25 years ago

…about this time, I was at Refrigeration Research in Brighton MI, the place where I used to work, trying to peddle some junk-bond-based mutual funds for First Investors, the place I was working for at the time. I don’t recall if I found out there, or when I got back to the car. I hadn’t paid much attention up until then; people had been going into space, mostly successfully, most of my life, and it was no big deal anymore. Sure, there was all that “first teacher in space” hoopla, but I’d grown up being unimpressed by teachers, and saw no reason I should be impressed then. So when it happened, I sorta went “Oh shit…that’s really sad”, but  it never occurred to be to write a Challenger memorial piece.

At the time it was (and became more so) All About Christa.  If you ask the man on the street who was on the Challenger, the list will begin (if it begins at all) and end with McAuliffe (unless you’re an Akronite, in which case you might remember Judith Resnik). At the time, we sensed there was something wrong with that, which is where the jokes all came from.

What were Christa McAuliffe’s last words? “Gee, what does THIS button do?”

Did you know Christa McAuliffe had blue eyes? One blew here, one blew over there.

The tragedy wasn’t in the lives lost, unless they were friends or family. How many times have we lost 7 or more military at a time? We don’t commemorate that 25 years later. The tragedy was that it ended our belief in technological miracles. We learned that NASA was just as screwed up as any other part of government, that private engineers could say there was a problem but the suits upstairs would reliably bend over for the state. That loss of innocence is worth remembering and mourning today.

On tomorrow’s skyshow

“naturally the folks who natter about the spiritual origins of polyamory backstage at every RenFest are in a tizzy.”
So says Tam, linking Roberta X, who suggests that the Wiccan Church of Canada is making way too much out of a regular and perfectly natural event.

I wuz one, once, so I can relate to the idea of reading omens into everything. But what was it an omen of in 1554…which was not one of the better years to be a witch? Here are a few of the events that immediately followed:

1550 About mid century, infanticide began to come to the notice of the courts. Along with this development, witchcraft is increasingly seen as a secular crime rather than an ecclesiastical or spiritual mistake.
1557: Toulouse witch trials took place, during which forty witches were condemned and burned.
1560 Women begin to be accused of witchcraft and sexual crimes. For the first time women have legal standing as the accused.

If it’s a “transformative energy”, I’d want to be really careful about what was being transformed. Look at the symbolism: the Goddess is going to disappear, on the longest night of the year, darkness on darkness.

Linux time at home, anti-virus for your car?

IBM, the company that enabled the Holocaust, has just filed patents giving it (or licensees such as the State) constructive ownership of your car. Meanwhile, researchers on the Left Coast have hacked a sedan.

Wir sind gefickt.

Long pig stew with tea: Space Coast, FL

The TEA Partiers were out in Florida to protest sky-high government spending, deficits reaching to the moon, millions of dollars going up in smoke…eh, maybe not so much.

Ms. CONNIE SMITH (Space Coast Patriots): Now, some people might say this is an entitlement program. But the space center provides so many more benefits than any entitlement program. We get tons of technology, tons and the high paying jobs that come out of here. What high paying jobs are we getting from Cash For Clunkers?

What kind of jobs and benefits would we get if Kennedy were sold to the highest bidder, and we gave private enterprise the freedom to explore and homestead space? Or if we all kept our money and used it to vote for the kind of jobs WE wanted to see?

“MY program is essential; YOUR program is a boondoggle.” Good luck with that…

Lisa Rainsong and the bugs

Today the Plain Dealer online version has a wonderful piece on my dear friend Lisa Rainsong (one of Ohio’s better composers) and her new project studying insect music. There’s a nice little video where she explains it all, far better than I ever could.

Lisa’s also an avid birder, carbon-sucking Earth-destroyer that she is.

Charles Walters RIP –and Olree reviewed

I just received word of the passing of Charles Walters, Editor Emeritus of Acres USA, from kidney failure. I had just finished his Minerals for the Genetic Code, and had been considering doing a review. This appreciation will become that review, even though it is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead. But it’s possible to acknowledge Walters’ importance while still pointing out real problems in his work.

For one thing, Walters couldn’t write as well as some people claim. His style managed to be both baroque and folksy at the same time, filled with words like “bespeaks” , and contrived and anthropomorphic verbs. Occasionally one will find non-sentences that appear to be transcriptions from notes, as this one from Minerals... ” Calcium functions in the body, solidity of the body, essential to fetal growth during pregnancy, found in cartilage, fluids and tissue and body alkalinity.” He would often assume knowledge of a reader that one could not reasonably expect, including undefined acronyms. And he had a positive aversion to citation. Minerals doesn’t even have a bibliography, let alone footnotes, and when these are absent from bold claims of governmental or agribusiness malfeasance, it makes Walters sound like a crank.

This connects to my other major complaint about Walters: his advocacy of neo-mercantilist agriculture policy. I’ve been a regular reader of Acres for about 4 years now, and I’ve still not figured out exactly what he thought should be done. He supported agricultural tariffs and parity adjustment,opposed free trade, and apparently thought there was a role for positive government intervention. But he recognized negative government interventions (though not the largest: fiat money manipulation). How could government, owned by whom it is owned by, ever be relied on to fix the problem? At the same time, his advocacy of consumption of locally produced food was a call to action for those of us (perhaps most of his readership) who think that the only ag policy the US should have is the aggregate of consumers’ food preferences.

All that aside, Acres has been and is an essential resource of eco-agriculture and food politics, which would not exist without Walters. Nor would the work of William Albrecht be as well known, and the work of those following in Albrecht’s footsteps would not exist. His shoes will be hard to fill at Acres, especially considering how much of the journal was still written by him. He was a leader. I regret that I never got to meet the man; I’ve always wanted to go to the annual Acres USA conference, but coming at the end of the semester and at the Christmas build-up, it’s never been convenient for me to do so.

Now on to Minerals:

This is “An exposition and analysis of the Dr. Olree standard genetic periodic chart & the physical, chemical & biological connection”. Dr. Richard Olree is a chiropractor who has been working on a kind of unified theory of natural health involving trace minerals and subatomic particles, DNA, chiropractic, acupuncture meridians and the I Ching. The basic concept is this: certain minerals are required by certain genes, but are replaceable by certain other minerals, with ill effect. When minerals balances are off, health degrades as the body uses the wrong mineral. Some minerals are necessary for the uptake of others.  Some minerals can help protect against radiation and other mutagens.

The first part of the book rambles a bit, with information on fluoridation and GMOs, which are connected to but not a part of what Olree is doing. Some of this material is a history of Olree’s predecessors and influences. The 2nd part examines each of the 64 positions in detail. For some, there is little information. Others are more extensive. The I Ching connection is really not explored, possibly because Walters does not understand it. For example, selenium is #50 (Ting ; the Cauldron. “Fire burns over wood. The superior man tends the fire and secures the success of the offering.”) Selenium is an anti-inflammatory, and is essential in sugar metabolism, so it might “tend the fire” in that sense. But Walters doesn’t discuss it at all.

The 3rd part (and 1/3 the book) is the most useful. It is a guide to sourcing trace elements from herbs and foods, with biological and common names, part used, and parts per million of the element. If government has its way, we won’t be abe to buy supplements, and this may help us with mineral balance.

I’m still on the fence about most of Olree, but I think he’s on to something (though he may be mixing it with things with no rational scientific connection), and I wish he would write a book himself, with footnotes.  I’ll be poking into this periodically, to see what else I can glean.

The city hurts your brain

VIa Vox Day, who thinks it might explain America’s voting patterns:

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control.

Of course, we hicks are stupid, impulsive, slack-jawed fools, per the urban elites. Can you say “projection?” And we beat our wives. But:

Kuo and her colleagues found less domestic violence in the apartments with views of greenery.

To be fair, jamming all those humans together also stimulates creativity. But given some of the things created in the city (“Desperate Housewives”, for instance), one has to wonder whether there’s an optimum level of creativity, or whether the nature of the city skews it in certain directions. As for the cultural deprivation of the country, yes, I grew up with that. But with the increased migration of library content to the Internet, the only limitations to a city-style collection are matters of finance, licensing and copyright.

What’s the issue?

A worker at a Baton Rouge photo lab is used to developing photographs of birthday parties, beautiful sunsets, and vacations. A picture of a girl cutting up a dead puppy, however, was a first.

The worker, from a Baton Rouge Walgreen’s drug store, immediately called sheriff’s deputies, who launched an investigation. Deputies were led to a student from Woodlawn High School who told them her mother had gotten the dead puppy for her from the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control, according to a police report.

So a Walgreen’s employee narks on a little girl because she’s doing biology? What’s the problem here? What would be the problem even if it were definitely a class assignment? Is it because it was a cute lil puppy? What if it was a bunny, or a lab rat? Folks, this is not vivisection. No animals were slaughtered in the making of this picture. Nobody is going to turn into a crazed puppy killer through doing this.

“scientific research and development in a residential area”

That’s apparently a violation of zoning law in Marlboro MA, as retired chemist Victor Deeb found out when an unrelated fire broke out in his house and the firemen found his home lab where he had developed several pending patents. He and his wife were temporarily evicted while the authorities stole his lab — which, BTW, contained no chemicals more dangerous than household cleaners. Since he’s being a Good Boy and shut up, he isn’t being charged with anything.

The girl who enforces code in Marlboro said, “I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.” Nothing like knowing where you lines are — or not. (Said girl was formerly the secretary of the Site Plan Review Committee and can be reached at Phone: 508 460-3769, Fax: 508 624-6504)

Or as translated here:

Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman’s words into plain English: “Mr. Deeb hasn’t actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don’t like what he’s doing because I’m ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I’ll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.”

It’s only science, you know, nothing that can actually make our lives better, just another way to rape the earth.

This comment was rather charming:

‘The government has every right to monitor and control behavior that is out of the ordinary. -Joe’

Well Joe, your comment is much different than all the other comments here, you’re on the other side of the issue, and therefore your behavior is ‘out of the ordinary’.

I think the Government needs to ‘control your behavior’ when you’re this far ‘out of the ordinary’ possibly ‘re-educating’ you to be more ‘ordinary’.

Agreed?

Thanks to James Rawles at SurvivalBlog.

Chopin’s heart to stay put

Scientists won’t be allowed to do DNA tests on Chopin’s heart to prove whether he died of cystic fibrosis instead of tuberculosis.

I’m with the Polish government on this one. There’s nothing to be gained; he’s dead. And we don’t need that “empowering cystic fibrosis sufferers” nonsense.