Musings

It is becoming clear to me and many researchers that over time, the Moon has had an extraordinary effect on things here on Earth. The picture that is emerging from these loony ideas is that it may be a mandatory type of satellite for any world that might harbor intelligent life (as we know it).

The real Genesis story goes something like this:

In the beginning, the Earth was without form and void. It condensed into a planetary body about 4.5 billion years ago, and was smashed by a planetoid about the size of the planet Mars around one hundred million years later, creating a dense ring of debris that circled our planet much like the rings of Saturn. As this ring slowly consolidated into a ball of lava, the Earth (and the Moon) continued to be pummeled by water-rich comets that may have contained primitive life forms. These had evolved within the comets, as many had liquid cores and plenty of Amino Acids at the time.

When things settled out about a billion years later, the Moon circled the Earth much closer than it is today. Back then, it took only 20 days to circle our planet, and a day on earth only lasted about eighteen hours.

Now, over time the core of the earth should have cooled down to the point that convection currents in the magma should have stalled. However, the tidal effects of the moon (and Sun) has added sufficient heat to the natural nuclear reactor at the core of our planet that it has never completely cooled, and therefore, life on Earth was protected from the solar wind by the magnetic field that is generated by the planet's liquid core.

Our planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars, never had a moon like ours, and do not have a magnetic umbrella. This is why they are devoid of life.

An additional benefit of our Moon's tidal effect is on our oceans. Coupled with our water-rich atmosphere that protects us from ultraviolet radiation from outer space, it allowed life to evolve from primitive viruses and bacteria into multi-cellular organisms. In addition, the Moon stabilizes Earth's rotation preventing dramatic movements of the poles and associated climate swings that might have doomed any chance for life to take hold, let alone evolve.

On the downside, we have a slug of volcanoes, both active and extinct (along with plate tectonics), that result from the same phenomena. On the upside, these volcanoes provided the nutrients that allowed life to thrive.

However, they have periodically gotten out of hand. Most of the mass extinction events on our planet are not due to impacts of interstellar debris, but instead, volcanic eruptions. During these events, the CO 2 released by volcanoes into the air dwarfed anything that humans have done or will do, and elevated temperatures to the point that life nearly disappeared.

They can still do so today. It is estimated that the planet has had over 10,000 volcanoes. Of these, over 1500 are active, eighty of which are under water. Of the remainder, about 20% may be dormant. The rest are extinct.

So, our Pagan ancestors and the Indians were right after all. The Sun and the Moon are the givers of life. I find it interesting to think about these things, and I hope you do too!For UFO fans, a well-reasoned speculation about life on Earth is found here: Alternative View

Back in the 1970s, I was offered the position of president for a small public company that had an interesting patent for a wind turbine that could be used to generate electricity. I accepted the offer only to find out that I had assumed the helm of a sinking ship.

First of all, I determined that the wind turbine design, while interesting, could not be economically produced, and secondly, that the wind turbine energy market at the time was basically non-existent. To make matters worse, in going over the books, I discovered that the board of directors had ‘loaned’ themselves the bulk of the company's working capital.

As I was now the fiduciary of the shareholder's investments, I had a real dilemma on my hands. To protect them and save the company, I forced the board members to repay the ‘loans’ and cast about to find some vehicle to make the shareholders investments provide a reasonable return. In desperation, I latched on to an opportunity that seemed sound: The Yellowstone Motel was up for sale. I went up to Montana, and got the books from the owner and reviewed its operations.

It had been bleeding ‘red ink’ for years because it had only been operated during the summer months. The reason was that the central steam heating system that provided heat to the individual cabins had shallowly buried pipes that froze solid during the harsh winter. As the sport of snowmobiling was in its infancy, I saw an opportunity to make it profitable by enabling its operation year-round. The owner was desperate to get rid of it, and I negotiated an excellent price.

As soon as the deal was concluded, I brought in trenching equipment and started to lay pipe at a much greater depth. Another issue was the old central steam plant. This Gothic horror moaned and groaned loudly in operation, and I feared that the boiler might explode at any time. As luck would have it, a good attorney friend had just purchased the Yellowstone Hotel, and was in the process of expanding it, and replacing the steam heating plant with one of greater capacity. I was able to purchase his existing plant for dimes on the dollar, and it was as least five decades newer than the one I had.

I kept the motel close all that summer and winter as my father and I made the necessary repairs, and planned a grand reopening in the spring. At that time, I hired a young college couple on sabbatical to run the day to day operation, as I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Of course, I had to travel there frequently to do the books and make sure things were running efficiently. In reality, this took very little time, and I actually spent most of my time engaged in fly-fishing for trout in the Madison and Firehole rivers, and in the small hidden lakes within Yellowstone Park. I had a grand time, and hiked all over the park that year. It was a wonderful interlude in my life, and as soon as the property had a history of profitable operation, I sold it for a tidy gain, and resigned my position with the company.

Since then, I have had a special interest in Yellowstone, and so I have become somewhat alarmed at the recent increased activity at the super volcano's caldera. Take a close look at the following chart produced by the USGS:

Now, the last time the volcano erupted was about 70,000 years ago. Interestingly, this was the same time that the Toba super volcano in Indonesia erupted, nearly making human beings extinct. This ‘recent’ Yellowstone eruption was tiny, only 1,000 cubic kilometers of Rhyolitic lava compared to the one that occurred about 640,000 years ago, forming the present 45 by 85 kilometer caldera. This eruption has been recreated visually in several recent made-for-television dramas.

A new satellite-based technique known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) allows direct and precise measurement of the vertical changes in ground level. This InSAR image of the area around the Yellowstone Caldera (dotted line) shows vertical changes during the 4-year period 1996–2000. The ringed pattern centered northwest of Yellowstone Lake is a prominent area of dome-shaped uplift. Each complete cycle of colors in the color bands represents a little more than one inch (28.3 mm) of vertical change. Yellow triangles are continuous GPS stations; white dots are locations of earthquakes in the period 1996–2000.

According to the USGS, “The uplift detected in the 1970s was centered near Le Hardy Rapids, between two resurgent domes-sections of the caldera floor that had earlier been pushed upward and faulted. Such resurgent domes form when magma rises to shallow levels beneath a caldera and slowly re-inflates a previously depleted magma reservoir, pushing the overlying caldera floor upward to form a dome. The pressure of the inflating magma reservoir may even force some of the molten rock to emerge at the surface as lava. The fact that the uplift documented in the 1970s was centered within the caldera near the resurgent domes seemed to indicate that the magma reservoir was again exerting pressure upward.”

I think I had better get up there soon to do a little more fly-fishing while it's still available!

Today, I was reading the digital archives of an old Utah newspaper called ‘The American Eagle’. The specific edition I was reading was dated May 5, 1896. Now, this was the days of the ‘Old West’ with cattle rustlers, still wild Indians, gunfights, and so forth. The total population of the territory (it wasn’t a state yet) was less than 30,000 and it was before cars, airplanes, and paved roads.

On page two of the old paper, I read the following:

“Some Ogden parties whose reputation is above question have seen an air-ship floating over town at night. It is the regulation ship that has been seen so often and at so many places during the last few months, cigar-shaped, with a light at either end. The queer craft possessed marvelous agility and changed its course, turned abruptly around and arose and lowered at will.”

Now, to put things in context; In 1852, Henri Giffard (a French engineer) built the first powered airship, which consisted of a 143-ft (44-m) long, cigar-shaped, gas-filled bag with a propeller, powered by a 3-horsepower (2.2-kW) steam engine. It flew 17 miles. Later, in 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin of Germany invented the first rigid airship. The Wight Brothers didn't make their first, short flight till 1903. The first continental railroad across the United States was completed on May 10, 1869, and was commemorated with a ‘golden spike’ being driven at Promontory Point, Utah.

I find this account very disturbing because the observers were stone-sober Mormon pioneers. I discount the possibility that the UFO was of extraterrestrial origin, and will entertain only three possibilities:

A) An obscure Jules Vern-Captain Nemo-type inventor; but come on, in the Old West?
B) A machine from a parallel universe that has an advanced civilization.
C) A machine from the future, implying a mastery of time travel.

To put things in further context, here is the article that follows:

“Joe Walker, the notorious horse thief of Emery county, who recently shot sheriff Tuttle, has offered to pay Tuttle’s doctor bill. He sent word from his camp in San Rafel that he would turn over three horses (presumably without a bill of sale) for the sheriff to dispose of. Should the animals bring more than enough to settle all bills, the residue is to be turned over to Walker.”

The First powered Airship

I have blogged in the past about the prospect for global food and water shortages escalating into pitched battles between countries to secure these vital resources. Today, I read a UPI report that the stage is being set for this conflict scenario by the Gulf Arab States.

According to the report, they are engaged in using their oil profits to acquire vast tracts of arable land around the world that have associated water resources. The idea is that by this means they will become self-sufficient in food production by cultivating these land holdings and directly ship the produce home, thus avoiding the global commodities markets and their associated price structures.

These land grabs are occurring in countries that presently can't afford to feed their own populations, and they don't bode well for the future for all concerned.

Why?

Because in the host countries, political pressure to feed a starving populace will cause the rulers or elected officials to nationalize these holdings, regardless of the moral or economic rules that govern global commerce.

This in turn, will present the prospect of those Gulf countries involved using gunboat diplomacy to protect their interests. And, in as much as the weapons suppliers both in the East and the West have greedily supplied these countries with the latest high technology military products, such enforcement actions become much more plausible.

Now, I suggest that the Arabic countries involved in this escapade rethink their strategy.

In point of fact, it is quite possible that food and water self-sufficiency can be achieved on your own soil, irrespective of the fact that most of it consists of barren, sandy, wastelands that are presently the homelands of scattered migrant tribesmen.

New technological developments have occurred in the last few years that allow economical solar-powered water extraction from the desert air. Although it seldom rains in these regions, the air above the desert has sufficient humidity to allow the production of sufficient water to engage in industrial-scale hydroponic farming. And with global warming, the humidity in the air will increase.

Hydroponics have been demonstrated to produce far more infestation-free crops per square meter than an equivalent area of rich farmland, and such systems can be set up as closed loop irrigation systems with little water loss. I'm sure your engineers are aware of these developments.

And that, my friends, is where you should be investing your oil dollars. Let's face it; your oil resources are running out, and you have only one shot at getting this right. I know that Western countries will be falling all over themselves to provide the technology and technicians to help make this happen, and in the long run, you might avoid the turf wars that flare up in more developed regions of the world, as a growing population chases growing scarcity of these vital resources.

For my readers who are unfamiliar with these advances, here are several examples of what I am talking about:

Water Extraction Schematic

Hydroponics

Aquaponics

I have made various posts that bitch and moan about politics and politicians. I thought I had finally, somehow, elevated myself above the fray, but upon reading the following quotation sent to me by my older and wiser cousin, I nearly broke down and wept:

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Cicero 55 BC

As my good Opera friend Angeliki reminded me, today is my birthday, and now I am officially a dirty old man, excused by society from all sorts of sanctionable activities, which I may or may not engage in. My new excuses include, 'I forgot', 'My glasses steam up (when I ogle the ladies) because of my high blood pressure', and the best one, ‘I’m too old to fight sonny, so I’m just going to shoot you between the eyes’.

And, I get to make one last (I hope) political rant:

The country that I have known and loved most of my life is becoming unrecognizable. It is due to the excesses of politics and politicians who seem to have an unhealthy disregard for the provisions of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. And, my fellow citizens have rushed willy-nilly to embrace the new ‘Savior-based economy’. Sadly, they are lacking the education and wisdom to deal with the issues intelligently, and largely depend on ‘Pundits’ and clergymen to do their thinking for them.

But then, this has been the case since the days that humans first formed societies out of gatherings of nuclear families. Nothing seems to change, and as time goes on, we burden ourselves with chains that exist only in our own minds. I came across a magnificent painting, rich in allegory, which seems to sum up our past and present condition:



It will surprise many to learn that the United States was not established as a ‘Democracy’. The fact is, most of our founding fathers were pagans, and went to great lengths to separate church and state, but one, James Madison, lobbied hard for it to be organized as a ‘Republic’, because he feared the results of direct voting by the citizens as is required in a participatory democracy. This was codified in the 4th article of the Constitution.

So, instead of a democracy, we have a republic in which representatives write the laws and operate the government. Now, this would be an abhorrent situation to an educated general population of patriots, but it is what we have. We are still a long ways from evolving into a participatory democracy, although with modern electronics and the free Internet, we could set up a good one tomorrow.

No, the U.S. wasn't perfect then and it is not perfect now. Democracy is a moving target, changing over time. But obviously we've done some things right. No other nation has influenced as many other nations since the days of the Roman Empire. No other nation has advanced the sciences and the arts as much as the U.S. has. And no other nation has yet moved beyond superpower status to a potential global government.

And yet, with the Savior-based economy, we are giving up much of what our fathers and forefathers achieved, and we are spilling the blood of our children in shooting wars instead of isolating and using the power of high technology, finance, and commerce to dominate and control the miscreants that have hijacked entire countries.

I’m sure that a world government, if it is ever constituted, will at first take the form of a republic, and will endure in that form until the entire population of the world is educated enough and smart enough to evolve it into the real deal. This may well take several lifetimes to accomplish, but it is a worthy goal.