Tim Tebow Making HUGE Mistake Going to Dallas' HATE Church

 Hateful fundies are all in a dither, and as one loon wrote on his blog "packing bags to go see and hear Tim Tebow in Dallas in April."   Yeah, right! Just don't let the HATE entrance door bang you in the balls on the way in, Sparky!

As reported in The Denver Post this morning ('Tebow Must Audible Out of This Play', p. 1B) Tebow plans to make an appearance April 28 at the First Baptist Church of Dr. Robert Jeffress.

The Post writer is dismayed by Timmy's obnoxious choice of venue, and cites the words of Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports:

'Tim Tebow is about to make the biggest mistake of his life. Tebow has agreed to speak at a hateful Baptist preacher's church, an EVANGELICAL CRETIN named Robert Jeffress, who does the work of the lord sort of like Westboro Baptist in Topeka, Kan., does the work of the lord."

Doyel goes on to note that while Jeffress isn't quite as bad as Prime Hater Fred Phelps of Westboro (i.e. picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers with signs of "HELL BOUND!")  he is still pretty bad.  He believes, like another "pastor" we all know who ran a rancid hate blog until he was chased off by death threats, that:

- AIDS is an exclusively 'gay disease' so provides a basis for the military to exclude any homosexual,

-Jews, homosexuals, and Catholics are all going to "Hell"  - some (e.g. Jews and homosexuals) faster than others.

- The Catholic Church is a "Satanic cult"

- Islam is a religion that "promotes pedophilia"

Now where have we seen all this bollocks before? Hmmmm.....let me think. I think the primary clue is a a blog that once bore the giveaway initials "P. M".  A blog (and linked Facebook page) that once idiotically proposed all atheists be placed on lists "similar to sex offenders" so people that are godly would know where the "Satan loving" reside.  Of course, once the atheist web got hold of that, they beseiged his sorry ass and within 2 nanoseconds he high-tailed and shut his blog down.

Anyway, I understand this same doofus plans to travel to Big D to see Tebow, and likely hobnob with Jeffress. Well, what can I say? I guess cretins of a feather flock together! 

Meanwhile, the D. Post author of the original column remarks:

"I simply can't imagine Tebow knowing the stuff that Jeffress has said and Tebow saying, 'Yep, that's where I want to go!'"

The author adds:

"It simply doesn't make sense he would risk all he's done just to make one speech."

Yeah, but see, in many ways money can do a lot to wreck supposed principles! Even for a fundie!

But perhaps the most salient words are the ones that ended the piece:

"After a season on the sidelines, Timmy, the ball's in your hands! Better not fumble this one!"

Indeed!

Simpson- Bowles the Sequel: Can You Say 'Neoliberal Lickspittle'?

Alan Simpson (left)  and Ernest Bowles 2 years ago,  after Simpson suggested Americans on Social Security are like 300 million sucklings "on 300 million government teats”

The Neoliberal cognoscenti are going bonkers with the rollout of Simpson-Bowles II, or 2.0 if you will, an update of their original codswallop to cut the deficit. No one liked the original and let Obama know it as well, raking him for even letting these Neolibs through the national issues door. Well, they will like 2.0 even less. Let’s not even get into the fact that if these punks were truly serious they’d be going after the latest Pentagon white elephant, the B-35, which has now doubled in cost estimates because of overruns and problems – to nearly a half trillion bucks.(TIME, Feb. 25, 'The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built’ ,p. 26)

Simpson –Bowles v 2.0 arrived with mucho fanfare, featuring a huge rollout sponsored by Politico (the hackiest, most Neolib political blog), where Neolib puppet Mike Allen hosted and interviewed the pair this morning in Washington. Make no mistake that when Neolibs come together they will have orgasms and wet dreams over any plan that appears “bipartisan” on the surface and takes aim at those nasty budget vampires called “entitlements”. You can also be sure that every Neolib hack- and- a -half in the Beltway, from Bob Woodward, to Fareed Zakaria to the latest  nabob (Joe Klein of TIME) will get excited at the prospect of a new way to snatch that money from oldsters’ pockets. All to “protect the kids”, never mind the real elephant in the room is defense spending - which budget slice is greater than the 45 next largest nations combined.

For example, in his recent TIME op piece (Op. cit., p. 17, ‘Aiming Low, Missing Greatness’) Klein thrashes Obama for "aiming too low" in his SOTU speech. He further accuses Obama of displaying “views of budgeting and spending” bearing a “totally unconvincing expression of prudence”. What does Klein want? What all Neolib hacks want! As he asks:

“Why shouldn’t government view capital investments – in education and infrastructure- as a necessary requirement for long term growth, as opposed to entitlements?”

Good question! Maybe because those “entitlements” help prop up aggregate demand for the economy, while providing oldsters with a measure of dignity and independence so they don’t have to move in with Junior or Missy – just graduated from college. BUT...Joe ....it does mean that in order to ensure seniors' future security the richest give up some of their yearly $55,000 tax cuts! (Actually, $1m for the top 0.1%)

Now, according to the Neoliberal rules of journalistic objectivity, supporting SB v 2.0 establishes your Neolib creds and extols you as a DC “serious person” and real player - as opposed to a pretender. Never mind that to the rest of the nation you’re a congenital asshole. Thus, it is good from time to time that people from the real nation sometimes arrive in DC and shake their asses up, such as when some  mean hecklers interrupted the Simpson -Bowles orgy. . In an apocalyptic sign for the deficit hawks, Simpson worshippers and other fetishists, the hecklers got a lot more attention on Twitter than the new Simpson-Bowles plan did. Can they of the "300 government million titties" fame recapture the magic?  Actually, I think that cow escaped the barn long ago, and 'Muricans are too smart to buy into it. Not when waste like the F-35 is on display!

S and B are doing their best meanwhile to explain why we need a new, different modernized cut plan ($3 of cuts to every $1 of revenue). One reason is that, in their eyes, the situation has gotten so, so much worse since their last plan, that we now need more deficit reduction than we needed last time. The other reason is that the point of this plan is to be a model for a “compromise” between the current supposed GOP sequester-avoiding plan and the Obama administration’s sequester-avoiding plan, and it does this by adding tax revenue that the GOP has explicitly ruled out — but not as much as the original Simpson-Bowles plan, which had a lotta taxes — and demanding even more spending cuts than the original plan did. So the new centrist common sense bipartisan compromise is way more conservative than it was a few years ago, but still not conservative enough to win any Republican support (beyond insincere rhetorical support, I mean).


The cuts come from Medicare and Medicaid, because while the Obama administration laid out a plan to get as much deficit reduction as Simpson-Bowles originally demanded, the Obama administration did so in the wrong way, without trying to cut a ton of money from those programs and Social Security.

As many readers may have heard, e.g. on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the United States will eventually — in a few decades — have a big debt problem, mostly because we have committed to paying for healthcare for old people and healthcare costs are ballooning. In order to “fix the debt,” we’ll probably just have to pay doctors and drug companies less. (That will make a lot of doctors and drug companies mad, but the alternative is “let old people die” so they should just suck it up.) Voila! We have solved the long-term budget deficit, let’s all go home. Kudos to Bob Woodward, Joe Klein, Jonathan Alter ('You mean we can't let Obama cut 5% from those programs?') and the other overfed Neoliberal elites.  

Meanwhile, Politico, the fave blog of the Neolib elites,  is pretty excited about Simpson and Bowles but in the end, whether v 1.0 or 2.0 or any further n.0,  no one in Congress or the White House really cares about it and so far as we know it’s put out there merely to appease the Neolib DC media and their lackeys, hangers-on

But that won't stop them all from pumping out more BS, bollocks, palaver, and propaganda. The problem for them now is we're all onto their shtick. Or...we should be!

 

Quantum Mechanics: As Mystifying Now as 100 Years Ago

A new survey of physicists working in the field of quantum mechanics (including a poll reported in a recent preprint on the physics arXiv server¹),) discloses that the so-called experts remain as mystified as ever. The semi-serious poll of 33 key thinkers on the fundamentals of quantum theory shows that opinions on some of the most profound questions are fairly evenly split over several quite different answers.


For example, votes were roughly evenly split between those who believe that, in some cases, “physical objects have their properties well defined prior to and independent of measurement” and those who believe that they never do. Despite the famous idea that observation of quantum systems plays a key role in determining their behavior, 21% felt that “the observer should play no fundamental role whatsoever”.

Regrettably, QM is not a descriptive field, i.e. amenable to straightforward English interpretation. It is primarily a mathematical theory. If one ventures outside the bounds of the mathematical descriptions to offer English interpretations, one risks nonsense. I believe it was Feynman, in a Preface to his 'Lectures in Physics', Vol. III, who remarked that once one tries to use purely English descriptions to button hole QM he or she will "disappear down a rabbit hole, never to appear again."

For readers who want a comprehensive and understandable book that provides the basis for the Copenhagen Interpretation, I recommend Heinz Pagels `The Cosmic Code' (Bantam, 1982) - which will dispel a lot of incorrect perceptions and assumptions that have accumulated over the past 25 years. In his book, Pagels endorses the best policy in quantum mechanics as simply being a `fair witness'. That means absolutely avoiding embellishment and exaggeration of the results, including projection of personal `fantasies'. If one insists on reading more into quantum measurement results than their statistical significance allows, self delusion ensues.

Back to the poll devised by Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, together with Maximilian Schlosshauer, now at the University of Portland, Oregon, and Johannes Kofler at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. It was then disseminated at a meeting of the Templeton Foundation where attendees were given 16 multiple-choice questions on key foundational issues in quantum theory.

Disagreements over the theory’s interpretation have existed ever since it was first developed, but Zeilinger and his colleagues believe that their poll might be the first to interrogate the full range of views held by experts. A previous poll at a 1997 quantum mechanics workshop in Baltimore asked attendees the single question of which interpretation of quantum theory they favored most.

Probably the most famous dispute about what quantum theory means was that between Albert Einstein and his peers, especially the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, on the question of whether the world was fundamentally probabilistic rather than deterministic, as quantum theory seemed to imply. One of the few issues in the new poll on which there was something like a consensus was that Einstein was wrong. Quantum theory IS probabilistic!

This is because most quantum physicists still adhere to the comprehensive, original interpretation of quantum theory developed in the 1920s: the so-called Copenhagen interpretation. This proposed that the physical world is unknowable and in some sense indeterminate, and the only meaningful reality is what we can access experimentally. The mathematical underpinning was perhaps first explicated by Max Born, who showed the quantum wave function (PSI) was a statistical artifact, not a real physical wave.

Consider: you want to find the probability that some particle will be found in a region of length a. The probability is given as an integral in terms of the wave function (PSI):  INT (-oo to + oo) PSI* (PSI) dx

where PSI =

A sin (2π x/ a) exp (- iEt/h/2π)

and PSI* = A sin (2π x/ a) exp (iEt/ h/2π)

with h/ 2π = 1.054 x 10 ^-34   J-s (modified Planck constant h)


Obviously, without doing the full integration, the complex functions for PSI and its complex conjugate (PSI*) cannot be identified with any real world entity. Hence (Max) Born's conclusion to treat the wave function as primarily statistical in nature is amply justified.

As the earlier Baltimore meeting, the Austrian poll found the Copenhagen interpretation to be favored over all others, including the Stochastic interpretation of David Bohm and Brian Hiley (which treats PSI as a physically real wave) and the ‘Many World’ interpretation of Hugh Everett. Even so, only 42% of the voters endorsed the Copenhagen. However, the same 42% also admitted that they had switched interpretation at least once. And whereas a few decades ago the options were very few, says Schlosshauer, “today there are more ‘sub-views’.”

The most striking implication of the poll is that, while quantum theory is one of the most successful and quantitatively accurate theories in science, interpreting it is as plagued with as many controversies as it was at the outset.  According to Schlosshauer “Nothing has really changed, even though we have seen some pretty radical new developments happening in quantum physics, from quantum information theory to experiments that demonstrate quantum phenomena for ever-larger objects. Some thought such developments would push people one way or the other in their interpretations, but I don't think there’s much evidence of that happening.

However, he says there was pretty good agreement on some questions, adding.

“More than two-thirds believed that there is no fundamental limit to quantum theory — that it should be possible for objects, no matter how big, to be prepared in quantum superpositions like Schrödinger’s cat. So the era where quantum theory was associated only with the atomic realm appears finally over.”

Wow! So we can now look at the superposition effect experienced in rockets and automobiles?

Other notable views: 42% thought that it would take 10–25 years to develop a useful quantum computer, whereas 30% placed the estimate at 25–50 years. Meanwhile in the much debated role of measurement in quantum theory — how and why measurements affect outcomes —the votes split with 24% regarding it as a severe difficulty and 27% as a “pseudoproblem”.

Zeilinger and colleagues do not claim that their poll is rigorous or necessarily representative of all quantum researchers. John Preskill, a specialist in quantum information theory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, suspects that “a broader poll of physicists might have given rather different results”.

Perhaps the most amazing line of agreement from all participants is that quantum theory does its job so well yet stubbornly resists answering our deeper questions. Maybe this "contains a lesson in itself,” according to Schlosshauer. In fact, the most revealing answer may well have been that 48% believe that there will still be conferences on the foundations of quantum theory in 50 years time.

I would not dispute that at all!

It May Be Better to Collect Social Security Early After All

One of the issues that often sends older folks’ heads into tailspins is when to begin collecting Social Security. Many financial advisors now recommend waiting as long as possible. Even the top senior advocacy group, the AARP, recommends waiting until age 70 if one can, to ensure maximum benefits paid out over the rest of one’s life. On face value, all the logic appears to hold up, at least until one digs below the assumptions and numbers.

First, most of the assumptions are based on the median life expectancy by a certain age for either sex. For males at age 65, for example, the median years of life expectancy is 17.8 years and for females it’s 20.4 years. In other words, a male retiring at 65 will need 17.8 years of income to live on, based on the median. This means if the average American guy waits until 70 to collect Social Security he can expect to live on its benefits for about 12.8 years on average.


Is this really better for him? And how much total difference in benefits are we talking about. Let’s say that he waits until 70 and collects his assured maximum of $2,000/ month, then for 7.8 years this means he will collect a total of: $187, 200, assuming he doesn’t have to pay taxes on the benefits. But what if he’d started collecting benefits at age 62, with only $1200 a month to start? Then from age 62 he’d be collecting them for 15.8 years and for a total of: $1200/mo x 12 month x 15.8 yrs. = $227, 520 or more than $40,000 in additional benefits over what he’d have collected waiting until age 70, using the same assumptions.

The point here is that the longer period of collecting benefits neutralizes the downside of taking them 8 years early, since by actuarial tables you have less time to enjoy them. (This reminds me of the outraged letter appearing in the AARP Bulletin not long ago, where a guy berated the Bulletin for publishing advice from experts to “wait until age 70”. He wrote: “My life expectancy is only 76.7! If I want until 70 I’d only enjoy my benefits for 6.7 years!”)

Second, in an article appearing in The Sunday Denver Post (‘Is Inequality Shortening Your Life Span?’, p. 6D) many of the assumptions and actuarial tables don’t hold up under further scrutiny and it may well be collecting earlier is a smarter move for certain demographics. For example, a black male who reaches his 45th birthday, according to the article “is 80 percent less likely to live long enough to collect Social Security” say than if he was white. Another dirty little secret is that at age 40, considering ALL American males, 1 in 7 will not make it to age 65. Worse, 3 in 7 will not make it to age 70.

A contributing stunner is that:

“White males with fewer than 12 years of education now have a life expectancy of just 67.5 years- just six months longer than the standard Social Security retirement age set under current law for today’s middle age and younger Americans.”

In other words, these are the males who really need to begin collecting their benefits earlier, say by age 62, because even then they will have only 5.7 years to use them.

The article’s conclusion is despite all the hype and hoopla the fact is that except for those at the very top, the top 1% (who btw, are still getting their Bush-Obama tax cuts thanks to the fiscal cliff deal) “life is shorter than if we’d lived in a more equal, less socially competitive and status –driven society.”

Much of the reason for this, of course, is the lack of adequate health care. Another contributing factor to the demise of too many males, is the combination of smoking, lack of exercise and poor eating habits. (Though stress is definitely another factor and the lack of paid vacation days.)

At the end of the day, every person has to make his own computations on whether it’s better to collect Social Security earlier or to wait. Usually, looking at your family history – if one or both parents and grandparents have lived until 88 or 90, it might be a good idea to wait to collect until 70. However, if longevity isn’t one of your family traits then collecting early is probably wiser.

In the meantime, look for the Neoliberal media to continue pumping the ‘wait until 70’ mantra for everyone, irrespective of family history, education or health issues. Their motive is clear: to keep as many hands from collecting “entitlements” for as long as possible. Meanwhile, they will keep retiring at 48 or 50 to go and golf their 18 holes in the Bahamas or St. Kitts. Waitin’ til 70, after all, is only for the hoi polloi.

Is Barbados Soon To Go the Way of Greece?

Tourists and Bajans flock to a vendor's stall to buy fresh grilled deep sea fish and "fixins" at the Oistins Fish Market. Will they still be able to enjoy this simple pleasure in the near future?


The recent news that Barbados bonds were downgraded to junk by Moody's - this six odd months after Standard and Poor's did the same -was disturbing in the extreme. It elicits the question of where the island nation is headed, and indeed if its future is one of profound austerity like that of Greece.

The downgrade lowered the country’s foreign and local currency bond ratings to Ba1 from Baa3. (note: a junk bond, is defined as one that is “below investment grade” due to a heightened risk of default, is any bond with a rating of Ba1/BB+ or lower, according to the system used by Moody’s.)

Standard and Poor’s lowered Barbados’ rating to junk in July. (The country’s S&P rating is BB+).

Moody’s  accompanying statement held that Barbados’ outlook remained negative, and cited two factors in the downgrade: Barbados’ “continuing lackluster economic performance,” and “ongoing deterioration in the government’s debt metrics.”

Barbados’ economy grew by 0.6 percent in 2011 and 0.2 percent through September of 2012, well below expectations, according to the New York-based ratings firm. (The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America recently projected  the country’s GDP to improve in 2013 with a rate of 1 percent . Much of this obviously can be traced to the U.S. recession which hit the islands with the force of a hurricane). The Moody's statement went on:

“Moody’s believes that the country’s growth prospects remain very limited due to its deteriorating competitiveness and declining productivity coupled with heavy dependence on tourism, particularly from the United Kingdom and the United States. Given the prospects for continued low economic growth in those countries, discretionary spending on travel is likely to remain subdued.”

Over the last 10 years, according to Moody’s, Barbados has grown at a compound average annual rate of just 1.2 percent, among the slowest for countries rated by the firm.

The firm also said that Barbados’ offshore business sector, the country’s second-most important industry, “also faces greater competition and is coming under increasing pressure from changes in tax laws in the US, Canada and the UK.” Adding:  Barbados’ negative outlook considered that economic performance is likely to remain weak.".

This ought to be obvious to anyone who knows the island and its employment situation, lack of resources and depending largely on the one trick pony of tourism. Also that although offshore banking had helped with diversification, attacks by minions of the OECD nations (i.e. on any offshore banking as somehow disreputable and 'unlawful')  caused harm to Barbados' economic health.  Few of these attacking nitwits learned or knew that many of us had lived in Bim over decades, and hence had set up and kept banking accounts there- even after we departed. Not to get secretly rich, but to use the $$$ whenever we visited - for beach house or hotel accommodation, car rentals...and just to purchase freaking expensive groceries at the food marts! Anyway, Moody's goes on:

“While the worst appears to be behind Barbados both in terms of fiscal deficits and economic deterioration, Moody’s anticipates that the government’s deficits will remain large for the next few years and its debt levels will continue to rise, albeit at a slowing pace. Even if the country is able to consolidate its finances and stabilize its debt metrics, they are unlikely to improve meaningfully for the foreseeable future given its poor economic prospects.”

The credit rating agency said that Barbados’ government faces “difficult choices” in its stewardship of the economy. Well, uh yes! Choices much like Greece's: to make serious cuts on top of existing high VAT (value added taxes) and send the populace into a furore, or try to keep a slow steady but small growth pace and offend the high and mighty rating kings. (The same lot that awarded AAA ratings to bonds laden with credit default swaps back in 2007-08)

Anyway, we who once lived there and continue to visit also  hope that doesn't mean a currency devaluation or worse! We hope Bim doesn't go the way of Jamaica and Trinidad!(One TT$ is now worth 1/6 of a U.S. $)

Moody's statement ominously goes on:

“In the absence of significant corrective measures, debt metrics will continue to rise, and if the government does take such measures, it risks putting the economy back into recession, On the other hand, many of the proposals to boost economic growth carry the risk of continued deterioration of the government’s financial position, at least in the near term.”

More distressing, in terms of currency issues,  Moody’s announced that it had additionally revised Barbados’ local currency bond and deposit ceilings to Baa1, its long-term foreign currency bond and deposit ceilings to Baa2 and Ba2 respectively, and its short-term foreign currency deposit ceiling to NP.

A Moody's threat perhaps?

“The rating will face further downward pressure unless the government is able to successfully navigate the current situation such that a clearly visible and easily achievable path to stabilizing debt metrics is established within the next 12-18 months, in which case the outlook could be revised to stable. The rating could also be downgraded if pressures on the currency peg mount significantly.”


The Central Bank of Barbados itself added, however, that Barbados' economic strategy "remains unaffected by the downgrade," and continues to focus on conserving foreign-exchange reserves and growing the foreign exchange-earning sectors.

"Thanks to a sufficiently tight fiscal stance, foreign-exchange reserves of BDS$1.4 billion on December 19, 2012, have been maintained at about the same level as at end-December last year."

See e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9g1DOm6By8


Meanwhile the claim that Bajans are “heading back into poverty” (Barbados Sunday Advocate, p. 3, yesterday) , is disconcerting to say the least. This is especially pertaining to the statement (by one political rep, Trevor Prescod) that people are “begging in the street for bare necessities.” One hopes not!!

My personal barometer, meanwhile, remains the status of de-mutualized Barbados insurance shares. Their value has plummeted more than 50% in the past five years and this brings the whole “junk” meme into a whole new immediate realm! To clarify, de-mutualization of an insurance company, in this case the Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Association (after being taken over by Sagicor Financial Company), meant a component of life insurance policy value was transferred into stock shares (in this case of Sagicor). The process itself is termed “de-mutualization” and there is no choice by any insurance holder to accept them or not. (Though a 'policy holder's meeting' usually determines the decision.)

These aren’t like normal stocks because: 1) The total amount of shares distributed doesn’t vary. Thus, there is no ‘buying on the dips’ to increase the number of shares owned nor can one 'buy' more shares in any case. One is issued a fixed allotment based on the value of the original policy. All that happens is your total stock value on paper continually goes down if the share value goes down. 2) The losses are REAL, i.e. as per a (2008) federal claims court ruling, there does exist an original cost basis (not 'zero' as the IRS once claimed) , and if one sells at a value below that cost basis a real capital gains LOSS is realized.

Basically, in the past five years I have watched as the total value of those demutualized shares  has‘melted down’ to appallingly low levels, vaporizing - at least on paper - what might have helped for a rainy day. But perhaps I ought to have seen this coming. Back in 2010, I sounded an alarm on Barbados’ growing debt (see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/05/will-barbados-fall-to-sovereign-debt.html

Noting that at the time that while Greece had a debt of roughly 10% of GDP, Barbados’ debt was 53% of its GDP. At such a significant debt ratio it has become obvious in hindsight that the country has had to borrow to sustain itself, eventually reaching the point that both S&P and Moody’s downgraded its bond status.

In a followup blog: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/05/will-barbados-fall-to-sovereign-debt_27.html

I warned that Barbados had to strive to keep the quality of its tourism product high,  given the recession had caused potential tourists from the U.S. especially to be much more selective. Barbados wasn’t the only great beach destination in the Caribbean after all! In that blog I pointed out a number of customer ‘breakdowns’ that didn’t help advance Bim’s rep, or its tourist capital. For example, one service worker quarreling when I asked for an ice cold Diet Coke plus a cup of water with ice. Then at a TGIFridays, a waitress sending assorted platters spinning off her hand nearly toppling over the drinks of my guests, after having been asked why – after 35 minutes- our ice cream sundaes had not been delivered.

Beyond that, in the two plus years since, I’ve been distressed to read in online papers of Barbados continued noise problems, as voiced by numerous tourists. They complain of everything from loud music going way past midnight, to dogs endlessly barking. Make no mistake that NO tourist has to travel so far to tolerate such ‘botheration’ when they can find a relatively quiet beach hotel near St. Lucia’s Pitons and at lower rates.

Hence, in some ways it’s been no surprise that Barbados’ economy has grown so meagerly the past two years, given tourism remains the central foreign exchange earner. (Offshore banking also has been, but has suffered somewhat by being tarred by assorted Neoliberal Loons, like former French Premier Sarkozy, imputing nefarious “tax dodging”  at OECD conferences and Banking confabs.)

Will the outlook improve? One can only wait and hope! The island is holding its general elections this year and perhaps the outcome will spur change in the right direction. This although ominous warnings have circulated regarding impending privatization, including of the water authority, pensions etc. Let us hope that's not the case!

When I next visit the island I certainly don't want to behold a Caribbean version of Greece!

That Disgusting Oil-Reeking Fluid Coming From Your Tap? It's WATER!

Scene from the documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire. Below: Fracking scene on the Colorado Front Range.

In the superb anti-fracking documentary "Gasland" one scene shows a homeowner actually lighting the water as it pours from his tap. This to show how much methane is in that water. Meanwhile, in another scene, a homeowner nearly vomits after trying to get a glass of water from his tap and finding it reeks like kerosene and has a brownish hue. He tosses it away and goes out to get bottled water.

According to Josh Fox the Director:

“This isn't some dystopian nightmare, but the harsh reality in communities from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. People are feeling completely upended,"

This is thanks to gas companies which have been leasing thousands of acres of pristine watershed land while laying waste to communities and water supplies, unleashing thousands of cancers in the wake.  This in a nation which lacks any true universal health coverage (the Obamacare plan doesn't qualify since people still have to pay through a private insurer in an 'exchange' or on the open market.)

And what has the gas industry's response been to the film? PROPAGANDA! BWAAAHAAAHA!

Bull pockey! The scenes don't lie, and in truth it is the fossil fuel industry and gassers that create the propaganda. "Oh, there  ain't nothin' to fret over! We won't destroy your water supply or health!"    In a pig's eye! In fact, the analogy is very close to the era (still extant) where toxic sludge is used as 'fertilizer' despite containing hundreds of toxins, effluent and carcinogenic chemicals. See, for example, the book  'Toxic Sludge is Good For You' - the handbook for all PR meisters and hacks.  

Meanwhile, here in Colorado, a number of recent toxic frack spills are setting the stage for our own flaming faucets and oil-slick glasses of H2O. According to a Denver Post Report (Feb. 15, p. 1A) :   "PDC Energy workers at the site of an 84,000 gallon spill of greenish, oil-laden fracking fluid on Thursday said they had pretty well cleaned up the mess." 

Maybe so, but bear in mind that NO inspectors were at the site, so we don't really know what they did with the effluent, or if they pumped it back into underground aquifers. (PDC operates 2,500 wells in the Waterburg formation along the Front Range).  Meanwhile, we are informed (ibid.): "Colorado Oil and Gas Commission regulators are continuing to monitor the cleanup".

 Wow, THAT is encouraging!  State spokesman Todd Hartmann added:   "Rest assured we will be physically engaged- present- AT the site!"  

Jeebus peace! I can now sleep peacefully at night! Wonder of wonders! Maybe I won't have to deal with flaming faucets after all!   The Post article also noted that PDC has reported a dozen spills over the past year including 6 in the past two months. Evidently, in the worst one a "mechanical failure" was to blame. The result?   "Water fouled with  oil and chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing sprayed from the well (4 miles north of Windsor) for more than 30 hours."  

The same report notes that a Jan. 22 spill released oil "contaminating groundwater with benzene, toluene and xylene chemicals"  

And the gas fuckers, excuse me.....FRACKERS.. still want to shout down "Gasland" as propaganda?  

The Post report goes on (p. 7A) to add that:   "expanding operations around Colorado have reported more than 2,000 spills over the past 5 years with roughly 17% contaminating ground water."  

Now, this is in a state which has a severe drought and for which there are and have been water restrictions in many parts. A state that can barely support its water-intensive agriculture, yet can afford to waste or contaminate millions of gallons from our watershed, aquifers with fracked water.  

Meanwhile, here in COS, our Colorado Springs Utilities, at the behest of the City Council, and despite our being in a severe drought, plans to lease or auction off tens of millions of gallons of water for oil, gas fracking. ('Drilling in a Drought', Colorado Springs Independent, Feb-13-19, p. 14).   President Scott Hente insists: "It's a perception issue! We will have brown grass and yards and pumping gas like crazy!"  

Well, maybe not the lawns, but how about the tap water reeking of oil and laden with benzene, xylene and toluene? Look, Hente, I really, really do not want a return of the prostate cancer for which I just got treated!  

The COS Utilities insists it's no biggie (ibid.) since each fracked well only consumes 3-5 million gallons of water per frack.   Huh! Seems a lot to waste in a frickin' drought!   The Utilities projects this water usage for 12-24 wells and "one time only" but omits mentioning that some technical estimates have put the water use per frack at 9 million gallons, and a single well can be fracked up to ten times.

In other words, the standard is to "use the water to extinction".  

Just fucking great you knotheads! And maybe, just maybe this will be our extinction! How does that old saying go: "You won't miss the water until the well runs dry". Well, we're nearly there here in Colorado!   Maybe when Gov. Hickenlooper pulled that stunt a year or so ago, drinking fracked water to show it's tasty and good, he really ought to have waited for the spill near Windsor. Then he could have scooped up some of that greenish crap and had at it! At least it'd have been more believeable!  

Do People Take Asteroid Strikes Seriously Enough?

Meteor crater in Arizona, nearly 4,000 feet across and 570 ft. deep, formed by the equivalent of a 10 megaton blast.

The question posed in the header is difficult to answer. However, following the cosmic coincidence of yesterday (meteoroid exploding over Siberia, close passing asteroid DA 14), everyone on the Earth with more than air between the ears ought to be taking potential asteroid (or large meteoroid) strikes, very seriously indeed.  (see also: http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/02/two-cosmic-shots-over-bow-for-earths.html ) Check out also the accompanying image of the Meteor Crater in Arizona (formerly the Barringer Crater) and process its dimensions: 4,000 ft. in diameter (1,200 m) and 570 ft. (170 m) deep.

The crater was was formed by the impact of an iron-nickel meteorite 50 m (165') across, coming in at 28,600 mph, generating an impact energy of 10 megatons. This crater, in other words, would have reduced a city the size of Miramar, FL to rubble. The impact occurred roughly 50,000 years ago. By comparison, the meteoroid that exploded over Russia was about 49 m in diameter, and Russian physicists estimate its explosive release at about 20 Hiroshima bombs of 10 kilotons each, or 200 kilotons - thus, a fifth of a megaton. Small change, in other words.

Meanwhile, a 100- to 130-foot asteroid exploded over Siberia in 1908 and flattened 825 square miles of forest, while the rock that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was a monster 6 miles  (10 km) across. The difference is the first is classed as a "regionally devastating impact"  (1-100 megatons) while the latter is classed as a mass extinction event (100 - 100,000 megatons). Though smaller in diameter than the one that exploded over the Urals, it was likely traveling at a faster velocity and probably had a higher mass density.

The worst nightmare is the Earth-sterilizing asteroid or planet killer, with explosive equivalent of > 100,000 megatons. This will be from a rock greater than 10km across.  While I did write in an earlier blog I would take an asteroid instead of a central meridian solar CME, that only applied to tiny asteroids like DA 14. NOT to planet killers, since a massive CME and planet killer would have the same outcome: most or all of humanity dead or dying.

Astronomer Paul Chodas, who works in NASA's Near-Earth Object program in Pasadena, Calif., decribed the Russian object as:

"....a tiny asteroid.  It would be very faint and difficult to detect — not impossible, but difficult."

Meanwhile, the actual asteroid DA 14 2012 that made a heart stopping close pass, was three times the size of the Russian object, and coming in at nearly 40,000 mph. Its blast -energy release was more like a 20 megaton blast.

In many ways then, these things are almost like random terror attacks from the sky. So why aren't more people concerned (up to now, for example, only 12 have read the blog from yesterday, compared to 270 who've read the Dec. 1st blog on the Notre Dame Prep sex video. Can a sex video really be more important or interesting than a potential, obliterating asteroid strike? Wait, don't answer that...

But at least according to Rusty Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9 in 1969, and helped establish the planet-protecting B612 Foundation (quoted in Saturday's Denver Post  referring to Friday's events): "

"After today, a lot of people will be paying attention,"

Well, maybe! If sex or Beyonce don't distract them! Schweickart and his Foundation have been warning NASA for years to put more muscle and money into a heightened asteroid alert. To his credit, he and some former astronauts want to give the world a fighting chance in terms of confronting the specter of an asteroid approach. After all, what good is all our vaunted human intelligence if we meet the same end as the dinosaurs one of these days?

Here's the current skinny: Scientists think there are 500,000 to 1 million "near-Earth" asteroids comparable in size to DA14 or bigger out there. But less than 1 percent have been spotted. Astronomers have catalogued 9,600 of them, of which nearly 1,300 are bigger than 0.6 miles long. That means they are at least of mass extinction level.

Earth's atmosphere gets hit with 100 tons of junk every day, most of it the size of sand and most of it burning up before it reaches the ground, according to NASA. And also, there may be many bolides such as exploded over Siberia, but many will do that over oceans or other areas where few human observers live.

As NASA's Jim Green, director of planetary science, puts it, regarding the Russian event:

"These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don't see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. This one was an exception,"

Former Astronaut Schweickart observed:

"The chances of Earth getting hit without warning by one of the big ones are extremely low, so low that it's ridiculous. But the smaller ones are quite different."

This is true, but the probabilities for the monster rocks smacking us ought not be readily dismissed, because one never knows what sort of gravitational perturbations can affect existing orbits. We already know, for example, that an estimated 1,000 asteroids are perturbed from the asteroid belt each year to become Earth-crossers. We call these "Apollo asteroids". We need to keep track of them, because they are the ones that are among the planet killing or mass extinction scales. The smaller ones? Yes, they are nuisances, but we can deal with them if we have some long range planning wherewithal combined with alert observers.

And what are our illustrious politicos doing in the meantime, since the Friday events?  Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee called for a hearing in the coming weeks. In his words:

"Today's events are a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science,"

Yes indeed, but we need a lot more than hearings. We need lots more technically-minded people with eyes on the skies.

Schweickart and others meanwhile, have advised that NASA launch a $250 million-a-year program to survey asteroids and work up a deflection plan. The latter would be most effective for the lesser objects but may also help with the larger ones, of at least mass extinction scale. Ideally Russia (especially after Friday) and the USA should combine their resources and work together for the planet's benefit - as opposed to more opportunistic war -making (to ramp up defense budgets), including endless stupid wars on terror.

WTF use is a war on terror, defending against maybe a 'dirty bomb' that can remove a thousand people, when a major meteroid strike - such as produced the Barringer crater-  would kill millions, say if it landed directly on New York City?  Instead of therefore pumping $200 b a year into wars on terror we ought to be focused on the terror from the skies - which though  admitttedly rare- would have consequences that are irreparable.

Schweickart notes that "NASA now has $20 million" for searching out these terrorists in the skies, and adds. ... "It's peanuts."

Sadly, it may well take a monster meteoroid or small asteroid (like DA 14) crashing into a populated area before NASA and other agencies, politicos wake up. That would then be our cosmic 9/11 and prompt us to get off our asses before the really BIG one arrives. Aka, the planet killer!