How Great We Are

When things are going really good for me I sometimes forget what an ignorant poser I really am.

I'm a technician, I fix things. I try to figure out what went wrong with someone else's design. Since I work in research, the circuits I fix are not always accurately documented. My imagination works overtime to comprehend basic ideas behind sophisticated electronic conglomerations. My job is to deduce problems within systems and correct them. I don't get paid what I'm worth.

I get this warm, fuzzy feeling every time I figure out how to fix something I could have never designed in the first place. The more I get things right, the better I feel, but it is all illusion. I might fix something by luck, or by replacing anything remotely related. I rely a lot on experience.

As much as I know, there is so much more I do not know. If I were an engineer, I would only know different things (and I would not know much of what I now know.) Given the amount of knowledge there is today, you would be safe to assume everyone you meet an ignoramus on everything.

As great as America is, how much are we getting wrong without realizing it? Nature has a way of helping us see our insignificance, but if she doesn't kill us all the remaining few will shrug it off and cast their votes for American Idol. Collectively, we are dumb-shit know-it-alls.

No one can know everything, but politicians pretend they do. They aren't very good at faking logical deductions, but they know a lot of big words and hire people who know how to write re-election speeches. Who better to represent a fool than a bigger one?

Any expert who thinks he fully understands his subject is due a rude awakening. You might know a lot more than the next guy, but there is something you have overlooked, guaranteed. Google hubris.

If none of us really understands what he is doing, how can we avoid disaster? The answer is, we can't.

This may explain the existence of the insurance industry...

We can minimize our disasters by doing nothing, but where is the fun in that? The facts are that little Junior has to visit Grandma and that will take gasoline, diapers and a large bottle of Dad's favorite alcohol. People do stuff they have to do and then accidents happen. Unavoidable.

As a society, we have to ask the difficult question,“What happens when things go wrong?” We ask, but we can't know the answer because the possibilities are endless. Mr. Murphy handles wrongness.

If we stop thinking we're infallible, maybe we'll stop doing things that nearly kill us – like drilling a hole in the bottom of the sea further down than we can swim.

FREEDOM

I am in a lot of trouble with the IRS. Consequently, I often imagine myself arguing before a nameless, faceless minion of the Money Cabal known as a judge: (call this a dream for now)

Your Honor, (emphasis on YOUR,) you are welcome to all the Federal Reserve Notes you desire from me. They are nothing but Get Out of Jail Free cards, anymore. I want no part of them. They are not money as I have come to understand money.

These notes represent everything I abhor. War. Pestilence. Poverty. Their value comes only from the cheating of other people, and I choose not to cheat any longer.

What backs these notes is not the industry of a proud nation working to create wealth, but fear instilled by a criminal cabal bent on world domination. This money buys only the cooperation of fools who believe success is bought by murder and mayhem. Perhaps it is fitting that their reward diminishes with every passing day through the tyranny of inflation brought on by usury.

Take all of these notes and eat them. They are yours as always. They have never been mine, anyway.

Take back these notes and swallow them. I cringe from their existence. This is wealth purchased with the blood of innocents – I no longer desire such abominations. If you can draw sustenance from such filth, you are welcome to it. I can only vomit at what these counterfeits represent.

Give me instead something of real value. Let me bask in real wealth. Let me feel the sun on my face, the wind in my hair and know the love of those persons that are most important to me.

Take your scrip and eat it. See if it nourishes you. Toss it around and see how much work it does once everyone knows its deceit. There is no value in the fiat of usurpers, anyway. Take it and go.

Leave me be to create an accounting of honest labor. Allow me to trade in what is valuable and good. Leave me alone to discover the true nature of money as God intended it. Interest does not interest me.

Without you, there would be no taxes.

Without you, there would be no poverty.

Without you, there would be no war.

Your greed created this money and your greed will digest it. Once it's gone, I will be free.

AMERICAN NIGGER

Sometimes it's hard to find a word to say
to speak your mind, in an honest way.
Maybe my words, can't quite describe
the way things are now planet-wide.

They want to say that everything's OK.
And yet we know that it just ain't so.
How do I know? Did the Bible tell me so?
Well, I don't know, but I know it's so.

I want to scream till it all goes away!
But it gets bigger and bigger and bigger,
till I'm just an American Nigger...

I worked my life for a little pay.
And I was told I was on my way.
But now I find my path has swayed
and all I owned is the bank's today.

I want to scream till it all goes away!
But it just gets bigger and bigger,
And I'm just an American Nigger...

The new improved American Nigger no longer
comes in any skin color so long as it is black.

American Niggers are docile and compliant.

American Niggers are very productive.

American Niggers are cost-effective.

American Niggers are a great investment opportunity!

MORE'S LAW

Monday, July 12, 2010

This thort is a response to:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100713/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

Let's assume a perfect record for 30 years of oil exploration in the gulf. Forget the huge spill in 1979. Besides, that was the Mexicans. Thirty years ago Mexicans, to boot. Nix Ixtoc I.

Obviously, the big oil companies operate much safer now that we have huge, complicated deep water drilling platforms. How long has deep water drilling been going on?

More importantly, how many deep water wells have been dug into the Gulf of Mexico? Can't seem to find that number. The moratorium proposed by Obama affects 30 currently drilling or planned (5) wells. How many drilled now?

I have heard there are 30,000 wells in the gulf, and I will assume 10% are deeper than I'd like to drill. (Think scuba divers fixing stuff.) Perhaps 10,000 deep wells (as I've defined them, not the "official" more than 1000ft.)

10,000 to 1 might be a good guess on the odds of a major catastrophe (actually, we're beyond major.) Figuring there were 10,000 wells drilled without catastrophe, if the next one fails (as it did) that's only 10,000 to 1.

Government regulators may have confused themselves by all the new-fangled technology disguised as backup systems, administrative controls and safety measures – but ultimately multiple layers of complication only really multiplied the chance of catastrophic failure. That's the way of sophisticated stuff. You might call it the "More Moving Parts" theory or perhaps More's Law (apologies to Moore.)

If you make stuff more complicated, you multiply the ways it can fail (catastrophically.) Engineers can anticipate certain failures, but multiple failures generate symptoms geometrically. Suppose you suddenly went deaf. Now suppose you suddenly went deaf, blind and dumb. Get the picture?

Ixtoc I was drilled in 160 feet of water. It was the biggest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico before our current disaster. In retrospect, I believe we'll find the Mexican damage was insignificant compared to what is still happening now.

These fools have threatened all life on Earth. Isn't it time for real change?

Interesting reading:

11 July 2010:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/211888-Gulf-of-Mexico-has-many-deepwater-wells

30 April 2010 (10 days into spin.):
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/deepwater_horizon_secret_memo.html

Info on the Mexican spill: (Ixtoc I oil spill):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

Dead People Walking

If the relief wells now being drilled by BP do not work, we may all well be unknowingly dead. Extinction of the human race (and all other forms of life as we know it) is the ultimate risk.

I know you don't want to hear this, who does? Wishing for the best or ignoring reality won't work. If the wells don't work, this well will dump toxic crap for years and years and years – until the pressure differential equalizes. Well, maybe a nuke could fix this, maybe. Fifty-fifty chance at best.

So, the truth is, it may be too late for any words I or anyone can write. Wordsmiths can't argue with Mother Nature. No matter how much propaganda governments belch, they can't dismiss a problem that threatens the very survival of the earth itself. We can't tax the oil away. We can't legislate away the health issues associated with this man-made disaster.

I guess I could go on and on about how if only I were in charge of MMS I would have never signed off on ANY underwater drilling...Is there an effective plan to stop catastrophic blowouts in even 200 feet of water? Prove it, if you think so...MAYBE (maybe) we can deal with something like this on land.

The government and their apologists tell us they know how to run everything while in fact they know nothing about what is important. If they had a clue about what is important to real people, the government would have never allowed private banking to control our money or corporations to write our laws. How did we allow such corruption to rule our world?

I don't think the wells will work. In fact, I expect the “relief” drillers to explode much as Deepwater Horizon did. Initial reports put the PSI on this well at 165,000 which is about 10,000 times what current technology can contain. Two wells won't relieve this. Even mainstream media has started to admit the PSI on the wellhead is 20,000 to 70,000 PSI. Can two wells contain this?

Even if the new wells don't blowout, will the weight of mud or cement overcome the pressure in the original well? Can they even find the original well if the casing is gone (no, no magnetics.) I think if the wells don't blow, it will only be because they don't intercept the pressure (miss casing.)

Somebody has to say this. Our governments no longer represent their people. Everybody “in charge” is bought off. Everybody knows how screwed up things are, I've got little to add here on that problem.

This thing is out of control already, I think. Prove me wrong or right in mid August...

Money as Credit

Money, as it is advertised and sold today, is a confidence game, run by an international cartel of con men.

Money measures wealth, the same as inches measure distance or ounces measure weight. And yet, an inch today is the same length as it was in 1913, but a dollar is not. Why?

Ben Bernanke agrees with Ron Paul that inflation is really a tax, but neither fellow ever tells us what really drives inflation.

Pretend for a moment there is no money except ten dollars that I just created (out of thin air) because you want to borrow it. You agree to repay me $1 per month for one year. Where do you get the last two dollars? You borrow again, of course!

Money created at interest can never be repaid simply because no money is ever created to pay the interest. A worldwide financial crises is the inevitable result of snowballing interest.

The problem is beyond the scope of web comment, so I urge everyone to Google "mathematically perfected economy."

Interest on money was once called usury but that word has been redefined by the money powers to mean exorbitant interest. I'd like to redefine usury as simply cheating.

Fine print is cheating. Misleading advertising is cheating. Overvaluing real estate is cheating. Underpaying employees is cheating. Demanding more payment than value is cheating.

Money is debt created by credit. Whose credit creates it? The borrower's of course. Banks are quick to say your credit is no good so no loan, right? Everyone agrees money is actually created by credit then, right? If it is your credit, then it should be your money! Logically, we should all be lawfully able to print our own money. Obviously, that wouldn't work very well, so our governments print our money for us.

Economics is just a lot of doublespeak by cheaters that want you to do their work for nothing. Most of their work is forcing other people to obey their rules or suffer painfully. War?

Everything really boils down to the Golden Rule, the same as as I was taught in Sunday School. Stop cheating. Play fair. All the stuff we teach Kindergartners, isn't it?

Christ was crucified for the same idea 2000 years ago.

Doomsday Oil Leak

Nearly two months after the blowout and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, no one has been able to give a definitive estimate of the scope of the disaster. The government and BP have consistently low-balled the amount of oil escaping. On April 23rd, three days after the blowout, there was no reported leak at all. Soon, the estimate was placed at 1,000 barrels per day and then upped every ten days or so until now the official flow rate is now about 60,000 barrels per day. A barrel of oil is 42 US gallons.

Finding accurate and timely information about the leak has been frustrating to say the least.

BP says they have no idea how big a field they've tapped. However, the last Gulf well DWH drilled was to world record depth and BP announced to shareholders one of the biggest reserves ever located, estimated larger than 3 billion barrels. No doubt BP had high hopes for this well also.

Since the official information on the leak is questionable and sparse, the interwebnets are predictably filled with visions of apocalypse. I've heard of everything from fiery hurricanes to a massive sea floor collapse caused by the detonation of a small nuclear bomb. However, government officials have already denied any plans to “blow up the gulf.”

One prediction (attributed to government scientists) has the sea water displacing the leaking oil in the reservoir being vaporized by high temperature and the subsequent explosion causing an 80 ft tsunami that kills everyone for miles inland.

My personal favorite is for the oil to accumulate until it covers the entire gulf and then bursts into a giant ball of flame that will only extinguish when the atmosphere runs out of oxygen.

Now, I don't know how long it would take a 615,000 square mile inferno to deplete enough oxygen to kill us all, but I did run a few numbers on how much oil is needed to coat the gulf an inch thick. My answer: about 255 billion barrels of oil would cover the entire gulf with an inch of crude.

That's a little less oil than the assumed reserves of Saudi Arabia. It is highly doubtful, but not impossible, that the leaking reservoir holds billions of barrels. Still, it won't take an inch of oil to create an environmental disaster of unimaginable proportion. A particularly thick oil slick is only 80 microns deep, at least according to Wikipedia.

Dividing 255 billion barrels by 80,000 we arrive at about 3.2 million barrels of oil to thickly slick the entire Gulf of Mexico. That's about 135 million gallons, or about how much the government now admits has already spilled! That's two months of two million gallons a day, folks.

Of course what is gushing out of this hole in the bottom of the sea is not refined oil, but a nasty conglomeration of mud, rock, oil and gas – about 100 parts gas to one part muck by most reports. I haven't dared to calculate the impact of so much gas being released into the air. Most of the yucky stuff appears to be suspended under the water – finding neutral buoyancy according to its specific gravity. The dispersant BP is adding enhances this effect. Compared to a giant blowtorch, keeping the oil underwater is probably a good thing.

Now there are reports of the well casing leaking far below the surface, with oil snaking up through the rocks and emerging from the seabed around the wellhead. In fact, there are videos taken by BP's submersibles that appear to show oil leaking directly from cracks on the sea bottom.

The big plan is still to wait until August when two relief wells will be finished. However, extreme pressure readings were recorded on Deepwater Horizon before the blowout so there is no guarantee that any relief well will not be met with the same fiery fate. I guess we'll know more in August.

While we wait, President Obama finally officially acknowledged the problem with his very first address from the Oval Office. Calling BP reckless and demanding the company pay billions of dollars in restitution, he promised more government regulation over big oil while conveniently forgetting the regulations already in place had been bypassed and ignored by the government itself.

His only proposed solution to the disaster? Prayer. I'm not kidding, he ended his speech by urging us all to pray our way out of an oily mess created by greed, hubris and indolence.

God, save us from these idiots.