Leslie Fish's Blog, page 2

A PERSPECTIVE COMPARISON

This is in answer to certain political questions I've been asked lately.

Think about it this way.  You come home from a weekend away and find that a homeless bum has moved into your house in your absence.  He’s used your food, your water, your electricity, your heating, and stolen a few items here and there.  What’s more, when you politely offer to let him leave before you call the police, he insists that he has a perfect right to be there.  Why?  Because while you were gone he swept the floor and did the laundry and even washed the dishes.  Also, because – he claims – his great-great-great grandfather used to live here, so he’s got a right to the land, and the house, and everything in it.  What’s more, he wails, he’ll absolutely die – of hunger, or cold, or something – if you throw him out. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast him out? 

Now let’s pull back the focus and look at a larger scale.  You find that a bunch of uninvited people have sneaked into your country, have used a lot of your public (taxpayer-funded) services and stolen quite a few items here and there.  What’s more, they insist that they have a perfect right to be there because they’ve done a lot of menial labor cheaply.  Also, because their great-great-great grandparents used to rule this land, they have a perfect right to the land today and everything that’s in it.  What’s more, they wail, they’ll absolutely die of poverty if you send them back to Mexico. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast them out? 

Now let’s pull in closer.  You discover that, despite your precautions, you’re pregnant.  The embryo is leaching nutrients out of your blood, bones and organs, and threatens your health with continued, and increasing, physical stress.  Finally, it threatens your life – millions of women have died in childbirth – if it continues to stay.  Various advocates insist that you must leave the embryo where it is because it’s your “duty”, because – simply by being a “person” (though it isn’t, yet) it has a perfect right to use your body, and because it will die if you have it removed from your uterus. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast it out? 

Yes, ultimately they arethe same problem.  

--Leslie <;)))><  

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH (from Libertarian Enterprise, 7/17/22)

Note:  I don't usually reprint whole articles by someone else, but this one deserves it.
--by Eric Oppen  -- ravenclaweric@gmail.com
"It looks like yet another of my predictions has come true. As I thought they would, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade, returning the decision on whether, and under which circumstances, abortion should be legal to the several states’ legislatures. That is, in my opinion, where it should have rested from the beginning.

"While I am in favor of legalized abortion, I did not and do not think that the courts have any business overriding the will of the voters as expressed through their elected representatives, save only in cases where the Constitution was violated by the legislation passed. I can find nothing in the Constitution expressly allowing abortion, nor forbidding it. At the time Roe vs. Wade was decided, many states had laws on their books forbidding abortion.

"For better or worse, many people, women as well as men, equate abortion to infanticide. Others, particularly at first, disliked having their state laws overturned by unelected judges. As time went on, the ones who objected to judicial overreach more or less reconciled themselves to the situation, but the ones who thought abortion was murder did not go away. The evangelical resurgence in the late 1970s and early-to-middle 1980s infused new life and strength into the anti-abortion movement.

"Ever since Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court has been captive to that decision. Presidents from both parties have selected candidates for the Court based on how their known or suspected views of abortion concur with that president’s party line. Candidates thought to be anti-abortion have undergone severe grilling and screaming protests from pro-abortion fanatics, and sometimes have been prevented from ascending to the Court.

"With Roe vs. Wade gone, the pro-choice people are going to have to get on top of their game. For many years, they’ve been able to shelter behind the Supreme Court, not needing to keep their political skills sharp and toned. Meanwhile, the other side has not been idle by any means. They’ve come up with many angles of attack, and tried law after law to get around the Supreme Court. No matter how often they’ve been rebuffed, they haven’t given up. Those people could give the Terminator a few lessons in sheer bloody-minded persistence.

"If I were advising the pro-choice people, there are a few pro tips I’d give them.

"First: Tone down the shrillness and quit exaggerating! I’m far, far from the only person who remembers what it was like before the Sacred, Holy Decision was handed down, and it was nothing at all like the Handmaid’s Tale! Or Taliban Afghanistan, or the ayatollahs’ Iran, for that matter. Exaggerating the real problems inherent in a ban on abortions does not help your case.

"While I’m on the subject: Ditch the damn Handmaid’s Tale costumes! Your obsession with that stupid, stupid book and the equally-stupid movie and TV series derived from it does not make people take you more seriously. There’s a time and a place for cosplay, and that time and place is at SF cons and other such costume-friendly venues. One of these days I plan to write an essay detailing all the ways in which that book should have stayed forever unpublished. The fact that it did, and apparently has never been out of print, while far worthier works by better authors are snubbed by publishers and languish in their authors’ hard drives and dresser drawers is proof of the injustice of life.

"Second: Get a grip! In a good few states, abortion’s a protected right in the state constitutions, so your work’s half-done already. Just because the Supremes handed this decision back to the several states does not mean that it’ll immediately be outlawed from sea to shining sea. This is a political setback, not the end of the universe. In 1964, ignorami thought conservatism was utterly finished after Barry Goldwater’s inevitable rout at the polls. And we all know what happened later, don’t we? That wasn’t the end. It was a beginning. Treat this the same way.

"One bright spot is that a lot of the states with sweeping anti-abortion laws on the books passed those laws more as an attempt to appease the anti-abortion fanatics, counting on Roe vs. Wade to make them forever moot. Now that Roe vs. Wade is gone, they’re going to have to face a lot of people (yes, even in the reddest red states) that won’t be happy about this situation at all.

"Third: Quit stereotyping your opponents! You spend a lot of time fighting an enemy that exists far more in your own stupid heads than in reality---and try engaging with the other side. I’ve had a lot to do with those people, and honestly, by and large, they are not the foaming religious fanatics you seem to think they are. They don’t think The Handmaid’s Tale is a blueprint for an ideal society any more than anybody else would. As a matter of fact, I’ve known anti-abortion atheists. How do you explain those?

"For that matter, how do you explain that there are a lot of women who are as passionately opposed to abortion as you are passionately in favor of it? Pro-choice women love taunting anti-abortion men with “Keep your laws off my body!” and “If you don’t have a uterus, you don’t have a right to an opinion!” but these women are as female as they are. They were the backbone of the anti-abortion movement, and are, if anything, as fanatical as the Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers.

"I think that if both sides could manage to get their shrieking all-or-nothing fanatics under control, we could hammer out a compromise that would make most people happy, or at least, reasonably content. If you actually read Roe vs. Wade, it does not confer a blanket blessing on all abortions, right up to the moment of birth.

"Up till about 2016, things were at a state of equilibrium. A lot of politicians would posture for the voters by ranting and raving against abortion, promising to pass sweeping abortion bans to save “the babies,” all the while knowing that they’d never really have to answer to their pro-choice constituents for those laws in any significant way. Roe vs. Wade had been settled precedent for quite some time, and showed no signs of being overturned soon, if at all.

"Then, in a surprise upset victory, Donald Trump won the presidency, shocking, stunning, and disappointing the feminists who’d set their hearts on Hillary, First of her Name, becoming our first female president. In their outrage and fury, they cast about for ways to show their displeasure and punish those flyover-country hicks who dare to claim citizenship, to vote, and to think they, and not the bicoastal elite, should be allowed to select a president. And they lit on the abortion laws.

"Laws about abortion in many deep-blue states were already very lenient, but after 2016, there was a spate of laws extending the legality of the procedure literally almost up to the moment of birth, if not that moment itself. This infuriated the anti-abortion forces, who responded by passing laws of their own criminalizing abortion far more sweepingly than had been the case before the Sacred, Holy Decision. In some cases, these laws even criminalized leaving the states where they were passed to get abortions in less-extreme states. (How this was to be enforced, I do not know.)

"The inevitable court challenges began. Smug and secure, the pro-abortion side put their faith in the Supreme Court, knowing of its reluctance to overturn earlier verdicts by its predecessors. Then they noticed that as president, Donald Trump was actually trying to keep his promises! (And here I’d always thought that the sight of a politician actually doing what he’d promised to do was one of the signs of the iminent end of the world!) He was appointing judges, just like he had some right to---like he was the President of the United States or something like that! How dare he?

"Then a vacancy appeared on the Supreme Court. The pro-abortion forces were already uneasily aware that the Supreme Court was poised on a knife’s edge. Every GOP president had taken advantage of every chance they got to put Justices on the court that were, or were thought to be, reliably anti-abortion. Those Presidents had not, themselves, necessarily been anti-abortion themselves, but they answered to a party that had been dominated by that viewpoint ever since Ronald Reagan’s ill-thought-out open welcome to the evangelicals disappointed in Jimmy Carter. (P.J. O’Rourke commented at the time: “Even Nixon had some discretion about which clergymen he’d let get close to him in public.”)

"When the Orange Antichrist/Literally-Hitler made his nomination, the eruption of outrage echoed off the vault of Heaven. “Protesters,” many of them in idiotic Handmaid’s Tale costumes, stormed the Capitol (with impunity, need I add?) and did their utmost to disrupt the hearings. To add insult to injury, they dug up some woman with a vague tale of having been groped by the candidate at a teenage party decades before.

"The incident, if it had even happened (the accuser could find no corrobration, and could not even remember the date and place of the “attack,” which hurt her credibility enormously) did not remotely rise to the level of a rape. But to hear the pro-abortion side, the candidate had viciously ravaged this innocent young ewe lamb. However, it wasn’t enough to keep the candidate off the Supreme Court.

"Fear for their precious Roe vs. Wade was probably the spur that goaded the Democrats to cheat their way to victory in 2020, but it was too late. One of the state-level abortion bans had been, as expected, stopped by the courts, and its supporters had appealed, eventually reaching the Supreme Court. And now here we are today.

"This endless quarreling and feuding has deeply scarred American society, and I heartily wish that the Supremes had decided differently in 1973. And I say that as someone who is, personally, of the opinion that abortion is no real business of the government.

"In my opinion, the pro-choice people should have used the fifty years’ grace Roe vs. Wade gave them to get constitutional amendments passed. If not on the federal level, then on the state level. Those are much more secure, and at the Federal level, they cannot be overturned by the Supreme Court. I do think that if they kept their demands reasonable they could garner a lot of unexpected support. I used to be active with the GOP in my area, and I noticed that a lot of them, men and women alike, were privately not nearly as foaming-at-the-mouth anti-abortion as the stereotypes would suggest. But the other side would prefer to engage a phantom that exists mostly in their own minds than actually deal with reality as it exists."

...To which I can only add: Amen!   --Leslie <;)))><

 

Nose to Nose

As of right now -- 7:15 PM Arizona time -- the vote-counting is still going on, but the Senate race has been called:  Mark Kelly wins, which isn't surprising;  he's done well for Arizona citizens, especially when they've been bullied by the federal govt.  The only surprise there is that Blake Masters actually got a few thousand votes;  he's obviously not just a bigot but a nut-case.  What else can you call someone who claims that abortion is "a religious sacrifice" and "demonic"?  We have to wonder why the GOP chose him for a candidate at all.

The only answer I can think of is the "ideological candidate" game.  When a political party knows that it's definitely going to lose a particular race, it puts up a candidate from the far fringes of the party's ideology.  The idea is to win over the brand-new, young, idealistic -- and gullible -- voters, so they'll be loyal to the party whether they win or not.  Apparently, the GOP really thought that the majority of their voters were opposed to on-demand abortion.  I daresay they know better now -- especially since so many states passed laws, and even constitutional amendments, protecting women's bodily autonomy -- and passed by public referendum, yet.  Actual vote-count shows that 71% of all Americans want to keep the right to abortion.  With that many states keeping that right, abortion bans are doomed to failure.  Any woman unwillingly pregnant, even if she lives in a state with ferocious abortion bans, need only hop on a bus and ride a few hours to another state.  Alaska and Hawaii are abortion-rights states.  All that the anti-abortion crowd can do is try to persuade women not to get abortions;  they can no longer force.  It's a lost cause, and the Republicans were fools to place any hope in it.

As for the other races, the results are tightly divided between parties.  In the governors' elections, the Democrats have 23 wins and the GOP has 25.  Arizona will probably choose Katie Hobbes, Democrat, and Alaska will get Mike Dunleavy, Republican.  In the House of Reps, the Republicans are leading with 211 seats to the Dems' 202;  Alaska and Maine will probably go Democrat, Arizona and Oregon GOP, and Colorado and California are anyone's guess.  Still, it looks as if the Republicans will get the majority -- just barely.  

The real nail-biter is in the Senate.  With Arizona choosing Kelly and Nevada going for Cortez, there are now 48 seats for both parties -- but Alaska, which has two Republican candidates (and how that happened is a story in itself), will definitely give the GOP a 49th seat.  That means control of the Senate will all depend on Georgia.  If the run-off election -- three weeks away now -- goes Democrat, which it seems likely to do, the Senate will be in a dead heat again: 49 seats to 49.  

That means that those two oddball Independent senators will hold the swing votes for control of the Senate.  You'll see both parties courting them like Penelope's suitors.  Personally, I just love the idea of third-party senators calling the shots.  That will break up politics-as-usual like nothing else.  Gloriosky!  Everybody else may be gnawing their nails for the next three weeks, but I'll be giggling.

Of course, the big question is what turned the expected Republican "Red Wave" into a trickle.  The Democrats, of course, are blaming it all on Trump, claiming that his endorsement of candidates was a kiss of death rather than a help.  If this were true it would mean that Trump has become as big a spoiler as David Duke, who has made his money for the past 20 years and more by offering to dirty any candidate's reputation by endorsing them.  But that would also mean that Trump has kept his campaign promise -- to "drain the swamp", for that he's certainly done -- just not the way anybody expected.  But Democrats can't be trusted on this subject;  despite all the barriers raised against him, they're terrified that he'll run for POTUS (or any office with pardon-power) in 2024 -- and win.

In fact, what chewed into GOP hopes for this election was the abortion question.  Exit polls revealed that US voters' first concern was indeed inflation and the economy, but abortion was the second.  By its very nature, it's a subject which only the fringes of both parties will even talk -- let alone squawk -- about, but it's clearly something which at least half the population, the female half, cares deeply about.  Male pundits may warble about the "sanctity of life" and how "human life begins at conception", but the women whose bodies those fetuses are growing in are not so sanguine.  All but the most naive know well what ordeal they're facing.  Any woman who doesn't already love the creature in her uterus is not going to risk her life, her health, her freedom, her treasure, or the welfare of her other children for it.

This is what the GOP overlooked, to its loss.

--Leslie <;)))><    

     

 

    

EUPHEMISM, EUPHEMISM

 

A “euphemism” is a softer, vaguer word for some topic that upsets or embarrasses the speaker and his/her friends.  Example: Putin’s various terms for what his troops are currently doing in Ukraine;  he’ll use any word but “war”.  Older example: all birds, male and female, will “roost” – but “rooster” was invented to replace the word “cock”, whose other application is obvious.  Likewise, “passed on” and “departed” are less-distressing terms for “died” and “dead”.  Not surprisingly, words that collect the most euphemisms are terms for sex, death, and politics.  Likewise not surprisingly, political terms generate euphemisms the fastest.  In fact, political – or politicized – euphemisms proliferate so fast that it’s hard to keep up with them.

Personally, I hate euphemisms;  they make lying too easy.  Therefore, in the spirit of honesty, I’ll list here – in no particular order -- a lot of the latest and most fashionable euphemisms along with their accurate definitions.

“People of Color” – non-Whites.

“Assault Weapon” – anything that looks like a military gun.

“Presentism” – a belief that only modern (post-1700) history matters, and only if it can be used to guilt-trip money and/or political power out of people, primarily Whites. 

“Hate Speech” – any form of speech that anyone, anywhere, hates.

“Progressive” – any policy that opposes anything listed in the Bill of Rights.

“Camel Toe” – women’s genitals.

“Junk” – men’s genitals.

“Booty” – anyone’s ass/arse.

“Twerking” – wagging one’s ass/arse.

“Grooming” – seduction, particularly of children.

“Zionist” – Jew.

“Palestinian” – Arab.

“Gender-Affirming Care” – Castration, surgical reshaping and hormone-dosing of a child or adult to make him/her resemble a member of the opposite sex.

“Gender-Fluid” – Queer.

“Racism” – Any argument or action contrary to the wishes of anybody with a skin at least one shade darker than the subject’s. 

“Violence” – Any criticism of anyone with a skin at least one shade darker than the subject’s.

“Harassment” – Any criticism of a politician, academic, bureaucrat or business executive. 

“Minor-Attracted Person” – Babyfucker. 

“Pro-Life” – Opposed to abortion, birth control, and women’s economic equality with men.

“Pro-Choice” – Not opposed to abortion, birth control, or women’s economic equality with men.

“Drag Queen” – A peculiar man who gets a thrill out of mocking women by dressing and acting like the most blatant form of female whore.

“Anti-Racism” – Anti-White racism.

“Right-Wing Extremist” – Republican voter.

“Traditional Values” – Christian, Jewish or Muslim religious fundamentalism.

“Anti-Fascist” – Parlor Pink.

“Internet Security” – censorship.

            And of course new ones are being invented every week.  Please feel free to add them to the list as they become visible.

 

--Leslie <😉))>< 

 

Population, Propaganda and Just Plain Lies

Let's start with some facts.  In the year 1500 AD, the beginning of the Age of Exploration for Europe and the middle of the Ming conquests in Asia, the best estimate of the whole world's population was 450 million.  That's million, with an "M".  

A century later, when Spain and Portugal had conquered and colonized (Oooh!  Oooh!  Eeeh!  Ick! Evil-evil!) and settled all of South and Central America, and a good-sized portion of North America, as well as slices of Africa and Asia -- and China (Crickets.) had conquered and colonized most of Asia, the 1600 AD global population reached 500 million.  

Over the next century the European powers -- Spanish, Portuguese, British, French and Dutch -- expanded their settlements in the Americas.  China suffered various setbacks;  the Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Qing, who nonetheless expanded Chinese conquests and fought a few battles with the Russian empire and the Dutch.  By 1700 AD the world's population reached approximately 610 million. 

That was enough for Europe to launch the Industrial Revolution, which -- among other things -- created improvements in farming, fishing, food storage, transportation and medicine, which spurred population growth.  It also led eventually to the American Revolution.  In Asia, the Chinese Qing emperors consolidated their hold over more than half of the continent and settled down to rule it efficiently.  In 1800 the world's population came to 1 billion, for the first time in history.

In the next century, with growing advances in the sciences, the global population doubled.  The 1900 estimate for the world's population was 2 billion, and it took off from there.  Throughout the 20th century the population didn't just expand but exploded.  According to the UN, the 2000 AD global population was over 6 billion.

Today it's 7.8 billion, and it's expected to reach 8 billion in another five years.  That's billion, with a "B".  

That, to be blunt, is too damn many.  Already our social systems and the environment are showing signs of stress.  Over 270 million people in the last 20 years have fled their home countries to anywhere else, where they have often caused a severe economic burden.  Viral plagues, like Covid, spread with unstoppable speed.  Our land and seas are filling with garbage, our fresh water supplies are running short, and our farmable topsoil is badly in need of restoration.  Regardless of how much climate change is natural and how much is due to human interference, its effects are becoming serious;  we need to stop adding to it.  Besides remediation methods, of which there are many, we need to cut our numbers down.

It doesn't take a university education to see this, and a lot of people all over the world know it.  This is why, over the past 30 years, people in general have been marrying later and having fewer children -- regardless of what their preachers or families might say.  Never mind losses due to wars, plagues and famines.  Population increase in those same decades has fallen from 1.56% to 1.05%, and looks to fall still further -- though it may not reach zero in time to prevent that 8 billion population mark.

You would think that politicians and political influencers would be pleased, and would encourage the trend.  China pursued its One Child Policy from 1980, hoping to cut its population down, and India has been pushing birth-control on its people since 1951.  

Ah, but you'd be wrong.  Elsewhere in the world politicians, preachers, and Captains of Industry have changed course and are wailing about their country's (or their religious congregation's) falling birth-rate.  Even China ended its One Child Policy in 2015 -- and announced it was allowing families to have up to three children in 2021.  Only India, which fears it will have the world's biggest population by 2030, is still pursuing its population-reduction plans.  We really have to wonder why.

China claims its reasons for the policy reversal are economic;  it has too many old people living on retirement plans and too few young people in the work-force to support them.  It's ironic that a culture that used to value old people for their knowledge and skills now considers them only useless mouths.  Various pundits in the US and Europe make the same excuse:  too many elders draining the retirement plans and too few workers paying into those funds.  Cynical historians have pointed out that when the US established the Social Security system in 1935 retirement age was set at 65 because most Americans didn't live beyond 70.  Nowadays, in over 100 countries, people live late into their late 70s or 80s. 

Examined closely, this argument doesn't hold water.  Yes, people today are living longer, but they're also keeping their health -- and their jobs -- longer.  Also, older workers tend to be more skilled and more productive than younger ones, and therefore pay more into the various retirement funds -- which is why Social Security has raised its official retirement age to 67.  The age of the average citizen in China is 38.4 years, almost exactly the same as the US's 38.5.  In India it's 28.7.  Nobody's population is unprofitably old.

A more likely reason is the nasty business of covert warfare by population imperialism.  We've all seen the effects of the Arab countries sending their excess populations to Europe and the US, often with explicit orders to outbreed the locals and further the cause of jihad.  The current administration of Mexico began its reign by emptying out the country's prisons and trucking the now-ex-cons across the border into the US.  China, which has always been better at economic and propaganda warfare than military expertise, has spent the last two decades sending record numbers of its spies/"students" to the US to spread useful social/political fashions and to learn American scientific and business processes.  It's also sent business chiefs to buy up large swaths of American farmland.  There's evidence that Chinese government agents are behind the organizing of "migrant convoys" from Central America into the US, and still more evidence that China developed and spread the Covid virus deliberately to cripple the western countries' economies and perhaps reduce their populations.  

The western countries have noticed this trend, and have begun taking various steps to limit immigration as well as "foreign influence".  Some have gone further, actively deporting Arab migrants and Chinese agents.  Right-wing political pundits, especially religious ones, are actively stumping to raise their own groups' populations by everything from opposing abortion and birth-control to creating panics about "fertility loss".  It's especially ironic to hear them quoting injunctions from the Old Testament which were first written for the express purpose of discouraging any form of sex that did not produce more babies -- therefore cannon-fodder -- for the tribe.  It's obvious that those who are aware of the population problem are determined that, whatever portion of the global population shrinks, it won't be theirs.

But the "leaders" aren't the people, and the Information Revolution has made total censorship impossible.  People can see for themselves what's happening and draw their own conclusions.  As the Covid wave recedes and the government lockdowns with them, societies are determinedly not returning to "normal".  In the US, working-age people are not returning to their old jobs, and not in expected numbers.  Neither are they so willing to give up legal abortions, let alone birth-control, as their assorted pundits expected.  In China, especially in the wake of the financial and housing fiasco, younger workers have taken up the fashion of "laying flat" -- neither breeding nor striving to work one iota more than they have to.  In Europe and Asia revolts against "green" policies and immigration rates have toppled more than one government.  A deep sense of cynicism has spread around the world, and with it a determination to breed less.  Whether this will affect population growth in time to prevent that 8 billion population mark is anyone's guess.

But if, in the next two years, we hear that the world's rate of population growth has dropped to zero or below, then we'll know.

--Leslie <;)))><      

 

 

  

Coming ‘Round Again

 

          As proof of how isolated we’ve gotten during the Lockdown, I learned just a few days ago that one of my oldest friends in fandom – Chuck Cady – died in August, and I discovered it only by accident.  Damn, damn, damn.  I know none of the details except that he died “of natural causes”, and was in a nursing home at the time.  Oh, the endless regrets that I hadn’t kept closer track of him, and his family, this whole past year! 

          The last time I talked to him was back in early December, when he called me out of the blue to ask how I was doing.  I was a little preoccupied with Rasty’s upcoming eye surgery, so I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.  Chuck mentioned that he was staying in a nursing home, and I didn’t even think to ask why.  He had an idea about me coming there to put on a concert for the patients and staff, and I thought it was a great idea;  I’d even bring some albums to sell and some books to give away.  The major problem was transportation, since his place was more than 50 miles east across the valley, and I had no idea how to get there.  We chewed over that for awhile, and I promised I’d call him back when I got something solid planned.  …How I wish now that I had.

          Just before he rang off, he asked me an odd question: “Les, what’s your opinion on reincarnation?”

          That knocked me a little off-balance, since I had a lot to say about the subject.  Not knowing what his opinion was, and not wanting to start a long argument, I only said: “I’ve done it.”

          That seemed to satisfy him, because he said only: “Thanks.  Stay well.” and hung up. 

          That was the last I ever heard from him, and I was soon distracted with my own household’s health problems and the upcoming holiday season and scattered relatives coming to visit.  Looking back now, I dearly wish I’d bothered to talk longer.  There was so much I could have said that I think he would have wanted to hear.  Never mind the two authentic hauntings I’ve seen;  I have good evidence that reincarnation is real.

          First, the best book on the subject is “Soul Survivor, The Reincarnation of a World War Two Fighter Pilot”, by Andrea and Bruce Leininger.  It’s the most detailed and documented case in modern (published in 2009) times, and there are just too many confirmed details in the story for it to be anything but an ironclad case for reincarnation.  Start there.

                                                 #       #       #

          And then there’s my own case. 

          Two more of my oldest friends in fandom, call them Keith and Nancy, I met shortly after I came out to California and started working for Off Centaur Publications.  I mentioned that I’d worked with a psychic research group back in Chicago, and they showed interest in what Nancy called “esoteric studies”, so I taught them what I’d learned. 

          First and most basic, of course, was practice in meditation: getting oneself deliberately into the Alpha-brainwave state, wherein psychic phenomena begin to occur.  Next came grounding and centering: studying, while in Alpha-state, one’s exact position in local time and space, and then scanning one’s own body to check for conditions and possible health problems.  Then there’s going deeper: using breath control and heartbeat-timing to get deeper into Alpha state, and even into light Theta state, which normally we can reach only when asleep and dreaming.  After that comes projecting: while in that state, projecting one’s consciousness out into the surrounding local territory. 

          Nancy became good enough at this skill that, coming home from a convention one time, she accurately guided us down the freeway – predicting knots of traffic ahead and the distance to a much-needed rest-stop – while blindfolded.

          Then we got into controlled dreaming, and that’s when the weird stuff started happening. 

          The technique I’d learned for controlled dreaming is, when you go to sleep, first meditate down as far into Theta state as you can get;  then visualize what you want to explore in your dreams.  Hold that image in mind as you slip further down into deep Theta, and then sleep.  If successful, you’ll have vivid dreams which you’ll remember clearly when you wake up.  Take notes, and see if you can confirm them by research later.

          Keith wanted to explore the possibility of past lives, so I taught him the technique for that: get as deep into Theta as you can while still conscious, then visualize time like a river – a translucent river of calendar pages, with successive days, months, and years like beads on a string – and “feel” yourself as a bird-like form soaring over the river, flying upstream, looking down at the “water” for anything interesting.  He tried it, and reported success;  he had vivid dreams, which he remembered clearly on waking, and took notes.  What he reported to me was only: “Making progress.  See if you can do the same and confirm.  Check the Civil War era.  Let’s keep separate notes for awhile.”  So indeed I did, and got results.  We didn’t compare notes until we met next, some three months later.

          What Keith remembered was being a young infantry captain from Ohio, in Meade’s army during the Civil War.  While there, he met and began falling for a young nurse in the nursing corps attached to the army’s medical office.  At one point he rescued her from the unwanted attentions of a drunken soldier, after which he loaned her his pistol for protection.  They were both present at Gettysburg;  he was stuck, with a leg-wound, in the medical tent behind the ridge where Meade had set his cannons.  At one point, when the cannons began firing a steady fusillade, she had to threaten him with that same pistol to make him stay put and recover, while she promised to go see what the noise was about and come report to him.  After the battle, the head of the medical unit was replaced by a male doctor who had “no truck with the females”, dismissed the women and sent them home.  The war ended a few months later and then-Keith, having gained the nurse’s name and address, came looking for her.  He found her, gave her a whirlwind courtship, married her, and took her out west with him to California.  They lived there happily until they died, though she became somewhat notorious for driving her one-horse light carriage at high speeds on the public roads and carrying a pistol in public.

          What I remembered was being an unmarried daughter, named Arabella Bishop, of a horse-broker in Annapolis who became wealthy dealing horses to the Union army during the Civil War.  I was a fervent Abolitionist, impatient with doing nothing but waiting to get married while such momentous events were happening all around us, and when Clara Barton came to town and gave a lecture about the importance of sending qualified nurses to the troops, I was inspired to join her volunteer corps.  I persuaded Papa to loan me a wagon and two good horses, and took my maid – a Black freedwoman named Odessa – with me to transport goods to the front lines.  Once we caught up with the army we stayed there, tending the wounded, while I wrote excuses to Papa (and long letters to the rest of the family) and we both fell in love: Odessa with a Black corporal named Cato and I with a young captain from Ohio, named Hollings – who looked nothing like now-Keith but had the distinct “feel” of his personality.  Odessa and I learned to be quite competent at picking up wounded men, her at the head, me at the feet, and hoisting them into the wagon or out of it.  The doctors and other nurses were impressed.

          I also remembered Gettysburg: the slightly-swampy hollow behind the ridge where we set up the medical tents, the intermittent inflow of the wounded, the sporadic bark of the cannons and the almost-constant crackle of gunfire. And then Meade’s cannons started pounding hard and fast.  I didn’t remember threatening my wounded captain to make him stay put, but I remembered promising to find out what was happening, so Odessa and I drove the wagon up to the ridge between the cannons and looked down at the flat meadow below. At first all we saw was a boiling gray fog of gunsmoke at the far end of the field.  Then Odessa was killed by a stray bullet that struck her in the head.  As I bent over her I saw a vast motion in the meadow below, and realized it was a huge mass of Confederate soldiers coming toward us at a walk. 

          It was Pickett’s Charge.  I watched, frozen in disbelief, as fifteen thousand men walked across more than half a mile of open field, while cannon and rifle-fire chewed into them like rain washing away dust.  I’d never heard of nor imagined such a vast, almost mechanical, slaughter.  I watched until the charge ended, the firing ceased, and the cloud of smoke lifted -- revealing the meadow carpeted with bodies -- thinking that the world had changed forever if mass-killing like this was now possible.

          I remembered driving back to the medical tent in something of a daze, hearing Cato wailing over Odessa’s body, and going into the medical tent to report to my nearly-frantic captain: “They’re all dead.  Thousands of them.”  He wanted to see it for himself, but I assured him that no, he didn’t.  He rubbed a thumb across my cheek and commented that my face was gray with gunsmoke, and I began to cry.

          Shortly after that our chief doctor retired because of his own failing health and a younger doctor was sent out from Washington.  He disapproved of any females working so close to combat, and especially disapproved of “tender young ladies” being exposed to such hardships, so he dissolved our volunteer corps and sent us home.  I remembered a tearful farewell to my young captain, and him promising to come and see me in Annapolis.  He also insisted I keep his pistol, and a small bag of bullets, to keep me safe on the ride home.  I drove away, sure that the war would sweep him away from me, and I’d never see him again.

          I don’t remember the long drive back to Annapolis, but I remember arriving at our front door and everyone but Papa exploding out the door to welcome me home.  I found it amusing that Mama sent the butler to drive the wagon around to the stable-yard, when I’d been driving that wagon myself for months.  At first it was wonderful to have hot baths and clean clothes and good food every day, and very flattering to be the center of attention at luncheons and parties, where I told my war-stories and preached for improving the nursing corps, but after awhile I noticed that none of the local young bachelors came courting me the way they used to.  In fact, the local menfolk – including Papa – seemed a little afraid of me.  Perhaps it was the “mannish habits” I’d picked up in combat, or perhaps it was my custom of always wearing a cloth drawstring purse that contained my captain’s pistol and spare bullets.  In any case, I had little to do but take up the old round of home and church and visiting – and I began to grow bored.  The news that the war was over, and the ferocious celebrations that swept the city for days afterward, didn’t change my life much.

          Then one morning I was working in the kitchen, helping the cook construct pies, when the butler came running in dithering that there was a “Captain Hollings at the door, asking for Miss Arabella.”  I dropped everything I was doing and ran to the door, in my working apron, to meet him.  Yes, it was my Ohio captain, wearing a new dress uniform – walking with a cane and still limping a little – with a fancy two-horse carriage parked at the front door for all the neighbors to see.  I shamelessly threw my arms around him, and he returned the gesture, bumping his hand into the drawstring purse and its contents.  We had a fine laugh about that, and then I pulled him into the house to meet Papa – who was quite impressed.  So was the rest of the family, who couldn’t get enough of him, especially when he announced: “I’ve come to Annapolis to marry your daughter.”  When Mama asked, “How soon?”  He replied, “As quickly as possible.” 

          The next few days were a whirlwind of activity.  I used the excitement as excuse to get Hollings to take me to a rather famous restaurant in town, and even to the bar in the basement where unaccompanied ladies never set foot and accompanied ones only rarely.  I remember sitting at the bar (shocking!) with an offset fireplace at my back, ordering a cordial for myself while he ordered a Scotch, and the two of us trading sips of each other’s drinks.  I admitted that I was showing him off, and he didn’t mind a bit.

          We were married in our family church, where the yard was sadly filled with fresh graves.  If it wasn’t the social event of the season, it came close.

                                                 #       #       #

          So I and Keith and Nancy had these notes of vivid dreams that interlocked.  I asked Nancy if she was perturbed that I’d been married to her husband in a former life, but she only laughed and said: “You had him then;  I’ve got him now.” 

          The next step was to try and verify the dreams/memories, so we planned our next vacation-times and arranged to spend a week or so exploring.  First we went to Gettysburg, checked into a motel, and then went to tour the battlefield.  I’d visited it once before (in this life!) as a little kid, along with my parents.  What I chiefly remembered then were the big round tower with the huge painting all around the inside, and the cannons looking like dinosaurs in the mist.  This time the weather was bright and sunny, and of course everything looked smaller.  The cannons were only sleepy monuments.  The painting in the round tower looked dusty and dim, as if it needed cleaning and perhaps retouching. 

          We walked slowly over the battlefield, quickly identifying the ridge where Meade’s cannons had stood and the hollow behind it where the medical tents had been.  Back then it had been an open meadow;  now it was studded with foot-thick trees, but we both could still recognize the spot. 

          As we walked back to the car, Keith and I both slid on a patch of slippery grass and took a slight tumble, earning a wrenched knee and a sprained ankle respectively.  When we limped up to the car Nancy asked us what had happened, and Keith quipped, “We were wounded on the battlefield at Gettysburg,” and we played off that joke until our respective injuries healed.

          The next stop was Annapolis, and there things got weirder yet.  As we drove into the city I was startled at how clear the air was;  somehow I’d expected to see a gray haze of smoke hanging low over the town.  Keith likewise noticed that the town didn’t “smell right”;  he’d expected a pervasive smell of fish, smoke and horse manure.  We both noticed a sense of what I could only call “time pressure”, an almost physical weight of time that had passed and human events that had happened since the last time we’d come by this way. 

          We had two known physical targets to explore: that famous old restaurant and the old church where Hollings and Arabella had married, both now historical sites mentioned in the tourist guidebooks.  We went first to the restaurant to eat lunch, where we didn’t recognize anything in particular, but the feeling of time pressure was worse.  Keith, whose knee was now hurting seriously, elected to stay at the table while I and Nancy went exploring. 

We asked our waiter and found that, yes, there was a basement with a bar in it, that had been operational since before the Civil War.  Nancy leading, we headed for the stairs, which were quite narrow, and the steps somewhat small.  I remembered that people had been a bit smaller a century ago, so that made sense.  I also knew, and told Nancy as she went down the stairs ahead of me, that when she opened the door at the bottom she’d see the bar along the wall to the right and a small offset fireplace to the left.  Well, she reached the bottom of the stairs and opened the door, and sure enough, there was the bar to the right and a small offset fireplace – with a small wood-fire burning in it – to the left.  We ordered a drink apiece and added up the “confirmations” while Nancy took elaborate notes.

Next we went to the church, where the old grave-stones in the yard were now backed up by newer stones that faithfully copied the names and dates of the originals.  As we headed into the church, I knew that from the inside we’d find a stained-glass window showing the Good Shepherd with a badly-drawn lamb.  I also knewthat there were internal columns partly blocking the ends of the pews – because that’s where Arabella had sat on so many Sundays, at the far end of the pew, perched behind the column and glancing sideways at that window.  Likewise Keith knew that, at the other end of the pew, the top of the newel-post would squeak noisily if twisted a little.

Into the church we went, and promptly saw the internal columns.  I went to the far end of the pew and sat down, but saw that the window nearby was of a Victorian design and depicted a delicate angel;  obviously the old window had been replaced.  Keith went to the other end of the pew and cautiously twisted the top of the newel-post.  Sure enough, it squeaked -- loudly.  Nancy and I strolled through the rest of the church, looking for anything that would confirm the old memories, and we found an old office-space in the back.  Sure enough, the window there was old stained glass – and it depicted the Good Shepherd, carrying a badly-drawn lamb.  That window had been shifted to a less publicly-seen position when the new, artistic, Victorian window had been put in. 

I was surprised at how bright the window looked, and how very red the Shepherd’s robe was;  I remembered the window being darker and that robe being more of a purplish-maroon color.  Then another memory clicked, and I knew that back then people heated their homes and wash-water and cooked their meals over wood fires – either in fireplaces or, among the better-off families (like Arabella’s), iron wood-stoves.  This meant that the air was constantly full of smoke, the cloud I’d been expecting and part of the smell Keith had expected when we came into town.  That smoke constantly stained the outsides of houses – and windows.  It would easily have dimmed the church’s window and darkened the color of the Shepherd’s robe.  In fact, owning a white-painted house was something of a boast in those days, because it meant that the family had enough money to hire enough servants to wash all the windows and the walls of the house once a year.

We didn’t have the legal clout or resources to go look at the church’s records for any account of a wedding in 1865 of an Arabella Bishop to a Union army captain named Hollings.  Neither could we easily look at the town’s antique tax records and see if there were entries for a horse-broker named Bishop during the Civil War years.  Nonetheless, we found enough confirmation for the memories from those guided dreams to convince us.  Psychic phenomena are real, and reincarnation is real.

I wish I’d told Chuck that before he died.

 

--Leslie <😉))><                                          

              

 

               

A Double-Barreled Solution To Homelessness

 

Some of this I've said before, but there's new information about it.  Today Phoenix, of all places, has a "homeless community" -- what used to be called a hobo jungle -- not on its outskirts but in the middle of downtown.  Now the sixth-largest city in the US can join the previous five, and easily ten more, in having streets full of bums.  Congratulations.  Our cities weren't this bad off during the Great Depression.

It's useless to point out that a lot of these are illegal immigrants, allowed in by the millions thanks to certain politicians;  that's another whole story.  Likewise there's no use mentioning that these homeless aren't bums because of a lack of jobs;  the economy is recovering, and a lot of employers with entry-level jobs can't get people to fill them.  And there's no point in pointing out how many of these homeless beggars are homeless because they're drunks, druggies, and really mentally ill.  The point is, what do we do with the bums now that they're here?

There are two solutions with long histories, and we can revive both of them:  the county mad-house and the county poor-farm.  Seriously.

Sometime during the Reagan administration, the ACLU argued successfully to the Supreme Court that people who had committed no crime didn't deserve to be "involuntarily incarcerated" in lunatic asylums, no matter how crazy they were.  A lot of politicians took this as an opportunity to save public money -- for themselves.  They turned all the nonviolent lunatics out of the county hospitals, gave them prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs and addresses of local clinics where they could get more, turned them loose on the streets and let the old hospitals go to ruin.  The lunatics have been wandering loose ever since, and a lot of them are incapable of getting jobs -- or even Welfare -- finding housing and taking care of themselves.  Thanks loads, oh humane ACLU.  

So the first half of the solution is to create new county hospitals.  Given our current public-health situations, each hospital should have two major wings -- one a rehabilitation unit for alcoholics and other drug-addicts, and the other for people with genuine mental illnesses.  Between the two wings it should have the triage unit: a full-service clinic where any bum brought in can be fed, washed, de-loused, examined and diagnosed.  Once diagnosed they can be divided into the addicts, the lunatics, and the just plain down on their luck.  Then send the addicts to the rehab wing, the lunatics to mental wing, and the just-plain-down-on-their-luck can go to the other institution -- the county poor-farm.  Once the hospital is up and running, send out the police to sweep up the bums off the street and bring them to the diagnostic center of the hospital.

(Side-note: a lot of these homeless beggars have property -- pitiful tents, at least -- and often pets, usually dogs -- and won't willingly be parted from them.  The hospital must also have a fumigation area for disinfecting the property and the pets, a storage area where the patients' property can be kept safely, and sturdy chain-link pet-runs along the back of the first floor where the pets can likewise be kept safely, and the patients can have access to them.  Any patients who are discharged can then take their property and pets with them.)

As for the poor-farm: build it in the shape of an elongated city block, with small but sturdy basic houses -- with car-ports and small back yards -- all around its borders.  The corner lots can be used for each farm's office/police station, tool/repair shop, local clinic, and community dining-hall/meeting-hall.  All the land in the center will be the actual farm.  Anyone broke and homeless -- and cleared by the hospital -- can come to the farm, apply at the office, and get assigned one of the houses -- in exchange for pledging to work a certain number of hours per week on the farm.  The working hours should be short enough to allow time during the working-week for the tenants to go out and hunt for real jobs elsewhere.

The land for the farm itself should be cleared and prepared, then planted and worked, as a permaculture food-forest   The food raised there can be used to feed the tenants -- plus whatever they raise in their own yards -- and the excess sold, with the money going to support the farm (including a fuel or transportation ration to the tenants so they can go hunt for work elsewhere).  The unemployed homeless can be hired to build the houses and prepare the ground too.  Tenants who succeed in getting outside jobs can stay at the farm and save their main-job money until they can afford bigger housing elsewhere. 

Once the poor-farm fills up, build another poor-farm.  Eventually we'll have neighborhoods, if not townships, of sturdy low-cost housing surrounding self-sustaining food-forests: working parks instead of slums and hobo jungles.      

To answer the eternal question, where will the money for all this come from: take it out of the budget the states are already spending on the homeless problem right now.  These solutions will work, and the farms can even be profitable.

--Leslie  <;)))><    

  

Green-Gov Stupidities, Part Two

Now that they've been out on the road for a couple years, subjected to real-world conditions, electric vehicles are beginning to show their downside.  

First, there are the revelations about EV construction.  Those enormous batteries require a lot of Lithium, and there are problems with that.  First, most Lithium deposits are found in China, which is notorious for playing economic warfare with the rest of the world.  Second, Lithium mining is dangerous, difficult -- therefore expensive -- and does no great good for the environment.  Third, processing Lithium into those big batteries is likewise difficult, expensive, and not good for the environment;  the waste products are a problem to dispose of safely.  There are ominous studies showing that the pollution caused by Lithium battery production is greater than the pollution caused by both petroleum production and petroleum emissions.

Then there are the performance problems.  Pound-for-pound, EVs simply can't match the power of liquid-fuel-burning vehicles, piston or diesel.  Worse, they've displayed a troublesome tendency to catch fire under a much wider range of conditions than liquid-fuel cars, and the fires are a lot harder to put out.  Still worse, smoke from burning EVs is more toxic than smoke from burning gasoline, diesel oil, Ethanol, Methanol, liquified syngas or E85. Finally, there's the fact that all that electricity to run the EVs has to come from somewhere, and not enough has been done to improve electricity generation.  We've all seen that solar and wind alone are just not enough.  Altogether, flex-fuel cars are safer, cheaper, more efficient and more environmentally friendly than EVs.  

Even Elon Musk is beginning to pull back from EV production.

You'd think that government officials would keep track of such developments, but obviously not.  Last week Gov. Newsome boasted that the California legislature had passed his merrily ambitious bill to reduce the number of new gas-powered cars that can be sold in California every year.  That number is supposed to shrink year by year, until no new gas-powered cars will be sold in California in 15 years.  Newsome also urged the governments of other states to follow his lead, and a few seemed eager to do that.  

Nobody seems to have thought this through.  There are easily 100 million gas-powered vehicles on the US roads today, and they're not going to vanish quickly.  Cuba has kept its old 1960s cars running for half a century and more.  Not all states will follow California's lead, and increasing improvements in gas-car efficiency will make succeeding years' cars still more efficient than EVs -- not to mention cheaper -- and the state will have a hard time forbidding non-EVs to even enter its territory.  So much for its Zero Emissions goals.

The real irony is that, just yesterday, Gov. Newsome put out an appeal to the people of California to not run their washers or dryers and not charge their electric cars to prevent "stress" on the electric grid during the current wave of triple-digit temperatures, when the state's air conditioners will by running most of the day.  Yes, the weather in the southwest has been unseasonably hot for the first week of September, and there's a heavy draw on the grid.

Could it be that the gods are trying to tell Newsome something?

--Leslie <;)))><             

Fracking Idiots and Politicians

Continuing from last week, those Netherlands farmers are now saying to the world that farm-produced manure alone isn't enough fertilizer to keep up their usual crop production.  They're appealing to their government to let them (let them?!) use a little synthetic fertilizer this year, but there's no guarantee that the government will relent.

I've found a solution, one that California dairy farmers in growing numbers are using already.  It's a double-barreled treatment for livestock manure, that makes money as well as fertilizer -- and with a little imagination it could be expanded considerably.  

First there's the anaerobic treatment, called Biogas Digestion.  It consists of putting the raw manure in a tank, or an expandable plastic container, with an escape-valve connected to an empty gas-cannister.  Toss in a handful of live topsoil, then add water to the brim so as to crowd out the air.  Stir thoroughly, then let sit for a few days.  When the container swells (or the fitted lid rises), you'll know the bacteria in the mix are generating methane.  Drain the methane into the gas-cannister and sell.  Methane can be burned as stove gas, or for heating, or to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity.  Keep at it until the whole load is processed into "digestate" and won't make any more methane.  Use some of the methane to boil and distill the water out of the digestate.  

The second stage is the aerobic treatment, called Composting.  Mix the digestate thoroughly with chopped vegetable trash -- sawdust to dead leaves or chopped straw -- set it out in the air on topsoil, wet completely and let stand.  Turn over and water the pile every day for two weeks, or until it becomes cool and scentless.  Then use it for fertilizer.

This two-part system provides a second product -- methane/biogas -- for the farmer to sell, and improves the natural fertilizer.  Those Netherlands farmers could benefit greatly using this system.  More to the point, the farmers could make deals with their local townships to process the towns' sewage.  The sewage from a single town can fertilize at least ten farms near it.  This would benefit everybody;  the towns would get their sewage processed cheaply, the farmers would get their high-quality organic fertililzer, both sides could sell the methane and split the profits.  

The question is whether their idiot politicians will let them do it, because the system produces methane -- which is Eeeevil, a "greenhouse gas", according to the ecologically-passionate and ignorant.

Meanwhile, the energy companies merrily practice a dangerous form of deep-level mining -- Fracking -- precisely in order to bring up ancient supplies of methane, precisely so they can burn it to boil water to make steam to turn generators that produce electricity.  National governments think this is perfectly acceptable because of "energy", you know.  

The way it's done is dangerous from the start.  First the company detects a pocket of methane buried deep in the bedrock.  Then it sets off explosions so as to break up the bedrock and allow the methane to filter up through the broken rock to the surface, where it can be captured.  To make sure the methane rises, the company pumps water into the deep gas-pocket to force the gas to the surface.  Where do the companies get the cheap water to pump into the bedrock?  They use raw sewage from the nearest town or city!  

Never mind that shattering the bedrock makes the land above it unstable, causing local earthquakes.  Never mind that the sewage contaminates the water in the natural water-table, so it can't be used for drinking-water.  Consider that when the bedrock is broken up, there's no telling just where the methane will rise to the surface -- where it can not only get into the atmosphere but catches fire readily.  This makes the process exceedingly dangerous to anyone living near a Fracking site.  Nonetheless, politicians find this risk acceptable.  Apparently ages-old methane, pumped up from deep in the bedrock, is Good -- but newly-generated methane, created on the surface and contained from the start, is Eeeeevil.  Right.    

The real difference between the two kinds of methane has nothing to do with its composition.  It's about who produces the methane: big (rich) corporations or common (middle-class) farmers.  This shows how much politicians really care about the environment, and who they really serve and protect.  Perhaps they're just thinking ahead, to the system of "energy credits" which the financial industry (sic) plans to use internationally to replace gold-based money.  They don't seem to have considered that all the money in the world won't do you any good if you can't eat.

--Leslie <;)))><   

Energy, Garbage, and Hatred of Cows

In the past year or less we've seen a fashion of amazing stupidity sweep over governments in Asia, Europe, Canada and the US -- a fashion that calls itself "Green" and "Environmentally friendly", even while its practitioners prove that they know nothing about ecology, biology, chemistry, natural history or economics.  Only thundering ignorance or stupidity -- take your pick -- can explain some of the disastrous "Green" policies we've seen being pushed around the world.  

Example: Biden's administration pushing blithely for solar and wind-generated electricity, while ignoring all other sources, even though all real-time analyses show that solar and wind can't produce nearly the electricity that the US needs, never mind anyone else.  Never mind the fact that there are other technologies available right now that can produce far more.  

Hydroelectric power, for example, doesn't need huge rivers and enormous dams;   a simple undershot wheel, stuck out into the current of any flowing stream, can produce a modest amount of electricity -- and an array of several of them can produce quite a bit.  And then there's geothermal -- using lava, or a geyser, to heat water to make steam to turn a generator.  Nobody but the Icelanders have developed this to date, even though there are lava-sites and geysers all over the planet and especially in the US;  Mount Kilauea has been in continuous eruption for the last ten years, and Yellowstone Park has enough geysers that it could easily spare one of them to power half of the state it sits in.  And there's tidal;  the tides roll in and the tides roll out, and the US alone has thousands of miles of coastline.  Then there's clean -- that is, Thorium -- nuclear power;  Thorium isn't radioactive enough to be fissionable, but it's radioactive enough to heat water, to make steam, to etc.  And there's Hydrogen -- the most abundant element in the universe -- which can be captured and burned (oxidized, which produces nothing but heat and clean water) with less energy output than the burning will produce.  As for portable fuels, there's biodiesel -- oil squeezed from algae -- which is beginning to be produced in northern California, but not enough other places.  There's fuel-grade ethanol, which can be made from any cellulose-bearing vegetable trash by purely passive -- solar distillation -- means.  And then there's "natural gas" -- Methane -- which can be produced by passive "cooking" from sewage, manure, or other organic garbage.  And speaking of organic garbage, the Catalytic Depolymerization process can convert any organic garbage -- from old tires to sawdust -- into gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil or syngas.  Only one plant in America today, PKClean in Utah, is working on this, despite its enormous potential to not only make fuel but clean up all the garbage in our landfills and oceans.  The point is that petroleum is no longer a fossil fuel, and there's abundant clean energy if we're willing to take a multi-pronged approach.  We don't need laws ordering us to buy this, not buy that, and march in straight lines on Mondays. 

Admittedly, we have to stop burning coal.  Coal is too valuable to burn!  We need our coal for certain industrial processes, like smelting iron out of ore and then turning it into steel, or making carbon-fiber or artificial diamonds.  Stop burning coal -- which, of course, governments like China's won't do.

Now those are sensible, and profitable, means to get abundant energy and improve the environment.  But what do we see instead?  Governments clamping down on, of all people, farmers.  It's one thing to push for a return to pasture-raised livestock and naturally-created fertilizers -- such as composted organic waste and the above-mentioned leftovers from Methane production;  it's something else again to demand that farmers use no Nitrogen fertilizer, or stop raising livestock altogether. 

The general objection to Nitrogen-rich fertilizer is that it puts nitrous oxide compounds into the atmosphere.  Of course, the atmosphere is made up of 79% Nitrogen and 19% Oxygen to begin with -- everything else making up the remaining 2%  -- and every lightning-bolt fuses some Nitrogen and Oxygen into nitrous oxide compounds which then fall to the ground and are taken up by the topsoil, which feeds plants, and this process has been going on for a very, very long time.  Never mind that nitrous oxide molecules are bigger and heavier than either Nitrogen or Oxygen, and therefore fall to the ground anyway.  No, various ill-informed governments and Captains of (non-farming) Industry have gotten a bee in their collective bonnets saying that all Nitrogen-containing fertilizer use must be dropped by at least 30%, starting right now -- and they'll pass laws to make sure farmers obey.  

Never mind what that does to food-production, and food costs.  The farmers -- and food-consumers, which means everybody -- have protested vigorously.  This is what brought down the government of Sri Lanka, sent farmers in the Netherlands out in tractors to dump loads of manure on government building steps, and cost politicians their seats in American elections.  One has to wonder how those politicians and their cronies could have been so stupid.  

If politicians wanted to pass laws that made themselves look good and Green, all they had to do was forbid the production and sale of synthetic fertilizers, and encourage the use of organic ones such as mentioned above -- created by methods that Nature herself has been using for hundreds of millions of years.  Oh, but that would have required some intelligence, and even doing research oneself, rather than listening to the loudest lobbyist.

As a prime example of how somebody can be brilliant on one subject and incredibly stupid on another, we have the spectacle of Bill Gates, no less, pushing for everyone to turn vegetarian so that farmers will stop raising cattle, because cows are Eeeeevil.  Cows are Evil, apparently, because they take so much energy to raise (?) and because they fart -- and belch -- Methane.  Both these excuses are so thin that one has to wonder if Big Billy has a secret hatred of cows.  

First, cattle and their ancestors (and buffalos, and sheep, and goats, and antelope, and horses, and deer, and pigs) existed millions of years before humans evolved.  Their major food source has always been the multiple species of grass-plants.  They live on the open grasslands that have covered much of Earth's surface since before the fall of the dinosaurs, and are an integral part of the ecosystem.  They do not need to be kept in feed-lots and fed energy-intensive grain crops;  they're actually healthier when free-ranged and fed on pasture-grass, which grows without human support.  The truth is that there are large stretches of land which can't grow human-edible crops but which can feed cattle.  In fact, such lands actively need the droppings and pawings of cattle -- and other hoofed animals -- to maintain the plant-life.  Remove the cows and the land degrades.  The ecosystem itself needs those cows.

Second: Methane.  On the one hand we have energy companies doing some very dangerous mining (fracking) to collect Methane, so as to use if for stove-gas and electricity-generation.  On the other hand we have so-called ecology activists wailing that Methane in the atmosphere is a much more dangerous "greenhouse gas" than CO2, so all its sources have to be stopped yesterday.  Does anybody see a contradiction here?  Methane is produced in Nature by microbes breaking down organic waste in the absence of Oxygen -- in other words: under water, under topsoil, or in the guts of animals.  Eventually the Methane bubbles up out of the water or topsoil (or guts) and floats around in the atmosphere until destroyed naturally -- by a spark of electricity, or a bolt of lightning -- which turns the Methane into CO2 and water.  The CO2 is inhaled by plants, the bigger the better, and the water is welcome wherever it falls.    Lightning strikes somewhere on Earth 200 times per second, so this isn't really a problem.

So why this hatred of cows, really?  Why this stupid oppression of farmers, especially small farmers?  And why the (deliberate?) ignorance of all other energy-sources than coal, "virgin" (drilled up) petroleum, massive-hydroelectric, wind and solar?  Who benefits from this ignorance and stupidity?  Who's pushing it, and why?  Suggestions welcome.

--Leslie <;)))><