VAMPIRES VOTE DEMOCRATIC

TRUE BLOOD WINDS DOWN.

But with a great political statement.

the Ol'Buzzard

WHAT THE FUCK?

My reading list is gone?

From now on when something is really fucked up I am going to say "It's Google."

the Ol'Buzzard

FROM THE BRAIN OF SARAH TO YOUR COMPUTER

Have you missed Sarah?   Well now you can have her in your home on a regular schedule.  You can find out about her take on Russia; on ObamaCare; on Benghazi; her home life; and even on “all” the stuff she reads.    

Yes, for only $99.95 a year you can subscribe to Sarah Palin’s new on-line “NEWS CHANNEL”   SarahPalinChannel.com can bring you the latest Tea Bag brew. 

So, If you haven’t had your fill of all the latest Republican talking points from the brains of the lunatic fringe – this is your chance.

the Ol'Buzzard

ANOTHER APOCALYPSE

BEND OVER AND KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE

We live under the threat of total devastation and the apocalypse purveyors are quick to describe how we all will demise – except themselves, who are constantly preparing for the great survival.

We have the nuclear apocalypse; the asteroid apocalypse; the global warming apocalypse; the pandemic apocalypse; the zombie apocalypse; and of course the God apocalypse (God so loves the world the He kills everybody – except the chosen few.)

Now, according to MotherJones we need to worry about the Jellyfish Apocalypse.   It seems that ocean warming along with overfishing (decreasing the natural predators of jellyfish) has caused a jellyfish population explosion and an expansion of jellyfish range and habitation. 

This increase has been startlingly visible throughout the Mediterranean and around Australia and the southern Pacific region. In Sweden jellyfish blocked the cooling ducts of a nuclear plant caused a shut down and in Israel jellyfish caused a problem at a coal fired plant; and even more appalling jellyfish have caused the closure of beaches throughout the Mediterranean resulting in loss of tourist revenue. 

It is estimated that world wide there are 150 million people stung by jellyfish each year: 500,000 in the Chesapeake Bay area and over 200,000 off the coast of Florida.   

There are very few fatalities from jellyfish stings though an encounter can be painful.   The box jellyfish found around Australia and the Philippians is considered deadly and a sting usually results in death within a few minutes. 

Jellyfish population encroachment has not posed a problem in North America at this time, but as ocean waters warm …

The solution seems pretty obvious to me: increase predation.   Perhaps peanut butter and jelly fish sandwiches.

You have been warned!

the Ol’Buzzard

ZEN OF APATHY

A passenger aircraft shot down in the Ukraine.

There is nothing I can do about it.

800 dead in the 18 day conflict between Israel and Hamas.

There is nothing I can do about it.

Fighting continues in Iraq and Pakistan.

There is nothing I can do about it.

Fighting in Syria, atrocities in Africa.

There is nothing I can do about it.

Russia, Cuba, China;

I am powerless.

A dysfunctional U.S. Congress

Prisoners inhumanely put to death in Oklahoma, Ohio and Arizona.

Obama Care is being challenged in court.

Bigotry, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia…

I vote but my vote is canceled by the Tea Party.

Beyond  my control.

In my mid-seventies, my days are limited, the grim reaper rides bitch on my bike.

It is what it is.

Today I am going to prepare the west side of my house for painting.    I painted the front (south side) first of the week.   I have one more cord of wood to order and stack for winter fuel; and I plan to replace the front storm door before winter sets in.   I haven’t meditated in a long time.   I need to take a few minutes this morning for Zen time.  It is suppose to be a beautiful day today – sunny with temps in the low seventies. 

Change what you can and accept what you can’t change: live in the moment: appreciate this day.

The Ol’Buzzard

TRAVELING SOUTH

Yesterday we traveled down to Portland for my wife’s doctor appointment.   I know that the traffic on the highways in Maine is nothing compared to the highways around Boston, New Your, Minneapolis… but every time I have to drive south from our rural western mountains I am appalled by the insanity of the people driving the freeways. 

I was doing seventy in the right lane and groups of cars were passing me in the left lane traveling at least eighty - bumper to bumper – only a car length between them.   It would only requires one driver to hit the brake to avoid a dog or deer, or drop his cell phone and the cars would pile up like falling dominoes.  

Why in the hell do drivers feel they have to ride the bumper of the car in front of them – especially at high speeds on the freeways?  

And then there was the car that drifted into my lane causing me to swerve almost to the rumble strip and blow my horn to avoid collision.   She pulled back into her lane, passed and then a few car lengths ahead of me swerved back in and then out of the right lane… obviously reading text on her phone instead of focusing on her driving. 

I sometimes wish I had a Mad Max vehicle with a plow on the front and could just run these people off the road.

Oh well, back home again and all is well

The Ol’Buzzard

POLITICAL ROYALTIES CORRODE DEMOCRACY

In this age of information you have to choose to be ignorant.   It is obvious to anyone except the blatantly ignorant that man has and is effecting the world climate by unchecked population growth, unchecked pollution and unregulated consumption of natural resources.

 Not only is mankind decimating the environment, but through continual war and genocide with more and more advanced weaponry in the hands of religious and political extremist we are approaching an apocalyptic destruction of societies. 

Meanwhile governments stand by fiddling while the world burns. 

Initially some governments were founded with good intentions.   But actually, governments never end up about the good of the people.   Governments become a product of men that wish to mold societies to their own ideals – ideals that best benefit themselves.  

Politicians that have the ability and charisma to influence others eventually set themselves up as a ruling class – a political royalty.  

Politicians always sell the goods that they are primarily concerned with the welfare of the people; but in the end the people exist for the good of the government – and the government is always about the politicians at the top and the wealthy that can influence them.   Even in the great socialism experiments the people in charge always decided for ‘the grater good’ – themselves being included at the top tier of ‘the grater good.’

Term limits are the only means of breaking up the ruling class and reestablishing a democratic government.

In America presidents come and go; but the real political royalty exist in the Senate and the House.  You might say that the Presidency is our House of Commons and the Congress is the House of Lords.

the Ol'Buzzard

  

GODS AND ANGELS AND BILLY GOATS

Today is Sunday.  Did you go to Church?

I can’t take religion seriously.   Man has created a God in his own image and by extension deified himself.   At some point man believes he will ascend into the realm of God (s) where he become eternal – a demigod.

Why women fall in line for Christianity is a mystery.   Christianity is a patriarch construct in which women were created as lesser beings.  According to Christian doctrine women are responsible for sin and pain and suffering in the world; they are the seducers, and harlots and defiers of God: …turned to salt…”get the away from me woman.”

In this country we seem to fear Islam’s Sharia Law; but if fundamentalist Christians were ever able to usurp the government their Christian Law would be as horrible and violent as Islam's.   After all they both believe in the Old Testament and Leviticus reads the same for Christians as Islamist.  

Besides that Christians have been there and done that before.

I actually believe in billy goats.

the Ol'Buzzard

BUZZARD BARF

Warning! This post contains explicit sexual language that may piss you off.

WARNING WILL ROBINSON!

Yesterday we were in Rangeley, Maine at a restaurant and out on the deck were a man and woman trying to eat their lunch in the company of a pouty, obnoxious teenager.    It makes me glad we decided to have cats.

THE PERFECT ANSWER FOR A BELLIGERENT TEENAGER;

If only I had been able to convince your mother to finish with a blow job, she could have cannibalized you – eating her young like the black widow spider - and we wouldn't have to be putting up with your snarky shit now. 

Maybe I wouldn't actually say that to a kid; but a blowjob is good birth control from a man’s point of view.

YOU WERE WARNED.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE GOD COMPUTER

In my last post I harangued about the computerization of automobiles which has transformed cars from icons to mere modes of transportation.

Back in the 1960’s Alvin Toffler wrote the book Future Shock which premised that society would be unable to adjust to rapid change: this, of course has been disproved by the advent of computers.

In 1983 I was introduced to basic computing while attending college.  Since that time computers have brought about unbelievable change in only thirty years.  It is as though we stepped out of the mechanical dark ages into a time of unlimited technology.  

To understand the quantum advancements in computers you must understand the basic unite of byte. 

Basically one byte is eight binary digits which compose one character or one letter.

·       1 Kilobyte = 1,000 Bytes

·       1 Megabyte = 1,000 Kilobytes or 1,000,000 (one million) Bytes

·       1 Gigabytes = 1,000 Megabytes or 1,000,000000 (one million) Kilobytes or 1,000,000,000,000, (one billion) Bytes. 

 The standard for computers in schools in 1985 when I began teaching was the Apple II with 48 kilobytes of memory.    In 1990 I bought an Apple II-C+ with 500 Kilobytes of memory, and about that time Apple came out with the Macintosh with 1 Megabyte of memory.  

 

Today inexpensive desktop computers handle Gigabytes and more expensive units – Terabytes (trillions of bytes.)

At this point it seems that the only limit to computer expansion is money for research and development.   Computer scientists are already working on computers that can learn, program and troubleshoot themselves (it seems science fiction writers are always the catalyst for science.)

Orwell’s 1984 gave us a picture of a world run by Big Brother: society totally manipulated by a ruling class.   But, 1984 was before the advent of computers.  

The next logical jump is a society completely run by computers – or a God Computer: a self-learning computer that has downloaded all the computer data in the world and manipulated and finally stored all relevant data for immediate access; and with the ability for logical decision making.  

This would not necessarily be a bad thing.   It would means that we would have to turn over authority from elected men of various and dubious intelligence to a logical intellect with unlimited intelligence and amassed knowledge. 

Take medicine: If all the medical information in the world was stored for immediate access then doctors would only need to input a patients symptoms and the computer would diagnose and prescribe the proper treatment.   

Look at our judicial system.   I have served on jury duty and it is a circus.   You have twelve individuals of questionable intelligence deciding the merits of a case, and a judge with religious, personal, racial and social biases passing sentence.   I had much rather have a judicial computer containing all US and State laws and regulations, with the ability to think and reason based on said laws, make a logical and impartial judgment on a case involving me. 

Of course there would be technical, cultural, social and psychological hurtles to overcome.   But the end results would be that instead of our lives being controlled and manipulated in the chaotic fashion of 1984 we would all be tied into a logical and impartial mainframe possessing all knowledge.

Perhaps I have over thought this…

What could possibly go wrong?

the Ol’Buzzard      

CARS AND DRIVERS

My wife released from surgery

Still feeling the anesthetic

I close the shades in the hotel room

And cut off all the lights

The air-conditioning produces white noise

I sit by her in bed

And watch her while she sleeps

This is a quite time

My time alone with only my own thoughts

I don’t mind

Why am I thinking about cars?

In 1962, a third class in the Navy, I drove a fifty-two Pontiac with the left brake line crimped off and the power steering disconnected from Argentia, Newfoundland to Washington D.C.   A friend of mine drove his family in a VW bus from Kentucky to Alaska.  A Navy buddy of mine blew his engine traveling through Maine: we had to pawn almost everything we owned to get money to rebuild the engine so he and his new wife could continue on to Kansas City.   These were driving adventures: people don’t do that today

As a young man I worked on my cars: big eights with four barrel carbs.  I rebuilt the engines, installed gauges, a floor shift, glass packed mufflers with a cut out and amplified speakers for my AM radio.   I probably drove to fast; but I was in control – the car responded only to me and my commands.  My cars were always special: an extension of who I wanted to be.

Today cars are mainly transportation; and in the case of some people a symbol of money and status.   But that personal relationship of a man and his car rarely exist nowadays.

We don’t drive our automobiles any more – we ride in them.  We turn more of our decisions over to the automobiles: a vehicle with a little computer chip that monitors all mechanical and operating functions.   We have GPS, Blue Tooth, OnStar, self deploying air bags, back up warning and camera, self parking programmed, automatic braking, blind spot warning, automatic light dimmers...  Our vehicles are capable of making their own decisions.    We click on the air conditioner and select our satellite radio station and read our text messages as we are transported with minimum effort and input to our destination. 

I have a cell phone, but it has no camera and is not capable of texting; anyway, I never turn it on unless I need to make a call.

 the Ol’Buzzard

A WORLD FOR AND OF AUTOMOBILES

Being from a small town in north-western Maine we are not use to traffic.   Here where we live people walk the streets, ride bicycles; kids on skateboards cruise sidewalks and street borders.

As my wife was scheduled for surgery in Portland we booked a hotel for a two nights.   The afternoon we arrived I stood at the fifth floor window and looked out:

Looking out the hotel window

At the parking lot below

Cars in every space

Red, Black, Blue, Green and Yellow

The makes indistinguishable from above

NO PEOPLE

Just beyond the parking lot on Congress Street

Cars and trucks bumper to bumper

Their progress determined by lights of red yellow and green

BUT NO PEOPLE

Just beyond is the Interstate

Lanes running north and south

Vehicles moving like ants

A continuous flow in both directions

NO PEOPLE

Visible beyond the Interstate

The Maine Medical Center

A multi-level parking garage

Running up the side of the building

On top acres of parked cars

A world for and of automobiles…

the Ol’Buzzard