And so, the Trials and Tribulations for Bunz & Katz continue…
September 11th when we remember the day the Towers fell…
Due to structural failure, following their being crashed into by two hijacked airliners, or so we’re told… Hijacked airliners that apparently were mostly crewed by Saudis… So naturally our President called for an attack on Afghanistan, his rationale, to capture Osamu Bin Laden… A misguided effort, as later Bin Ladden turned out to be in Pakistan… (Are you following all this?) To add insult to injury, the Prez and his cronies, not long after, connived an unprovoked war with Iraq – who they claimed possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction”… Though later it turned out that they didn’t…
The Upshot, 15 years later we still have two seemingly never ending and horribly deadly wars (for all sides) with no end in sight… That is the true Tragedy of September 11th!!
“This court awards you the bank accounts, the house, and all the furniture, including that lamp in the bedroom I like so much.” —paraphrase from “The Critic.”
Glad to see I can still say something here. Last two days, I haven’t been able to make any snarky comments at three other sites…or, if they’re posting, I’m not seeing them.
Probly they just got lost in the general Sea of Snarkitude… We live in troublous times indeed… I sometimes wonder if our present-day history is being written by the team of Attila the Hun, Monty Python and the Gran Guignol…
Before we’re done with this travesty of legal juris-pestilence completely… Here, for your ogling edification, is a li’l pin-up that I sketched out a couple of weeks back (When I probably should have been doing something actually productive)…
Moxie & Bob, our two ersatz Sailor Scouts posing together – apparently without any animosity or anything… Perhaps if it had occurred to me, I might have placed Moxie in the jury box next to Bob.. but well… I just didn’t think about it…
Moxie couldn’t sit on the jury because she’s a cop. Well, she wouldn’t be able to sit in on the jury in the real world… defense attorney Lechat would dismiss on peremptory challenge… because Moxie’s probably unreasonably prejudiced against homicidal, lunatic criminals.
But she and Bob do make quite a pair. (Shipper on deck!) Yes! I DO want the comic store geek to be with the hot chick! Absolutely. YOU GO BOB!
Josh, a nice sketch of Ossifer Moxie and the comic store geek having a good time. As you recall I speculated that some of the gold bling worn by Attornet Lechat might have a connection to her supposed super-powers. But with the sketch of the dancing duo (and they do go together well), the metal-like bands on Moxie’s wrists might have a duel function. Firstly they simply look nice. But secondarily being a martial artist, Moxie might slip in a bit of hidden training. The bands might be made of heavy Tungsten, and used (covertly) to build extra speed and strength, while also making her look good.
I dunno boss. Seems a bit of a stretch to me. I mean, I can believe a tonfa wielding, anime-sailor-chick uniformed, knock down gorgeous female police officer from the LAPD Cosplay Division with a rack that would make a freight train take a dirt road but that she’s also a secret master Hung Gar practitioner with iron rings? Naaaah.
Well Bunz almost was terrified to death of her — from something that she saw or sensed that we didn’t. Why would Bunz be terrified by a mere martial arts sort of night stick — when she herself has (or possibly had a super ray gun)? Add to that, that Bunz took out the lethal leader of a gang threatening in a convincing way to kill everyone in the room — and dragged him without any concern at all down the street. Bear in mind that if Bunz handed herself over to Moxie, that it would be no worse for her or Katz than the last time they wound up in jail. It hasn’t yet registered to anyone that she is from way way way out of town. She was clewed into something to be afraid of, and the details of that we don’t yet know.
Hey, remember that Bunz and Katz were warned by HQ, even before they landed on Dirt, that Giant Robots and Sailor Chix were the Dirtians’ greatest Superweapons! Naturally, the sight of a Sailor Chick suddenly turning up at a critical moment is going to give Bunz and Katz a sudden desire to be someplace else… almost anyplace else….
Billthesurely and DoublW, a couple of things to consider in Josh’s story telling. Bunz and Katz themselves might not be a great threat to us. In fact, they are kind of mixing in with us although keeping true as they can to their original order. No of course the real threat is a gigantic invasion fleet, and a people inspired by high technology. We have technology as well, but would have to do some serious catch up in any kind of conflict with them.
In the story they are coming at us with a serious reason, we just don’t currently know what it is.
But Josh’s dance of the Sailor Scouts hints at our response to the invasion fleet. A high technology people might have a natural fear of the Sailor Scout sorts. And why? Quite simple. All their observations of any version of Sailor Scouts were involves with some sort of dance-like moves and at least implied meta-physical powers. Super smart as Bunz’s people are they have no place in their thinking of that sort of thing. What [if] they wonder, should it work out that that there is a reality beyond our perceptions that we are about to challenge?
I believe that Moxie’s hand gestures are hinting at this higher reality.
Certainly she seems an ordinary enough woman — outwardly at least. The only stand out oddity about her, is the wearing of decorative Christmas tree-like ornaments in her hair. Perhaps a distraction to play down who and what she really is: earth’s natural defender. An ultimate hero. Josh’s story would have to balance out with someone well suited to counter ultra advanced technology. Someone just a little bit mystic in their nature.
I know it seems odd for a delicate looking flower of a girl to practice with heavy “iron” strength training rings, and do it invisibly in front of your eyes. But, a chosen earth hero might not be entirely ordinary. She would just do a lot of things other people wouldn’t. From history remember Joan of Arc. A serious meta-physical counter-point to the invaders of her nation. And as a prisoner may have made even more of a statement than as she even managed to do as a warrior.
Look at Moxie’s right hand gesture. If she is into really old school Kung Fu sorts of things, then she might have also retained a respect for Buddha Hand Gestures. The tradition calls her gesture “Mudra”. Compactly it is explicitly a threat or warning. And notice that it is directed upward. In a general sense, towards the incoming fleet of invaders.
Now look at Moxie’s left hand. The gesture is traditionally called “Vitarka Mudra”. It is associated with Intellectual argument. And contained within that sign are her circled fingers with a further meaning — “the Wheel of Law”. And Moxie’s very person is the earth’s [statement of Law].
The hand gestures and the dancing may remind us of John Travolta’s “Saturday Night Fever”. And that Moxie is having fun. And she is. Why can not earth’s hand chosen defender have some fun, even while engaged in a great conflict? She is our tough as nails defender. But her heart is of joy and very much at peace. Confounding absolutely a mortal foe.
Uh, yeah… what you said… Although, taking into account what we saw on the ancient battle station now known as Iapetus, since the battle station has been inert for uncounted millenea, is now barely functional, with essential parts for repair on back-order for several million years, and has a total battle strength of one B-class scout craft (presently impounded for illegal parking and lack of valid license plates), and one pilot and henchbot (presently marooned on an enemy planet and reduced to taking odd jobs for survival), it seems the entire question of the Great Negafleet Invasion may be regarded as moot, or, as my vulgar Uncle Emmit would have said, “not worth a fart in a hurrycane…”
The bit of the invasion fleet’s command center that Josh showed us was in serious disrepair. To get this facility up to military specifications by the book might require all the delay that you outlined. That is by the military specifications of the robotic rulers. But the true potential of the fleet is in the hands of the rank and file sorts on board, like our hero/villain Bunz. It falls to them of if they have a cause. It falls to them, if if they fill in the breaches in the wall left by decayed equipment (like lacking bricks by another traditional sort of story). A long long long time ago there was a reason to send out an invasion fleet. Every viable culture has a history. Does this pending fight also mean something to the invaders? In our own culture, our military readiness is but a fraction of say what it was in WW II (outside of our super weapons and examples of extreme technology). The later are not so much decayed as impractical in several ways to use against our current foes. Boots on the ground as it is put, might be more desired than high technology — for apparently the kind of fight our foes taunt us into engaging in. Generating an estimated 5 million refuges quite some taunt.
In the Negafleet’s case, however, there are apparently no boots available … on the ground, in zero-G or otherwise … Bunz wears slippers, Katz has foot pads, and the two AIs left running the battle station have, respectively, pseudopods and nothing… while the remaining craft of the Fleet, with the exception of one B-class scout, have either failed to launch, crumbled into rust or bashed into launch tube doors that failed to open … And, since part orders for essential repairs have been neglected or ignored for millions of years, one must assume that the great Gokkorian Empire, which originally launched the Negafleet, must have gone extinct long ago … Which seems to be the general fate of empires or nations which come to devote too much of their resources to military expansion.
Kinda seems to be the fate of expansionist empires/nations in general.
I must beg to differ on the subject of “boots on the ground”. In fact they are not necessary. It all boils down to just how ruthless the user of force is prepared to be. If Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan had had access to the military technology we possess today they would simply have obliterated resisting nations – city by city, town by town, village by village – until the victim capitulated or ceased to exist.
The potential of a first class modern technological military in the hands of a totally ruthless tyrant leading a devoted and slavishly obedient population is the stuff of nightmares.
The story element of the crumbling technology is a feature of our own culture. This definitely was not a problem at all for say Alexander the Great. His leadership had its problems: alcoholism, a tendency for excessive debauchery, internal rivalry, and in between great victories and foundations of new empire building — a serious general desire to return to home and hearth — loneliness.
But Alexander never suffered a supply problem, nor a crumbling of equipment problem. He remembered well the theory of science and engineering that he was taught in school — and effortlessly innovated when confronted with new challenges. The divine “mission” aspect of his nature doubtlessly feeding into the power of his innovation. Others had invented math, science, philosophy and so-on, and he was putting these concepts to work. And often rather uniquely. He, and those of course that he inspired.
The Nega-fleet has thus far not made use of an early discovery of Alexander. Maybe by his God’s blessing, or maybe not, he never failed to find whatever resource that he needed while in the course of his extended conquest. If he was for example running out of manpower for his army, he in his inspired way would merely pack in new numbers from those that he conquered. And winning them over by offering them advantages missing from any prior administrations — say like building libraries, cities and commerce. Had the WW II Germans done likewise, they might never have been beaten. But the strength of their super-race concept was also a weakness. The conquered people couldn’t truly embrace them, as the thought remained that they themselves couldn’t be one of the superior race, no matter how hard that they might try to be. Alexander easily solved that problem. He had everyone marry everyone else, including himself. Thus as a paradox with today’s example of a mythic superior Aryan race — Alexander viewed such a thought as counter-productive with regard to actual global conquest. You want the “others” not to be “others”.
From Alexander’s philosophy of conquest, the Nega-fleet should, or at least the humanoid elements of it should look to shore up their weaknesses with local resources. Humans looking for investment in foreign technology and trade. The eye of the Nega-fleet will ultimately notice the people of Io and Callisto. I know that Josh wanted to contain his story so as to not include their mention. But the Nega-fleet is desperate for replacement components for their long neglected high technology. And very obviously Io and Callisto’s people have technology on the right level to replace what they need for furthering their conquest.
For our own example, Trump has said that we “should have kept the oil” after our invasion. As if we could pick it up and carry it off as simply our own. But on some level we know that his overly simple statement has some truth to it. What overall point to any invasion, for good reasons or ill, without the element of the acquisition of something — or anything? That was the businessman in him speaking — not so much the guy that might order retaliatory drone strikes.
Io and Callisto seem to be entirely free spirits, unlikely to marry into or enlist in some army of conquest fielded by a moribund (if not extinct) empire. Who knows what level of technology has been reached by the society they come from… although judging from their Foosaucer, it may be somewhere about the late 1950s.
And as for Bunz and Katz temselves… What, you’re suggesting that Bunz ought to marry some Dirtian? I can imagine her response to the mere suggestion… but I’d imagine it from a safe distance…
First off, my apologies, I had initially intended to explain more about Iapitus and the Nega-Fleet long before now in the story – but with various changes in the plot as we went along, the character that B&K would explain this to got written out in order to speed up the proceedings…
Doing this strip is a bit like Jazz – I have a general outline as to where the story is going, with some portions thoroughly scripted, other portions have just the high points noted… Along the way I’ve been improvising, adding pages and characters that were never part of the original concept, while dropping others, mostly just to streamline the action… Because of this improvisation, some story points that I should have hit, got left out and that’s unfortunate… Part of the overall problem is that I’m just slower at completing the pages than I had hoped – If I had been able to keep to a page per week schedule, then we’d be much farther along in the story than we are now, so that some of these questions would not be a factor…
As per Bunz & Katz, their mission is not really a secret, as far as our nominal dramatis personae are concerned – it’s just that no one has bothered to ask them “Why?” — Mostly because no one yet actually realizes what they’re here for…
Also, to nip a wrong idea in the bud – DoubleW is incorrect in naming the Aliens – No one on Dirt, er, Earth knows or has ever known what the Aliens of the Nega-Fleet call themselves, mostly because they never got around to telling our ancestors… It probably didn’t seem to matter, as they were only going to slaughter them anyway…
As for Io & Callisto – or other Funny Animal characters, they do NOT exist in Bunz’ & Katz’ story, other than as fictional characters in Comix… I have played with the idea of the Space Gophers as an exception, as they can be considered legitimate aliens – though their presence would pose other problems in the continuity – so um… the jury is still out on that possibility…
For whatever it’s worth, I wouldn’t count the Nega-Fleet out just yet… There’s more ways than brute force to win a war – especially when the other guys don’t even know that they’re in one…
Or to quote a brochure from the Iapitus Chamber of Commerce, which I happen to have here on my desk:
From the burning hell of Mercury to the acid clouds of Venus, to the crushing gravity of Jupiter, the double entendre name of Uranus, the freezing cold of Neptune – even that ex-planet named after Micky Mouse’s dog – they’re all quite nasty — And then there’s Iapetus…
Yes, Iapetus, among the least pleasant places to visit in the entire Solar System – Its ancient armored surface broken intermittently by frozen acid lakes and bunkered weapon systems, those still operational, scanning ceaselessly, relentlessly, for any invading craft, creature – or just anything that moves… To the radioactive desolation where random rogue crenchulon zormax killer bots still roam – (many still active after ages of shambling over the bomb pitted surface, looking for something to kill), to spiky, nasty eradication pits, half filled with the effusion of ages of backed up toilets and then, there’s the unspeakable horror of the Oozalakx… Frankly a death dive into the gravity hell of Jupiter is far more pleasant! Our best advice, Stay Away! Stay far away! Don’t come near, not even on a bet, and especially not to touch it with a ten foot pole (that might irritate something!) Iapetus ranks right up there with… Um… Come to think of it – there’s no place that’s even close when it comes to danger, quick unpleasant death and those nasty stains which just won’t wash out!!
Let us not deride “boots on ground. I remember reading a juior Royal Naval flag officer’s account during the Napoleonic War, “Although as a naval officer, it pains me to say this, you can’t proclaim a successful victory until your troops plant your country’s flag on the enemy’s battlements.”
That is quite true. But our troops don’t have to do it. There are plenty of people in that part of the world who will be glad to shovel the dirt over the corpse of ISIS after they’re gone. We ran the Taliban out of Afghanistan by supporting the people who were already fighting the Taliban. We got mired in Afghanistan when we decided we had to send in thousands of troops and indulge in nation building afterwards.
This time we do it a bit smarter perhaps? Blow ISIS to hell and gone and don’t put a bunch of our own troops on the ground to become targets afterwards? Sounds like a plan.
It’s not our business to tell a bunch of people overseas how to live their lives. We are there to kick the crap out of a bunch of people who by fanatical, barbaric means are trying to force the world to live by their standards and spread their “religion” anywhere they can make it stick. Who takes over after ISIS is gone is none of our concern. That they might not be “democratic” is not our concern. That they may not give women rights equal to men – not our concern. The fact that somebody in the middle east might not want to become America-in-the-Middle-East, and they DON’T, is not our concern. We are only there for one reason. Destroy ISIS. Period. As long as whomever takes over afterwards keeps their business to themselves we’re done.
Oh crap! How did I get so high up on this pile of soapboxes? Gonna have to be careful climbing down or I might hurt myself. The preceding has been a political opinion unique to ME and may not reflect the views of the guy running this page or the other people posting on it.
As with most such things, the problem contains its own solution. ISIS displaced about 5 million people out of the region. Any that offer to deal with that region’s problems don’t reside there. And for the most part, they differ from the original people by following “Islamic Law” i.e. Muslim Brotherhood sorts — as were those chased out of power recently by normal secular Muslims in Egypt. ISIS is a Muslim Brotherhood sort. Changing one caustic chemical for another (but of the same sort) is hardly a change.
Muslim Brotherhood sorts have zero tolerance for Christians and others. Installing more of the same will not alter that. The negatives of the old leaders in Syria and Iraq notwithstanding — they were as a strong wall protecting those that the brotherhood would destroy. That is another way of saying that unless the OA is lead by idiots, they should not have called for the head of the Syrian leader to be severed and placed on a tray — in their white glove sort of way.
The ideal solution to the problem seems painfully obvious. The exact 5 million people displaced by ISIS should be blessed and restored by the world. The lesson learned that it was a major goof to gun run the overthrown dictator of Libya’s weapons into brotherhood (in Syria’s) hands and not expect the results observed. Monumentally stupid thinking.
Take the 5 million people, offer them limitless training in WW II city to city tactics to take back from thieves, murderers and worse what was taken from them. There would be no hope of Heavenly glory for ISIS to fight these righteous people, whereas they could label us as otherwise. Fighting a foe in Iraq’s forces, that they viewed as less than righteous allowed them a clear 15 to 1 victory. Not even close to this is to be expected when fighting the rightful owners of all they stole.
Unfortunately, “kicking the crap out of ISIS” will require American troops on the ground… first to hold the line while the displaced Syrians (actually only the military-aged males) are vetted, trained, their families supported and ISIS recruiters kept away, and secondly to offset the Russians, whose goals are in no way similar to the ones expressed here. The longer the ordeal lasts, the better Putin will like it. A steady flood of refugees will destabilize and impoverish Europe, and thus weaken NATO. Putin is playing the long game, in which the goal is not restoring peace in the Middle East, but making Putin dictator-for-life of a reborn Soviet Union.
The 5 million are already out of Syria. If we want to promote the old saying of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, we could be the “boots on the ground” as you say. But only for the sake of American pride. Alternatively, with all the security that even Trump could approve of, we could wall off one or more of the training bases used in WW I and WW II, that are mostly mothballed — or in a state between being sold to the civilian market, and bring them up to suitable standards. A really easy thing for one of the world’s master builders to deal with. Then teach them all they need to learn to take back their own property. Any question to my point, that these heroes would be viewed by ALL of the greater Islamic World as no less than heroes — if they saved their own land?
Trump would approve this because we have thus far spent 6 trillion dollars following the vision of a child-man (pick Obama or Bush II, makes little difference) and have [less than nothing] good to show for it.
Let Putin have the ME if he wants it. Everything left as it is, even slight Global Warming will render the average temperature there at about 60 degree C. Enzymes in plants from Biology 101 cease in their function. Hence no great foresight is needed that if that temperature average is reached by the expected and well published date of about 2050 — there won’t be anyone left in the “Holy Lands” for whoever is in office then for Russia to govern. That “hand writing on the wall” plenty will leave the region long before then.
The bane of the ME, and a factor in many of our wars tracing back to possibly even WW I is oil — or lust for it. The excessive build up of atmospheric CO2, with little quibbling by even Global Warming critics, will bring about what I have said above — and long before the bulk of the world faces that level of problems from other GW predictions.
The eruption of ME problems, perhaps even greater than Russia can fully contain, will force the next president to rely more on so-called domestic resources in North Americ, i.e. fracking and Canadian Tar Sands Oil — along with its gigantic pools of waste water filled to near saturation with metalic mercury and sulfate salts. These are considered as rich food for anaerobic bacteria. Bread with extra sugar and bags of yeast rises faster than when without — cooking tip. Same with these using sulfate salts and mercury.
From extremely easy computation the (mostly metalic) mercury ppm in the ocean is given by the approximation:
x = x0*Exp(-1.0986E-3*z), z depth into ocean in meters
Currently x0 is 1 ppt = 1E-12, tons of mercury per ton of water. Roughly at the beginning of the industrial age it was 1/3 rd that amount. By bio-magnification of the food chain, a common tuna might have a mercury [or almost completely] methyl mercury concentration of around 1 ppm = 1E6, kilograms/kilogram. At about 20 ppm [Me]HgCl that should be a lethal dose.
The presently 0.5 cubic mile of the pool spoken about has an unknown concentration of metallic mercury and likewise an unknown concentration of methyl mercury CH3-Hg-Cl. This is a very closely controlled state secret. Everything and the kitchen sink is published about leaked mercury — but nearly nothing about contained mercury. Easy to understand though. As Trump pointed out in his speeches our fracking represents future wealth of about 50 trillion dollars. That Canadian Oil a great many times even that.
I’m not against wealth. But I am against willful ignorance. The magnification factor (at least for tuna) is 1 million fold methyl mercury to metallic mercury — in the sea. Bear in mind my cooking tip for bread making. We have zero idea as to the magnification factor of the two chemicals in the ponds. [And we are not looking for it.]
Josh spoke of a certain Hell like planet that almost has a sign up saying “don’t come here”. Ditto for what could happen here. Without even knowing the value of “x” ppm mercury in the pond, or its magnification factor for methyl mercury dissolved in the fats and lipids of the pond’s bacteria, we can still solve easily enough for an upper bound of what would kill all the fish in all the oceans of the world. Merely solve the following:
x*v = y*V, “x” of course unknown. “y” assumed to be 20 ppt, with the roughly observed multiplication factor of 1 million fold assumed to hold at a greater ocean concentration. It might be higher, but not less.
The real concern is the ppm of methyl mercury in the pond, but that is a controlled secret. And it might be quite high indeed. “v” is currently 0.5 mi^3 but will rapidly grow as the resource is fully tapped into. And “V”:
V = (4/5)*(4/5)*pi*R^2*(maybe 1 km converted to miles), R = 4000 mi
Not a tough problem. And one made worse if the pond magnification factor is greater than the ocean magnification factor. At a minimum we should worry if the pond has maybe 640 ppm metallic mercury. And worry more if the bio-magnification factor is higher than the ocean. Possibly even most of the pool is in fact methyl mercury. There are no numbers made public. If man or nature releases this “bowl’s” content then unbelievably it could fulfill a “Revelation” verse of a mere one sentence — were all the fish is the sea die. Dilution for most of the pool’s toxins works quite well. But not a toxin that does not dissolve in water but only in fats and lipids. None of it gets lost or wasted. Or hardly any.
The cure? Don’t completely go down that path. The navy developed a process to make gasoline from sea water’s baking soda content. Little more complicated really than a child’s science fair volcano project. Their estimated cost about 3 dollars per gallon of gasoline. They used a common light water reactor for energy at about 6 cent/kWh. The Richard Nixon banned Molten Salt Thorium Reactor can produce electrical energy at about 1 cent/kWh
(3 $/gallon)*(1/6) = 50 cents/gallon gasoline.
That was done without making further use of the direct hydrogen from water with 1000 degree C heat of the reactor — a potential further reduction in cost.
So the choice is clear. Allow the “puppet masters” as Trump defined them to not only have “more money than God” and add to it. But at the cost of the life of the planet. [Once the seas are dead they will emit hydrogen sulfide gas. That gas though not especially toxic will kill most land animals within a span of a few years. And leave only an ironic “fools gold” marker in the earth’s iron ore rock — to mark in a natural way our once proud presence.] That choice, or save planet earth and make wealth while doing so. As every place on earth can use access to the sea, or to limestone to make low cost fuel — it would make no sense to hoard and fight over it.
Um… as much as I dislike censoring anyone, concerning the present “ISIS Talk” thread – I really don’t think that this is the best place for discussions of Geopolitics – though perhaps I somewhat started it all with my own opening comments…
Just my own 2¢ worth – That as Ruthless Despotic Dictators go, it may well turn out that Saddam Hussein was one of the U – S of A’s best friends in the region… He may have been a first class SOB, but at least he kept the crazies in “Duck & Cover” mode!
And now a word from our own moderately dangerous dramatis personae:
Josh, I’ve largely said my piece on ISIS. If it turns out to be a case of “when the saints come marching home” for them, then tables are turned, and it is they who are in trouble. Rightful terror for those that dished it out so very generously. For them, reciting Holy verses, not the deciding issue. Asking for mercy and forgiveness, from those they wronged of a greater merit.
Ah your artwork piece. Godzillia/Trump may have remarked about it being difficult for a flat chested woman to be classified as a “10”. But I would say that our space invader, heroine/villain Bunz is giving the title a good run for the money. I’m hoping that by the end of the story the hansom mine at last finds words of his feelings to express to her — even if not necessarily requited. Even a broken heart gesture goes with his calling.
I would say that removing the practical value of oil (as I have more or less done) ranks a bit above most of the things that (gasp) Henry the Kissinger has done. Without anyone actually voting such people into leading us, we wound up buying that the South China Sea area conflict was over China wanting rice fields and not oil fields. Present day dredged up islands are sort of re-writing what none of us, at least then, dared to talk about.
I’d like to send mail to various Congress people and committee Chairmen (ladies). But that’s a no go. All mail to a congressman or chairman outside my district, no matter the topic, goes to my Kansas congressman. And no one in Congress likes him. And as he was swept out of office by a baby doctor — and easily so. Then no one much likes him back home either. Being kicked out of the agriculture committee didn’t much help. Outside of Superman being born here, we need our agriculture representation, to not be considered as totally fly over country. If you want to eat bread, we grow the grain. Sort of like in the National song.
And speaking of grain, have you ever watched The History Channel? Stories there make clear that 12,000 years ago before the Sahara became the Sahara Desert, this region was rich in vegetation, rivers and lakes. How much water in those lakes? Would you believe a good five times as much water as are in our Great Lakes? It obviously rained quite blessedly in Eden. Yes, I name it thus. Something massive inspired the giant Church constructed in Turkey — with all the simple signs of humble animals. Other places may have strange creatures. These are but simple animals. A funeral rite to a vast lost creation — maybe? We know that the Pyramid complex was constructed in Egypt entirely to fight against the desert God of Death — distantly remembering that the rains were shut off.
The History channel showed a great natural cathedral cavern deep in the Sahara Desert. On the ceiling of this natural church is a painting. One which might make some weep. The people there could see this “climate change” happening — even to the vastness of Eden itself. The painting is a plea to any of the above that might help — “to please send us vital rain”. The rain has been shut off 12 thousand years. Perhaps it is time to open the vault of the sky and bring Eden itself back to the earth.
Can it be done? Sure. And maybe even easily. Should it be done? Well I showed that with hardly an effort gasoline at 50 cents/gallon could displace most of the hydrocarbon fuels on earth. The time required? Only what Trump might say that he needs. Molten Salt Thorium Reactors are so simple in concept, that they should go together with no more challenge than children stacking blocks. Except these graphite blocks being perhaps welded together with a glue of molten Molybdenum metal.
Why the reactors? Merely killing two birds with one stone. We don’t really need reactors, except to supply 24/7 power to large communities of people. But like with the incident in Japan and elsewhere, people fear either man or nature might release the obviously hundreds of tons of radioactive content. A reasonable fear. But also reasonably addressed.
People fear nuclear weapons nearly as much as nuclear power plants. Enough so, that certain greens have shut down construction over explicitly a nuclear bomb being dropped upon a nuclear power plant — and spreading its contents on a continental scale. The radiation release of thousands of bombs. Fear comes from the enemy. Use rather your brain. Is it not God given? The contrary argument (of your foe — the one wanting you to freeze in fear) is that you can’t think. Prove that wrong.
It is just merely a matter of historic record, that under the right conditions that ALL of the energy of a small scale nuclear device can be fully contained underground. Shallow blasts make the ground puff up dramatically. Very deep blasts do not puff up. Kicked up dust isn’t the same as a puffed up deformation.
A 15 kiloton blast 1 km underground (in suitable sandstone) will form a 50,000 cubic meter squared chamber with thick walls of super strong pure quartz-glass. Interestingly Revelation has such crystal-glass, or in other verses fire infused glass where seemingly saints are dancing with joy. And the glass and such, located at the foot of God’s throne. But the problem in reading Revelation, is a lack of location of this throne. The far earlier book of Jeremiah geographically locates the throne in Chapter 47. It in Edam. An old district in Iran, currently used for nuclear and missile projects. God seems to favor very rich spice when he cooks.
Setting aside the seeming impossibility of it, Scripture hints that this dramatic region will kick off tons of blessing for the earth, rather than tons of woe. Readers it is a close in chess game. And some say the Iranians may have actually invented chess. Two cosmic level players rather than outwardly war, are using ideas and concepts to decide a match. And what happens when you win a chess match? Your king displaces the other king, and puts his throne in control of the contested region. That simple.
Iran has a bone to pick with us. We say that those millions in the street and their leaders must be mad to be that angry — and at us. But we weren’t there during the Iran/Iraq War. The supposed dispute of ownership of an island over a large pool of oil (yea that again). Reagan had a part of this feud. All of us should have had a part as well. But not the case.
Reagan could have taken a page from Matthew’s Gospel about The Beatitudes, and combined that with reason — to be a “peace making child of God” and offering the wisdom that the parties should not logically fight over a mere pool of oil — when both countries reside on top of well known oceans of oil. It was on a silver platter from Heaven, offered as if his saintly crown. And Reagan rejected it. And Reagan did the very opposite of promoting mercy, reason or peace. Instead he BECAME his name’s anagram. He became the living words of “INSANE ANGLO WARLORD”.
Reagan gifted or sold to both Iran and Iraq all the weapons that they believed that they might need to conduct their serious and deadly war. Without the weapons, there is the possibility that there might not have been a war. After all “courts” are less painful than war, to decide “minor” land disputes. And initially that was about what it was. But what it became was an estimated 1 or 2 million deaths of children, who were used to clear out landmines.
Yes the parties decided to fight. That much is on them. But the weapons to do it with was on us. No one says it — but that is the true beef that they have with us. And more death isn’t going to change any of this. We took what can’t be returned — children and their futures. Gone.
That was the sacrifice play to set up a final confrontation. A sort of check, if not check mate move. A very grave situation. Definitely they want a piece of us, even if they go down too.
But there are more pieces on the board than Iran. Remember that I said that GW would kill the plants and crops in the region when the temperature averages at 60 degree C. Remember the 12,000 year old prayer calling for rain and more rain from Heaven. High time to come full circle.
CERN of Europe in their Project CLOUD division has identified four chemicals needed to form rain clouds: sulfates, ammonia. amines (related to ammonia), and a chemical associated with pine trees and hemp (like perhaps the pot smoked by Gov. Johnson). Elijah had to wait for a cloud to show up. We might not have to do the waiting part of rain making. It is enough that water molecules are in the air. What CERN found can sort of glue them together.
For the next piece look up an article: “California Drought: A Surprising Cause?” by Sayer Ji, Founder and Keith Bell. Amazingly our selective GMO technology may release microbes with a genetic advantage to not freeze in cold weather. To not act on the clouds that we have created and nucliate ice crystals in them. It is ultimately from tiny ice crystals in clouds that we develop rain. Even the Weather Channel in slicing open under high magnification hail stones — admits to as much about “ice-nucleating bacteria” the main cause of rain.
The Iranians would be fitting all these things together in their minds. We are doomed to 60 degree C heat because of too much CO2. Iran as a nation would cease to exist. Rain in the deserts could restore Eden. Restored Eden would reduce CO2 and preserve Iran’s existence as a nation. America and the world are having their rain shut off because of GMO getting out of scientific control and altering the entire biosphere, invisibly but still powerfully. And a certain un-described need for underground nuclear voids.
The nuclear voids would have two alternative uses: (1) to store the main components of Molten Salt Thorium Reactors; (2) to be used with pumped back hydro-energy storage systems.
Use (2) because of laminar flow head loss will require a 1 km long tunnel to the surface of 4 meters diameter. The volume of the tunnel about 25% of the volume of the blast cavity.
A 4 meter diameter tunnel will allow components and workers to construct underground MSTR’s. These will contain reactor contents against most anything man or nature is likely to throw at them.
For pumped back hydro storage just have one void 1 km lower than another. Reversible turbine/pumps make this into an efficient battery.
Make a hundred cities in the Sahara, with roads, water culverts and energy units. Use thermal energy storage at 700 C to make electrical energy, chemicals for clouds and a thermal cooling tower updraft. Put chemicals and dried (greenhouse grown) ice-nucleating bacteria into the thermal updrafts. The result regional rains.
Sorry the post is so long Josh — you probably can’t print it. But I had to tell someone as telling Congress is quite out of the question. Besides that, they are likely deeply sold on the Canadian Oil Project. Which I point out that no one is looking at the danger of killing the oceans of containment fails.
Well… You seem to have a lot on your mind Bill… I’m not censoring any comments right now, just asking people to remember that this is about comix, more or less…
As for a Lush and Wet Sahara, I kind’a think, if that’s what you’re looking for, you need another ice age… People tend to think of Ice Ages as being bitterly cold – and they were in the northern regions – however, most creatures didn’t live around the huge ice sheets, as temperate climates had moved generally south, it apparently wasn’t all that bad a time to be alive and judging by ice age fauna, they did quite well… Of course, if one lived back then, you wouldn’t have the internet or football pools and the neighbor’s cat might be a sabertooth, so there were trade offs…
It might not work everywhere Josh, but the sage Elijah, perhaps because he was a sort of natural born scientist wanted Israel to go back to obeying all of the Moses given laws, even the obscure one of keeping the “Sabbath of the Land”. Every 7 years, the farmers were to allow their fields to go fallow, and the native plants and weeds to take over. If you look into “ice-nucleating bacteria” or “ice-minus bacteria” in the opposite direction, you will find that Dr. Steven E. Lindow through extensive research found a heavy likelihood that the IN+ were quite plant specific. The new plants that the Jews were introducing to their fields were of a sort of recently mutated grass (wheat). Nature had not the time to develop a corresponding IN+ bacteria. Furthermore while he may have burned naphtha as if naphtha, and let people think as a sort of stand up comedian amateur magician that it was “water” burning as if naphtha, likewise non-cut phosphate rock from a near-by Holy mountain, something subject to thermal decomposition in great heat, rather than more common stone, that was hardly the limit of his wonder work. He did something greater that getting the Baal people out of the picture allowed him to do. As I pointed out he warmed up the farmers to ritual of allowing the fields to go fallow — likely even asserting that they had to do even more of it to catch up with lost Sabbaths. A generous amount of plant litter with associated “dry” IN+ bacteria was now on the ground. Anything that disturbed the dust of the earth would tend to cause the IN+ bacteria to become air born. Likely enough rain was coming down to at least grow native weeds, even though there was a prolonged drought. A good solid rain might kick off the rain cycle again. On healthy farm fields of some crop, S. Lindow measured and recorded a flux of about 400 IN+ cells/second/m^2. The genius (and faith) of Elijah was to observe a seeming correspondence between the celebration of the Feast of Booths and the odds of rain at those time. The obvious hypothesis formed: something in the ritual (probably on an elemental scale) was inducing rain. Elijah had no microscope or wind tunnels — but he could do an experiment to test his hunch. There was the one time sort of Texas bon-fire face off with the Baal people. That only bought him the time to set matters up and try his experiment. He saw the cloud coming in from the sea and cooked his beef on an altar. Likewise a good many others in various locations did the same.
As Steven Lindow demonstrated the lack or presence of a specific molecule on the membrane of the bacteria in question allowed fruit to freeze on a cold day. As I mentioned first you have to form a tiny crystal of ice with an IN+ bacteria that a rain drop might grow from it. The current theory is that the molecule associated with IN+ bacteria deforms with temperature until it exactly matches the crystal lattice of water-ice. Nothing else in nature or as a product of man comes even close to doing this trick. Not dry ice, not silver iodide, nor as the Russians use lead-salts. Until recently the Weather Service insisted that a certain white clay, the weather break-down product of granite served as a nucleating agent to form rain drops. As something dangerous for us (in that GMO crops may have altered the regional flux of IN+ in California) — they have admitted to being wrong. They admit NOW that IN+ bacteria are the main nucleating agents.
Think how effective that they are. Assume that 1 IN+ bacteria has a chance of bringing down a drop of rain. The radius of a bacteria is about r = 0.5E-6 m. A rain drop could be R = 0.5 E-3 m.
An accumulation of a mere 2.09E-7 meters of rain in one second.
But over a year that is (2.09E-7 m)*(365 day/yr)*(24 hr/day)*(3600 s/hr)
= 6.59 meters/year of rain. A place like Israel might get something like 0.5 meters/year. The IN+ bacteria are thus about [(0.5)/(6.59)]*100%
or 7.59% effective in returning rain to their ideal potential.
Elijah’s gamble was that the something contained in the plant litter was generally the same something contained in the fried up beef. Animal nerve transmission chemicals appear to be approximately the same thing as the molecules expressed on the membranes of the IN+ bacteria. But that is of yet somewhat conjecture as the IN+ bacteria, though genetically manipulated to generate IN- bacteria, have yet to have their membrane molecule isolated and mass produced. What motivation for bio-companies to mass produce a chemical associated with what has been classified as a plant pest — a plant infection. Remember only very recently have we determined that it had a useful function at all. Our arrogance would have allowed us to wipe it off the face of the earth. Explaining much of the indifference with GMO related experiments, by the bio-firms.
Not to play fast and loose with the ecology of the planet by introducing even too many natural micro-organisms to it, but would it not be wise to bribe if necessary a bio-firm to isolate and mass produce the very interesting IN+ bacteria’s active membrane molecule? Let’s call it molecule “X”, like with the Marvel super hero group. If we have effectively turned off the rain, and this might help save us, then it is a hero molecule.
The mass produced Trump cities could house lots of regionally displaced people, like the Palestinians who might fulfill a verse in the Beatitudes of Matthew about those that “inherit the land”. The 10 million square kilometers of “Eden” would completely dwarf the area of Israel. Would Iran, see themselves in the ending verses of Jeremiah 47 as receiving a blessing by helping all of this come about, that likewise dwarfs their own painful issues? Do they not hold it as a Holy duty to do what is right by the land-less Palestinians? Everyone says that we should rightly deal with this moral issue. How many presidents have tried? But obviously none have even a clue to a solution. Here we take a problem, of displaced people, abused people, people with not much hope — and reverse everything. Now no other people on earth would be as blessed. Their work in the field would bring back Eden — greater than it ever was.
Josh you are correct, that if we merely waited long enough that long term planetary processes would restore Eden. But look into the pages of the Bible about an odd thing. Even though it is most unlikely that everyone on the planet would suddenly become Jewish — the prophets assert that The Feast of Booths would indeed be celebrated on a world wide scale. That explicitly where it is celebrated that there is rain, and that where it isn’t “the rain is shut off”. The sun baked meditate-er sorts might have got wind of a vision of us really goofing up on the GMO related issues. And gave us a way out of the mess. That is should we take it. Our arrogance, or hate, our fear, can at times be a little off the scale.
I talked about using underground nuclear explosions. There are a few problems. The volume of the voids is about what I said that it was, and can certainly be adjusted. And the walls are ultra-strong. But not so much the ceiling of the voids. My sending down a 4 meter diameter tunnel from the surface to the voids ought to eliminate ceiling cracks and such. You need the 4 meter diameter for 5% head loss with pumped back hydro energy storage. Whole teams of engineers need to fill in a lot of gaps that I have left out. But rockets to the moon were planned with even much less. At that time they had fins and were of one stage, and a landing device was literally science fiction. Kennedy really went out on a limb with a project initially designed with little more than slide rules (as was the incredible SR-71 Blackbird of spy plane lore — and to transport the hero group of The X-men). A further problem is one that would tick off presidential want to be Jill Stein. Our most common current day nuclear bombs are made compact enough to even load in nuclear cannon by using hydrogen-3 or tritium (or possibly lithium-7) to jump start the fission process. A lot of mass and bulk removed to get the final results. Good for vaporizing the cores of cities, but not so good for a Project Plowshare type of idea. Of the thousands of Project Plowshare concepts that are listed, there happens to be no mention of pumped back hydro energy storage. Perhaps in the era of King Coal no particular need was seen dragging in solar and wind ideas. Plus, I did need to make a massive tunnel to the surface and a lot of such tunnel making devices hadn’t been invented yet. They did come through with a compressed air storage of energy through an 8 inch diameter pipe. But it was probably costly (due to air drying devices), at a maximum 60% efficient, and with completely unsolved noise pollution problems. You would only use something like that if you had to. Oh yes, there was zero linear nature to whatever energy that you could store — hence far from being intuitive to design as part of a greater something. And if something nuclear and of a gaseous nature like hydrogen-3 is inside, then the least flaw might allow it to get outside — in water or air. Water the main problem as H-3 can be easily incorporated into the molecules of cells. There is no particular danger from a mere beta-decay of low energy. There is considerable danger from H-3 becoming quite suddenly He-3. Neither item alone are harmful. But very weird chemistry can take place with the chemical bonding in molecules when suddenly hydrogen becomes helium. There just aren’t protective back-ups geared to cure that random situation.
The modern nuclear bomb can be designed to go down an 8 inch borehole — but with generating the H-3 problems above. The solution, go old school with the bomb design — really old school. The second bomb used on Japan was a Plutonium implosion device. It, like modern design was 20% efficient in converting the lump of plutonium into a fission-ed result. 80% of the fission material, never fission-ed, and merely became a vaporized gas. Plutonium is something that you don’t want to be around. People living near to plutonium development problems have developed health issues. Its OK in a nuclear reactor, where there are containment safeguards, and not so much OK if it gets into air, water or obviously people. For the most part the somewhat more expensive uranium bomb would be preferred for the underground explosion work. The old school nuclear bomb is comparatively huge, maybe a meter in diameter, but also not using anymore uranium than the more compact modern design. A 1 meter diameter tunnel should not be a serious cost factor when the next stage after the blast is to construct a 4 meter diameter tunnel.
(4/1)^2 = 16 times the volume removed with the larger tunnel than the smaller one. Thus the old style nuclear bomb doesn’t add a significant expense to the total project. And doesn’t embed H-3 into wall material or add to escaped gases released into the air.
The operation of a nuclear reactor also releases H-3. If the walls of the chamber are sprayed with fiber reinforced concrete can be contained within it. But concrete ages and [normally] develops cracks. A new product called “self-healing concrete” simply won’t do that. Tiny beads of a clay like product have a bacterial agent that reacts with open air or water to make a concrete paste that can immediately fill-in cracks up to 0.8 mm in width. The concrete will be free of any flaws for about two centuries. The whole underground unit should be shutdown long before that time. And H-3 has a half life of only 12.3 years. (0.5)^(200/12.3) = 13 ppm of the original H-3 would be left. Near to nothing.
There isn’t anything that can’t be done in these concepts. And there is little risk in doing them. And potentially a whole lot to gain. Bringing back “Eden” saves us from excessive CO2 problems, if one is inclined to believe in them or not. And no other alternative allows to feed the expected future populations, or to provide energy, cut back significantly on wars, and make available copious amounts of water. Furthermore with Trump at the helm of construction, everything might be made on time and on budget. A bank account in the name of “Eden” might see that world investments are paid back with profits of the Eden grown products.
The sulfates in the Canadian toxic pond, that are otherwise a problematic pollution matter to dispose of would be absolutely perfect for kicking off The Eden Project’s rain making with the CERN ratio of required cloud making chemicals.
The deadly and super deadly mercury and mercury compounds in the pond ideal to serve as a thermal working fluid sources of Hg for the solar trough units to power up everything in the Sahara.
And finally, the entire super toxic mixture remaining in the ponds rendered utterly harmless by combining it in the right ratio with crushed limestone and running it through the ultra hot nuclear heat driven top down lime kiln operation used to make CaO (to return to the sea) and CO2 for gasoline production, the vaporized Hg gas run through a vortex extractor device again routed to solar machines in the desert.
There remains a sort of flea bitten excuse as to not develop the Thorium Salt technology as there isn’t a long term experience with running high temperature molten salts through plumbing and pumps. A potential solution is to construct these primarily of space shuttle grade graphite. Of course you would only want to do that with outright mass production — central to my theme. Additionally surface coatings to extend useful life in harsh environments might be desired. Tungsten drill bits have had their useful life extended as much as 50 times by coating them with a “diamond” surfacing. Doing this, may or may not be possible if the base surface is graphite — there being such a difference between materials. Not a problem. The ultrahigh temperature metal Molybdenum bonds perfectly well with graphite. So have a base of graphite, then a coating of Molybdenum, and a final coating of diamond. The final combination should have a very very high resistance to harsh environments. Let someone simply try it.
I believe the Soviets had some experience using molten salts in their reactors as a coolant. As I recall the results were somewhat less than totally satisfactory.
(I know I shouldn’t dood it but I gonna dood it anyway!)
I’m not sure what any of the bulk of the discussion has to do with the aliens and clowns and courtroom drama that happens to be the subject of the recent strips, but what the hell…
Well, in other times, someone like Bunz might be viewed as an angel or a sort of space God (at least with her super ray gun in hand). Even today she might be viewed in that way. Often angels had the job of messengers from Heaven. She sort of is saying we have messed up so badly that like with the Bible day city of Nineveh — that we are “doomed”. Indeed the very secular progressives often leading us, and certainly preaching to us, have a similar message about the side effects of Accelerated Global Warming Theory. On my book shelf I have a copy with underlined sections of Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. I may be somewhat conservative, but he was much more right than he was wrong. If questions aren’t answered, then quite obviously billions of people will die. And perhaps worse than all the very predictable death and misery would be the loss of our ideals, or heart, and our hope. A little like Josh’s description of a certain dreadful mystery planet.
And the clowns? Look at those leading us. They are obviously intelligent enough. But aren’t they somewhat the clowns by not using their obvious intelligence? Or as in running for office expending so much effort upon matters of perhaps some merit, but in context of infinitely great problems not much more than a distraction or diversion. We are expected to believe that they will switch gears once they have the office. But we are far from sure that they will in fact manage that conversion. It looks very much, at least currently, as if it were a clown act. A clown act potentially involving “red buttons” just as much as Josh had his clown suggest using toxic pies.
And the “court room”? Just as much as in Josh’s story an adequately courage filled judge sat in the bench judging the clown before him with sin upon sin upon sin — and pronouncing that he should be punished, or at least removed from the streets. But not much following through on what he said. Nor giving any real encouragement to the “doughnut eating cop” that he would back him up in jailing the clown — hence the cop did absolutely no more than he had to.
The press is that jury. They see everything, or at least should see everything. But way too often they are exactly like the cardboard cutouts in Josh’s jury box, that if you noticed hardly moved at all. I think by Josh’s design. Where pray tell is that jury over the last minute 100 mile lateral diversion of the passenger jet into a war zone in Ukraine, that very nearly got us all into war. There are layer upon layer of detail that no one talks about. Our strange total indifference is as puzzling as Josh’s cardboard cutouts. And aren’t we all cardboard cutouts if we do not question the ultra secret nature as to what is in a certain growing Canadian pond, or as to the mere ingredients being used in fracking operations here at home and under our very feet? Where is the least tiny bit of curiosity? Are we cardboard cutouts in the backdrop of the universe?
Hey, Bill of Kansas (or should that be can ass, canned sass, etc.) Josh asked if you could answer in only a couple of sentences. I for one would like to see the frak’n math equations flussh themselves into a black hole. I ‘m no Charlie Epps (Numb3r5), but even he might have problems with some of those equations. I sure did!
Er… Let’s all keep things on a friendly basis here… We’re all here to have fun – I Hope! It’s okay to disagree, but just remember, it’s a Comix forum, we shouldn’t take matters here too seriously…
By the way, My apologies for not having a new page posted by now – I spent a lot of time on the Calendar last week, but the next page is almost inked (there’s about half a pose left to do) Then I need to finish the coloring and plug everything into the layout, which already has the lettering in place and so on… I also did a fair amount of writing last week – it’s kind’a too bad that I can’t just post the pencil roughs of the page layouts, as the story would progress a lot quicker if that’s all I needed to do…
BruceDaDude, you are right, I said way too many things in way too few words. In fact it is possible that considering the magnitude of some things that are implied, it wouldn’t really be a waste of resources to have roughly a team of engineers assigned per each equation. That was about what happened by researchers sent out to measure mercury in sea water. What probably and properly took about a 20 page peer reviewed paper with maybe a whole page of citations — I super compacted into only a couple of lines.
But understand what is going on. For reasons not clear to even me, I was singled out by evidently nature itself to deliver a message. And life and death are kind of involved. I can paint a picture of what is wrong and how to make it right. And it is a true picture. It is just not a very elegant picture. Nor is there any one audience to present the picture to.
To summarize the core message that I am carrying inside me:
I wish to destroy Oil (and quite utterly so) — before it destroys us.
Is that compact and simple enough to readily understand?
But it might take maybe a good ten teams or so of engineers to lay out quite exactly how to do it. Alas, the universe does not give my conscience reprieve on the matter. I never gave the answer back, “no I won’t do it.” Nor the answer back, “no I can’t do it”. I have to hope against all hope, that a powerful, and super smart person will somehow read my plea, see that I speak a true message, and with a whispered prayer from my heart to any above that hear, act upon it.
Probably a worthy ambition. But it won’t be accomplished with doom-saying. Want to destroy oil (as a baseline, standard fuel)? Come up with something envionmentally sound that is as cheap and convenient.
Hey, speaking of cheap and convenient power sources, whatever was powering Bunz & Katz’s scout ship was still operational after a few million years… what kinda half-life is that? If anyone cares to chip in with me to pay the impound fee, we could make billions!
It would seem to myself, “Kansas” that if you want to get your message out, you would be better served posting and discussing it on sites that deal with Scientific speculation and the like… On a comix site such as this, you’re unlikely to reach the people who you really want to read your material… Here, you’re more likely just to irritate people than not…
We often tend to forget that most plastics, vehicle tires, machine lubricants and who knows what else, all come from Petroleum – so our culture is likely to be hooked on the stuff for just about forever… Still, I agree that burning it is a bad idea! Yet, I’m not convinced that Nuclear power plants are anything more than a disaster looking for a place to happen! Seemingly Wind Power – Solar Power – even Biofuel all have untapped possibilities that we should be doing much more with…
Like ferinstance, at our local VA Hospital here in LA, most of it’s large parking lots have been roofed over with Solar Cell Arrays – not only are these producing power, but you get to park your car in the shade, so that it isn’t cooked when you return to drive away! So could someone explain to me, WHY are we spending Billions on pointless wars, when for the price of one new Aircraft Carrier we could roof over how many (?) parking lots with solar Arrays here in the US and do something useful with out tax money???
There are plenty of practical options to energy that we can do right now – it does NOT require pie in the sky new technologies – what it does require, is the will to do it!!
Quite true about the demand for oil in the plastic industry. The science fiction author E.E. “Doc” Smith (Skylark of Space series & Lensman series among others) prophecized in his last novel that most of our energy would come from atomic sources, as petroleum based production would be taken up by an incesant demand by plastics and other synthetic industries.
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And so, the Trials and Tribulations for Bunz & Katz continue…
The Upshot, 15 years later we still have two seemingly never ending and horribly deadly wars (for all sides) with no end in sight… That is the true Tragedy of September 11th!!
“This court awards you the bank accounts, the house, and all the furniture, including that lamp in the bedroom I like so much.” —paraphrase from “The Critic.”
Glad to see I can still say something here. Last two days, I haven’t been able to make any snarky comments at three other sites…or, if they’re posting, I’m not seeing them.
Probly they just got lost in the general Sea of Snarkitude… We live in troublous times indeed… I sometimes wonder if our present-day history is being written by the team of Attila the Hun, Monty Python and the Gran Guignol…
Seemed something about the software didn’t like my website. Other than that, well…I haven’t a clue.
Actually, I thought she was pretty well endowed when we first met her…
Before we’re done with this travesty of legal juris-pestilence completely… Here, for your ogling edification, is a li’l pin-up that I sketched out a couple of weeks back (When I probably should have been doing something actually productive)…
Moxie & Bob, our two ersatz Sailor Scouts posing together – apparently without any animosity or anything… Perhaps if it had occurred to me, I might have placed Moxie in the jury box next to Bob.. but well… I just didn’t think about it…
Moxie couldn’t sit on the jury because she’s a cop. Well, she wouldn’t be able to sit in on the jury in the real world… defense attorney Lechat would dismiss on peremptory challenge… because Moxie’s probably unreasonably prejudiced against homicidal, lunatic criminals.
But she and Bob do make quite a pair. (Shipper on deck!) Yes! I DO want the comic store geek to be with the hot chick! Absolutely. YOU GO BOB!
Moxie makes quite a pair all by herself.
Guh… Moxie and Bob… The mind reels… the stomach unreels…
Jealous.
Josh, a nice sketch of Ossifer Moxie and the comic store geek having a good time. As you recall I speculated that some of the gold bling worn by Attornet Lechat might have a connection to her supposed super-powers. But with the sketch of the dancing duo (and they do go together well), the metal-like bands on Moxie’s wrists might have a duel function. Firstly they simply look nice. But secondarily being a martial artist, Moxie might slip in a bit of hidden training. The bands might be made of heavy Tungsten, and used (covertly) to build extra speed and strength, while also making her look good.
I dunno boss. Seems a bit of a stretch to me. I mean, I can believe a tonfa wielding, anime-sailor-chick uniformed, knock down gorgeous female police officer from the LAPD Cosplay Division with a rack that would make a freight train take a dirt road but that she’s also a secret master Hung Gar practitioner with iron rings? Naaaah.
Well Bunz almost was terrified to death of her — from something that she saw or sensed that we didn’t. Why would Bunz be terrified by a mere martial arts sort of night stick — when she herself has (or possibly had a super ray gun)? Add to that, that Bunz took out the lethal leader of a gang threatening in a convincing way to kill everyone in the room — and dragged him without any concern at all down the street. Bear in mind that if Bunz handed herself over to Moxie, that it would be no worse for her or Katz than the last time they wound up in jail. It hasn’t yet registered to anyone that she is from way way way out of town. She was clewed into something to be afraid of, and the details of that we don’t yet know.
Hey, remember that Bunz and Katz were warned by HQ, even before they landed on Dirt, that Giant Robots and Sailor Chix were the Dirtians’ greatest Superweapons! Naturally, the sight of a Sailor Chick suddenly turning up at a critical moment is going to give Bunz and Katz a sudden desire to be someplace else… almost anyplace else….
If Katz wants to play in the sandbox, I hope it’s not for what cats usually want to do in the sandbox…
In Katz’s case, the next kid would probably find a deposit of dead “D-Cell” batteries…
Billthesurely and DoublW, a couple of things to consider in Josh’s story telling. Bunz and Katz themselves might not be a great threat to us. In fact, they are kind of mixing in with us although keeping true as they can to their original order. No of course the real threat is a gigantic invasion fleet, and a people inspired by high technology. We have technology as well, but would have to do some serious catch up in any kind of conflict with them.
In the story they are coming at us with a serious reason, we just don’t currently know what it is.
But Josh’s dance of the Sailor Scouts hints at our response to the invasion fleet. A high technology people might have a natural fear of the Sailor Scout sorts. And why? Quite simple. All their observations of any version of Sailor Scouts were involves with some sort of dance-like moves and at least implied meta-physical powers. Super smart as Bunz’s people are they have no place in their thinking of that sort of thing. What [if] they wonder, should it work out that that there is a reality beyond our perceptions that we are about to challenge?
I believe that Moxie’s hand gestures are hinting at this higher reality.
Certainly she seems an ordinary enough woman — outwardly at least. The only stand out oddity about her, is the wearing of decorative Christmas tree-like ornaments in her hair. Perhaps a distraction to play down who and what she really is: earth’s natural defender. An ultimate hero. Josh’s story would have to balance out with someone well suited to counter ultra advanced technology. Someone just a little bit mystic in their nature.
I know it seems odd for a delicate looking flower of a girl to practice with heavy “iron” strength training rings, and do it invisibly in front of your eyes. But, a chosen earth hero might not be entirely ordinary. She would just do a lot of things other people wouldn’t. From history remember Joan of Arc. A serious meta-physical counter-point to the invaders of her nation. And as a prisoner may have made even more of a statement than as she even managed to do as a warrior.
Look at Moxie’s right hand gesture. If she is into really old school Kung Fu sorts of things, then she might have also retained a respect for Buddha Hand Gestures. The tradition calls her gesture “Mudra”. Compactly it is explicitly a threat or warning. And notice that it is directed upward. In a general sense, towards the incoming fleet of invaders.
Now look at Moxie’s left hand. The gesture is traditionally called “Vitarka Mudra”. It is associated with Intellectual argument. And contained within that sign are her circled fingers with a further meaning — “the Wheel of Law”. And Moxie’s very person is the earth’s [statement of Law].
The hand gestures and the dancing may remind us of John Travolta’s “Saturday Night Fever”. And that Moxie is having fun. And she is. Why can not earth’s hand chosen defender have some fun, even while engaged in a great conflict? She is our tough as nails defender. But her heart is of joy and very much at peace. Confounding absolutely a mortal foe.
Tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let Double Dubya handle this one. Take it away WW…
Uh, yeah… what you said… Although, taking into account what we saw on the ancient battle station now known as Iapetus, since the battle station has been inert for uncounted millenea, is now barely functional, with essential parts for repair on back-order for several million years, and has a total battle strength of one B-class scout craft (presently impounded for illegal parking and lack of valid license plates), and one pilot and henchbot (presently marooned on an enemy planet and reduced to taking odd jobs for survival), it seems the entire question of the Great Negafleet Invasion may be regarded as moot, or, as my vulgar Uncle Emmit would have said, “not worth a fart in a hurrycane…”
The bit of the invasion fleet’s command center that Josh showed us was in serious disrepair. To get this facility up to military specifications by the book might require all the delay that you outlined. That is by the military specifications of the robotic rulers. But the true potential of the fleet is in the hands of the rank and file sorts on board, like our hero/villain Bunz. It falls to them of if they have a cause. It falls to them, if if they fill in the breaches in the wall left by decayed equipment (like lacking bricks by another traditional sort of story). A long long long time ago there was a reason to send out an invasion fleet. Every viable culture has a history. Does this pending fight also mean something to the invaders? In our own culture, our military readiness is but a fraction of say what it was in WW II (outside of our super weapons and examples of extreme technology). The later are not so much decayed as impractical in several ways to use against our current foes. Boots on the ground as it is put, might be more desired than high technology — for apparently the kind of fight our foes taunt us into engaging in. Generating an estimated 5 million refuges quite some taunt.
In the Negafleet’s case, however, there are apparently no boots available … on the ground, in zero-G or otherwise … Bunz wears slippers, Katz has foot pads, and the two AIs left running the battle station have, respectively, pseudopods and nothing… while the remaining craft of the Fleet, with the exception of one B-class scout, have either failed to launch, crumbled into rust or bashed into launch tube doors that failed to open … And, since part orders for essential repairs have been neglected or ignored for millions of years, one must assume that the great Gokkorian Empire, which originally launched the Negafleet, must have gone extinct long ago … Which seems to be the general fate of empires or nations which come to devote too much of their resources to military expansion.
Kinda seems to be the fate of expansionist empires/nations in general.
I must beg to differ on the subject of “boots on the ground”. In fact they are not necessary. It all boils down to just how ruthless the user of force is prepared to be. If Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan had had access to the military technology we possess today they would simply have obliterated resisting nations – city by city, town by town, village by village – until the victim capitulated or ceased to exist.
The potential of a first class modern technological military in the hands of a totally ruthless tyrant leading a devoted and slavishly obedient population is the stuff of nightmares.
The story element of the crumbling technology is a feature of our own culture. This definitely was not a problem at all for say Alexander the Great. His leadership had its problems: alcoholism, a tendency for excessive debauchery, internal rivalry, and in between great victories and foundations of new empire building — a serious general desire to return to home and hearth — loneliness.
But Alexander never suffered a supply problem, nor a crumbling of equipment problem. He remembered well the theory of science and engineering that he was taught in school — and effortlessly innovated when confronted with new challenges. The divine “mission” aspect of his nature doubtlessly feeding into the power of his innovation. Others had invented math, science, philosophy and so-on, and he was putting these concepts to work. And often rather uniquely. He, and those of course that he inspired.
The Nega-fleet has thus far not made use of an early discovery of Alexander. Maybe by his God’s blessing, or maybe not, he never failed to find whatever resource that he needed while in the course of his extended conquest. If he was for example running out of manpower for his army, he in his inspired way would merely pack in new numbers from those that he conquered. And winning them over by offering them advantages missing from any prior administrations — say like building libraries, cities and commerce. Had the WW II Germans done likewise, they might never have been beaten. But the strength of their super-race concept was also a weakness. The conquered people couldn’t truly embrace them, as the thought remained that they themselves couldn’t be one of the superior race, no matter how hard that they might try to be. Alexander easily solved that problem. He had everyone marry everyone else, including himself. Thus as a paradox with today’s example of a mythic superior Aryan race — Alexander viewed such a thought as counter-productive with regard to actual global conquest. You want the “others” not to be “others”.
From Alexander’s philosophy of conquest, the Nega-fleet should, or at least the humanoid elements of it should look to shore up their weaknesses with local resources. Humans looking for investment in foreign technology and trade. The eye of the Nega-fleet will ultimately notice the people of Io and Callisto. I know that Josh wanted to contain his story so as to not include their mention. But the Nega-fleet is desperate for replacement components for their long neglected high technology. And very obviously Io and Callisto’s people have technology on the right level to replace what they need for furthering their conquest.
For our own example, Trump has said that we “should have kept the oil” after our invasion. As if we could pick it up and carry it off as simply our own. But on some level we know that his overly simple statement has some truth to it. What overall point to any invasion, for good reasons or ill, without the element of the acquisition of something — or anything? That was the businessman in him speaking — not so much the guy that might order retaliatory drone strikes.
Io and Callisto seem to be entirely free spirits, unlikely to marry into or enlist in some army of conquest fielded by a moribund (if not extinct) empire. Who knows what level of technology has been reached by the society they come from… although judging from their Foosaucer, it may be somewhere about the late 1950s.
And as for Bunz and Katz temselves… What, you’re suggesting that Bunz ought to marry some Dirtian? I can imagine her response to the mere suggestion… but I’d imagine it from a safe distance…
First off, my apologies, I had initially intended to explain more about Iapitus and the Nega-Fleet long before now in the story – but with various changes in the plot as we went along, the character that B&K would explain this to got written out in order to speed up the proceedings…
Doing this strip is a bit like Jazz – I have a general outline as to where the story is going, with some portions thoroughly scripted, other portions have just the high points noted… Along the way I’ve been improvising, adding pages and characters that were never part of the original concept, while dropping others, mostly just to streamline the action… Because of this improvisation, some story points that I should have hit, got left out and that’s unfortunate… Part of the overall problem is that I’m just slower at completing the pages than I had hoped – If I had been able to keep to a page per week schedule, then we’d be much farther along in the story than we are now, so that some of these questions would not be a factor…
As per Bunz & Katz, their mission is not really a secret, as far as our nominal dramatis personae are concerned – it’s just that no one has bothered to ask them “Why?” — Mostly because no one yet actually realizes what they’re here for…
Also, to nip a wrong idea in the bud – DoubleW is incorrect in naming the Aliens – No one on Dirt, er, Earth knows or has ever known what the Aliens of the Nega-Fleet call themselves, mostly because they never got around to telling our ancestors… It probably didn’t seem to matter, as they were only going to slaughter them anyway…
As for Io & Callisto – or other Funny Animal characters, they do NOT exist in Bunz’ & Katz’ story, other than as fictional characters in Comix… I have played with the idea of the Space Gophers as an exception, as they can be considered legitimate aliens – though their presence would pose other problems in the continuity – so um… the jury is still out on that possibility…
For whatever it’s worth, I wouldn’t count the Nega-Fleet out just yet… There’s more ways than brute force to win a war – especially when the other guys don’t even know that they’re in one…
Or to quote a brochure from the Iapitus Chamber of Commerce, which I happen to have here on my desk:
From the burning hell of Mercury to the acid clouds of Venus, to the crushing gravity of Jupiter, the double entendre name of Uranus, the freezing cold of Neptune – even that ex-planet named after Micky Mouse’s dog – they’re all quite nasty — And then there’s Iapetus…
Yes, Iapetus, among the least pleasant places to visit in the entire Solar System – Its ancient armored surface broken intermittently by frozen acid lakes and bunkered weapon systems, those still operational, scanning ceaselessly, relentlessly, for any invading craft, creature – or just anything that moves… To the radioactive desolation where random rogue crenchulon zormax killer bots still roam – (many still active after ages of shambling over the bomb pitted surface, looking for something to kill), to spiky, nasty eradication pits, half filled with the effusion of ages of backed up toilets and then, there’s the unspeakable horror of the Oozalakx… Frankly a death dive into the gravity hell of Jupiter is far more pleasant! Our best advice, Stay Away! Stay far away! Don’t come near, not even on a bet, and especially not to touch it with a ten foot pole (that might irritate something!) Iapetus ranks right up there with… Um… Come to think of it – there’s no place that’s even close when it comes to danger, quick unpleasant death and those nasty stains which just won’t wash out!!
“And now you know… the rest of the story.”
Nothing like author’s word of god.
Let us not deride “boots on ground. I remember reading a juior Royal Naval flag officer’s account during the Napoleonic War, “Although as a naval officer, it pains me to say this, you can’t proclaim a successful victory until your troops plant your country’s flag on the enemy’s battlements.”
That is quite true. But our troops don’t have to do it. There are plenty of people in that part of the world who will be glad to shovel the dirt over the corpse of ISIS after they’re gone. We ran the Taliban out of Afghanistan by supporting the people who were already fighting the Taliban. We got mired in Afghanistan when we decided we had to send in thousands of troops and indulge in nation building afterwards.
This time we do it a bit smarter perhaps? Blow ISIS to hell and gone and don’t put a bunch of our own troops on the ground to become targets afterwards? Sounds like a plan.
It’s not our business to tell a bunch of people overseas how to live their lives. We are there to kick the crap out of a bunch of people who by fanatical, barbaric means are trying to force the world to live by their standards and spread their “religion” anywhere they can make it stick. Who takes over after ISIS is gone is none of our concern. That they might not be “democratic” is not our concern. That they may not give women rights equal to men – not our concern. The fact that somebody in the middle east might not want to become America-in-the-Middle-East, and they DON’T, is not our concern. We are only there for one reason. Destroy ISIS. Period. As long as whomever takes over afterwards keeps their business to themselves we’re done.
Oh crap! How did I get so high up on this pile of soapboxes? Gonna have to be careful climbing down or I might hurt myself. The preceding has been a political opinion unique to ME and may not reflect the views of the guy running this page or the other people posting on it.
As with most such things, the problem contains its own solution. ISIS displaced about 5 million people out of the region. Any that offer to deal with that region’s problems don’t reside there. And for the most part, they differ from the original people by following “Islamic Law” i.e. Muslim Brotherhood sorts — as were those chased out of power recently by normal secular Muslims in Egypt. ISIS is a Muslim Brotherhood sort. Changing one caustic chemical for another (but of the same sort) is hardly a change.
Muslim Brotherhood sorts have zero tolerance for Christians and others. Installing more of the same will not alter that. The negatives of the old leaders in Syria and Iraq notwithstanding — they were as a strong wall protecting those that the brotherhood would destroy. That is another way of saying that unless the OA is lead by idiots, they should not have called for the head of the Syrian leader to be severed and placed on a tray — in their white glove sort of way.
The ideal solution to the problem seems painfully obvious. The exact 5 million people displaced by ISIS should be blessed and restored by the world. The lesson learned that it was a major goof to gun run the overthrown dictator of Libya’s weapons into brotherhood (in Syria’s) hands and not expect the results observed. Monumentally stupid thinking.
Take the 5 million people, offer them limitless training in WW II city to city tactics to take back from thieves, murderers and worse what was taken from them. There would be no hope of Heavenly glory for ISIS to fight these righteous people, whereas they could label us as otherwise. Fighting a foe in Iraq’s forces, that they viewed as less than righteous allowed them a clear 15 to 1 victory. Not even close to this is to be expected when fighting the rightful owners of all they stole.
Unfortunately, “kicking the crap out of ISIS” will require American troops on the ground… first to hold the line while the displaced Syrians (actually only the military-aged males) are vetted, trained, their families supported and ISIS recruiters kept away, and secondly to offset the Russians, whose goals are in no way similar to the ones expressed here. The longer the ordeal lasts, the better Putin will like it. A steady flood of refugees will destabilize and impoverish Europe, and thus weaken NATO. Putin is playing the long game, in which the goal is not restoring peace in the Middle East, but making Putin dictator-for-life of a reborn Soviet Union.
The 5 million are already out of Syria. If we want to promote the old saying of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, we could be the “boots on the ground” as you say. But only for the sake of American pride. Alternatively, with all the security that even Trump could approve of, we could wall off one or more of the training bases used in WW I and WW II, that are mostly mothballed — or in a state between being sold to the civilian market, and bring them up to suitable standards. A really easy thing for one of the world’s master builders to deal with. Then teach them all they need to learn to take back their own property. Any question to my point, that these heroes would be viewed by ALL of the greater Islamic World as no less than heroes — if they saved their own land?
Trump would approve this because we have thus far spent 6 trillion dollars following the vision of a child-man (pick Obama or Bush II, makes little difference) and have [less than nothing] good to show for it.
Let Putin have the ME if he wants it. Everything left as it is, even slight Global Warming will render the average temperature there at about 60 degree C. Enzymes in plants from Biology 101 cease in their function. Hence no great foresight is needed that if that temperature average is reached by the expected and well published date of about 2050 — there won’t be anyone left in the “Holy Lands” for whoever is in office then for Russia to govern. That “hand writing on the wall” plenty will leave the region long before then.
The bane of the ME, and a factor in many of our wars tracing back to possibly even WW I is oil — or lust for it. The excessive build up of atmospheric CO2, with little quibbling by even Global Warming critics, will bring about what I have said above — and long before the bulk of the world faces that level of problems from other GW predictions.
The eruption of ME problems, perhaps even greater than Russia can fully contain, will force the next president to rely more on so-called domestic resources in North Americ, i.e. fracking and Canadian Tar Sands Oil — along with its gigantic pools of waste water filled to near saturation with metalic mercury and sulfate salts. These are considered as rich food for anaerobic bacteria. Bread with extra sugar and bags of yeast rises faster than when without — cooking tip. Same with these using sulfate salts and mercury.
From extremely easy computation the (mostly metalic) mercury ppm in the ocean is given by the approximation:
x = x0*Exp(-1.0986E-3*z), z depth into ocean in meters
Currently x0 is 1 ppt = 1E-12, tons of mercury per ton of water. Roughly at the beginning of the industrial age it was 1/3 rd that amount. By bio-magnification of the food chain, a common tuna might have a mercury [or almost completely] methyl mercury concentration of around 1 ppm = 1E6, kilograms/kilogram. At about 20 ppm [Me]HgCl that should be a lethal dose.
The presently 0.5 cubic mile of the pool spoken about has an unknown concentration of metallic mercury and likewise an unknown concentration of methyl mercury CH3-Hg-Cl. This is a very closely controlled state secret. Everything and the kitchen sink is published about leaked mercury — but nearly nothing about contained mercury. Easy to understand though. As Trump pointed out in his speeches our fracking represents future wealth of about 50 trillion dollars. That Canadian Oil a great many times even that.
I’m not against wealth. But I am against willful ignorance. The magnification factor (at least for tuna) is 1 million fold methyl mercury to metallic mercury — in the sea. Bear in mind my cooking tip for bread making. We have zero idea as to the magnification factor of the two chemicals in the ponds. [And we are not looking for it.]
Josh spoke of a certain Hell like planet that almost has a sign up saying “don’t come here”. Ditto for what could happen here. Without even knowing the value of “x” ppm mercury in the pond, or its magnification factor for methyl mercury dissolved in the fats and lipids of the pond’s bacteria, we can still solve easily enough for an upper bound of what would kill all the fish in all the oceans of the world. Merely solve the following:
x*v = y*V, “x” of course unknown. “y” assumed to be 20 ppt, with the roughly observed multiplication factor of 1 million fold assumed to hold at a greater ocean concentration. It might be higher, but not less.
The real concern is the ppm of methyl mercury in the pond, but that is a controlled secret. And it might be quite high indeed. “v” is currently 0.5 mi^3 but will rapidly grow as the resource is fully tapped into. And “V”:
V = (4/5)*(4/5)*pi*R^2*(maybe 1 km converted to miles), R = 4000 mi
Not a tough problem. And one made worse if the pond magnification factor is greater than the ocean magnification factor. At a minimum we should worry if the pond has maybe 640 ppm metallic mercury. And worry more if the bio-magnification factor is higher than the ocean. Possibly even most of the pool is in fact methyl mercury. There are no numbers made public. If man or nature releases this “bowl’s” content then unbelievably it could fulfill a “Revelation” verse of a mere one sentence — were all the fish is the sea die. Dilution for most of the pool’s toxins works quite well. But not a toxin that does not dissolve in water but only in fats and lipids. None of it gets lost or wasted. Or hardly any.
The cure? Don’t completely go down that path. The navy developed a process to make gasoline from sea water’s baking soda content. Little more complicated really than a child’s science fair volcano project. Their estimated cost about 3 dollars per gallon of gasoline. They used a common light water reactor for energy at about 6 cent/kWh. The Richard Nixon banned Molten Salt Thorium Reactor can produce electrical energy at about 1 cent/kWh
(3 $/gallon)*(1/6) = 50 cents/gallon gasoline.
That was done without making further use of the direct hydrogen from water with 1000 degree C heat of the reactor — a potential further reduction in cost.
So the choice is clear. Allow the “puppet masters” as Trump defined them to not only have “more money than God” and add to it. But at the cost of the life of the planet. [Once the seas are dead they will emit hydrogen sulfide gas. That gas though not especially toxic will kill most land animals within a span of a few years. And leave only an ironic “fools gold” marker in the earth’s iron ore rock — to mark in a natural way our once proud presence.] That choice, or save planet earth and make wealth while doing so. As every place on earth can use access to the sea, or to limestone to make low cost fuel — it would make no sense to hoard and fight over it.
Um… as much as I dislike censoring anyone, concerning the present “ISIS Talk” thread – I really don’t think that this is the best place for discussions of Geopolitics – though perhaps I somewhat started it all with my own opening comments…
Just my own 2¢ worth – That as Ruthless Despotic Dictators go, it may well turn out that Saddam Hussein was one of the U – S of A’s best friends in the region… He may have been a first class SOB, but at least he kept the crazies in “Duck & Cover” mode!
And now a word from our own moderately dangerous dramatis personae:
Josh, I’ve largely said my piece on ISIS. If it turns out to be a case of “when the saints come marching home” for them, then tables are turned, and it is they who are in trouble. Rightful terror for those that dished it out so very generously. For them, reciting Holy verses, not the deciding issue. Asking for mercy and forgiveness, from those they wronged of a greater merit.
Ah your artwork piece. Godzillia/Trump may have remarked about it being difficult for a flat chested woman to be classified as a “10”. But I would say that our space invader, heroine/villain Bunz is giving the title a good run for the money. I’m hoping that by the end of the story the hansom mine at last finds words of his feelings to express to her — even if not necessarily requited. Even a broken heart gesture goes with his calling.
I would say that removing the practical value of oil (as I have more or less done) ranks a bit above most of the things that (gasp) Henry the Kissinger has done. Without anyone actually voting such people into leading us, we wound up buying that the South China Sea area conflict was over China wanting rice fields and not oil fields. Present day dredged up islands are sort of re-writing what none of us, at least then, dared to talk about.
I’d like to send mail to various Congress people and committee Chairmen (ladies). But that’s a no go. All mail to a congressman or chairman outside my district, no matter the topic, goes to my Kansas congressman. And no one in Congress likes him. And as he was swept out of office by a baby doctor — and easily so. Then no one much likes him back home either. Being kicked out of the agriculture committee didn’t much help. Outside of Superman being born here, we need our agriculture representation, to not be considered as totally fly over country. If you want to eat bread, we grow the grain. Sort of like in the National song.
And speaking of grain, have you ever watched The History Channel? Stories there make clear that 12,000 years ago before the Sahara became the Sahara Desert, this region was rich in vegetation, rivers and lakes. How much water in those lakes? Would you believe a good five times as much water as are in our Great Lakes? It obviously rained quite blessedly in Eden. Yes, I name it thus. Something massive inspired the giant Church constructed in Turkey — with all the simple signs of humble animals. Other places may have strange creatures. These are but simple animals. A funeral rite to a vast lost creation — maybe? We know that the Pyramid complex was constructed in Egypt entirely to fight against the desert God of Death — distantly remembering that the rains were shut off.
The History channel showed a great natural cathedral cavern deep in the Sahara Desert. On the ceiling of this natural church is a painting. One which might make some weep. The people there could see this “climate change” happening — even to the vastness of Eden itself. The painting is a plea to any of the above that might help — “to please send us vital rain”. The rain has been shut off 12 thousand years. Perhaps it is time to open the vault of the sky and bring Eden itself back to the earth.
Can it be done? Sure. And maybe even easily. Should it be done? Well I showed that with hardly an effort gasoline at 50 cents/gallon could displace most of the hydrocarbon fuels on earth. The time required? Only what Trump might say that he needs. Molten Salt Thorium Reactors are so simple in concept, that they should go together with no more challenge than children stacking blocks. Except these graphite blocks being perhaps welded together with a glue of molten Molybdenum metal.
Why the reactors? Merely killing two birds with one stone. We don’t really need reactors, except to supply 24/7 power to large communities of people. But like with the incident in Japan and elsewhere, people fear either man or nature might release the obviously hundreds of tons of radioactive content. A reasonable fear. But also reasonably addressed.
People fear nuclear weapons nearly as much as nuclear power plants. Enough so, that certain greens have shut down construction over explicitly a nuclear bomb being dropped upon a nuclear power plant — and spreading its contents on a continental scale. The radiation release of thousands of bombs. Fear comes from the enemy. Use rather your brain. Is it not God given? The contrary argument (of your foe — the one wanting you to freeze in fear) is that you can’t think. Prove that wrong.
It is just merely a matter of historic record, that under the right conditions that ALL of the energy of a small scale nuclear device can be fully contained underground. Shallow blasts make the ground puff up dramatically. Very deep blasts do not puff up. Kicked up dust isn’t the same as a puffed up deformation.
A 15 kiloton blast 1 km underground (in suitable sandstone) will form a 50,000 cubic meter squared chamber with thick walls of super strong pure quartz-glass. Interestingly Revelation has such crystal-glass, or in other verses fire infused glass where seemingly saints are dancing with joy. And the glass and such, located at the foot of God’s throne. But the problem in reading Revelation, is a lack of location of this throne. The far earlier book of Jeremiah geographically locates the throne in Chapter 47. It in Edam. An old district in Iran, currently used for nuclear and missile projects. God seems to favor very rich spice when he cooks.
Setting aside the seeming impossibility of it, Scripture hints that this dramatic region will kick off tons of blessing for the earth, rather than tons of woe. Readers it is a close in chess game. And some say the Iranians may have actually invented chess. Two cosmic level players rather than outwardly war, are using ideas and concepts to decide a match. And what happens when you win a chess match? Your king displaces the other king, and puts his throne in control of the contested region. That simple.
Iran has a bone to pick with us. We say that those millions in the street and their leaders must be mad to be that angry — and at us. But we weren’t there during the Iran/Iraq War. The supposed dispute of ownership of an island over a large pool of oil (yea that again). Reagan had a part of this feud. All of us should have had a part as well. But not the case.
Reagan could have taken a page from Matthew’s Gospel about The Beatitudes, and combined that with reason — to be a “peace making child of God” and offering the wisdom that the parties should not logically fight over a mere pool of oil — when both countries reside on top of well known oceans of oil. It was on a silver platter from Heaven, offered as if his saintly crown. And Reagan rejected it. And Reagan did the very opposite of promoting mercy, reason or peace. Instead he BECAME his name’s anagram. He became the living words of “INSANE ANGLO WARLORD”.
Reagan gifted or sold to both Iran and Iraq all the weapons that they believed that they might need to conduct their serious and deadly war. Without the weapons, there is the possibility that there might not have been a war. After all “courts” are less painful than war, to decide “minor” land disputes. And initially that was about what it was. But what it became was an estimated 1 or 2 million deaths of children, who were used to clear out landmines.
Yes the parties decided to fight. That much is on them. But the weapons to do it with was on us. No one says it — but that is the true beef that they have with us. And more death isn’t going to change any of this. We took what can’t be returned — children and their futures. Gone.
That was the sacrifice play to set up a final confrontation. A sort of check, if not check mate move. A very grave situation. Definitely they want a piece of us, even if they go down too.
But there are more pieces on the board than Iran. Remember that I said that GW would kill the plants and crops in the region when the temperature averages at 60 degree C. Remember the 12,000 year old prayer calling for rain and more rain from Heaven. High time to come full circle.
CERN of Europe in their Project CLOUD division has identified four chemicals needed to form rain clouds: sulfates, ammonia. amines (related to ammonia), and a chemical associated with pine trees and hemp (like perhaps the pot smoked by Gov. Johnson). Elijah had to wait for a cloud to show up. We might not have to do the waiting part of rain making. It is enough that water molecules are in the air. What CERN found can sort of glue them together.
For the next piece look up an article: “California Drought: A Surprising Cause?” by Sayer Ji, Founder and Keith Bell. Amazingly our selective GMO technology may release microbes with a genetic advantage to not freeze in cold weather. To not act on the clouds that we have created and nucliate ice crystals in them. It is ultimately from tiny ice crystals in clouds that we develop rain. Even the Weather Channel in slicing open under high magnification hail stones — admits to as much about “ice-nucleating bacteria” the main cause of rain.
The Iranians would be fitting all these things together in their minds. We are doomed to 60 degree C heat because of too much CO2. Iran as a nation would cease to exist. Rain in the deserts could restore Eden. Restored Eden would reduce CO2 and preserve Iran’s existence as a nation. America and the world are having their rain shut off because of GMO getting out of scientific control and altering the entire biosphere, invisibly but still powerfully. And a certain un-described need for underground nuclear voids.
The nuclear voids would have two alternative uses: (1) to store the main components of Molten Salt Thorium Reactors; (2) to be used with pumped back hydro-energy storage systems.
Use (2) because of laminar flow head loss will require a 1 km long tunnel to the surface of 4 meters diameter. The volume of the tunnel about 25% of the volume of the blast cavity.
A 4 meter diameter tunnel will allow components and workers to construct underground MSTR’s. These will contain reactor contents against most anything man or nature is likely to throw at them.
For pumped back hydro storage just have one void 1 km lower than another. Reversible turbine/pumps make this into an efficient battery.
Make a hundred cities in the Sahara, with roads, water culverts and energy units. Use thermal energy storage at 700 C to make electrical energy, chemicals for clouds and a thermal cooling tower updraft. Put chemicals and dried (greenhouse grown) ice-nucleating bacteria into the thermal updrafts. The result regional rains.
Sorry the post is so long Josh — you probably can’t print it. But I had to tell someone as telling Congress is quite out of the question. Besides that, they are likely deeply sold on the Canadian Oil Project. Which I point out that no one is looking at the danger of killing the oceans of containment fails.
Well… You seem to have a lot on your mind Bill… I’m not censoring any comments right now, just asking people to remember that this is about comix, more or less…
As for a Lush and Wet Sahara, I kind’a think, if that’s what you’re looking for, you need another ice age… People tend to think of Ice Ages as being bitterly cold – and they were in the northern regions – however, most creatures didn’t live around the huge ice sheets, as temperate climates had moved generally south, it apparently wasn’t all that bad a time to be alive and judging by ice age fauna, they did quite well… Of course, if one lived back then, you wouldn’t have the internet or football pools and the neighbor’s cat might be a sabertooth, so there were trade offs…
It might not work everywhere Josh, but the sage Elijah, perhaps because he was a sort of natural born scientist wanted Israel to go back to obeying all of the Moses given laws, even the obscure one of keeping the “Sabbath of the Land”. Every 7 years, the farmers were to allow their fields to go fallow, and the native plants and weeds to take over. If you look into “ice-nucleating bacteria” or “ice-minus bacteria” in the opposite direction, you will find that Dr. Steven E. Lindow through extensive research found a heavy likelihood that the IN+ were quite plant specific. The new plants that the Jews were introducing to their fields were of a sort of recently mutated grass (wheat). Nature had not the time to develop a corresponding IN+ bacteria. Furthermore while he may have burned naphtha as if naphtha, and let people think as a sort of stand up comedian amateur magician that it was “water” burning as if naphtha, likewise non-cut phosphate rock from a near-by Holy mountain, something subject to thermal decomposition in great heat, rather than more common stone, that was hardly the limit of his wonder work. He did something greater that getting the Baal people out of the picture allowed him to do. As I pointed out he warmed up the farmers to ritual of allowing the fields to go fallow — likely even asserting that they had to do even more of it to catch up with lost Sabbaths. A generous amount of plant litter with associated “dry” IN+ bacteria was now on the ground. Anything that disturbed the dust of the earth would tend to cause the IN+ bacteria to become air born. Likely enough rain was coming down to at least grow native weeds, even though there was a prolonged drought. A good solid rain might kick off the rain cycle again. On healthy farm fields of some crop, S. Lindow measured and recorded a flux of about 400 IN+ cells/second/m^2. The genius (and faith) of Elijah was to observe a seeming correspondence between the celebration of the Feast of Booths and the odds of rain at those time. The obvious hypothesis formed: something in the ritual (probably on an elemental scale) was inducing rain. Elijah had no microscope or wind tunnels — but he could do an experiment to test his hunch. There was the one time sort of Texas bon-fire face off with the Baal people. That only bought him the time to set matters up and try his experiment. He saw the cloud coming in from the sea and cooked his beef on an altar. Likewise a good many others in various locations did the same.
As Steven Lindow demonstrated the lack or presence of a specific molecule on the membrane of the bacteria in question allowed fruit to freeze on a cold day. As I mentioned first you have to form a tiny crystal of ice with an IN+ bacteria that a rain drop might grow from it. The current theory is that the molecule associated with IN+ bacteria deforms with temperature until it exactly matches the crystal lattice of water-ice. Nothing else in nature or as a product of man comes even close to doing this trick. Not dry ice, not silver iodide, nor as the Russians use lead-salts. Until recently the Weather Service insisted that a certain white clay, the weather break-down product of granite served as a nucleating agent to form rain drops. As something dangerous for us (in that GMO crops may have altered the regional flux of IN+ in California) — they have admitted to being wrong. They admit NOW that IN+ bacteria are the main nucleating agents.
Think how effective that they are. Assume that 1 IN+ bacteria has a chance of bringing down a drop of rain. The radius of a bacteria is about r = 0.5E-6 m. A rain drop could be R = 0.5 E-3 m.
V/v = [(4/3)*pi*R^3]/[(4/3)*pi*r^3] = (R^3)/(r^3) =
(0.5E-3)^3/(0.5E-6)^3 = (1E-3)^3/(1E-6)^3 = (1E-9)/(1E-18)
V/v = 1E(-9 + 18) = 1E9 => a billion fold increase for the investment.
Something that could even impress someone like Trump.
Of course most such rain seeds don’t bring rain. But assume for a moment that they did.
What is the return for 400 cells/s/m^2?
(1E9)*(400)*((4/3)*pi*r^3) s/m^2 = 2.09E-7 m^3/s/m^2
An accumulation of a mere 2.09E-7 meters of rain in one second.
But over a year that is (2.09E-7 m)*(365 day/yr)*(24 hr/day)*(3600 s/hr)
= 6.59 meters/year of rain. A place like Israel might get something like 0.5 meters/year. The IN+ bacteria are thus about [(0.5)/(6.59)]*100%
or 7.59% effective in returning rain to their ideal potential.
Elijah’s gamble was that the something contained in the plant litter was generally the same something contained in the fried up beef. Animal nerve transmission chemicals appear to be approximately the same thing as the molecules expressed on the membranes of the IN+ bacteria. But that is of yet somewhat conjecture as the IN+ bacteria, though genetically manipulated to generate IN- bacteria, have yet to have their membrane molecule isolated and mass produced. What motivation for bio-companies to mass produce a chemical associated with what has been classified as a plant pest — a plant infection. Remember only very recently have we determined that it had a useful function at all. Our arrogance would have allowed us to wipe it off the face of the earth. Explaining much of the indifference with GMO related experiments, by the bio-firms.
Not to play fast and loose with the ecology of the planet by introducing even too many natural micro-organisms to it, but would it not be wise to bribe if necessary a bio-firm to isolate and mass produce the very interesting IN+ bacteria’s active membrane molecule? Let’s call it molecule “X”, like with the Marvel super hero group. If we have effectively turned off the rain, and this might help save us, then it is a hero molecule.
The mass produced Trump cities could house lots of regionally displaced people, like the Palestinians who might fulfill a verse in the Beatitudes of Matthew about those that “inherit the land”. The 10 million square kilometers of “Eden” would completely dwarf the area of Israel. Would Iran, see themselves in the ending verses of Jeremiah 47 as receiving a blessing by helping all of this come about, that likewise dwarfs their own painful issues? Do they not hold it as a Holy duty to do what is right by the land-less Palestinians? Everyone says that we should rightly deal with this moral issue. How many presidents have tried? But obviously none have even a clue to a solution. Here we take a problem, of displaced people, abused people, people with not much hope — and reverse everything. Now no other people on earth would be as blessed. Their work in the field would bring back Eden — greater than it ever was.
Josh you are correct, that if we merely waited long enough that long term planetary processes would restore Eden. But look into the pages of the Bible about an odd thing. Even though it is most unlikely that everyone on the planet would suddenly become Jewish — the prophets assert that The Feast of Booths would indeed be celebrated on a world wide scale. That explicitly where it is celebrated that there is rain, and that where it isn’t “the rain is shut off”. The sun baked meditate-er sorts might have got wind of a vision of us really goofing up on the GMO related issues. And gave us a way out of the mess. That is should we take it. Our arrogance, or hate, our fear, can at times be a little off the scale.
I talked about using underground nuclear explosions. There are a few problems. The volume of the voids is about what I said that it was, and can certainly be adjusted. And the walls are ultra-strong. But not so much the ceiling of the voids. My sending down a 4 meter diameter tunnel from the surface to the voids ought to eliminate ceiling cracks and such. You need the 4 meter diameter for 5% head loss with pumped back hydro energy storage. Whole teams of engineers need to fill in a lot of gaps that I have left out. But rockets to the moon were planned with even much less. At that time they had fins and were of one stage, and a landing device was literally science fiction. Kennedy really went out on a limb with a project initially designed with little more than slide rules (as was the incredible SR-71 Blackbird of spy plane lore — and to transport the hero group of The X-men). A further problem is one that would tick off presidential want to be Jill Stein. Our most common current day nuclear bombs are made compact enough to even load in nuclear cannon by using hydrogen-3 or tritium (or possibly lithium-7) to jump start the fission process. A lot of mass and bulk removed to get the final results. Good for vaporizing the cores of cities, but not so good for a Project Plowshare type of idea. Of the thousands of Project Plowshare concepts that are listed, there happens to be no mention of pumped back hydro energy storage. Perhaps in the era of King Coal no particular need was seen dragging in solar and wind ideas. Plus, I did need to make a massive tunnel to the surface and a lot of such tunnel making devices hadn’t been invented yet. They did come through with a compressed air storage of energy through an 8 inch diameter pipe. But it was probably costly (due to air drying devices), at a maximum 60% efficient, and with completely unsolved noise pollution problems. You would only use something like that if you had to. Oh yes, there was zero linear nature to whatever energy that you could store — hence far from being intuitive to design as part of a greater something. And if something nuclear and of a gaseous nature like hydrogen-3 is inside, then the least flaw might allow it to get outside — in water or air. Water the main problem as H-3 can be easily incorporated into the molecules of cells. There is no particular danger from a mere beta-decay of low energy. There is considerable danger from H-3 becoming quite suddenly He-3. Neither item alone are harmful. But very weird chemistry can take place with the chemical bonding in molecules when suddenly hydrogen becomes helium. There just aren’t protective back-ups geared to cure that random situation.
The modern nuclear bomb can be designed to go down an 8 inch borehole — but with generating the H-3 problems above. The solution, go old school with the bomb design — really old school. The second bomb used on Japan was a Plutonium implosion device. It, like modern design was 20% efficient in converting the lump of plutonium into a fission-ed result. 80% of the fission material, never fission-ed, and merely became a vaporized gas. Plutonium is something that you don’t want to be around. People living near to plutonium development problems have developed health issues. Its OK in a nuclear reactor, where there are containment safeguards, and not so much OK if it gets into air, water or obviously people. For the most part the somewhat more expensive uranium bomb would be preferred for the underground explosion work. The old school nuclear bomb is comparatively huge, maybe a meter in diameter, but also not using anymore uranium than the more compact modern design. A 1 meter diameter tunnel should not be a serious cost factor when the next stage after the blast is to construct a 4 meter diameter tunnel.
(4/1)^2 = 16 times the volume removed with the larger tunnel than the smaller one. Thus the old style nuclear bomb doesn’t add a significant expense to the total project. And doesn’t embed H-3 into wall material or add to escaped gases released into the air.
The operation of a nuclear reactor also releases H-3. If the walls of the chamber are sprayed with fiber reinforced concrete can be contained within it. But concrete ages and [normally] develops cracks. A new product called “self-healing concrete” simply won’t do that. Tiny beads of a clay like product have a bacterial agent that reacts with open air or water to make a concrete paste that can immediately fill-in cracks up to 0.8 mm in width. The concrete will be free of any flaws for about two centuries. The whole underground unit should be shutdown long before that time. And H-3 has a half life of only 12.3 years. (0.5)^(200/12.3) = 13 ppm of the original H-3 would be left. Near to nothing.
There isn’t anything that can’t be done in these concepts. And there is little risk in doing them. And potentially a whole lot to gain. Bringing back “Eden” saves us from excessive CO2 problems, if one is inclined to believe in them or not. And no other alternative allows to feed the expected future populations, or to provide energy, cut back significantly on wars, and make available copious amounts of water. Furthermore with Trump at the helm of construction, everything might be made on time and on budget. A bank account in the name of “Eden” might see that world investments are paid back with profits of the Eden grown products.
Uh… Do you ever answer anything in maybe two sentences?
The sulfates in the Canadian toxic pond, that are otherwise a problematic pollution matter to dispose of would be absolutely perfect for kicking off The Eden Project’s rain making with the CERN ratio of required cloud making chemicals.
The deadly and super deadly mercury and mercury compounds in the pond ideal to serve as a thermal working fluid sources of Hg for the solar trough units to power up everything in the Sahara.
And finally, the entire super toxic mixture remaining in the ponds rendered utterly harmless by combining it in the right ratio with crushed limestone and running it through the ultra hot nuclear heat driven top down lime kiln operation used to make CaO (to return to the sea) and CO2 for gasoline production, the vaporized Hg gas run through a vortex extractor device again routed to solar machines in the desert.
There remains a sort of flea bitten excuse as to not develop the Thorium Salt technology as there isn’t a long term experience with running high temperature molten salts through plumbing and pumps. A potential solution is to construct these primarily of space shuttle grade graphite. Of course you would only want to do that with outright mass production — central to my theme. Additionally surface coatings to extend useful life in harsh environments might be desired. Tungsten drill bits have had their useful life extended as much as 50 times by coating them with a “diamond” surfacing. Doing this, may or may not be possible if the base surface is graphite — there being such a difference between materials. Not a problem. The ultrahigh temperature metal Molybdenum bonds perfectly well with graphite. So have a base of graphite, then a coating of Molybdenum, and a final coating of diamond. The final combination should have a very very high resistance to harsh environments. Let someone simply try it.
I believe the Soviets had some experience using molten salts in their reactors as a coolant. As I recall the results were somewhat less than totally satisfactory.
(I know I shouldn’t dood it but I gonna dood it anyway!)
I’m not sure what any of the bulk of the discussion has to do with the aliens and clowns and courtroom drama that happens to be the subject of the recent strips, but what the hell…
Well, in other times, someone like Bunz might be viewed as an angel or a sort of space God (at least with her super ray gun in hand). Even today she might be viewed in that way. Often angels had the job of messengers from Heaven. She sort of is saying we have messed up so badly that like with the Bible day city of Nineveh — that we are “doomed”. Indeed the very secular progressives often leading us, and certainly preaching to us, have a similar message about the side effects of Accelerated Global Warming Theory. On my book shelf I have a copy with underlined sections of Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. I may be somewhat conservative, but he was much more right than he was wrong. If questions aren’t answered, then quite obviously billions of people will die. And perhaps worse than all the very predictable death and misery would be the loss of our ideals, or heart, and our hope. A little like Josh’s description of a certain dreadful mystery planet.
And the clowns? Look at those leading us. They are obviously intelligent enough. But aren’t they somewhat the clowns by not using their obvious intelligence? Or as in running for office expending so much effort upon matters of perhaps some merit, but in context of infinitely great problems not much more than a distraction or diversion. We are expected to believe that they will switch gears once they have the office. But we are far from sure that they will in fact manage that conversion. It looks very much, at least currently, as if it were a clown act. A clown act potentially involving “red buttons” just as much as Josh had his clown suggest using toxic pies.
And the “court room”? Just as much as in Josh’s story an adequately courage filled judge sat in the bench judging the clown before him with sin upon sin upon sin — and pronouncing that he should be punished, or at least removed from the streets. But not much following through on what he said. Nor giving any real encouragement to the “doughnut eating cop” that he would back him up in jailing the clown — hence the cop did absolutely no more than he had to.
The press is that jury. They see everything, or at least should see everything. But way too often they are exactly like the cardboard cutouts in Josh’s jury box, that if you noticed hardly moved at all. I think by Josh’s design. Where pray tell is that jury over the last minute 100 mile lateral diversion of the passenger jet into a war zone in Ukraine, that very nearly got us all into war. There are layer upon layer of detail that no one talks about. Our strange total indifference is as puzzling as Josh’s cardboard cutouts. And aren’t we all cardboard cutouts if we do not question the ultra secret nature as to what is in a certain growing Canadian pond, or as to the mere ingredients being used in fracking operations here at home and under our very feet? Where is the least tiny bit of curiosity? Are we cardboard cutouts in the backdrop of the universe?
“Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
Hey, Bill of Kansas (or should that be can ass, canned sass, etc.) Josh asked if you could answer in only a couple of sentences. I for one would like to see the frak’n math equations flussh themselves into a black hole. I ‘m no Charlie Epps (Numb3r5), but even he might have problems with some of those equations. I sure did!
Er… Let’s all keep things on a friendly basis here… We’re all here to have fun – I Hope! It’s okay to disagree, but just remember, it’s a Comix forum, we shouldn’t take matters here too seriously…
By the way, My apologies for not having a new page posted by now – I spent a lot of time on the Calendar last week, but the next page is almost inked (there’s about half a pose left to do) Then I need to finish the coloring and plug everything into the layout, which already has the lettering in place and so on… I also did a fair amount of writing last week – it’s kind’a too bad that I can’t just post the pencil roughs of the page layouts, as the story would progress a lot quicker if that’s all I needed to do…
Well, that’d at least put these comments in the past…
BruceDaDude, you are right, I said way too many things in way too few words. In fact it is possible that considering the magnitude of some things that are implied, it wouldn’t really be a waste of resources to have roughly a team of engineers assigned per each equation. That was about what happened by researchers sent out to measure mercury in sea water. What probably and properly took about a 20 page peer reviewed paper with maybe a whole page of citations — I super compacted into only a couple of lines.
But understand what is going on. For reasons not clear to even me, I was singled out by evidently nature itself to deliver a message. And life and death are kind of involved. I can paint a picture of what is wrong and how to make it right. And it is a true picture. It is just not a very elegant picture. Nor is there any one audience to present the picture to.
To summarize the core message that I am carrying inside me:
I wish to destroy Oil (and quite utterly so) — before it destroys us.
Is that compact and simple enough to readily understand?
But it might take maybe a good ten teams or so of engineers to lay out quite exactly how to do it. Alas, the universe does not give my conscience reprieve on the matter. I never gave the answer back, “no I won’t do it.” Nor the answer back, “no I can’t do it”. I have to hope against all hope, that a powerful, and super smart person will somehow read my plea, see that I speak a true message, and with a whispered prayer from my heart to any above that hear, act upon it.
Probably a worthy ambition. But it won’t be accomplished with doom-saying. Want to destroy oil (as a baseline, standard fuel)? Come up with something envionmentally sound that is as cheap and convenient.
Practical nuclear fusion would about do it.
Hey, speaking of cheap and convenient power sources, whatever was powering Bunz & Katz’s scout ship was still operational after a few million years… what kinda half-life is that? If anyone cares to chip in with me to pay the impound fee, we could make billions!
Flubber?
It would seem to myself, “Kansas” that if you want to get your message out, you would be better served posting and discussing it on sites that deal with Scientific speculation and the like… On a comix site such as this, you’re unlikely to reach the people who you really want to read your material… Here, you’re more likely just to irritate people than not…
We often tend to forget that most plastics, vehicle tires, machine lubricants and who knows what else, all come from Petroleum – so our culture is likely to be hooked on the stuff for just about forever… Still, I agree that burning it is a bad idea! Yet, I’m not convinced that Nuclear power plants are anything more than a disaster looking for a place to happen! Seemingly Wind Power – Solar Power – even Biofuel all have untapped possibilities that we should be doing much more with…
Like ferinstance, at our local VA Hospital here in LA, most of it’s large parking lots have been roofed over with Solar Cell Arrays – not only are these producing power, but you get to park your car in the shade, so that it isn’t cooked when you return to drive away! So could someone explain to me, WHY are we spending Billions on pointless wars, when for the price of one new Aircraft Carrier we could roof over how many (?) parking lots with solar Arrays here in the US and do something useful with out tax money???
There are plenty of practical options to energy that we can do right now – it does NOT require pie in the sky new technologies – what it does require, is the will to do it!!
Quite true about the demand for oil in the plastic industry. The science fiction author E.E. “Doc” Smith (Skylark of Space series & Lensman series among others) prophecized in his last novel that most of our energy would come from atomic sources, as petroleum based production would be taken up by an incesant demand by plastics and other synthetic industries.