A Sunrise and a Sunset at a Time

 

"Goodbyes hurt the most when the story was not finished."

                                                                                           ----- Anonymous       

I recently bid goodbye to a friend.  About two weeks ago a stroke, followed by another while at the hospital took its toll that put him on life support.  A week later, his family brought him home.  When I got there, his wife, her eyes swollen, only barely able to speak above a whisper as she greeted me, was at his bedside holding his right hand.  His sister was by his left side, stroking his face and head with a small damp towel.  His youngest son, just out of college was there as well. His labored breathing filled the quiet room. His eyes were closed and I don't think he could hear anything anymore.

I've known Tim for twenty five years. We worked at two separate companies that did business with each other. We remained friends because we shared a common bond beyond the commercial interests of our companies. I was already deep into woodworking as a hobby.  He wanted to get into it.  That's how it began. 

The message of the quote above has so many facets in it. Goodbyes always hurt.  When parents say goodbye and mourn the loss of a child, the  anguish is incomprehensibly painful for anyone to endure. It defies the orderly sequence of life. 

Tim's dad is 104 years old.  Tim - just a few months younger than I - was yet to celebrate his 75th birthday.  Tim did not talk openly about it but he had every reason to believe that he had much to look forward to before his story was finished. His mom passed away in her late-nineties just a few years ago. Everyone who knew Tim understood why he went about planning a lot of things.  Genetics was on his side. His dad is not only a navy veteran of WWII in the Pacific, he is a prostate cancer survivor.  

About four years ago Tim was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He never smoked.  There are no early symptoms for lung cancer until it is already in stage 1 or worse. Tim was experiencing shortness of breath, chronic fatigue and unexplained weight loss. A mass that tested malignant was found in one of his lungs. The good news is that Houston has some of the best cancer care facilities in the world.  Immunotherapy, a new medical breakthrough, hailed as the latest alternative to chemotherapy, was tried on Tim. Lo and behold the mass that was already the size of a tennis ball went away after a regimen of immunotherapy. His cancer went on remission but he had to undergo regular testing and check up that  routinely became  part of his life.

Tim had plans.  I thought he had more than what a typical  25 year old has, or anyone going through mid-life.  But he was not in a hurry nor felt as if he was pressed for time, or that time could run out on him.  He built a new house next to where his dad lives.  Next to it was a huge barn-size structure that he made into a giant workshop although it was more than just for wood projects.  He had equipped one area to service automotive and farm equipment in addition to what later was going to be a full fledge woodworking shop.  There is a pneumatic lift similar to a service bay at a mechanic's garage.  The air filter and a ductwork was well laid out. I have only seen the photos and I had plans to visit later this summer or fall. Tim had repeatedly invited me and my wife to visit.

Mississippi is a little over six hours by car from Houston. His dad owns a large acreage of farm land and forested area of hardwood trees.  Tim himself had over many years accumulated large acreage of his own - also deeply forested and farm land next to his dad's property. He would go back and forth countless of times from  Mississippi to his Houston condo. His wife, who still works, makes that home for the two of them. So, Tim who always exuded with positive attitude and a determination to go on with life split his time between Mississippi and Houston.  

For a cancer survivor Tim carried on with a heavy schedule.  He did not completely leave the oil industry because he still did consulting work while at the same time attended to the farm and forest management of his land, and looking after his dad's welfare. Fortunately, his dad, a living centenarian, manages to do relatively well, considering that most folks way younger than him are already in nursing homes or in assisted living conditions. Tim, aside from making regular trips back and forth for the tests and check ups he needed to have, still had time to visit with friends here and there, often accompanied by his dog.  He often would bring pieces of hardwood he would load on his truck for me. I have enough to work on for a very long time.

Tim had much to hope for.  His attitude was very much that of someone looking forward to all the sunrises he believed were still in front of many waking hours he expected to have.  We cannot blame him.  His dad is a cancer survivor.  

Just weeks ago, the cancer came back. It spread quickly.  The stroke was from a brain hemorrhage. The cancer spread so rapidly Tim's immune system was overwhelmed.  

Since that day I said goodbye to him, it was two more sunsets and two sunrises later before I received a text from his wife, "He just left us".

Every earth-bound inhabitant - plants and animals alike - is bound by time sandwiched between sunrise and sunset every twenty four hours. From dawn to dusk, the brightening of light and the intensity of it by mid-day and the waning to a multicolored hue in another few hours, are  what goes in between the bookends of everyday.  Each day a page, pages make a book, and for all of us fortunate indeed to complete a book, the sunrises and sunsets when tallied and bound together are what life is all about.

The most important thing to remember is that each of us gets the same allotment of time between each sunrise and each sunset.  However thin or thick a book each of us ultimately puts together, what counts is how well we spend the time between each sunrise and each sunset.  Every page is one sunrise and one sunset at a time. I believe Tim had completed his book. 

P.S. In 2016 I wrote about "Twilight" which some of you, who may not have read or just want to read it again, hopefully will find solace:

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/09/twilight.html

 

 

In Awe of Flora

Flora, in this case, is not the Spanish lady's first name.  It is flora as in :

"flo·ra 1. (Botany) all the plant life of a given place or time 2. (Botany) a descriptive list of such plants, often including a key for identification .."

We, elephants, whales, minnows, polar bears, coyotes, earthworms, fleas and termites and every life form in between - all air-breathing animals - belong to half of a pair that defines the two general classifications of living organisms on this planet: flora and fauna. This follows my last musing, "CO2", and this is one of the ways to pay homage to all plant life. Without them as co-dependent, life would be unsustainable for every air breathing organism.   

But..

 "Which was here first: plants or animals?"

Quick answer is: Plants preceded animals by 60 million years !!

The long answer: For three billion years our world was populated by nothing more than single-celled life forms.  It was only half a billion years ago that multicellular organisms came into being. Then about 450 millions before us, arthropods - animals with segmented body parts similar to what insects and simple crustaceans have - dominated the landscape. But in a flash, by geological standards, they became extinct.

After that mass extinction that killed off the arthropods, "Modern" era plants, vegetation permeated the entire earth.  It was 60 million years later when tetrapods -  aquatic dwelling four-limbed creatures that breathe air either through gills or rudimentary lungs - came into being. 

From that point on, the beauty and wonders of creation unfolded to fulfil the inevitability and resiliency of life in all its diversity and every species' unwavering determination to survive, adapt and evolve. Whatever is the reader's inclination: a belief in the mystery and existence of a higher power that is the Creator or to not believe at all or straddle the fence of agnosticism, one must, however, acknowledge that for one of these organisms to rise above all the others and develop the intelligence to ponder these things, one must be in awe that however long it took, the wonders of creation are all around us, yet only we are equipped to understand it.  Not completely, of course, but at least we have the ability to peel one layer at a time the nature of our world that predates us by billions of years. 

And plants not only pre-dated us and all the other air breathing creatures, they prepared the landscape to be habitable and conducive to an almost never ending processes of evolution that to this day continues.  In addition to that, plants continue to convert the sun's energy into packets of nutrients for all the other organisms.  Indirectly, plants allow us to use the sun's energy to sustain us.  Here's how:

By now, readers of my musings will have long known my defense of what seems an almost indefensible stance - standing up for the most maligned compound on this planet - carbon dioxide and its single element that is carbon. I have my own good reasons. Carbon dioxide is what sustains plants.  Plants sustain us.  The inevitable cycle that connects flora and fauna had gone on for eons.  

There is an extremely high probability that one of the oxygen atoms that was  in about 400 milliliters of air you inhaled from the one breath you took just now was the same one that was in a gulp of air that T-Rex or some ancient bird took millions of years ago. It could also have been one of two oxygen atoms that was in CO2 absorbed by some Jurassic fern or algae, recycled many trillions of times over and over up to the moment it entered your lungs a moment ago. And then only to be part of a waste-compound that is CO2, once again, which you are about to expel through your nostrils or mouth. Then it starts all over again and again, ad infinitum.  Even while at rest - sitting down reading this - your respiratory system processed 360 liters of air in one hour.  After one 24-hour day, you expelled 2 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Yes, every breath you take is recycled material. Actually, we are from recycled material. Every species that ever lived and each of its descendants into the future will continue to be made up of recycled material. 

Genesis 3:19

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In fact, the iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones go way back long before the solar system was created.

Here is something to think about.

Going by the Biblical accounts of the first chapter in the Book of Genesis are a narration of the sequence of creation that practically mirrors the order of development defined in cosmology, geology and biology supported by fossil records and other observations. 

Biblical symbolisms and allegories aside, a careful look into the sequence of creation will point to an uncanny similarity with the order of fossil evidence. Plants were created on the third day, air breathing creatures on the fifth day, while humans - represented by Adam and Eve - did not come about until the sixth day.  

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 

12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”  

21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

 

23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

If there can ever be one thing that both believers in the Biblical account and those who only rely on scientific evidence can agree on is that plants came first.  They can also agree on the supposition that perhaps plants came first to prepare the environment for airbreathing organisms to emerge, to survive and to flourish.

Both sides can also agree that life as we know it today is forever linked to the seemingly convenient arrangement for both flora and fauna to not only  coexist but to be co-dependents with each other

We must therefore be in awe of flora.

We must be in awe of the powers of the Creator and the wonders of creation.

CO²

Of all that are considered bad for the environment, CO² is the number one bogeyman, the most oppressive of all gasses in our atmosphere, the most villainous symbol that could end humanity, and we must get rid of it, like vermin, or to be eradicated as we would the plague.  Or else, it shall be the end, the most potent of all existential threats.

So, let's take a closer look.

A simple-looking compound, it seems, with two oxygen atoms attached to one carbon atom. Like hydrogen and oxygen, they have a special affinity for each other. There is no debate that the most crucial of combinations - that of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms which give us H2O - are why there is life on earth. 

But why is CO² not a good mix? Is it really that bad?  Well, let's take an even closer look.

One  crucial phenomenon that makes life what it is today, here on earth, anyway, is the co-dependency between the two main categories of life forms that biologists fondly label - flora and fauna - plants and animals. 

All life forms are engines of life. We, humans, and countless other species, burn fuel for energy, just like any internal combustion engine. Carbohydrates are our favorite source of fuel. For combustion to take place we need oxygen to burn with the fuel.  Like any engine we need an exhaust for some of the products of combustion - mainly waste gasses.  Carbon from the carbohydrates in our food combine with oxygen from the air we breathe and we have combustion. Energy is released and the fused atoms become a compound molecule that is CO². We exhale it. Well and good but that is not the end of the story.

But first, this:

"According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%".

So, we're mostly water, and since water is H2O, and there are two atoms of hydrogen per water molecule, one would assume that we are therefore made up mostly of hydrogen.  In number of atoms, yes, but the atomic weight of an oxygen atom outweighs hydrogen by 16 to 1.  In other words, we are  mostly oxygen. That is no trivial matter.

Most amazingly though is that oxygen in the air is even more crucial because beyond four minutes that we do not inhale it,  our existence will come to a gasping end. Yet, our daily life is regulated by our body's breath cycle, even while asleep, without us having to think about it. And every day we exhale waste gasses that are made up mostly of CO² in the amount of two pounds per person.

As "luck would have it", CO² is fuel to the other half of all lifeforms on the planet - plants.  From algae to grass to palm trees to Redwood, CO² is as crucial as oxygen is to us. And then, no less miraculous, is that the plant will strip the carbon from CO², keep the carbon atom for its growth, and then expels the oxygen atoms. 

It is life's greatest universal gift from nature that wasted gas from one is needed by the other, and vice versa, which makes life for both a circular sustaining process.  This is the most important symbiotic relationship, without which neither may exist.

The clown fish and the sea anemone have a symbiotic relationship as millions of other species do but none can compare to the universal co-dependency that is between plants and animals that must occur every second of every day. 

But what have we done?  Our population now is upwards of seven billion, expelling 3 billion tons of CO² per year. That's just us. Add to that all air breathing animals and that is a lot of CO².

Meanwhile, we denude our forests, rainforests in particular, and our habitats have become concrete and other non-carbon consuming entities. We have effectively upset the balance of co-dependency.  That imbalance has more to do with climate and our existence than just the proliferation of CO², per se.

Even more astounding is that the more CO² there is for plants,  the less water they need.  Which is a good thing. But then when there are less plants and trees from when it used to be, what are we to expect but reap the consequence of a shattered co-dependency.

CO² is not to blame.

 

Time Magazine's 2019 Person of the Year, teenage phenom, Greta Thunberg, has this quote below:

"Of course there is no magic amount that says that this an OK amount, science doesn't really work that way," she said. "The higher the concentration of CO² in the atmosphere is, the bigger the risks are going to be. There is not one magic tipping point where everything is beyond saving and so on, but rather we should try to keep it as low as possible."

Time Magazine, as inconsequential as it had become, notwithstanding, we can't really blame Greta because we know full well she does not have the scientific background to make her an authority but we can perhaps blame all the adults who are behind her ascendancy.  All the adults at the UN and the U.S. Congress who invited her to speak the irresponsible claims against CO² and fossil fuel are responsible for the insanity of climate change or climate emergency or some other revised talking point in the future.

The cynics among us are led to believe the insincerity of those who promote zero emissions and the elimination of fossil fuel. Notice that the programs they propose will not all be in place till many years from today - promises by year 2030, others by 2050. Long after they are no longer in office or long enough for folks to forget what they did or long after they are gone from this life to be held accountable.

Take the climate summit held in Davos, Switzerland, last year.

From CNN (Business) London:

"WEF (World Economic Council) estimates that there were as many as 309 trips last year by private planes to two nearby airports for the conference. That number, which excludes the presidents and prime ministers that tend to land at a nearby military base .."

Add to that the number of gas guzzling limos, some heavy with armor plating, and cynics have a legitimate reason not to take these so called "concerns for the environment" seriously.

At least, Greta traveled by train and when she went to New York to address the UN, she went by sailboat from Sweden.

Now. let's consider this.  During the Jurassic period when the dinosaurs ruled the earth CO2 was five times the level than it is today.  The dinosaurs reign lasted for 160 million years.  Ancient vegetation were just as dominant and they were the scrubbers of CO2, and like today, from plants, exhaled precious oxygen to support the other lifeforms, including the giant dinosaurs.

Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time

Therefore, CO2 and oxygen, in partnership for eons of time, are what had then and now kept our lives viable. 

The Green New Deal, pardon the pun to follow, is barking at the wrong tree.

UFO

Most recent composite headline from a combination of news outlets and press releases: "The U.S. Military confirms the videos are real".

Far from what used to be doctored images in the past, or, at the very least,  some were grainy pictures from dubious sources, these were taken by highly trained military pilots.  Even more intriguing is that these were released by no less than the Pentagon - the seat of the U.S. military. It must be noted though that the videos were all taken about four to five years ago.  The first question most folks ask is "Why were they released just now?"  Actually, "Why release them at all?"  After all, the government had been silent for decades since the first rumors or "reports" about UFO's surfaced.  We can go back to the 40's and 50's when articles and "eye witness" accounts first came out.  Then in 1968 Swiss author Erich Von Daniken released his first book, "Chariots of the Gods". Not for very long thereafter, fans across the world were treated to more books, TV shows, even conferences and discussions among both "experts" and noted UFO "authorities".  A new word was coined.  Ufology. And Ufologists who dabble in the "study"  of unidentified flying objects.

Below: Photo taken by an amateur photographer

Here are a few more questions:

1) As headlines go, why is there very little staying power for these stories?  They grab the public's attention for a few days, then the stories vanish as quickly as the mysterious flying objects themselves.

2) Why are there no credible forensic evidence of any kind at all? For example, why are there no alien materials like some sort of exotic metals or residue of any kind related to propulsion or construction. (Area 51, notwithstanding, no bio-specimens or DNA either) 

3) Aside from the visual images, why are there no audio recordings whatsoever?  All UFO's apparently emit no sound at all.

4)  Are alien abductions to be believed?  Whatever happened to all the alien abductees? 

There are many more questions than just those four - obviously.

The idea that we can be or had been visited by alien entities in spacecrafts that defy human technology does not seem that implausible because of the following logic.  In the vastness of the universe, it is estimated that there are trillions of galaxies, each with an average of  100-200 billions of stars.  Each of those stars is in reality  not unlike our sun and likely to have planets orbiting it, structurally no differently from our own solar system. Our closest galaxy neighbor - the Andromeda - may have a trillion stars.  A low ball estimate as to the potential number of habitable planets like our earth in just the Andromeda and our own Milky Way is mind bogglingly high, let alone in the entire observable universe. If just for those assumptions to work with, we are told that it is beyond any doubt that we are not alone.

However, until such time that one of these aliens do land somewhere, perhaps on the south lawn of the  U.S. White House or right in front of the Forbidden City or next to the Kremlin, or some meadow in Katmandu or Luneta Park in Manila, and then declare the famous science fiction cliché, "We come in peace" or a reiteration of, "Take us to your leader", it is also plausible that indeed we are really alone.

 

Then again, this could be how it will happen,

 or

The other argument used is that for all the galaxies, stars and other cosmic structures around the entire observable universe, where our earth is circling around an average-size star that is tinier than one millionth the size of a sub-atomic particle if the entire universe were reduced to the size of the Milky Way galaxy, surely all of these are not not just for us alone.  We cannot conceivably believe that there are no other life forms elsewhere. But then, why not?  Why can't the other statement be true as well?  

I would like to use a different argument which in essence simply says, "We might as well be alone".

A while back I made up an analogy about an amoeba on Lake Tanganyika in Africa.  It is the longest fresh water lake and the second oldest in the world, 410 miles long,  oriented north/south in the African continent.  First photo below is the lake and by the next photo, it is merely an invisible sliver lost in the entire continent.

One day, my favorite amoeba at the northern edge of the lake pondered - we need to give it the ability to think for this to work -  so, it asks, "What's out there towards the southern end of the lake"? It can't know and the idea that it can someday get over to the opposite end  would exceed the limit of its most optimistic imagination (Lest you forget, we gave it the ability to think). With a life span of just two days, it will not make it but for a few meters, let alone even get to either the eastern or western banks of the lake.  We smile at the two-day life span of the amoeba but our own life  relative to the entire cosmos,  can be bracketed to perhaps within just  a fraction of a microsecond, if we were to scale down the universe to the size and age of Lake Tanganyika.

It is not hyperbole, of course. Take Alpha Centauri, closest star neighbor to our sun. It takes its starlight 4.2 years, traveling at 186,000 miles per second to reach us.  Using the fastest spacecraft we've ever produced, it will take us 137,000 years to get there.  Multiply that speed to a hundred times faster, without worrying about how much payload of fuel it would take and what physiological effects it will have on the space travelers, it would still be a few thousand years of one way travel.  

Forget the nearest galactic neighbor - the Andromeda. Light from it takes 2.5 million years to reach us and, vice versa.  "We", humankind, if we can last long enough, will see the day 4.5 billion years from now when both galaxies will meet up for a spiral embrace in one colossal cosmic collision (can't resist the triple alliterative phrase).  Still, we will not get to any of its stars or to any of our own neighboring suns, even  if they were like swirling desert sands disturbed by a Saharan sirocco. No two stars will collide because there will still be vast distances between each of them.

And that my dear reader is the reason why we might as well be all alone.

That still begs the question. What were those mysterious crafts caught on camera or seen by witnesses, some of whom were actually credible accounts?

1) Before the world first knew of or seen the first stealth fighter, prototypes had been in the works for perhaps two decades earlier. Any eye witness who saw the prototype take to the air then (they needed to be flown "under wraps"), with one weirdly unfamiliar shape and barely a trace of exhaust, would have interpreted it as "alien".  Any new super aircrafts in development today would be wrapped in secrecy that even much of the military will be clueless, including pilots.  Take the photo of the B-2 stealth bomber below.  Does it look like a regular airplane?  Remember the sightings of triangular-shape alien spacecrafts a while back?

2) "Experts" tell us that some of these aircrafts fly at speeds and maneuvers that no human pilots can survive.  What about drones? Below is the pilotless Northrop Grumman X-47B which can land and take off from an aircraft carrier.  I'm sure it will be able to do death defying maneuvers that no human pilot can survive.   

Other sightings have been ruled natural phenomena that played tricks on the human imagination.  The rest remain under the category of "Unexplained".

Where does that leave the Idle Mind?  A philosophical and even spiritual discussion will take up more time.  They can  best be reserved for another musing.

Therefore, short of a press conference between our world leaders and an alien representative, I will have to say that UFO's, as in extraterrestrial vehicles, aren't real in one sense but that they could be in another plausible sense as in man-made as-yet-to-be revealed technology.  To quote Mrs. Slocombe in the erstwhile British TV sitcom, "Are You Being Served", when making a point, she would say,  "And I am unanimous with that".

Why Growing Old Beats the Alternative?

 

It is an important question. The one significant answer, if one were to distill it to just one, is that the alternative to growing old is to die young.

If life is indeed a journey, then it follows that growing old allows for a much longer trip.  It also means getting to more places than had it been otherwise.

If the price of the ticket to growing old are chronic pains, a bigger medicine cabinet, a thicker medical file, fading vision and straining to listen to normal conversation, or having hip or knee replacements, always keep in mind that that ticket is not due to be collected till towards the end.  So, enjoy the journey to its fullest.

I notice too that getting old also allows for stories to get better with each recollection.  The privilege of editing is not what preoccupies the youth.  They are too busy to introspect or think deeper than and beyond the spur of the moment. By the time we get to a certain age we get to enjoy the accumulated paint brushes and a more colorful pallet and a bigger canvass on which to express and tell our stories.  Our keystrokes may be slower but our vocabulary is larger, our knowledge substantially wider.  The alternative to growing old is the limited experience of youth.

"I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience".

-------- President Ronald Reagan

Only when we get to a certain age when we acquire the audacity to say, "Youth is over rated". It is also the time, the only time actually, when we can say with deep conviction that youthfulness is not the strongest quality of the young, or that we sometimes say, "If only we were able to keep our youth and didn't squander it when we were young", whatever that means, since I don't really know where I was going with that one.

Here is the reason why, as we get older, time seems to go faster:

On the other hand, this is what bothers some people.  Why does time have to flow only in one direction?  You see, we are all gifted to understand life better looking back but we can only live it going forward.  The only entity I know that was able to do it differently was Merlin in King Arthur's court. At least, in one version of the king's lore.  In that story Merlin lived going backwards in time - he experienced the future while living "forward" in the direction where he is yet to confront the past.  How he and King Arthur were able to interact was never explained in that story.  Although I should remind you.  That was a Broadway musical, "Camelot". On stage or cinema, producers and directors can do whatever they want.  After all, Lerner and Lowe were able to turn a cockney flower girl into a princess in "My Fair Lady".  But, I digressed.

So, we shouldn't  be worrying about growing old.  Once we get to that point, the dreadfulness of when we used to worry about the uncertainty of the future is all gone because we are already in it now.  We made it.  And we could care less about what happened in the past. We shouldn't want that to be a burden. Besides,  the future that we used to worry about is not so bad. Given that perhaps life in a few instances was not fair, to be alive today is still a good thing.  Really. It's a gift.

The folks of a certain age reading this - you know who you are - have that privilege to have gone aboard the rail car of life far longer than others who didn't get to board because they didn't have the express ticket to a longer life.   The long trip, as often the case, may be fraught with a lot of challenges but it beats the local bus. The scenery is better. Even if not, remember, the power to edit is the reward of living longer, specially if you outlast all the potential critics to your story.

Getting the full value of life's ticket is to finish the journey.  Losing the ticket early is a tragedy we do not wish on anyone.  Handing it over at the station after a life's long journey should never be feared.  Instead we should cherish the experience while it lasts. Old age is that time just before we reach the final stop and it is the only stage in life where we can claim, "We know better".

Above all, the one reason we want to try to live life at its fullest, and achieve one that was well lived, is because there are no round trips for the rail way of life.

Hold on to that ticket.  Live well. Live life like it is the only one you have.

 

In Awe of the Climate Fever

How good is the science of climate change?  It is awfully bad! First sign towards incredulity is the attempt to wiggle with semantics. It was global warming in the beginning.  But to hedge the bet that it is possible a global cooling could occur, climate change was a bigger umbrella.  Pun intended.  Now, it is climate emergency, since existential threat has become a bit over used already.

1.) We will not talk about existential threat.  Instead let's talk about existential events that had  already happened.  There were five mass extinctions of species throughout the fossil records. They happened. Species became extinct, new species emerged. In fact, over 95 % of all species that ever existed are no longer with us - today. All of those mass extinctions occurred long before there were internal gas combustion engines, coal fired power plants and industrial furnaces, and if green house gases from Co2 blanketing the upper atmosphere were the reason, they were all from natural causes and way beyond the artificial manipulation by any of the living organisms then. 

2.)  Let's try this.  Ultimately, the sun's energy - the heat we get from it - rules the entire solar system, and it is what determines how hot or cold the planet had been.  1.3 million earths will fit inside our sun.  So, it is huge.  More importantly, it is one unimaginably large thermonuclear device. At its core are the equivalent of about a trillion megaton hydrogen bombs exploding every second.  But we're fortunate, we are 93 million miles away.  Let's put that in perspective.  If the sun is a light bulb at the ceiling in the middle of an average room, earth is the size of a particle of dust on one corner of the breakfast table. We're far away so we get only 2 billionth of the total energy the sun puts out but the sunlight heats the atmosphere and combined with the heat the earth's surface gets (land and oceans), we get our daily weather and the long term  definition of climate.

The sun had been  a stable provider but the nature of how it produces energy is subject to the uncertainty principle, provided for by the laws of physics.  So, any slight deviation from its routine had large consequences on planet earth and the rest of the solar system that depend on it. Disturbances in planetary orbits, solar flares, sun spots, etc. can cause a number of variances on climate.  Add to that volcanic activities, magnetic pole reversals, jet streams, earthquakes and we find that our human efforts would be like a canoe pushing against an ocean liner trying to change its course.  In other words, the mighty sun, the light bulb at the center of the room, will fry an egg on the pavement in Phoenix, Arizona, on a hot summer day, but a slight weakening of its output, or some anomaly in its nuclear fusion reactor, even briefly could have an impact on climate.  And then there is this, from geological records:

"At least five major ice ages have occurred throughout Earth’s history: the earliest was over 2 billion years ago, and the most recent one began approximately 3 million years ago and continues today (yes, we live in an ice age!). Currently, we are in a warm interglacial that began about 11,000 years ago".  In other words that was the time all the Great Lakes in North America were frozen solid with ice and glaciers.

3.) American taxpayers, or 330 million inhabitants are admonished to adhere to the climate agenda.  But two countries with a combined number of about 2.5 billion people, will not play along.  One will continue to burn coal and even export it.  The other just recently, in an effort to be responsive to the cutting of trees for firewood, announced that its households will now switch to propane/butane gas stoves for cooking. But we're told that the U.S.  must aim for zero emissions by such and such a date while kitchens, continents away, will be cooking with hydrocarbon gases.

Meanwhile, today as it happens, the U.S. has by far the cleanest air and cleaner rivers than 3/4 of the world.  If you don't think so, compare U.S. big cities with those of the cities at those two countries alone.  Add another billion who cannot afford to finance a green new deal  on their own to the 2.5 billion people mentioned above and we have  at least half of the world's places that will not comply with the restrictions the U.S. is urged to self-impose.

Climate fever is a strange malady.  Not only is it really not understood, the diagnosis is suspect.  The motivations, however, are much too clear.  It is politics and political power and a means of imposing control and a gateway to central planning from the seat of a central government instead of the federated states.  

Two years ago I wrote in, "In Awe of Climate":

Yesterday, Sept. 4, 2019, 425 days from next year's U.S. 2020 election, ten presidential aspirants gathered for a Climate Town Hall for hours. It and almost all the next get together and discussions to follow will be pivotal in one particular way. One of these candidates could conceivably shape the critical agenda for running the next government in case the present administration is voted out of office. It shall be a huge switch in policy because as one of the candidates said last night, "Every Policy Should Be Informed by Climate Change."  What that means could be subject to interpretation, but for what it is worth, it can mean that climate change will dictate, influence and likely be the last word in how the new government will conduct its business. 

To our dismay, it is exactly what is happening - a feverish scramble to position climate in front of the American public - in less than three months of the new administration.

To remind the reader and every American taxpayer, below is one of the key sections in the bill driving the Green New Deal agenda which will be the overarching influence in much of the proposed spending by this administration in the next decade.  Let us be very clear about this. While politicians and others worry about existential threat that climate has become, this one is horribly consequential to taxpayers and America's well being. 

(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’);  the goals described in subparagraphs A through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the ‘‘Green New Deal goals’’) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the ‘‘Green New Deal mobilization’’).

Financially,  $billions "ain't cutting it anymore because now we're talking in trillions of $".

If we are going to distill what is going on, it boils down to two main points: climate change and racism drive the policies.  And somehow, from one rhetoric to the next, the government manages to not only connect them, they are able to make them intersect, intertwine with each other.  No less than the Vice President  took the lead from the New York Times editorial which said: 

"The most immediate cause of the immigration surge may be the series of deadly hurricanes that swept through Central America last year, part of a greater trend fueled by climate change".

Just as an aside, but it is not any less crucial, through the magic of wordsmithing, what used to be a violation of the country's sovereignty of its borders, illegal immigration became undocumented entry and now with nary a pretention, proponents just lump it all into pure and simple immigration. To say that the line is blurred between those arriving at the proper port of entries with proper and legitimate documents and those just merely walking across an open border is a massive understatement.

Some may consider this a radical idea and likely a subject of censorship by social media and I know some of what I had already written had been restricted in subtle ways.  

Let us not forget that for something so nebulous as this climate change initiative has been, thousands of people already lost their jobs across the nation and other places. Add to that all the lost peripheral businesses related to the fossil fuel industry and the potential rise in gas prices and we will have an economic hardship about which we will find a lot more unintended consequences to follow.

The more we are told to follow the science the more we will see that climate change could be a fraud, an impostor of the truth.  

Are we really in for a world like this?

Or, is the blue planet much too resilient than we give it credit?

We are not and should not be saying that we abandon all efforts towards a cleaner, safer environment but we must do it with an abundance of common sense and a paucity of politics and pseudo-science.

As reference to "In Awe of Climate", copy link below to your search bar and click on it:

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2019/09/in-awe-of-climate.html

USA, Don't Try to be Argentina

The title is not meant to be facetious, and I must hope that no Argentinian is offended.  The world knows the depth and distress that befell the once wealthy nation that is Argentina. The steady stream of its citizens leaving the country in the last  three decades or so add to the travails of a country that was once  the destination for over six million immigrants in the late 19th century, second only to those who came to the U.S.  Today, those who were able to leave  know the value of their fortune for just that reason alone.  

Must the world at large learn the lesson of Argentina? I wrote in an earlier musing that either history is an incompetent teacher or people are inept students and, arguably but sadly, we  can now conclude that human nature and politics are poor substitute teachers. For the first time in human history, the lesson plan is laid bare, live and out in the open for the world to see in Argentina. And Venezuela, or other failed states in that region, for that matter. Will any nation learn from it?  Will the big, mighty USA grasp  just even a hint?

First, we must search the archives of the past for context, but we will not travel too far back in history to make sense of it today.

Argentina's history  almost mirrored that of the U.S. Its story began in 1776 (date sounds familiar?).  "The declaration and fight for independence (1810–1818) was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861, culminating in the country's reorganization as a federation of provinces with Buenos Aires as its capital city. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with several waves of European immigration, mainly Italians and Spaniards, radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook; 62.5% of the population has full or partial Italian ancestry".

"The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century".  The economy relied on exports of beef and agricultural products. 

Although the United States is castigated even now for its history of slavery, all the colonized territories from Barbados to Argentina and Brazil had their share of the slave trading era to satisfy the needs of the labor intensive business of agriculture and animal husbandry.  Some of the territories - they are independent nations now - have a share of the black population far higher, as a percentage, than it is in the U.S. The Caribbean islands, including Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti and the Dominican republic  and Brazil  have higher black  demographics in their population. Though not so much in Argentina, it is a  little known fact  that, recently, of all times, it has its own Black Lives Matter movement.

In the long fight for ideological influence between democracy and communism, underscored during the cold war, Cuba became the western hemisphere's showcase for the Soviet style communism when Fidel Castro's movement ousted President Batista. In the guise of socialism, political radicalism first infiltrated Cuba's elective government in the mid 50's.  It took a while after the revolution in 1959, before Castro finally acknowledged and declared Cuba a communist nation in 1965.  From there he exported the ideology to much of South America.  Che Guevara, an Argentine-born physician met the Castro brothers in Mexico City, became a naturalized Cuban a short time later, then he set out to export the ideology to South America, including a foray into Africa's Congo.  It was in Bolivia where he was arrested and executed.

During that period of political upheavals 17 of 20 countries in the Latin American region were dictatorships.  Mexico  had an elective government but it was a one-party system for decades. There is already so much that had been written about Argentina and Venezuela. A video has been going around for some time now. I had gotten it twice already, so far.  The reader may want to watch it.  The background music was sang by Madonna, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina", which is, of course, the theme of the Broadway musical, "Evita".  A copy of the link for anyone interested, is at the bottom of this blog.

I will not rehash all that had already been said and written about Argentina's economic, social and political misfortunes, except perhaps to cite one quick commentary from The Economist magazine seven years ago, "The Parable of Argentina": 

"There are lessons for many governments from one country’s 100 years of decline."

"A CENTURY ago, when Harrods { Upscale London Dept. Store} decided to set up its first overseas emporium, it chose Buenos Aires. In 1914 Argentina stood out as the country of the future. Its economy had grown faster than America’s over the previous four decades. Its GDP per head was higher than Germany’s, France’s or Italy’s. It boasted wonderfully fertile agricultural land, a sunny climate, a new democracy (universal male suffrage was introduced in 1912), an educated population and the world’s most erotic dance. Immigrants tangoed in from everywhere. For the young and ambitious, the choice between Argentina and California was a hard one".

What went wrong?  As mentioned, so much had already been said. However, there is something to be learned, and the U.S. may want to pay attention.

Three years ago I wrote in "Ancestry, Fredericksburg, Texas", the following:

"Mid 19th century Europe was a period of discontent with the political climate and economic conditions that were pretty much held over by monarchy and nobility. Many Europeans, Germans included, heard of a new system that was growing out of a former British colony, where the hopes of ordinary people were lit by a new political experiment - democracy. One German nobleman denounced his nobility to lead a group of German immigrants to resettle their lives at a place called America".

That new political experiment and an economic system based on capitalism that was the United States thrived like no other nation had been before.  

Today, there are signs of fraying at the edges of what once was a glistening tapestry of one government system and a burgeoning economy that worked perfectly hand in hand for over two centuries now. 

What was once a colony became a nation that had a pivotal, if not decisively crucial, role in ending two world wars in Europe and the Pacific.  By the 50's and 60's, the U.S. was a full- fledge superpower.

One generation later, beginning in the 80's, which followed the so-called free-wheeling social revolution, exemplified by Woodstock of the 60's, the movement to transform the government began. Another generation came and in 2008 the pledge to transform the nation along progressive liberal lines was out in the open. Today, the trend is continuing but more so like a coiled spring snapping back into action after a four year compression that repressed the movement of liberalism.  

The 2020 election happened.  The new administration resumes the transformation so that  the era of high taxes, almost unfettered social programs and entitlements, federally focalized control over state rights, fueled by a woke generation and cancel culture, and a compliant media are well on their way to upset the once well balanced two-party democratic system  towards a monolithic power structure.

The Huffington Post, not exactly a conservative medium, published in 2011 a list of 53 types of taxes imposed on the American people  that did not exist a hundred years ago in the country's history. That list is even longer today.   On top of the Federal Income Tax, we have the inheritance tax, school tax, all kinds of sales taxes and today, the gasoline tax is over $.47 per gallon, and there are 48 more on the tax codes that are a heavy yoke for the American public and small businesses to carry on its back. It is true indeed that death is the only way to avoid taxes.

The taxpaying public has a right to be appalled by the fact that as more taxes were imposed and collected, the more the government is unable to balance its budget.  There is something so fundamentally wrong with that.  For that incoherent phenomenon alone, we can only point to government as the source of the problem, as it was with Argentina.  It is as if democracy that was the foundation of this country since 1776, has already weakened so badly  to be comparable to what ails this country's real physical infrastructures.

If central planning is the Achilles heel of socialism or communism, American democracy is suffering from  severe skeletal fractures at several places. It is swollen with 3 million federal employees, 600,000 of them work for the U.S. postal service alone. The woke generation and cancel culture have singlehandedly created a society cowering in fear of being labeled racist this, xenophobic that,  while businesses are caving in to the slightest tremor created by social media.  Monolithic censorship will result in a single political system.  It shall be a victory for the dominant party but a disaster for democracy.

The 2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill is just the opening bid for what will be a massive spending agenda, but the congresswoman from Queens New York said this, “I know that may be an eye-popping figure for some people, but we need to understand that we are in a devastating economic moment,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Millions of people in the United States are unemployed. We have a truly crippled healthcare system and a planetary crisis on our hands. We’re the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. So we can do $10 trillion.”

That reference to "planetary crisis" is all about the green new deal.  It is so easy for a lot of these politicians to propose all these spending because it is not their money.  Look up or Google the "Solyndra scandal" and shovel ready jobs between 2008 and 2009, that did not even touch dirt.  Look to the Spanish version of the green new deal earlier that was a total failure.

If this continues, the country will go on to print more money to fund the social programs it cannot afford while mismanaging the economy and its educational system where the teacher's union is now a significant voting block and political contributor. Government bureaucracy that permeates the  Postal Service, Social Security Administration, The VA and many other agencies, is the single most pervasive cause of waste, inefficiencies and enabler of incompetence. Amtrak and the USPS are two examples that, if they were corporations, should have gone under a long time ago.  If they were traded in the stock exchange, their price (what taxpayers pay) to earning ratios (P/E) alone would have been enough indicator to halt operations.  But, they are still around because government has taken the phenomenon of "throwing good money after bad" and tossing it into the proverbial bottomless pit.

From Forbes: "Argentina's highest annual rate of inflation was a staggering 20,262% in the 12 month period ending April 1990. That definitely constitutes hyperinflation! To translate using U.S. dollars, an item which cost $1 in May 1989 would have cost $203.62 one year later. Argentina was in a depression from late 1998 to 2002."

What are the odds that politicians will have learned something from the Argentina story?  

American readers should care about what can be learned from Argentina. All that we need to do is look back at history.  Relics of history are not difficult to find if one must look at what happened then.  Ever wonder what happened to great civilizations that built the Acropolis of Athens and the Temple of Delphi, the Colosseum of Rome, just to name a few.  Or, the pyramids of Egypt.

Will tourists a thousand years from now be clamoring to see the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, or the surviving pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge?  Farfetched?  If history continues to teach but we refuse to learn, tourists of the future will see for themselves but politicians will never foresee nor look at the consequences of what they do today. And they will no longer be around to witness the future they created.

          

 USA, Don't try to be Argentina

Copy the link below to your search bar to listen to the song, that accompanies the video about Argentina that I mentioned several paragraphs earlier.  It is an https: file and safe.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=295c8f1d05&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1696037345660737989&th=178988fad9e799c5&view=att&disp=safe

The blog that precedes this is about a longer historical scale that tells how we got to this point in our history.