Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Carbon Conundrum



I packed the last of my things with an adventurous enthusiasm.
In my last phone call before leaving, my friend Jim told me to
find three empty seats on the plane from Miami, to lie down and
sleep on the long flight South. With seventeen hours of flying ahead of
me, I though it good advice.

What I anticipated would be a reasonably carefree excursion would
begin with a traveler’s worst nightmare - Gluttony.  As my seat row was
finally called, I made my way through the line at the gate.
Standing not ten feet ahead of me in line was an extremely
huge girl. As I watched her from behind, I said to myself,
"Please God, don’t let her sit next to me."

As insensitive as it sounded at the time, even to me, I just
didn’t want to start the worst part of my trip, trapped in my
seat, pressed against the sultry flesh of a squishy human being.
Sure enough, by the time I found my way aboard the plane, she’d
already pulled up the seat divider between our two seats and
oozed a good half-way into my prepaid space. Be "Zen," I thought
to myself, as I climbed over toward my seat.

What an obstacle I thought, should there actually be an
emergency. We’re all going to die because the emergency exits
over the wings were plugged up by a passenger. She couldn’t fit
down the aisle without having to straddle and waddle at unusual
side angles as she walked.

For the first time in my life I was inspired to bitch to the
airline and insist that she pay for the part of my seat that she
was occupying. When I looked over at her, I could tell
immediately that she felt horrible, was completely
self-conscious, and that if I said anything at all, not only
would I be cruel and insensitive, but she’d probably start crying
or something and make the whole thing that much worse.
I ordered a Wild Turkey instead, turned the air toward my face,
and endured the flight out of Austin.

As I sat in the Miami Airport waiting for the last long leg
south, the terminal was filled with Bolivian businessmen and
travelers, laden with bags and boxes and trinkets of all kinds.
Three empty seats to lie down on and sleep, Jim had said. That
would be a tall order. When the cabin door closed, I would be the
last and the only gringo to move, destined to remain in my
assigned seat for the next ten hours.

It was an all night flight from Miami to La Paz. At sunrise the
next morning, I would land at the world’s highest airport and on
the longest commercial runway. Despite the hours, I could find no comfort in
sleeping. I leaned quietly against the cabin window, staring out
occasionally at the complete darkness. Not even a moon would
bless the sky on the long and lonely flight. We flew across the
Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, across the coastline of Columbia,
then into the descending Amazon Basin of Peru and Brazil and not
once did I see a light on the ground.

After flying for hours in the darkness, and just as I began to
drift to sleep, I was startled by a bright light shining from
beneath the plane onto the ceiling above the cabin. The entire
cabin glowed with the warm and familiar light as if from a city
below. With hours still to go to La Paz, I figured we were over
some eastern Peruvian City. When I looked down out of the window,
I was surprised to once again find no sign of civilization, or at
least as I knew it.

The light was shining from a vast forest fire, blazing in the jungle.
Wealthy ranchers in want of barren grazing land were burning
thousands of acres of forest. For miles I could make out huge
fires that lit up the sky. I was nearly six miles up in the air
and the sky was as bright as daylight from the fires below.
My God, I though. They really are burning the forests. I was
looking down upon a sign, a sign of Armageddon, and the
Revelations were playing out before my very eyes.

On November 7, we will all know who has been chosen to lead our
nation as well as the world toward our human destiny. Throughout
the presidential race and in the continuing debate, we have
muddled through myriad opinions about abortion, about the role
and consequences of religious fundamentalism in government, about
responsibility or the lack thereof, morals, ethics, political
reform, the influence of big business in government, healthcare,
partisan and bipartisan politics.

We have heard varied opinions about the state of and plan for
education, social security, our national security and defense
readiness, the booming economy, the budget windfall, and a number
of other important issues that will affect all of us in the years
to come. What we have not heard from the leaders of the western
world is how "we" will lead and manage the consequences of
overpopulation and pollution, the second exacerbated by the
first, the two universal issues that will affect all of mankind
forever.

Each of these issues is important. A moral and ethical society
that is employed and productive, reasonably educated, that has
purpose and direction, which, supported by a sound economy
creates stability, or an inherent lack of serious conflict. If
the United States is economically stable, so too, is the rest of
the world in general. People everywhere can live their lives
without much worry or fear that they won’t eat, have a place to
live or be able to raise and support their families.

This is, in part our government’s role, to keep things stable and
its people happy. However, with every new human being - and we
add them by the millions - we place a greater demand upon the
natural order and harmony of our ever-shrinking planet.
Population control and environmental responsibility and
management are issues that are not just important, they are
critically important.

The success of our democracy and free market economy is
completely dependent upon the availability and exploitation of
cheap fossil fuels, the Earth’s natural resources and economic
growth. To remain dominant as a world leader and economic
powerhouse, we must seek out new markets throughout the world and
take every advantage of the world’s economic opportunities. In
doing so, so to do we distribute our culture and values.
There is little escaping exposure to American culture and quality
of life anywhere in the world today. Our standard for and
exportation of a "quality of life" is based upon our naïve
understanding of our own quality of life, the most opulent,
resource and opportunity laden society ever.

As we expand into places yet untouched by development, we create
therein opportunity for other populations. With their newfound
wealth, there is always a corresponding increase in the quality
of life, facilitating better education, healthcare, housing and
living conditions of all kinds. An increase in the quality of
life increases both the spans of life and population in general.
As larger and larger populations are sustained, there is a
corresponding increase in the demand for goods, services and
natural resources.

Increases in the demand for all of these things, sustaining an
ever-increasing human population, keeps people employed and the
economy robust and most serious conflicts limited to religious
ideological dogma. The tragedy of this thinking and shortsighted
practice, unabridged by responsible leadership and universally
applied resource management, is the assurance of our own
destruction.

There is little denial and mounting scientific evidence that our
planet is out of balance. Not caused by the natural ebb and flow
of "cycles" in weather, water and ice, or of the sun, but caused
solely by the influence of man and his ever increasing disposal
of green house gasses into the atmosphere, global warming is no
longer a debate. Everything about our economy is dependent upon
the exploitation of the land, trees, oil, minerals, and natural
gas.

The cast off of almost everything we do is Carbon Dioxide.
Billions of tons of carbon, otherwise trapped in the forests, and
underground reservoirs of coal, oil and gas, we expel as the
byproduct of our engineering and industrial efficiency. Radiating
less of the sun’s heat to the cold of space, Carbon Dioxide and a
few other well-known hydrocarbons warm our world. This is not to
mention the contribution of toxic and other dangerous chemicals
and substances to the land, sea and air, endangering life or
depleting the Earth’s protective ozone layer
.
We have already witnessed dramatic changes in the Earth’s
atmospheric and ocean temperatures, and as a result, changes in
moderate and reasonably predictable weather patterns. Glaciers
all over the world are receding at unprecedented rates. We now
know that in the years to come, our current behavior will alter
both the life and the stability of our planet in ever more
significant, dramatic and perhaps permanent ways.

Despite the emerging truth, it is not that surprising to find
that few Americans consider the management of population or of
the environment as critically important, pressing issues. Most
citizens are concerned more about their economic welfare, their
security, and that their retirement savings grow exponentially
over the years. Most citizens - and most American leaders - look

for short-term gratification and solutions with little regard for
the long-term consequences. And to make matters worse, in America,
our ideas are motivated not by information or by intellectual contemplation. Our government is motivated almost entirely by money and the desperate pursuit of more of it. No one is there to pay for the ideas that the world is finite, population has a limit and that global warming and pollution may have devastating consequences to all life on Earth.

All people, particularly the young, are aware and can sense that
we are living on borrowed time. The future of our planet looms in
question. A time will come when we must all face the consequences
of our conduct.

The preservation of the world environment and the balance of
nature are issues that cannot be ignored. It is however a matter
of such proportion that it cannot be managed by mere individuals
alone. Governments and responsible government leaders are the only remaining
forces with the power and influence to change the conscience of
the people and endeavor what must be done for the good of all mankind.
Even if we have no choice but to cling to the
relentless pursuit of wealth for our future, concocting economic
and tax incentive measures for citizens and corporations to
reforest their land, to recycle, to develop and utilize
environmentally conscious processes, transportation, and energies, or for
families to bear fewer children is no more difficult than any other legislative
government action. What makes them different is that these are issues that must
transcend politics, religion and selfish gluttony. The choice is completely ours.

The Book of Revelations predicts the demise of man. In the end,
the cause will not have been his sins or the wrath of God. Man will
cause his own undoing, wrought from both ignorance and greed. The
tragedy that will live throughout time in the heavens will have
been that, by the grace of God born into the Garden of Eden, Man
was given the mind and the body to save the World, but he didn’t.

Green Guy Recycling








Monday, November 14, 2011

Time


Each day the next is surely towing, and time too quick is past us flowing.
Each day is shorter, shorter growing; no sign at all that time is slowing.

We know from tests of speeding that, Einstein was talking through his hat,
The scale of time but faster goes, for fact it cannot be it slows.

Perchance the Friesians did not know just how a clock is supposed to go.
And when they put their clocks in space, they set them at too fast a pace.

When large it is the rate of v, then small becomes the pace of t
Perhaps therein the answer lies, a piece that always with you flies.

For sake of theory must it be and faiths in science guarantee,
At the speed of light the time will still, and then will pass just as you will.

Carl H. Deal  

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Give Your Best To Life Each Day



When you live with faith in others
Then you learn to trust and care
When you live with generosity
Or your instinct is to share
When you live with warmth and kindness
Then that kindness warms your heart
And it makes each day a sunny day
Right from the very start

When you live with peace and patience
Then you somehow find the way
Of turning frowns and troubles
Into happy hours each day
When you live with understanding
And you try to see the good
Then you never lose the hope you have
In lasting brotherhood

When you live with truth and honor
You have real security
For you know that you’re respected
And that you’ve a right to be
You can make the world a brighter place
And your own life happier, too
If you live with all these good things
For life gives them back to you.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Old Main


The LXE Car

These are the things I did this week to the LXE Car. My mom asked where I learned to do all this stuff. I said, your husband taught me these things doing what he did. I guess so, she says. I am amazing, none the less. 


Spark plugs
Oil, 
Oil Filter
Oil Sending Unit
Timing belt
Timing Tensioner
Serpentine Belt
AC Freon
Front and Rear Brakes
Starter
Water Pump
Transmission Filter
Transmission Fluid,
Left Rear Brake Light
Left front headlight
Cam Shaft Seal
Main Seal
Radiator Fluid
Radiator Thermostat
Radiator Cap