. In this case, though, evil is not evident; simply a strong  egocentricity. Still, who can argue that all candidates for public office are not strongly egocentric?
    My question: “Does ego equate with evil” is  not categorically true, of course, but I  could argue endlessly that it is at the root of much of the evil we encounter or observe, or that has occurred. It would be hard to imagine doing anything about it, however. The answer lies in uniform adherence by humans to the finer self, and that isn’t going to happen.