We're Going To Need A Lot Of Audacious, And Innovative Ideas, To Save Ice In A Lot Of Places.

Especially as it concerns the ice around both polar regions, and even near regions. This is so for no other reason than a lot of circulation patterns rely on their being ongoing cold sinks in which to preserve temperature differential; which is, of course, the basis of thermodynamics, and convection currents of whatever type, in whatever semi viscous fluid.

And I'm not qualified to say that these wouldn't be workable plans for the niche applications they are suggested for. They might certainly work quite well. Or there might be unanticipated problems. That's the way it always is for something this far out on expanding one particular envelope or another. The two things I would caution on, however, would be these:

1. First and foremost. If we are forced to think in terms of dollar costs to attempt to do what we must attempt to do, we are doomed before we even start. For at the get go of that game is all of the finger pointing as to who will bear that abstract number, of abstract counters.

If, on the other hand, we were to recognize the absolute need to change economic operating systems, we could approach the problem from an entirely new perspective. One that changes the equation from abstract cost to very specific relationships of materials availability, skill availability, and the applicable information we can bring to bear on the problem. Because that's when you start describing what one means by an "effort based economy." One where keeping communities going is our newly redefined work, and the efficiencies we will reap, in getting rid of the marketing, and packaging, that goes with a consumer economy, will give us a great deal of new material supply with which to work with; even with diminishing resources to contend with world wide.

2. Whatever we do decide to do to alter the physical equation, on any kind of large scale, vis a vie a natural environment like the regions around the poles, so as to affect thermal flows in one way, or another, we need to keep something very important in mind. And that is a very simple dictum. If we make a way to dial some counter, or helping, effect up, to keep cold things cold, we also must give serious consideration to being able to dial those effects back down again, in something approaching practical time frames. Which should already be on our minds in any case as we need responsive time frames to be in play at the front end, as well as the back end of this process.

This is also where I have to admit a certain personal bias as I also have an audacious, and I'd like to think, quite innovative, way to perhaps approach these problems. And in my case that relates to my ongoing love affair with lighter than air tech.

I've already explained the Hybrid Dirigible Blimp trains idea a bunch of times, so I won't go into that here, though it is worth mentioning that that type of logistics capability might be a program saver for any, massive polar developmental project; especially one where you do not want to go thrashing about any hard surface, in these delicate ecosystems, anymore than you have to.

No, this is where I rely on the more, I also like to think, elegantly simply, design primitive of a lift doughnut; which is no more than a very big inner tube shape, holding lift gas bladders, and having a carbon fiber tube sock of a thing hanging down from it's inner, circular circumference; say in 150 to 300 meters or so lengths. Simple constructive primitives with which you could build support columns of many kilometers of height. Flying columns in essence if you cross connected a vast forest of them in some kind of unitary, cubic oblong; a great flying shape that could support flexible mats of both solar collectors, and mirrors to reflect sunlight with. Get the entire, massive structures up high enough, in fact, and shroud all of those carbon fiber tube socks, so that they could become cold air heat pipes, bring air down from on high, and you might really be able to keep cold things cold; and do it wherever you, and your clever engineering for making them strong enough, could want them be put. And the result, if it worked of course, would be the essence of both flexible placement, and the ability to dial things back down in some much more relatively short time frames.

The real bottom line here, however, is that a whole host of very audacious, and innovative, actions need to be contemplated if we are to save this planet. And if we stick to a money economy it will never even get started in any sort of proper way. You wait and see. Time will tell on this without any doubt whatsoever.

See Also:
[Post Note: And let's not forget that saving the planet will also require beginning the new Great Migration. J.V.]

HARD ROCK LIFESTYLE

Will We Ever Colonize An Asteroid?

6 diggs BBC Space

The asteroid belt is rich with precious metals. There are already plans for asteroid mining but could we ever build a colony on one?

A young Dutch inventor has a $360 million plan to clean plastic from the ocean

TORNADOES, HOWEVER, AREN'T THAT BAD

The Most Expensive Natural Disasters In The US Since 1980, Visualized

7 diggs Data Viz

One worrying trend is that natural disasters, especially storms, are happening with increasing frequency.

If We Grew The Pot Ourselves, Without The Money Dynamic Involved In The First Place

We would automatically decimate the criminal drug industry in one fell swoop. Might not eliminate it entirely, certainly, but it would sure put one hell of a dent in it.

Taking the money dynamic out would also allow us to have some confidence that there weren't other motives involved with all of the other, "business as usual," side of things when it comes down to conducting "Wars" on much of anything.

And in this context, to be sure, people have been making considerable amounts of money on selling what makes not only the "war" go (all those war materials a good soldier needs to have --whether you call the individual a policeman, or a soldier--, and so many companies, or nations, are right there, and willing, to provide), but also now from the incarceration industry. And then last, but certainly still significant, is the influx of corruption any kind of big money, coming into a situation, can bring; wherever the bribes come from, and wherever they go to pay things off for. All of which, certainly, makes not only more violence likely (necessary to keep people fearful you understand, because keeping gangs profitable serves a purpose Mr. Sessions is never likely to admit to), it makes corruption itself more commonplace, and acceptable.

Anything else Mr. Sessions might suggest of this, for the self serving interests, of his limited power base, are pure BS.

Foreign cartels embrace home-grown marijuana in pot-legal states

See Also:
[Post Note: Things can certainly get complicated in this area though. As evidenced by this report concerning the powerful AMA lobby's efforts to kill legislative efforts to enforce doctor compliance with prescription control measures as relates to pain medications; especially as it relates to the national Prescription Drug Monitoring database. They claim the real problem is that society refuses to pay the full bill for "evidence based treatment that works," which certainly seems a bit thin, but, on the basis that anything is possible, they might have a point, and that, in any case, treatment shouldn't be based on anything but the best judgement of the doctor, in a doctor patient relationship. The problem the doctors face, though, is that so many of them were taking the drug salesmen kickbacks when these pain medications were first introduced. And because money itself is a drug in a sense, and it can corrupt in ways all by itself. And there is no dosage guidelines, or prescription database, to keep track of the problem users.  J.V.]  

MEET THEM IN THE LOBBY

Congress Is Too Scared Of The American Medical Association To Really Attack Opioids

4 diggs The Daily Beast Drugs

The opioid crisis may be raging, but Congress has been unable to pass reforms for prescribing the drugs—and opposition has been coming from an unexpected source.

[Post Note: Just in case you needed a reminder of just how powerful the "money dynamic" is when it comes to drugs. J.V.]

WHITE-COLLAR NARCOS

Origins Of An Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused

12 diggs The New York Times Drugs

A confidential Justice Department report found the company was aware early on that OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but continued to promote it as less addictive.

The Power Of Cooperation Illustrated

As well as the power of trying to keep life as simple as possible.

The thing is here, you don't necessarily have to go to their lengths to keep it simple, if you just keep a sense of balance in mind. And you can still believe in whatever deity, or higher purpose you desire.

You just need to realize that every group sees things through a vastly different frame of reference. As such they will have come to understandings that will make absolutely no sense to you; just as what you have come to understand will make little sense to them. Which is why tolerance becomes so important on a very crowded planet. Tolerance that will give each belief system a chance to be able to go its own way (as a part of the "True Test").

Is that really so horrible a price to pay? To keep the planet alive? To keep a chance for all belief systems to not only flourish, but have a chance to go forth into infinity to see just how strong it is to survive on its own? Given the other alternatives that will happen to us all, as the planet becomes unlivable, it sure as hell doesn't seem like too big a price to me.

MESMERIZING

Treat Yourself With A 10-Hour Timelapse Of An Amish Barn Being Raised

8 diggs Satisfying

The coordination and effort it takes to build a barn is beautiful to watch.

See Also:
[Post Note: There is hope for change, as these two posts to follow clearly indicate. We just cannot let ourselves give in to the fear, or the hate. The only things we will achieve with them is a horrendously bloody end. J.V.]

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, BEATS THEM

25,000 Berliners Drown Out A Fascist Rally With Techno

14 diggs Quartz Photos

Berlin takes a stand against fascism with its best beats.

GO GET 'EM

Parkland Activists Are Still Picking Off Corporate Donors To NRA-Friendly Politicians

19 diggs GQ Politics

After a student-led die-in, Publix is cancelling donations to a Florida gubernatorial candidate.

I Think We Can Pretty Much Bet That Both Of These New Approaches To Drug Policy

Won't involve more "Wars On Drugs," or an increased emphasis on ever more draconian criminalization. And thank both a sense of a "Higher Power," and a "Higher Purpose," to be at work here for this turnaround.

Now. Just think of the more of this we could do if we took the money dynamic out of what motivates so much in the way of terrible choices, and solely self serving intents. Just another reason why "Business As Usual" has to stop.

MESSIN' WITH RACIST DRUG LAWS

Will Texas Follow Houston's Lead On Drug-Policy Reform?

2 diggs The Atlantic Criminal Justice

District Attorney Kim Ogg is rapidly implementing progressive policies in Harris County — and she intends to be a model for the rest of her state.

HEALTH OVER JUSTICE

How Portugal Reversed Its Heroin Crisis

We're Beating On

We're beating on,
beating on,
beating on a dead horse.

But that's no horse
of course.
We just hide the ride
that way.

It's just the old way
we carry on.
A stubborn old thing
that found a new way
to juice that carrot
dangling on
an over extended stick.

And yet its still going
faster than what might be
good for those who long
for laster. For it heard
all too well our cries
of "More, More, More,"
the rebel swell
just a branding, that made it
all sound so good.

And still we beat upon
the beating on
the thing that died
as our old nag
to make us carry on.
With the more coming
too fast to make anything
last.
But now we beat
in various rages
to make it stop.

So now we ride
the wild side
of too much
put into motion
with its own horrible
logic to compel
more terrible feeding
because there's a sweetness still,
to sell and sell and sell,
in that "More, More, More."

Add new diction
to iction, which
is just juiced up itchin,
and you have something
that only hard scratch
can apply to. And that's the only way
they want you to get off.
But drop off
all you want. They have the hard
scratch to make enough
want to keep making more.

So how will you
break it to remake it?
Or will you just keep
beating on,
beating on that dead horse
that's not a horse
of course,
but just the source
of all the other beatings,
as the dead thing rushes on
to the cutting edge
of what can be kept
on bleeding.

A Post I Feel Obliged To Make Now

Dr. Peterson has been someone I've only noticed on the periphery of my wanderings within the Infosphere these days. The issues that seem to be swirling around him so far, to my limited knowledge, lay in the areas of free speech, and chauvinism/feminism issues. The little of him that I have heard directly comes from a ten minute interview he did with NBC news a little while ago. So I feel confident in saying at least this:

Important though the things swirling about him may be, and they may well be significant indeed, they pale in comparison, in my opinion, to the ice melting at our poles. The fact that we have a certifiably disturbed person occupying our highest office of government. That we have a clearly toxic, and absolutely obsolete economic operating system, still in place; a system that creates most of the very dangerous competitions all of the nations of the world are currently engaged in, even as it also thwarts any ability to do anything useful about virtually any big problem. Competitions I would remind you that threaten war. Right when we need to be thinking about how we're going to cooperate in saving the planet from killing us off anyway. These things. These are far more important. So I haven't given him much attention.

That being said, I will limit any further comment to this:

At first impression he strikes me as another version of Ann Coulter, only with more sophistication, perhaps, and from a different set of angles of approach. And I make that comment not so much to criticize the content of his message, for I have little input on that in any case, but to point out that it seems to work around the same methodology as Coulter's version of "Controversial Branding." That process of commoditizing "Controversial" so as to be able to stay in the public eye and work both the book, and speaking tour markets. And from the little I can gather he seems to be doing quite well at that.

Now. Is that, in and of itself bad? No. He's playing the game in a way that the game allows him to play it. He presents his product and people can either buy into it or not. And it certainly seems like his message resonates with a good number of people, both for and against, but that's exactly the idea.

In a sense Bill Maher is something quite similar, though perhaps a bit more encouraging of engaging each other in respectful dialogue. As a good Liberal, or Progressive, should be. And of course, Bill Maher is both funny, and honest about being a satirist first, and social commentator something after that. But make no mistake, Maher is making a goodly amount of money doing what he does, which is a form of "Controversial Branding."

There may well be some elements of Dr. Peterson's message that have value. There may be some that don't.

I certainly do not agree, for instance, with Dr. Peterson's assessment that the Left is only about structureless anarchy. If he knew anything about labor history, or the development of Socialism, he would know that anarchists have been swirling about more than just the left; as evidenced by the Spanish civil war in the late 1930's. You had Fascists, Socialists, and Anarchists, boiling in the mix. And let us not forget that it was Dutch workers, a long time ago, who threw wooden shoes into the works, to agitate for labor's interests. And we know what that's called today. But to say all Socialists are for anarchy is absurd. Marx was a process guy to the max. Appreciated structure. Understood structure, and was out to set what he felt was incorrect structure right. You might not agree with his analysis, but you have to respect his understanding of what he was trying to analyze.

You could say that I am trying to do something similar for understandable reasons. That is why I have made it quite clear that I will never work for money again. That is why I have made it clear that I live on my SSI income alone now, and will continue to do so. And more to a personal point: I not only loath excessive notoriety, I fear it. I fear it the same way any alcoholic would fear going back to an environment of flash, and dash, and too many tempting temptations.

I fear it as well for what this nation has made of it. Of what we tend to do with putting not only too much emotion into our adulation, envy and hatred sometimes, but actual belief. Actual, tremendous, emotionally powered belief. You put that together with one idea or another and you have potential recipes for unbelievable disasters.

This is also a part of why I will never go on any speaking circuit. I don't want to become a celebrity talking head for a radical cause. I am an analyst. I analyze things. I provide descriptions of what I have analyzed, and possible solutions to the problems thus identified. I will be up for the Q and A that the press demands, but it will be in a limited amount, and it will be without live video.

I am doing this for one reason, and one reason only. I was quite literally made to understand why things aren't right. Made to be able to figure out how to articulate that, and provide a possible path to a solution. I have done that. Now it's up to you dear reader to decide what will be done with it. Your choice. I can only hope that, even being biased as I am as a Humanist and Progressive, I have made this be as informed a choice as it was in my power to do so.

There is a lot on the line for our survival here. Nothing else as a commitment towards addressing that will do.

RECONSIDERING THE LOBSTER

I Was Jordan Peterson's Strongest Supporter. Now I Think He's Dangerous

13 diggs The Star Personal Essay

When he soared into the stratosphere he became peculiarly unknowable. There is something about the dazzle of the limelight that makes it hard to see him clearly. But people continue to be who they are even in the blinding overexposure of success. I have known Jordan Peterson for 20 years, and people had better know more about who he is.

Can We Dare Hope?

Somebody, already making a ton of money on it, actually becoming concerned about making the apocalypse a commodity? Might this be a trend towards conscience amongst the tech community?

Time will tell.

Far Cry 5’s Creator Is Worried The World Might Actually Be Ending (HBO)

Back In The Really Old Ages Of Pangea

When the continents were still pretty much one linked mass, atmospheric circulations out and about at the time weren't much to talk about. As in not circulating much at all, especially as it relates to what might have been going on, because there was a lot of water everywhere else, but land barriers were in the way. So things got not only pretty hot, but also quite dry, and stayed that way for quite a while.

Of course things seldom happen in complete isolation so why not also kick a whole lot of material into the atmosphere. From a bunch of volcanoes, in this instance, that did what they do for a good long time as well. Something else to make things get hotter. So hot, in fact, that gobs upon gobs of moisture was put into the atmosphere from all that water, everywhere else. So much, in fact, that it could overcome, eventually, the land barriers mentioned above, and come tumbling over into once arid land. Continuously. Because that became the first big circulation change to happen in eons.

That last sentence needs to be repeated:

Because that became the first big circulation change to happen in eons.

After which, of course, things couldn't change to something else until other big factors took effect; like the appearance of a whole new plethora of plant life to start taking out the carbon that was oh so helpful in making things hotter in the first place. And also a new era of waterborne erosion, as well as tectonic plate shifting affects finally pushing the land masses further apart. And of course those changes took their own eons of time to accomplish.

What this serves to illustrate is very simple. We are like the volcanoes mentioned above. Only we've done, in a mere few hundreds of years, what took them a lot longer to do. We put in enough stuff to block infrared radiation from the ground, and air, to radiate back into space. to make things start getting hot again. And now that extra, continuous build up of heat, is leaving ever less ice at both poles of the planet; something that used to reflect a lot of the sun's light, and thus prevent the surrounding ocean from absorbing more heat; which in any body's book is a really bad double whammy.

So what does that leave us with boys and girls? Yes, that's right:

Another coming, very big change, in planetary air, and ocean circulations.

And let's just be clear about what happened in the one described via the posted video link. Terrible floods came; over and over again. Whole species died out. And very little was the same ever again. What will happen this time is, actually quite difficult to predict because it's just too complex a system now to extrapolate beyond a few weeks, let alone a few years (as any weather forecast will confirm). Whatever it will be, though, won't be much good for the lifeforms that have become dependant on the old status quo. And that most definitely includes us.

That dear reader is what we are riding on a terrible accelerator towards. A terrible accelerator because it is Capitalist competition, and excess electrified. And you have all been so befuddled by the mesmerizing, and corrupting, nature of it all, to even care to want to notice all that much, let alone do anything about it. And more's the pity.

That One Time It Rained On Earth For Two Million Years Straight

See Also:

RUNNING ON EMPTY

The Rio Grande Is Drying Up

4 diggs The New York Times Nature

Even in a good year, much of the Rio Grande is diverted for irrigation. But it's only May, and the river is already turning to sand.

In My Experience, What This Often Comes Down To Is

A guy with a stick up his butt about an aspect of his own, deep personality (we're half women and half something else after all), that he has never been able to deal with. And yes, I know that's a cliche now, but it also happens to be a cliche that guys with way too much power seem to share to the point now that it's a cliche as well.

You would think, these being cliches and all, that we'd have made a great deal more progress on addressing the issues involved. You would think. But then I hear that "thinking" itself has become a cliche as well. It would follow, certainly, as we are now in the age of "The Absurdity Of Growing Up."

Unless, of course, you're ready to start getting truly revolutionary about it. Thinking I mean. And growing up. And understanding a lot more about a lot of dualities (if you want to have a lot of fun seeing both sides of this duality made fun of see the movie "The Other Guys;" which only proves that this too has become a commodity! Gods help us).

THE CRUELTY OF CHAMBERLAIN-KAHN

A Forgotten War On Women

6 diggs New Republic Politics

Scott W. Stern's book documents a decades-long program to incarcerate "promiscuous" women.

Could This Perhaps Also Be Because We Need To Respect

Both notions of either a "Higher Power," or a "Higher Purpose," because they both have something to say about what it is to exist, and to seek both meaning in the here and now, as well as transcendent explanation, in the larger scope of things. Two goals I think we will need in great abundance if we are to succeed in also finding a way to work the hard negotiations that would allow an ever dynamic balance to be sought between the two. Because that is the only way this planet, and most of the life on it, will survive.

THE BENEFITS OF BELIEF

What Good Is Religion?

7 diggs aeon Beliefs

International development has focused on material goods, but religion has an important role to play in human flourishing.