Tidal Power and the Power of Math

Much of the summer has been spent trying to work out a feasible way to capture the immense power of the tides here on the Little River in East Boothbay, Maine. They rise and fall twice a day around 12 feet. The kinetic force is huge and it lifts and lowers my 3-ton boat twice a day. There’s got to be a way to use it to power some of the things I currently pay Central Maine Power for. Then there’s the whole issue of living in a heated house while paying for electricity to keep a refrigerator inside it cold. Especially when there is infinite water 20 feet away at a temperature between 32 and 50 Fahrenheit depending on the season.

Anyway, the tidal thing is simple and complicated. I think I’ve solved a few of the troubles, but storage and use of DC current is still problematic. At the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine the other weekend, I talked with some proponents of hydrogen, created primarily by solar power (photovoltaic) as a stored energy and source for heating, or using (currently too expensive) fuel cells for electricity. God knows the state of the art in batteries still sucks, so storage is a key element here.

The basic idea involves a vertical column, rising from a small boat, probably a dinghy, and attached to the dock here so that the column, probably PVC pipe, can rise and fall with the tide. The column would either be lifting a weight that would fall at the tide change and either through cable and pulleys or a rack and gear system running the length of the column which would, at the point of greatest potential energy, turn it to kinetic energy driving a simple generator to charge a battery, create (and store) hydrogen or sell back to the electric utility.

All of the tidal programs I’ve seen to date use the current as the tides ebb and flow to run turbines. This creates a mess in turns of regulatory gridlock, and the requirement of massive scale. By using a dinghy as the only thing touching the water, it’s hard to see how any regulation could be required for something that only touches the ocean as a boat rising and falling with the tide. This just might drive the EPA nuts, but I think I’m on safe legal ground here.

So obviously there is a lot of power expended in raising our little boat 12 feet with a force of the boats rated load capacity of, let’s say 1000 pounds.

From www.howstuffworks.com we get this handy chart:

In (James) Watt's judgment, one horse can do 33,000 foot-pounds of work every minute. A horse exerting 1 horsepower can raise 330 pounds 100 feet in a minute, or 33 pounds 1,000 feet in one minute, or 1,000 pounds 33 feet in one minute. You can make up whatever combination of feet and pounds you like. As long as the product is 33,000 foot-pounds in one minute, you have a horsepower.
Horsepower can be converted into other units as well. For example:
0. 1 horsepower is equivalent to 746 watts. So if you took a 1-horsepower horse and put it on a treadmill, it could operate a generator producing a continuous 746 watts.

If I get my math right, our 1000-pound lift going 12 feet in 6 hours could generate 0.001 of horsepower (at perfect efficiency). If I have any readership, feel free to check my math. That works out to about 0.7 watts, which is the power generated by a really small solar panel. We can scale up the foot/pounds by upping the pounds, as the tide can lift a theoretical infinite weight.

Using my bigger boat, we can assume just over 3 tons of lift and generate just about 0.006 HP or 4.5 watts. I think I’ve found the flaw in my theory. A freaking 25,000-ton freighter rising and falling twice a day would generate 50 horsepower, about the same as a motorcycle. Perhaps I’m out of my mind, or perhaps I got the math wrong, but I swear there’s a pony somewhere under all this shit, I just need to keep digging.

Anyway, I hope I got the math wrong and there’s some potential to this, but right now I feel like an idiot. Maybe the refrigerator booster idea will work out better.

Fundamentalism stops a thinking mind

No bailout

Of course, without a bailout, we face financial Armeggedon.

With a bailout, we ensure that our children and grandchildren get to enjoy it too.

Where do we go from here?

Now that the markets are facing collapse and freeze ups and a lot of really bad juju, the same old sorry assed Republicans are trying to fix things without looking like it’s another bailout for the wealthy. And that it’s fiscally conservative. And convince us that eight years of complete Republican control didn’t get us here. And that it’s the Dems fault. Specifically Obama.

I’m waiting for the Rovian attacks to compel us to believe that none other than Barack Obama and a (barely) Democratic lead Congress are to blame for the mess, rather than deregulation, absurd tax cuts and just plain stupid policy choices by the administration. Just as they did with Iraq, these assclowns have been trying to kick the economic can down the road so it blows up on someone else’s watch. The seven hundred billion dollar bailout is a Hail Mary play to keep the economic apocalypse off until January when it will obviously be Obama’s fault.

Americans (unfortunately) on the whole are collectively stupid and complacent enough to buy this shit, which is really heartbreaking. For many of them, there will be no “Aha” moment unless and until three things happens:
1. No beer
2. No TV to watch sports
3. No money to watch sports at bar with buddies

The sad fact is that at that point Joe Sixpack will not magically grow insightful and realize he’s been played for a schmuck by the “values” party that only “values” his usefulness as a taxpayer, a good little voting sheep and for cannon fodder. The fix has been in for so long that it’s waaaay too late to get on top of things. Just what Joe S. does next is the real seven hundred billion dollar question. What are his choices?

Move in with the in-laws? Move in with the kids? Starve? Beg? Steal? Revolt? Rampage? Something has to happen if Wal-Mart isn’t hiring and PhDs are cleaning the Slurpee machines down at the QuikScrewMart. How mad will these gomers be and will it be at the right people? These folks are very probably the same ones who own (multiple) firearms, so there could be some pretty interesting outcomes.

$700,000,000,000.00 without oversight

End of Investment Banking

I did a double take when I saw this on Bloomberg. Last night, the two remaining investment banks in America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley “concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken”.

Wow! These entities were separated from commercial banks in the 1930’s, and have really been the mainstay of Wall Street. There were five of them back in March and four of them last week, but now they are gone. Does this mean the title, “Investment Banker” is gone? Must be, if there is no such thing as an investment bank. This is really startling to me as I spent much of my career with these guys, and got to know hundreds of them over the years. I got out of college in 1982, which was pretty much the beginning of a 25-year bull market, and these guys were the Masters of the Universe throughout the entire run.

It’s like waking up and finding that there is no longer the color brown, or that all the Wal-Marts were closed and shuttered. This will be a really big deal in NYC and other urban areas with a large investment banking population. As commercial bankers, these guys aren’t going to need food stamps, but the old days of multimillion-dollar bonuses every January is probably over, and that will definitely have an impact.

It’s reminiscent of the scene in Tom Robbins’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” in which the protagonist gets cut off from commissions and must live within his $100,000 annual salary but has a $23,000 a month mortgage. We’ll see soon whether it was just the little people living so far beyond their means. I suspect not.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

I have a hard time with the whole unfettered free trade and free markets gang that populates the Republican Party. It is no problem to ignore a starving child or pay a hedge fund manager billions of dollars because they each deserve what they got. The free markets created incentives for the starving child to be born to a 15 year old crack whore and for Wesley Hoggington Bellsworth IV to join a hedge fund after a Wharton MBA.

First, I thought the analogy for the $700,000,000,000.00 bail out was like a guy who goes to the casino with $10,000.00. If he wins, he keeps the money. If he loses, the taxpayers pay him back. But it’s even worse than that. The players are on their own, but the casino gets paid back if it loses. We’re facing the largest case of welfare for the wealthy in world history.

First, let’s get a handle on the size of that seven hundred billion US dollars. What is seven hundred billion? It’s over $100 for every man, woman and child in the entire world. $100 is the annual income of billions of human, so this is not particularly trivial. Put another way, it’s a million dollars for every man, woman and child in the entire state of Vermont or Wyoming or Alaska.

More fittingly, as a tax bill, it’s $6,200 for every taxpayer in the country. Paid all at once it would be a 50% increase in the Federal Income Tax owed by each taxpayer, an estimated 113 million strong.

How can they get away with it? When foreclosures started to mount, the Right said, “Those people made poor decisions and must take the consequences” which likely include lose of home, bankruptcy and worse. When the boys and girls at the investment banks made poor decisions, they got to keep their bonuses, their jobs and their companies on the backs of the people losing their homes.

Why isn’t anyone standing up to say, “The Emperor is not only naked, he’s screwing the dog”? I’ve often wondered if a malign power had attempted seven and a half years ago to ruin America whether they could have made a worse mess than the Bush Administration. It’s hard to imagine. But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, we go from “The economy is strong” to “The economy will die if we don’t spend almost a trillion dollars on it NOW” in less than a week.

Credibility anyone? It would be hard enough if someone had admitted things were getting a little iffy, or if they offered to accept a little regulation along with their welfare, but all the abuses of the past that were chalked up to the cost of free trade now get socialized at the first whiff of disaster.

The only good that can come of this is to discredit the idea of government as the problem and the critically flawed theory of the power and perfection of an utterly free market.

Eric is such a great writer, I'll just repost here:

Quote:
Originally Posted by GRG55
The headline and opening paragraph of the article state...
Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings
WASHINGTON — It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first...
Either the US Congress is even more clueless and illiterate than I'd suspected,or this is just another act in the unfolding Greek tragedy designed to prepare the audience [US taxpayers] emotionally in advance of the "hundreds of Billions" announcement that followed. No prize for the correct answer...
Which came first, the egg of incompetent crisis prevention or the chicken of incompetent crisis response?

They are preparing Congress for the next phase. They may also hope they might pull out of it, and know they don't have a chance without a blank check from Congress. But at some level they must know they have little chance anyway. Too many things have broken at the same time. This is why Bernanke has been out of sight. Paulson is a crisis-hardened executive, Bernanke an academic. He never learned how to manage and hide his fear. Fear is more contagious than a virus. He is kept out of the public eye.

America's enemies smell weakness. Open season on America has begun.

Next comes financial chaos where even the appearance of control is lost. The sheer speed and randomness of events will catch many by surprise, like a financial tornado.

After the financial tornado passes we will all stare in wonder at the strangeness of the scene, the red Lamborghini stuck upside down 40 feet off the ground in a last remaining branches of a leafless oak tree, at the man smiling who is glad to have survived unscathed in his underwear in the bathtub that was as all that remained of his home. Lives will be frozen in economic time, careers ended, ancient relationships cut off by economic irrelevance.

Next year, slowly we will stagger out of the economic wreckage and start to rebuild. But things will never be as they were, for our old reality was fantasy anyway, built on false beliefs. We have no more chance of recreating it than we have in the morning after waking from a lovely dream to fall asleep again back into it while the alarms are ringing.

Why higher taxes make us work harder

It’s pretty much gospel on the right to state that lowering taxes raises government revenues and increases the incentive to work. Conversely, raising taxes somehow reduces government revenues and decreases the incentive to work. The idea put forward is, “Why should I work harder when the government gets 20/30/40 percent of it anyway?” By the same logic, wouldn’t the current increases in energy and food prices create the same incentives or disincentives?

In the real world, most people live paycheck to paycheck. If taxes increase, and take home pay falls, the last thing they’re going to do is work less. Thank about it. I’ve got friends who are being affected by the economy. They can’t afford their current standard of living. How do they deal? Get an extra job, work longer hours, cut back on unnecessary expenses. No one I’ve talked to thinks they should work less as a result of the squeeze. And yet this is gospel to the right wing.

As for raising revenues through lower taxes, could somebody take a look at the national debt and tell me what the current administration has done to us with tax cuts? How did we pay for WWII, which got us out of the Great Depression? Tax hikes. Big ones. Massive ones. And nobody whined about disincentives to long hours at the hedge fund.

It would be a beautiful thing if the next President could grow a spine and tell it like it is. We will have to raise taxes and just take it. We need to tie patriotism to shared effort and cost. The same people who hate taxes seem to be the ones in favor of a $3,000,000,000,000.00 war in Iraq, but not in favor giving poor kids breakfast. The American people can rally to a cause and be better than this. The consumer nation we live in today is not the America we’re capable of being.

I’d sure love to know what’s going through the head of some of those folks from Lehman Brothers, who were making literal millions a year who are out on their butts this week trying to figure out who is hiring financial geniuses these days (answer- no one). Maybe a month ago they were maxing their contributions to America’s Watch and McBush/Qualin ’08 and now staring down a $9,000 a month mortgage and no job prospects whatsoever, do they have an epiphany? Do they gain a little insight into why some of us want to help out the disadvantaged by taxing the advantaged just a little more? I wonder.

I was lucky to fail miserably in life and in business before hitting one out of the park, because the memories of helplessness and frustration and need are still there, and I hope they temper my actions. We’ll muddle through like we always do, but it would be nice to see a lot more simple kindness from people.

The Shit is Hitting the Fan

Okay, so the shit is hitting the fan, and man, oh, man, they re grabbing the cash and running. While they tell you, "Buy and hold! Stocks always win in the long run!" the Masters and Mistresses of the Universe are selling everything and grabbing the cash. The good news is that things like gold and oil are a deal, but it's just because the smart money (what's left of it) are selling everything and hoarding cash. I'll admit to stuffing a safe deposit box a few weeks ago, but it was almost a coincidence rather than a plan,
Anyway, call up your broker and they'll give you the standard pabulum, stocks always go up, buy on the dips (are they still using that one?), equities (US stocks) should be the bulk of your holdings, blah, blah, blah
These are the same morons who told you the Dow would hit 30,000 (it's at 11,422 right now eight years later), that real estate never goes down (A total of 215,749 foreclosure filings were reported in December, up 97 percent from December 2006in US) and that deficits don't matter (credit card debt absurdly high and not going away). Guess what? They're lying again. Here's a little tutorial on how it works and how it falls apart. It's not pretty. Company raise money so they can do stuff by either selling new shares (stock) or borrowing (bonds). Buying stocks means you own part of the company, where buying bonds means you have an IOU from the company. Get it? Good. When a company sells bonds, they essentially have to pay interest to the bondholders, but if they go bankrupt you get in line first to get your money back. When they sell stock, they pay no interest, but as the stock price goes up, the new shareholders join in the rise. If they go bankrupt, the shares are pretty much worthless.
What's happened in the US right now is this- the big financial companies are losing billions of dollars mostly from dumb bets on mortgages, which is driving their stock prices down A LOT. This makes would be bond buyers nervous, so they basically charge more interest, which the money losers can't afford, if they can sell the bonds in the first place. When things get bad enough, these companies sell themselves dirt cheap (and shareholders get little or no money for their shares) or go bankrupt (and shareholders get no money back for their shares
The big problem comes because everybody owns part of everybody else. Fannie Mae shareholders include Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Barclays and other companies that your mutual funds probably hold. Whoops! You retirement nest egg is shrinking. Worse, the other companies in your mutual fund held other owners of these companies and so on and so on and so on. The faster it goes the faster it goes and the companies that go under are not just dipping, they are going to zero. There is no coming back from zero. You can't win in a long-term hold strategy with a stock that is worth nothing. Get it? Okay, the shares you own in mutual funds are actual, real live stocks of companies that may go broke leaving you with nothing. Recent stocks falling to zero include Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns (close enough), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A year ago, these were the safest widows and orphans type investments available. Now, the shares are useful solely as scratchpads.

Adding insult to injury are the bailouts by the US government. Remember all that talk of free markets, and why it was wrong to tax hedge fund execs, cuz they’d be less motivated to work? Where my bailout on my liar loan? Where my bailout on these medical bills? Where’s my bailout for outrageous tuition? Why do the big guys get helped after screwing us and we remain screwed?

John McCain/Monty Python '08

For those of a certain age, nothing, but nothing is funny like Monty Python is funny. This is a riot.

Michael Palin for President.

God, Hurricanes and Republicans

Enough with the self indulgence of a whining Boomer and the horrifying fact that time does indeed pass and all things turn to dust. I forget who said it, but, “I know we’re all going to die someday, I just expected that an exception would be made for me.”

So in the wake of the last few weeks, I’m trying to see how the Religious RightTM can keep its own bullshit in order. Let’s look at the events as they unfold, shall we?

1. Video posted on Focus on the Family asks Christians to pray for rain to interrupt Obama’s outdoor acceptance speech. Oddly, the speech is delivered in perfect weather.

2. Flash forward the next week and a mighty hurricane preempts the first day of the GOP convention. Can anyone of them rethink their politics?

3. Flash forward again and a mindnumbing monster hurricane is headed for the reddest part of the reddest state in the country.


Are any of them thinking this through?

Doncha think if Obama had gotten rained out and a hurricane hit Massachusetts that they’d be all over the airwaves praising God for smiting unrighteousness? Of course they would. What a bunch of assclowns.

Aging, Part 2

The drugs are kicking in but even an open MRI is no walk in the park. Imagine lying on your back with an Oreo 7 feet across lowered over your body to within 2 inches of your nose, with the top of your head only a few inches from the edge of the Oreo so you can see out if you roll your eyes way back. They let you have your arms out to the side so you can grab the end and haul your sorry butt out if the feces hits the oscillator (and isn’t that what claustrophobia is all about, loss of control?). This MRI takes an hour, rather than twenty minutes back in the torpedo tube in a trailer, but the extra time is totally worth it. The flat surface is almost too close to focus on, so I make a game of unfocusing my eyes and consciously hallucinating the Oreo a few feet away. Thanks, Ativan!

All things considered it’s been a hell of a day. The tech yells, “We’re done!” and I roll out from under the Oreo. It only takes a few minutes to develop the films, and the prognosis is in. I apparently have a cyst between Lumbar vertebrae 4 and 5 on the left side. “What, like a spinal zit?” I ask the doc, but just has a blank look. I get an Rx for Vicodin and a course of steroids, and we’re off for home and our guests. An appointment with the Neurosurgeon is scheduled for the next week, and home we go.

Good news. The pain has really been intense, but the morning after the first fistful of steroids, I’m relatively pain-free. The night before, the pain meds had taken the edge off, so I stop taking them to see what I really feel like. Not bad, just a lower backache, a calf that feels like it wants to cramp and a foot shot full of Novocain. After the last week and a half, not bad. We’re having a nice weekend, and other than a limp, I’m feeling pretty good. Next we get to meet the Neurosurgeon down in Scarborough, just south of Portland.

After a 4 second (really!) wait in the not really a waiting room, Doogie Howser greets me in his office. If my ability to read Latin numerals hasn’t failed me, he graduated from Yale in 1990, so he has to be nearly 40, but I have him pegged at 14. Very intense, very professional, I get an uninterrupted half hour with the guy. When was the last time the medical profession spent that sort of time on me outside of surgery, psychiatry or a heart attack scare? I think it was during childbirth, but my memory gets fuzzy somewhere around 1960.

Anyway, he peers at the films through coke bottle lenses, and hems and haws for quite a while. Turns out I don’t have a cyst, but a herniated disk, lumbar 5, left. He leads me through a short tutorial on reading an MRI, disks and hernias, and the “crab meat like substance” that leaks from the former and into a space the nerve would rather have to itself. “Ninety five percent of the time, we can surgically fix this and avoid permanent weakness in the foot, intense pain and eventual incontinence and loss of bladder control.”

At this very second, I want to whip out a credit card, heave it to him and schedule an OR. Then he goes into detail.

“We just roll you over on your tummy (sic), wash you down with antiseptic, slice a neat slit through the back muscle, drill a hole into the vertebrae and tease (sic) out that little piece of crabmeat (sic).” Tummy, tease and crabmeat are his actual words. I swear.

Mentally, the credit card goes back into the wallet, the OR is unscheduled, and I’m thinking homeopathy, a leg brace, chanting, a Shaman, anything but that.

“There is also a one or two percent chance that there’s an infection. Then we’d have to open you back up, wash it out, sew you up and strap a pump of antibiotics to you for ten to twelve weeks.”

As mentioned before, medically I’m an idiot, whereas Liz thinks all doctors are (and she’s the one with decades in the industry). I may be ignorant, but even I know enough to never ask a barber if I need a haircut. It’s obvious that this guy wants to cut, because that’s what surgeons do. For once, facing a doctor I remember to challenge him or at least ask questions. Just taking him at face value, and being a sheep, I’d be in surgery tomorrow. The implication is that otherwise, I’ll be a pain-ridden incontinent Depends wearing gimp from here on out.

“I do forty or so of these every month” he cheerfully throws in.

“How often does this clear up on its’ own?” I ask.

“Plenty of times. It often just clears itself up.” No statistics are offered, but later I’ll look up the website of Johns Hopkins Medical School which puts the odds of this condition clearing up without surgery at better than 90%.

“How long can I wait to see if it fixes itself?”

“Usually four to six weeks after onset.”

“That gives me two to four weeks.

He nods, and hides his disappointment well. Maybe later, Sweeny Todd.

Now I’ve got a few weeks to read up on this and figure out what way to go. There’s an interesting moral dilemma in deciding whether to take the pain meds and feel better or be in pain but know if it’s getting better. Surprisingly, I rarely go for the meds and prefer to feel how I’m feeling. In fact, it’s been a week and the label says, “Take one every six hours as needed” and I’ve only had two. Not masochism, it’s just that this feels like a growing old moment I somehow need to fully experience.

Through damn near half a century, I’ve been car wrecked, capsized, cut up, beaten up and even thrown through the windshield of a taxi. It’s really been a hell of a ride, but all I ever picked up before were a bunch of very interesting scars, or tattoos with better stories, as I like to think of them and a few fake teeth. They are just marks on an aging, wrinkling wrapper that’s been with me for so long, and the changes so slow that it can be unnoticeable. Seeing someone after years or decades makes you notice, but it’s a long slow change, so it’s easier to handle. This disk injury thing isn’t like that. Maybe I’ve just been way too fortunate, but the idea of a permanent and sudden loss of strength or usage of a limb is too sudden and too permanent.

It reminds me of my last flying lesson, when I learned about “stalling”, the fact that there is a speed at which an airplane is aerodynamically indistinguishable from a rock. I remember rumbling along 1000 feet over the New Hampshire shore throttling back further and further at the instructors command, when suddenly at around 70 mph, we pointed straight for the ground. No gradual loss of lift, I was suddenly flying a rock. Obviously I pulled out of it, but that was it for flying lessons. I leave it to the professionals.

It’s the same with my back. Injuries are just supposed to leave scars, and I managed to believe I would always be 20 years old, except with very gradually decaying powers. I was fine with that. But faced with the suddenness of a real loss of function, loss of lift is sort of sobering. James Taylor wisely wrote that the secret of life is enjoying the passing of time. I really try to live that way, to a degree that can drive Liz crazy.

“Do you realize I’m closer to age 80 than 18?”

“Shut up!”

“When Genevieve graduates from college, I’ll be 71.”

“Please shut up now.”

“Your Dad was your age when I met you.”

(Sound of impact from item thrown at head.) “Ouch.”

It seems important to be aware of where we stand in life and not let it slip past unawares. My nightmare scenario has been the same for decades; waking up old and unhappy and unloved and having left not a scratch on the world, wondering where the hell my life went and what it was all about. Much of my time and thought ever since have been focused on preventing that from happening. I can’t do anything about the getting old part, but I hope I’ve got a pretty good handle on the rest of it.

Aging, Part 1

As we said so many times before when somebody complains about old age, it beats the hell out of the alterative. But just when you think it’s enough to point that out, life throws you a little chin music.

We went with friends rafting on the Kennebec River 2 weeks ago on a beautiful August morning. The water was what they call “big” and we entered a series of class III and IV rapids pretty early on. I thought I was doing okay up in the front of the raft when I looked up and saw a wave over my head. Well, it picked me up and deposited me under it, in a raft/Jeff/river bottom sandwich for all of 10 or 15 seconds. Note that the rapids don’t stop and take a break when you fall out of the boat. Struggling to get to the edge of the bottom of the boat was surreal, in a dark boiling blender with that looming black roof of inflated vinyl. I finally reached the edge, and got pulled by the intrepid guide into the boat and preceded to gasp for breath for a good 15 minutes. Finally getting back to my front row position, I curled up on the floor for at least a half hour.

So a day or two later, the various pains had sorted themselves out between bruises, lacerations, bumps and the like, along with a new fiend. It was a sort of burning pain from upper left butt to back of the calf, which faded into a generally numb left foot and ankle. Like with most back pain, I figured it would just go away on its own, but it didn’t. By Sunday, a week after the incident, I was in the ER. The Doc did some poking and prodding, and after failing to walk on my heels I was diagnosed with Sciatica, and given pain meds and muscle relaxants. “If it isn’t any better mid-week, see your primary doctor.”

Well, meds are always nice, but mid-week wasn’t seeing improvement. I went to Ron, my primary doc here in the north woods, and he too poked and prodded. But he noticed something the ER doc hadn’t, and I learned a new term, “foot drop”. My left (numb) foot was unable to pull itself up with anywhere near the strength of the right one. I not only couldn’t point my toes on the left foot to my nose, I could only get them slightly off the ground at all.

Ron got that serious look you don’t ever want to see on the doc’s face, especially when you are the patient in question. “I’m going to consult with a Neurosurgeon and get you into an MRI.” Oh, those are comforting words. My lovely wife Liz speaks “Medical” while I have an easier time with Phoenician than docspeak. I’m pretty sure consulting with a neurosurgeon and getting an MRI fall short of a weekend at Disney World, or even in county lockup.

Rapidly, things happen behind my back with cryptic updates, like “Open MRI Scarborough 7:45 half-open Topsham 3:30 out back now” and “…with enough pressure from the disk on the nerve, the losses in the foot could be permanent and lead to loss of bladder control and incontinence…” As the Onion noted on September 12, 2001, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”

So now that they’ve got me all relaxed (NOT!) they bring in the wheelchair and plop me into it. My wife, brother and sister-in-law watch me wheeled away through a series of hallways and turns and finally out the door into the parking lot and onto a hydraulic lift attached to the side of a semi trailer. Up we go in the wheelchair on the lift, the door opens, and I’m instructed to rise and enter. You think it might have been easier to just use the stairs?

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a slight tremor that can turn downright Hepburnesqe under sufficient anxiety. This qualified. Two nice clinicians tried to divert me from looking at the tiny opening into which I would be shoved, after cleverly placing a washcloth over my eyes. I asked about IV Valium, and they laughed, but I was not kidding at all, no way, no how, no siree.

They hand me a bulb and said to squeeze it in an emergency. I cross my arms and slide backwards into this hellishly tiny torpedo tube. NOW they tell this is going to take 20 minutes. (I assumed, what? 30 seconds?) NOW I realize, being larger that the average human at 6’2” and 220 that this was a tight fit and my always-lurking claustrophobia
comes to the surface. After less than a minute of enclosed darkness and banging noises, I squeezed that bulb several hundred times rapidly, and slowly left the chamber. Once I could move my arms I pulled myself out and I do believe the aides feared for their lives.

Back to the wheelchair, the tremor closer to a seizure, I roll through the hospital looking for my family, who, assuming I’d be back in 20 minutes where nowhere to be found. I confessed to Ron that I couldn’t hack the MRI thing and what else could we do? Champ that he is he called around and found an “open MRI” 40 minutes away in Topsham that could see me in 45 minutes. “Ron, something for the nerves, Please?” Five minutes later we pick up an Ativan from Rite Aid and it’s off to Topsham.

Next, the open MRI

Sex and Drugs and Mariachis

It occurred to me in a discussion with a Republican Christian (who will remain unnamed) that there is a dichotomy in world view between left and right on the issue of bad things. I’d like to take a look at three of them and how they’re treated on the left and the right.

First, sex. The Right would prefer abstinence. The problems of sex primarily exist because abstinence did not occur. And in fact can’t not occur. Millions of years of human history can’t be wrong. Without lust, none of us would be here. The Left would prefer to address the problem; given that people who shouldn’t will have sex, how do we deal with unwanted outcomes? This works for everyone and doesn’t arbitrarily divide us into good (chaste) and bad (sexually active outside of a heterosexual marriage). Evidence the (VP-R) eldest would-be first daughter.

The black and white of abstinence is appealing apparently for its clean, neat delineation. Life, however, is rarely clean, neat nor clearly delineated. The fixing what’s broke approach is complicated, and offers no clear set of winners and losers, no sinners and saints. That definitely makes it harder, but also makes it more just and merciful. Education and available birth control would be a nice start.

Second, drugs. From the beginning of time, man has sought to alter his state of consciousness, whether through sacramental wine, herbs, whirling, snake handling, opium, tobacco, mushrooms, peyote or holding one’s breath till blue.

The right generally says, “Don’t.” and enacts absurdly punitive sentences for people who either have a disease or a good handle on free markets. Drop me anywhere in the US with $200 and I’ll get you smack, pot, LSD and a clean needle in an hour. Legalizing makes it harder for underage users, and we could afford a hell of a lot of education on the profits and taxes. Basically we’d be saying that if you’re dumb enough to bang smack, we’re smart enough to have you do it in a controlled setting, and have no reason to rob us for the next fix.

The left (more and more) recognizes that people are going to continue to get high, so how to handle the situation? Legalization, taxation, regulation and treatment seem like a good idea. Want to defund most gangs, mobs, the Taliban and the FARC? Want to cut prison populations by 80%? Want to annihilate the deficit? Legalize, tax, regulate and treat.

Third, immigration. As long as there are more opportunities on the north side of the US southern border than the south, there will be immigration, whether legal, illegal or hard to say. Once again, the right has the clean, neat response of “Go away.” It’s simple, it fits a neat slogan, “What part of illegal don’t you understand.” It’s really tough to defend in Biblical terms, but most of the right I hear from use the gospel for lipservice, cherry picking or worse.

On the left, the messier, but much kinder and more practical reform to a path to citizenship. Nothing would fix social security as quickly as 20,000,000 new taxpayers.

It’s funny that besides being impractical, the right’s solution to each of these dilemmas is drastically more expensive, undeniably cruel to millions and just plain not nice. How a bunch of alleged libertarians can stand for this is absurd. Especially the ones who call themselves Christians. Like the sticker on my truck says, “As you do to the least of these…”

Oh wait. I get it. The song goes, “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” They obviously left out brown on purpose.

Unscrew Yourself

There are countless Americans in a trap today, living in more house than they can afford. They purchased their SUV (like the house) with no money down and they’re upside down and gas is four bucks. Heating the monster house is going to be a burden with heating oil at four and a half bucks and when did they last get a raise? The credit cards are maxed and the HELOC got dropped to zero.

If you are in this situation, you probably made a few bad decisions. But. Billions of dollars were spent on advertising designed to wring every penny out of your cash flow. Fight back. Technically, it’s illegal, but then so are the powers just granted to the Treasury Department to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Morally and ethically, this is the way to go.

Cash your paycheck. No automatic deposit, no records. Take the cash and buy groceries. That’s it. Insurance? Your call. Pay for heat and electric (buy money orders to send in). Screw the car payments, the credit cards, the cable bill and the mortgage. It’ll be a year before they can evict you, and in the mean time, you’re going to build up a pile of cash. Give the actual cash to friends or family to keep in a safe place. You’ll need to show for six months before filing for bankruptcy where the money went. The kids needed it to pay for heating oil.

Credit scores are meaningless. What matters is cold, hard cash.

Lose the Internet connection, cellphone and cable. Use the library. They have free Internet access and books are free. Times will get really tight in the next few years. You aren’t depriving your family; you’re a trend-setter. You can’t ignore taxes or student loans, but they are practically the only untouchables.

They’ll seize your SUV within sixty days of the last payment, but by then you’ve got about a months’ pay in cash. Try public transportation or carpooling. Consider a bike. If you must have a car, buy a beater. If you get crap about driving a 1995 Honda Civic with primer on the fender, ask them what the payments are on their 2007 TerminatorXL and gas mileage. Tell them you own yours. Gloat.

A year later and where are we? Probably better read and in better shape from walking or biking when possible to save on gas. The median after tax pay for an American worker is about $42,000 a year. Let’s use a generous $800 a month for food, take out the $2000 we spent on the beater and another $500 for auto insurance, and even $3000 for heating if you need it. Miscellaneous will take another $300 a month, but we’re trying to save money here, right? No Carmel Macchiatos.

So what do we have? The SUV is long gone, and the foreclosure auction is scheduled for next week. You’re going through bankruptcy proceedings at this point (chapter 7, which removes all debts, not chapter 11 or 13 which just reschedules them) and that’s where the technically illegal part happens. They’ll ask if you have any assets you haven’t declared. You’ll look the judge in the eye, and say “No” knowing that your kids, parents or friends acquired $23,300 in cash and you will soon have zero debt.

At this point, you may have technically broken a law by lying under oath (Presidents do it) but given the assembly line economic disemboweling of millions of your fellow Americans, the odds of getting caught are zip. Screw them. They’ve certainly screwed you. This act of civil disobedience is as American as apple pie. It was illegal to bail out Fannie and Freddie. Boston Tea Party anyone?

Think about the credit card offers filling your mailbox. Think about the mortgage broker who promised that real estate prices never go down, that you can always refinance and suggested you lie about your income.

Now think about going out into the world with a clean slate and $23,300 cash. Find an apartment (nothing too fancy) and pay the first month, last month and security deposit. The median price for an apartment in DC is around $700 a month, but let’s double it to $1400. To move in we’re out around $4,000. Try to find something close enough to work to walk, ride or take public transportation. Put another $1,000 on a secured credit card (only use it when absolutely necessary, like renting a car) and live within your means. Save at least 20% of your income. Shoot for more.

In a mere year, our hypothetical, yet typical American has gone from being a wage slave to a debt free saver with a decent place to live, money in the bank and, I suspect, a much better outlook on what’s important in life.

Go ahead. Unscrew yourself.

The Hypocritical Right. This is great.

Am I the luckiest guy in the world, or what?

Good Day,


I am Roger Weston, staff of Bristol & West Private
Banking. I am contacting you concerning a deceased
Customer and an investment he placed under our banks
Management three years ago. I would respectfully
Request that you keep the contents of this mail
Confidential and respect the integrity of the
Information you come by as a result of this mail. I am
Making this contact with you based on the committee's
Need for an individual/company who is willing to
Assist me to stand as the next of kin to my deceased
Client.


Being the deceased financial consultant before the
Untimely and sudden death and since i am the only one
Who has the knowledge where these funds (60million
British pounds sterling) was moved to when the
Deceased demanded it be moved from our office Bristol
& west to a security company, I can move this deal
Forward to its successful end once we conclude to
Work together. What I expect from you is trust and
Commitment. There is a reward for this project and it
is a task well worth undertaking.According to
Practice, the Security firm will by the end of this
Financial year broadcast a request for statements of
Claim to Bristol & West Private Bank, failing to
Receive viable claims they will most probably revert
The deposit back to Bristol & West Private Bank. What
I propose now is that if you are the relative to my
Client please let me know. I alone have the deposit
Details and they will release the deposit to no one
Unless I instruct them to do so. I alone know of the
Existence of this deposit for as far as Bristol & West
Private Bank is concerned, the transaction with our
Late customer concluded when I sent the funds to the
Security firm, all outstanding interactions in
Relation to the file are just customer services and
Due process. The Security firm has no single idea of
What is the history or nature of the deposit? They are
Simply awaiting instructions to release the deposit to
Any party that comes forward. This is the situation.
This bank has spent great amounts of money trying to
Track this man’s family; they have investigated for
Months and have found no family. The investigation has
Come to an end. My proposal; you share similar details
To the late fellow; I am prepared to place you in a
Position to instruct the Securities firm to release
The deposit to you as the closest surviving relation.
Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share
The money with you in half. That is: I will simply
Nominate you as the next of kin and have them release
The deposit to you. We share the proceeds 50/50.I
Would have gone ahead to ask the funds be released to
Me, but that would have drawn a straight line to me
And my involvement in claiming the deposit. I assure
You that I could have the deposit released to you
Within a few days.


I have evaluated the risks and the only risk I have
Here is for you to betray my confidence.
Hope to hear from you soon.


Roger Weston

God seen to hate Dobson, GOP

This just KILLS me. The assclown reverend blamed Katrina on faggots in NOLA. Who dislikes whom, weasel boy?


Be careful what you wish for
Posted by Michael W. Dominowski September 01, 2008 11:00AM
Categories: Michael W. Dominowski

Associated Press
UPSTAGED BY BAD WEATHER: As television coverage of Hurricane Gustav plays on a TV monitor, there's not much happening on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Is it God's will?
Selfish preacher calls for Biblical rain on Obama's speech and discovers why some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

Talk about miscalculations.

Somewhere along the line the fringe nuts at James Dobson's right-wing cult "Focus on the Family" thought it would be a good idea to entreat whatever kind of God it is they worship to wash out Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the close of the Democratic National Convention the other night. One of the group's producers, Stuart Shepard, appeared on camera near Mile High Stadium in Denver, site of the speech, and did just that. His attempt to harness the power of prayer as a political weapon seems to have backfired big-time.

A most un-Christian appeal


Shepard
As the Democrats began gathering in Denver, Mr. Shepard strolled in front of the stadium, microphone in hand, and in a theatrically whiny, sniveling voice that can only be described as creepy, wondered aloud "if it would be so wrong to pray for rain ... Not just rain, abundant rain ... urban and small streams advisory rain ... umbrella ain't gonna help ya ... swamp the intersections ... network cameras can't see the podium rain."
An almighty God who takes advice from jerks and is willing to consider all requests, no matter how petty or mean or selfish? This is a pretty perverted Talibanesque twist on Christianity. Nevertheless, the entreaty has not gone unanswered. Of course the results were probably not what Mr. Shepard had in mind.

The Good Lord delivered up a beautiful, balmy, clear, starry night in Denver. Then the Republicans came to Minneapolis and God sent Hurricane Gustav to Louisiana. Not a direct hit on the hapless city of New Orleans, mind you. Just wind and rain. Abundant rain. Urban and big-rivers advisory rain ... umbrella ain't gonna help you, swamp-the streets, network cameras abandon Minneapolis for the storm scene rain. You know. Just enough to showcase, in the timeliest of ways -- the third anniversary of Katrina -- the flagship Republican domestic failure of the worst presidency in American history.

The wages of intolerance


Dobson
Wingnut nonprophets of the Dobsonian persuasion are practiced in selectively reading the Bible and glossing its words to perfume their message of intolerance and bigotry. Mr. Shepard, for example, apparently overlooked the admonishment of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Now the Republican National Convention has been disrupted by bad weather. Did Shepard's sheer hubris tick off the Big Guy? Did God send Hurricane Gustav as a lesson to the radical right? Who is to say?

Had events gone the other way you can bet the motley assortment of sawdust Billy Sundays out there would have been tearing their shirts and bellowing from the pulpit about their being in league with the almighty, etc., etc. Instead the opposite happened. It could be bad luck, it could be God's will. Whatever it was, there's no crowing in the extremist "Christian" camps today, and Focus on the Family has pulled the video.
--
HIS WORDS ENDURE: Stuart Shepard's intemperate wishing of ill unto others still exists here, on YouTube.
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IS TURNABOUT FAIR PLAY? Reaction to the Shepard video produces parodies purporting to be counter-requests to the almighty to disrupt the GOP convention. Pray for a tornado | Pray for diarrhea (Avoid this one if you are offended by scatological talk.)