Not a bad day.

Up at six-thirty, coffee and some Internet, five loads of wash done and put away, breakfast, paid bills and rent, went to lunch. Now just Perry Mason and a nap left on the plan. Life is good.

Priceless

Let's see now. Pelosi promised to deliver 110 votes to pass the republican bailout and she delivered 140. She criticized the Bush administration's economic policies that let Wall Street run wild. The republicans got their feelings hurt so they voted down their own bill.

The bailout bill: $700 billion.
Cost to the taxpayer not yet known but probably much, much less than that.
Stock market losses to stockholders and savings and retirement investments today when the bill failed to pass: $1.3 trillion.

Stocks Down In Flames

Pelosi made it clear that the Bush administration decided that a bailout plan is needed and that giving them $700 billion was really probably stupid but that it was the best congress could do for now. From what I've seen, I think it is pejorative to keep putting up the $700 billion as the number and I don't think she or anyone should keep using it. I don't know that the bailout as proposed, would amount to that much over the long run because after Bush is gone, there is a chance to make some changes. By the same token, I'm not sure that leaving the problem to the markets and letting it take it's lumps is going to be as bad as the administration and probably too many others seem to think.

None in congress have, in my opinion, consulted with enough experts outside of Wall Steet. Or at least they have not publicized those discussions enough to make me confident that they have a handle on the problem or a solution. I want to know things like where the money went, exactly what class of mortgages are in trouble how much trouble, and if the problems are really coming from junk mortgages. There has been very little 'data' shared with the public by any of the parties involved. If it is as big a problem for 'everyone' as they seem to want to make it out to be, we need more information. A grand total of 23 minutes from Bush and scarcely any more from anybody else doesn't cut it and won't get the public up for dealing with the problem if indeed it can be done at all by government bailout.

Of course, I don't have any expertise in that stuff but, this is what I do when I'm procrastinating and avoiding house chores and figuring out Medicare.

CraigStings

Overheard from three folks with laptops at the coffee shop today; several DFW area police departments have people that post ads on craigslist in several sections for the purpose of setting up drug and prostitution stings. From what I could gather they are doing it a lot. That really got me wondering about how many of those kinds of things are entrapment.

It seems to me that the act of posting those ads comes pretty close to promoting the activity in question and adding to the pressure for some people to do those kinds of things. At some point then, someone is going to go over the line from curiosity to perp just because of that extra amount of promotion. So at least one question arises as to what percentage of the ads on craigslist in those particular categories are put there by the cops with our tax dollars?

I know the ads are free but presumably we are paying the people writing the ads and following up with the contacts and hopefully the prosecutors or DAs who are overseeing the operations. So if 10% or 20% of the ads in some samarmy section are cop ads, what percentage of the problem does our tax dollar create? And in creating that part of the problem, are they catching that or a bigger percentage of the perps? I would be willing to bet that they neither catch enough crooks to justify the dollar cost or sociatal costs and that the prosecution and 'corrections' resulting from the whole thing have drastically unwanted and negative over all affects.

I always just felt it was a sad loser that would pay for attention from people on craigstreet but now I have a little more worry for them and everybody else because I think law enforcement is too much big business and thuggery and that when it is easier to make criminals than to find them, we are all in trouble.

Now, back to looking for a cheap washer and dryer.

I Believe

It should be noted that Roy Chapman does not call for more ministers, chaplains or religion in reforming prisons.

Learning From Mistakes

New research in brain science shows us a little more about the differences in the way human brains learn. Age has strong implications in the capacity to learn from negative feedback. Until our noggins are about twelve years old, we don't learn so good from our mistakes and failures. I suspect that not learning from mistakes carries on well past twelve in some folks. I've shed some close friends on occasion though my fairly long life because of that. I developed some habits early in my aviation training and career that are almost a sixth sense that causes warning lights to come on when I'm around someone that has problems learning from negative results. It's rarer now but, that still gets in the way some days. I've been around some folks in the past that seemed to get the same result from doing it wrong day after day just as regular as sun up. After a couple of those dawns, I'm ready to go find grown-ups to hang with.

Train Wreck

The little fake portfolio I put together a few days ago is still doing pretty well except that something ate the WM stock. Washington Mutual failed so I guess the stock is worthless. I don't know how that works but it's not pretty. The rest of the four stocks have held up pretty well though with a net gain as of right now of 108.37% since Sept. 22. I'm greedy when it comes to play money so I'll let the bet ride and see what happens after all the political grand-standing over the bailout brouhaha.

Except that the presidential election is only days away, it is odd that Bush has spoken publicly on the economy meltdown (a problem the White House now admits it has been working on feverishly for months) a grand total of about twenty minutes - and just in past two days. The only thing that makes this a sudden emergency is that they wanted to keep it under wraps and use it politically in favor of McCain. Country first ya know.

Email Fail

New Movie

I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie 'Blindness.' A bunch of people supposedly go blind. But, I noticed they were able to put on matching shoes and clothes and do their hair and stuff.

It's so fun to be right.

Just the rumor of the new bailout by adults spurred a rally in the stocks I was looking at yesterday. Well three out of four anyway. How about +5.93%, +65.82%, and +55.29% in one day?! The one loser was down 3.9%. It is a long way from over and the rest of the market will come along after the bill is signed. I'd bet on some high four and maybe some five figure percentage gains on some of the cheap stocks and double digit at the whole market level over the next few months. But no one knows how long it will last. It's a good thing I have to work on signing up for Medicare or I might be out robbing banks to invest in this market! I'm good at resisting gambling urges when I'm broke. That's what saved me from the ruin of buying Google at $250 a share. Ha!

There be adults there after all.

The horribly stupid proposal from Treasury to just get a blank check and go sling $700 billion dollars into the streets has been countered by an actual proposed law that contains actual plans and processes and oversight and responsibilities and it looks good. It is here. Competence is such a good thing! I hope this is the one that gets passed. If it does, I predict a huge stock market bounce and a recovery in the dollar value beginning immediately after it's passage. Now is a good time to buy some AIG, FNM, FRE and even some WM they are cheap and essential to the world. If they don't come back, money won't be worth anything anyway.

Check Your Voter Registration To Make Sure It Hasn't Been Tampered With.

It's on the Obama website.

Took me less than a minute.

Enter name and address, and it will check you against the official voter role to confirm that you're registered to vote. Cool! (And yes, they're harvesting email addresses, but you can enter null@null.com and the system accepts it.)

The system will also tell you whether and when (but not where) early voting is available in your state.

This is worth doing, and telling your friends about. Not only does it ensure your vote, it keeps you from holding up the line for everyone else on Election Day. And if you're in an early voting state (most are), please do vote early if you can. Every vote cast before Election Day makes it that much easier for the people who do vote on Election Day. Shamelessly stolen from RBC - Pass this on.

We are witnessing the most colossal fraud ever perpetrated on citizens by any government administration in the history of the world.

I saw a news story showing a bunch of congressional leaders sitting across the table from a bunch of financial industry leaders and treasury dept. heads and the headline was something to the effect of 'Congress stunned to hear nation's economy days away from collapse." The obvious question seems to me to be; Why are they just learning of something of that magnitude about the economy only days before? If that is true, it seems to me that everyone in that room should at least be fired or better yet, on their way to prison.

The only way this problem could have been created and perpetrated all while the government agencies and administration charged with the responsibilities of monitoring and regulating the industry have been reporting a robust and strong economy is for there to have been massive fraud and lying in both reports to government and by government. It is a crime to lie to government officials in official reports and it is a crime for government and agency officials to make false reports.

Now we have the text of the proposed fix in the form of the federal treasury buying the 'bad paper' to save the banks that are holding them now. Secretary Paulson must have got Dick Cheney to write the proposed legislation. It gives the secretary absolute power to do just about anything he wants and makes his actions totally un-reviewable by even the courts! (Section 8)

There is not one syllable in this legislation speaking to preventing the practices that got us in this mess from continuing even as the bad debts are shifted to the treasury. There is not even a call to investigate the wreckage. NOT ONE WORD!

The plan is a two year plan and it's purpose is none other than to shift the responsibility for cleaning up the fraud to the middle of the next administration's term.

I hope the first move by the next government is to prosecute the bastards that have been running this massive credit scam.

Here's the proposed legislation. This too may be a smoke screen but it is sure as hell for the benefit of banks that are still solvent. And it is strapping our federal treasury with far more than the FDIC $100,000 limit per account of relief. Guess who profits and who loses.

Everyone, call your congress people and tell them to commit in writing and in this act to investigating and prosecuting those responsible for this mess.

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY

TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

Section 1. Short Title.

This Act may be cited as ____________________.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Authority to Purchase.--The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

(4) establishing vehicles that are authorized, subject to supervision by the Secretary, to purchase mortgage-related assets and issue obligations; and

(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities of this Act.

Sec. 3. Considerations.

In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.

Sec. 4. Reports to Congress.

Within three months of the first exercise of the authority granted in section 2(a), and semiannually thereafter, the Secretary shall report to the Committees on the Budget, Financial Services, and Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committees on the Budget, Finance, and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate with respect to the authorities exercised under this Act and the considerations required by section 3.

Sec. 5. Rights; Management; Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.

(a) Exercise of Rights.--The Secretary may, at any time, exercise any rights received in connection with mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act.

(b) Management of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary shall have authority to manage mortgage-related assets purchased under this Act, including revenues and portfolio risks therefrom.

(c) Sale of Mortgage-Related Assets.--The Secretary may, at any time, upon terms and conditions and at prices determined by the Secretary, sell, or enter into securities loans, repurchase transactions or other financial transactions in regard to, any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act.

(d) Application of Sunset to Mortgage-Related Assets.--The authority of the Secretary to hold any mortgage-related asset purchased under this Act before the termination date in section 9, or to purchase or fund the purchase of a mortgage-related asset under a commitment entered into before the termination date in section 9, is not subject to the provisions of section 9.

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time

Sec. 7. Funding.

For the purpose of the authorities granted in this Act, and for the costs of administering those authorities, the Secretary may use the proceeds of the sale of any securities issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, and the purposes for which securities may be issued under chapter 31 of title 31, United States Code, are extended to include actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses. Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed appropriated at the time of such expenditure.

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Sec. 9. Termination of Authority.

The authorities under this Act, with the exception of authorities granted in sections 2(b)(5), 5 and 7, shall terminate two years from the date of enactment of this Act.

Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.

Sec. 11. Credit Reform.

The costs of purchases of mortgage-related assets made under section 2(a) of this Act shall be determined as provided under the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, as applicable.

Sec. 12. Definitions.

For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall apply:

(1) Mortgage-Related Assets.--The term “mortgage-related assets” means residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before September 17, 2008.

(2) Secretary.--The term “Secretary” means the Secretary of the Treasury.

(3) United States.--The term “United States” means the States, territories, and possessions of the United States and the District of Columbia.

$20 Computer

It was one of those days that I just couldn't stay away from Craigslist. I saw an old Dell 4100 advertised for $25 so I dropped an email to the ad. A few hours later a guy calls and he is just down the toll road about two miles. I told him I didn't need the keyboard and mouse but could use some speakers with the machine. He knocked off five bucks and threw in some speakers.

I got the little darlin' home and plugged it in and it fired right up in Win Millennium. I cracked open the case and discovered where the guy had been keeping most of the pet hair and dust bunnies for the last few years. I rolled my air compressor out on the patio and banished the gunk and varmits into the breeze. I guess the EPA is looking for the source but my cheap computer is clean.

I plugged in some memory sticks and fed Ubuntu 8.04 via the optical drive. Oops, flakey drive. So I swapped a drive from my standby computer into the cheapster and installed me some linux. It was pretty interesting getting everything going and figuring out where some of the linux bells and whistles are hidden. I had a little scuffle getting DVD movies to play. I got the software and codecs easy enough but the movie player would just dissappear every time I tried to play a movie. I figured it was some grphics card problem so I poked around trying to get the ATI Rage 128 to work but still no movies. I remembered I had a video card salvaged from another old computer in my parts heap. So I rummaged around in the back of the closet until I found one that looked like some nvidia lash up with the number 64 something on it. I swapped it into cheapo and pushed the go button. After a good boot without the previous "cannot display this video mode" message during the start up, everything just works. Movies and all!

I guess I can add that to stuff I can do along with changing windmill leathers, heliarc, helicopter flyin' and naval observin'. Aren'tchugladyouasked.

World of Woo Returning To Addison

A few years ago, I was driving along minding my own business and wondering how I could get smarter about my job and such when I saw a bunch of cars at the Addison conference center saying something about a wellness convention. So to take a break, I circled the block and went in to see what was happening. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. It was also pretty scary. The place was full of fortune tellers and holistic bullshiters acting with complete immunity. Worse, there were lots of people there actually buying the crap. I wondered around and asked a few questions but soon realized that I'm not smart enough to take much of it. In a little seminar, some lady was explaining, straight faced, to a fairly large group of people what kind of music to play to their drinking water. There was a couple of crystal vendors and various other snake oil, err I mean, alternative medicine/lifestyle sellers. It didn't take me long to regret the $5 entry fee and I was out of there. On my way out I was walking past some guy that was a psychic or something and he started trying to ask me something. I don't remember what he asked; I just stopped and said to the effect of, if you're what you say you are, I would guess you already know the answer and if you can't figure it out, I held up my cell phone and said "Just call me later." I guess I'm not much smarter about hardly anything now than then but, he never called and I'm not ever going back there. I hate that stuff.

Roy Zimmerman 'Splains Bush Doctrine To Sara Palin

Should Yin and Yang be a 50/50 mix?

Go see this and this.

Ike To Help Osteen Prepare Prosperity Sermon Early Saturday Morning

I guess it will be about to prosper from another righteous answer to all that praying for it to rain on Obama. But, somehow it reminds me of J.Allan Toogood, FORTRAN programmer sayin' "God is Real, unless declared Integer."

Not SNL

I watched Charlie Gibson try to interview the Palin half of what has become the Palin/McCain GOP ticket last night. If they had been in front of a live audience in a setting like Saturday Night Live they would have brought the house down - Gibson for obviously over simplifying his questions to the point they were non-sequiter and Palin for her over important body language, facial ticks pointy finger characeraturing that holy confidence trumps thoughtfull and expanding reponses on complex subjects. It would be hillarious to see Tina Fay spoofing Palin by saying "I've got important foreign relations expertise because I've been to Canada and Tiajuana and because Russia can be seen from one of the desolate Alaskan islands way out in the West." Oh yeah and Palin can't even pronounce the word "nuclear". But it was not SNL and it was not in the least funny. Gibson leant way to much importance to her by even interviewing her. It was obvious he was there for the shallowest of reasons. ABC ratings.

Best Creationist Quote-Miner Smack Down Evar!

I also despise quote-mining but am ill equipped to deal with it. PZ Myers is not so handicapped! Best comment ever is number 37.

Posted by: Your Name's Not Bruce? | September 9, 2008 5:40 PM

Christian quote mining has a very long history. Much of Christianity itself based on quote mining the Hebrew Bible for "evidence" of "prophecies" of the coming of Jesus (insert off-colour comment here). Many of you are probably familiar with the whole mistranslation of the Hebrew "almah" (spelling?), meaning "young women" to the Greek "parthanos" meaning "virgin", giving rise to the whole doctrine of the virgin birth. I recently read a book called How Jesus Became Christian which tells the story of how a nice Jewish boy's ideas got subverted and/or disregarded by Paul to found a new religion which he would probably not have recognized or approved of. It is the story of how the religion of a fully human, fully Jewish Jesus became the religion about the divine, gentile Christ. Watch any of the "end-time" sermons of the televangelist to see how far away from "literal" translation they are capable of straying. It's sadly amusing how they can find all sorts of biblical "evidence" to support their lurid scenarios in highly imaginative and less than simply literal interpretations of "prophecy" to show how America and the rest of the world will, er, um, "interact" in what they believe and hope to be the imminent End of the World. And yet Genesis is to be used as a science textbook (tell me, though, where are the wombats?). Go Figure. If they have so little respect for the careful, scholarly use of their own texts, how can we expect them to show care or respect for any other written source?

It reminded me of thinking once that if I had one thing of my previous career as a dad to live over again, instead of letting my dear old mom (who never set foot in a library) fill my kid's brains with her religious nonsense and booting my influence out the window, I would have made sure my kids read two books; The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan and Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer and Stephen Jay Gould. But I still don't think I would have taken my dad's track when he told me he didn't believe too much of the stuff mom said but he had to get along. That's one of those things I call un-do-overable.

The only argument I had with Sagan and Druyan was that they were not firm enough in their rebuke of superstition. Too many people think of superstitions as no worse than play things and curiosities. They are wrong. They are religions now and are the most dangerous and insidious forces in the universe.

McCain First To Call Someone A Pig Wearing Lipstick

McCain & West Wing = ?

So, what's the deal? During McCain's convention speech the image of an unidentified mansion-like building appeared on the big screen in the background behind him. No one seems to remember anything in the speech during the time the image was shown that seemed to link to the picture. Someone figured out that the image was that of the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. Some think the video gurus screwed up and meant to project a picture of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Walter Reed Middle School has written that they did not give permission for the RNC to use the image of their school and that they do not support any political candidates. Even odder though, it turns out that the building behind McCain was also used as the backdrop for Matt Santos' announcement of his presidential candidacy on The West Wing.

The Yard

Over the past few months, I've been trying to sell a small piece of property. I got the check today. The property is in Pecos in Reeves county Texas now only described as:

BEGINNING at a sake 1179 feet South 11-3/4° West of and 640.4 foot North 78-1/4° West of the Northeast corner of Section Sixteen (16), Block Five (5), H&HG RR Co. Survey for the Southeast corner of this survey,
Thence North 78-1/4° West 185 feet to a stake and the Southwest corner of this survey;
Thence North 11-3/4° East 300 feet to a stake and the Northwest corner of this survey;
Thence South 78-1/4° East 185 feet to a stake and the Northeast corner of this survey:
Thence south 11-3/4° West 300 feet to the place of beginning.

But to me it was once much, much more. In the early '50s it was "The Yard" to me. It was the place of some of my earliest memories of the magic my dad and grand-dad could do. Bill Huckabee and Doc Coleman drilled wells and the yard was where they kept and built and maintained their rigs and all the equipment they used in connection with their drilling business.

When I started working on selling the property, lots of memories of the time I spent with them started flooding back to me. Dad and grand-dad built a lot of their own equipment. They were very ingenious and industrious and could match the workmanship of just about any of the equipment makers of the time. Instead of buying some piece of machinery or tooling from some far off place like Midland or Houston or even further away, they could usually come up with their own designs and produce it themselves.

During those years, they had two Fort Worth spudder cable tool drilling rigs and one rotary tool rig. I don't remember where they got the rotary but it was a shop built rig put together probably in the Midland/Odessa area.

The rotary rig consisted of draw-works, tables, tool store room crew house, engine and folding-telescoping mast system and all mounted on a set of aircraft landing gear wheel sets from a B-24 so it could be towed in one load. The power was supplied by a big Waukesha industrial engine driving everything through a system of clutches, transmission gears and chain drives.

The mud system for that rig was mounted on a very heavy wheeled frame/trailer that they designed and built themselves. The power for the pump system was supplied by twin Ford flathead V8 industrial engines though manual clutches and V-belt drives.

The Fort Worths were mostly wooden. Dad and grand-dad had installed some of their own bells and whistles and re-engined the spudders with Continental engines. I remember both of those rigs getting overhauls at the yard. The masts were wooden and they replaced all of the mast wood on both machines. I was amazed because I had never seen lumber that big in my life. Living in Pecos, for all of my tender young life by then, I had not even seen a picture of a tree big enough to make wood beams that big. Those masts had lots of steel hardware and giant bolts and brackets and shivs and wiring and lights to install I remember drilling huge holes in the wood and installing the steel parts and clamping it all up to shape. The result was a gracefully tapered mast from which all the tools were suspended by the steel wire ropes that drove them up and down the well during drilling operations. After we put it all together, we painted both rigs bright red with silver and green trim. I still remember the aromas of the wood cutting and the painting and of the greases we used.

There were a couple of portable electric power plants used to power the lighting and some tools around the rigs when they were on location. They were all Kohler gensets I think and had little 4 cylinder engines. There was an assortment of welding power plants and all kinds of different acetylene oxygen metal cutting and welding torches from little bitty to great big. They had three or four acetylene generators that ran on calcium carbide and water.

All of the rigs and various other engines were fueled with butane except for the welding generators which ran on gasoline. So there were a couple of large skid mounted butane tanks.

All of that stuff and the various trailers full of drill stem and bits and collars was hauled around by an Autocar tractor with a Hercules engine and an International with a combo bed consisting of a wench on a flat steel roller tailed bed with twelve foot gen poles and two 1949 one ton long bed pickups with extra heavy grill-guards, headache solid steel bed liners and huge steel bumpers and hitches that dad and grand dad built themselves. All the trucks and pickups were gasoline fueled.

There was always activity in the yard even when all the rigs were on locations drilling. There was always something to repair or build. I was in heaven there. It was a place full of fire, and sparkes and flaming metal and big things being lifted and moved and all done again. My dad and grand-dad started teaching me the ropes at a very young age. I got blisters and calluses there. There were few comfortable days there. It was either blazing hot or freezing except for a few hours early in the mornings in spring and fall.

I was doing basic lube and tune on all the engines by the time I was in third grade. I was driving the pickups on location and around in the yard by that time. I started driving and using the larger trucks by the time I was in sixth grade. I roughknecked in the summer and a few times on weekends when school was in session. I made driller on all three rigs when I was about eleven. But I couldn't run a shift with hands other than kin because I was too young and the hired hands just wouldn't take to having to drive the driller to work.

The yard was a piece of land in what was, during WWII an Army-Air force training base. The particular piece of land had a thin layer of pavement on the surface that was in pretty bad shape but good enough to keep it from turning to mud both time it rained. One of my main jobs was to keep the weeds and cactus under control. And that kept me acquainted with all the of bugs, ants, lizards and snakes as well as the hundreds of different kinds of plants and gourds that seemed to grow overnight through the pavement and into the barbed wire fence. It was a jungle out there. I remember the smells from some of the plants such as the creosote bushes that bloomed year round and the gourds. There was some pretty health prickly pear and a few mesquites mostly along the South line.

The yard was within bicycle or walking distance from our house in Pecos. So it was one of my primary destinations after school. I couldn't go out to the locations where the rigs were drilling very often when school was in season so I spent a lot of time at the yard by myself. I usually had some assignment but even when I didn't I liked to hang out there. I could tinker with all the machinery and make stuff and I had a better chance of seeing my dad working on something if he was not on location. Watching him was one of my favorite things. It was fascinating to see him move. He never seemed to waste a motion. When he built things, everything flowed out of his consciousness and through his hands in a way that was just amazing to me. But sometimes it was also a problem. Dad wasn't great at explaining things when he was working. He was accustomed to doing a lot of things by himself. I think it was just how he had grown up or something and he would get frustrated at me trying to help when I was always about three steps behind him. That led to me having to work on my own a lot and that kind of got me to being a lot like him sometimes. I guess that prepared me for some of the situations I found myself in later in life where I was mainly a one-man operation at some of the work I've had.

I discovered bits and pieces of airplanes, jeeps, and all kinds of other strange olive drab green devices laying just under the dirt in and around the yard. That got to be another habit with me - finding bits and pieces of the world and stuff left behind by others.

One of my other early memories as a kid was exploring the large vacant lots around our house and around the yard, most of the time alone. I found bones and worked rocks and arrow points and things that remain mysteries to me to this day. I got in the habit of those kinds of explorations just about everywhere I've gone since. I loved to get out and just walk all over the place when I was on those drilling locations back then. Most of those sites were in areas where the ground had not been worked since creation. A well was one of the first things to happen before any land was plowed for farming. And ranch wells were in such remote locations most of the surrounding ground was mostly undisturbed by more than just a few humans since time began. But I saw their signs. I got to see some really old creosote stands and pick up some really interesting rocks and sometimes I would see a human sign that I could tell had been there a long, long time. The vastness of the place made me wonder how their journey had gone. I knew it had not been easy. Those places were full of interesting plants, bugs, lizards and all manner of sharp or stinging things.

I remember being awed by all the different kinds of plants and critters. There were rabbits everywhere then. But after the ground was planed and plowed and the irrigation systems were built all of that disappeared and I have never seen anything like it again anywhere I've been.

The most spectacular time was night. In that time and in that place, the night sky was a universe deserving infinite wonder but clearly unreachable. The nights were so clear and the stars so distinct that it made a three dimensional sense in me that has never again been matched. It is a sense for the real and a knowledge that the universe goes on well beyond the short life of human existence and pays us no mind.

So it was with some cherished memories at my side and "for and in consideration of the sum of TEN AND NO/100 DOLLARS ($10.00), and other good and valuable consideration in hand paid by the above named Grantee" I wrote the deed to the new owner of The Yard.

Now to the important stuff.

Now that the political season has passed for me except for vote day, I'm gonna get shave, showered and dressed and go outside for the sole purpose of fixing the glove box light on my truck so it will shut off and stay off when the door is closed and stop killing the battery. When that's done, it will be a good day.

Using POWs To Imprison The U.S.A.

I tried to be charitable while watching Senator McCain deliver his acceptance speech last night. I know I'm biased by the sense of rage I have stemming from these eight long years of the Bush administration's failures. But I wanted to try one more time to think about stuff the way most everyone I know seems to. So I listened and watched as much of both convention as I could. PBS had more than three times as much coverage as the big three so I watched PBS. I saw and heard a lot more speeches than I would have seen otherwise. I find myself still firmly in the Democrat camp today. I just cannot get G.W. Bush out of my head. He got there by a series of fluke meetings in '97-'98. I witnessed his handlers leading him around and heard snippets of their conversations enough to know that the side the light shines on is a complete, utter fraud to the public. Over the years I have come in contact with a few of those kinds of folks and their supporters. But the conservative take over of the Republican party is one of the most disgusting forces I have ever encountered. One theme that comes to me over and over through the years watching this thing grow is the incompetence of not only the front-men/women but how that incompetence runs through all the way to the core of the culture. It shows in the little things like the background screen screw up during McCain's speech, the balloons failing to drop, practiced but stiff crowd reactions. I think John McCain is a man that still has a small conscience and it is bothering him to try and stand up there and deliver the crap those really in control of the party require him to say. But his body language fails. That doesn't come through to me from Bush who is seems a complete psychopath. So, I see John McCain as a pretty fair representation of Republicanism as it stands today taken over by some of the most evil, self serving forces in history - a culture that now has only a trace of human dignity left. That tiny trace is being systematically both cynically exploited and suffocated by the ruthless hijacking and exploitations of everything from our religious traditions to every social symbols we have acquired for ourselves. It is the weakness of those very symbols that can make us so vulnerable. They are only symbols. When we start to worship the idol instead of really understanding and testing and exercising human meaning we will be easily conquered. Exploiting the sufferings of the real people who have so dreadfully suffered the consequences war as POWs for the purposes of getting elected instead of focusing on the here and now is a sham and we should be ashamed of ourselves. I remember many men from when I was young who had fought in WWII. I remember only a few of them ever spoke about their experiences in public. I remember that even when they spoke among themselves about anything related to their experiences there were strong boundaries of honor that brought instant rebuke to anyone who in anyway used the experience to call attention to either themselves or to promote anything at all. Their memories were of the bloody nightmares. They understood it was not a path to glory for them. To a man, they loathed being held up for glory. Many simply would not do it. But there were a few exceptions. I learned at an early age in which hearts corruption flourished.

Putting Lipstick On A Lying Hockey Puck

Gov. Sara Palin's delivery of her GOP speech proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she can lie straight faced. All I saw from the convention delegates was a bunch of folks trained to scream on cue. I call it Oprah drool. There's no doubt now that McCain chose this woman for political show value and not for the good of the country. She stood there last night and repeated the lies about her role in the bridge to nowhere, omited every connection to indicted Ted Stevens and otherwise led the audience in holering at things no more important or substantive than pep rallye slogans and derision. I'm surprised they didn't dress her up in little a red white and blue cheerleader outfit with pmm-poms and stick a homecoming queen crown on her before it was over. Funny that no one seemed to get the conflict between her touting her so-called CEO experince and the fact that McCain has none. The fact checking is under way and it just shows what kind of evangelicals they are.

Gustov

A category 2 hurricane that got a category 5 response from the Bush administration.

Physics Gets Good Rap From Kate McAlpine

Just yesterday, I was looking through an old physics textbook I have. A First Course In Physics by Robert Andrews Millika, Ph.D., Sc.D. and Henry Gordon Gale, Ph.D. (both of the University of Chicago) does not contain the name Einstein nor the words galaxy, nuclear fusion or fission or anything about radio or radio tubes or much of anything we take for granted as the basics of physics today. The pictures facing the title page are of recent achievements in applied physics, Andre' Beaumont speeding over the Marconi wireless station at Genoa in a monoplane at well under a hundred miles per hour, I wager, and pictures of cloud chamber tracks left by Alpha particles, Beta particles and X-rays. It is hard to imagine that we could progress to the LHC in less than 100 years from when that book was written seeing how little we knew then. Thanks to Kate McAlpine, here's to progress and the knowledge that we have just scratched the surface of the beauties and wonders of reality.

14 Reasons To vote For Obama

Obama has answered the Science Debate questions and they are good answers. McCain has not bothered to even respond. That makes at least 15 reasons on this issue alone to vote for Obama.