November 15, 2006 :: Dog Jumping Deaths in Scotland

After seeing my own dog jump off a bridge this past Saturday, I have been interested in why a dog might perform such an act.

In Bella's case, I strongly believe that she saw the wall of the bridge as being similar to the brick retaining walls at home, and assumed solid ground is always on the other side of similar short walls.

However, one Wikipedia article suggests some other possibilities. The Overtoun bridge dog deaths in Scotland suggest that some bodies of water carry scents that make the air just off the bridge smell like something the dog really wants. This is interesting. I also found another blog about the same bridge, and I similarly found another article on dog suicide which talks about the Overtoun bridge as a reading lesson to teach English. There are more articles, but I'll leave that to the reader to research.

This might remain a mystery, but it will be some time before I get the image out of my head of my dog hanging from a bridge by her harness. Crazy dog.

November 10, 2006 :: After election day thoughts

US Constitution Photo by Mark Solomon, Nov 4, 2006

These are some of my thoughts. It's about 4am and Bella woke me up to bark at something, so I sat down and wrote this.

After election day, is there hope for the future?

Since the next congress is chaired by all democrats, (committees, the floor, etc) I looked at the Democratic National Convention's agenda at http://www.democrats.org//agenda.html

I wonder how much of this will actually be pushed and signed in the next two years?

Their six-point plan's top three points are:

1. Real honest/open govt. Something I know we've been lacking

2. Real security. Interestingly, at least four sub-articles referenced on this page are about Donald Rumsfeld needing to be replaced (Overcome By Events...as we all know), and at least another five articles are about Iraq. I'd like more definiteness here. Are we talking about the security of building a new fence along our southern border that gets mandated but not funded? What security are they talking about specifically?

3. Energy Independence. Simply put, this is the root of almost all of the world's evils right now, and with the current presidential administration's uber-close ties to big oil, it's no surprise that oil prices doubled in the six years of their presidency terms. When I was first learning finance, I was told to look for approximately 20% increases per year of investment, as that was a five year doubling plan. This was in the late 1980's regarding mutual funds. Today, when must mutual funds are earning half that, Bush has been fortunate to create those great, 6 year doubling rate of earnings again for his real constituency in days when the rest of America's investors are making half that. Kudos to a brilliant plan for making money to those in the oil industry.

Not much has been done to effectively become anything but more dependent on oil. In our time, when twenty years of technology can go from four megabytes of RAM costing $400 in the late 1980's to putting 60 gigabytes of songs in a 12 year old's back-pocket for under $250, the entire automobile industry "boasts" about today's sedans fuel efficiency when it gets a whopping 25+ miles per gallon. This is essentially the same as the comparable models of cars from the late 1980's when honda's were getting upper 20's and lower 30's of MPG. Today, same models, same MPG. Why? Toyota's advances in fuel efficiency caused by electronically controlling intake and exhaust valves to most use all combustible fuel while minimizing pollution would have allowed for increased fuel efficiency, but those same smaller engines gave Toyota the ability to make their trucks larger; result: no net decrease in fuel usage, but a more impressive "ride," to be sure.

Consumers have been mislead with the addition of ethanol in gasoline, as its production is cheaper with the goal of lowering petroleum use. Drug dealers call this "cutting" their product, as a less expensive additive can "stretch" their product. So, if gasoline at the pumps is being cut because oil prices went from $30 a barrel to $60-70 per barrel, the price should go down, right? Well, it's stayed the same with the addition of 10% of ethanol. Why? Market burdens/fluctuations, oil reserves, cost to industry to get ethanol, etc. Someone is making a lot of money. Heating oil costs and natural gas prices have tripled over the last six years, too, and their use of "bio-diesel" and the like have had the exact same effect on heating oil prices: stabilized at the tripled rate.

According to a Feb 2, 2006, article at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06033/648770.stm, venture capitalists "invested" $4.4 billion in alternative fuels between 1999 and 2004. The Bush administration was investing over $26 billion in wars to secure the oil pipelines in Afghanistan while searching for Osama Bin Laden, and securing not only democracy and freedom in Iraq, but also their oilfields. Hmmm. There seems to be a vast imbalance of both priorities and funding in the world of the energy industry in modern times. Maybe the democrats will do better, since this is, after all, number three on their to-do list of priorities.

My conclusion to all these thoughts, for now, anyway, are that now that Congress is no longer a "rubber stamp" for the Executive, for the next two years there may be more "uniting" being done by the Executive now that it HAS to. Maybe there will be more discourse between branches and less mandating to the people. Much in the way a sculptor sees a vision and creates that vision, perhaps Congress will see a future where technology and funding will be used to make a sustainable environment where the environment can co-exist peacefully with cultures, who, by the way, get along better between themselves, too.

We can hope...

It can't hurt to cross our fingers but watch this Congress with the same skepticism that those in power often loose focus, and, irrespective of political ideologies, power corrupts. Fast government = bad government. More discussion/public civil argument = good politics. A longer "news cycle" that focuses on actual, important issues is good; week long "media circuses" about the latest food health scare, who can marry whom, and the latest holiday game console only distract people from war, people still dying in Darfur, daily violence in the middle east, and executives indefinitely holding suspects without any judicial process... all bad things... but all old news.

But, still, let's hope.

Thoughts about September 11, 2006

Wow, five years since the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was at work in Newport News, and Dave exclaimed that an airplane had hit a building in new york. Then 45 minutes or so later, he said that another airplane hit a building in new york, and [ I'm getting goose bumps just remembering this ] I thought that couldn't be error, and it had to be the beginning of something big. The pentagon was also hit by an airplane, and for the rest of the day, I was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Luckily, there was only the one giant shoe.

Something is wrong here. This past week, I've been reading quite a bit about so much evidence of trickery, deceit, and [ sorry ] conspiracy theories about that day, and the many days that followed. Please don't judge unless you do some research, but much of the data and articles I've read and photographs I've examined, that there might just be something wrong with much of the official story. Official photographs seem to be staged and altered in both new york and around the pentagon. Timelines do not make sense regarding the third building that was detonated in New York on September 11, 2006 (World Trade Center Building 7 – WTC7) which most people I talk to don't even remember. Isn't it strange that a 47 story building was brought down by fire in a manner consistent with a controlled detonation which normally takes days to engineer and plan? This building had a giant plume of smoke coming from it before the second airplane hit the second tower, and the WTC7 building was not struck by debris. The fire only lasted for a few hours and was imploded by means unknown. Something is very wrong here.

It struck me very dramatically how much has changed since September 11, 2001. The Patriot Act, a 150 page document that severely eroded many civil rights for most Americans, was almost unanimously passed by congress within days of its proposal. This is the same body that takes longer to approve their own raises or pass emergency resolutions to continue government operations in time of budget crises. Secret courts deny only 0.1% of the warrants applied for to spy on Americans according to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) but our executive branch kept secret the fact that it bypassed that secret court to spy on anyone it wanted, claiming the broad umbrella of national security. On this issue, a federal court held that the broad surveillance of Americans without due cause was illegal, citing that the President was created by the U.S. Constitution and could not circumvent its laws.

Our government advocates the use of torture. Our government was widely chastised as having employed wide use of torture in the pursuit of justice in the war on terror, further holding hundreds of people on a military base offshore of the United States to keep its prisoners from being able to seek any form of legal redress. Our government has been holding these prisoners for over four years, many of them are not even allowed to know the charges or evidence against them due to national security. When petitioned by the U.S. Senate to abstain from the use of torture and pass legislation to that effect, the U.S. Attorney general, at the behest of the President and Vice President, sought to shield the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from any law banning or outlawing the use of torture. To reiterate, the U.S. Attorney General argued to preserve the right of the U.S. Government to torture prisoners and suspects in its war on terror.

The U.S. CIA has, this week, admitted the existence of a secret prison system to perpetuate the controversial practices described above. These prisons are located outside the United States, as to shield them from U.S. laws. Torture is routinely employed on prisoners and suspects by foreign nationals with the knowledge and consent of U.S. agents. If these people walk away, they are testaments to the lack of democracy that our government purports to be protecting.

In admonishing the executive branch’s actions in the global wiretapping case above (ACLU v. NSA), the judge wrote, “As Justice Warren wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967): Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile. Id. at 264.”

I love my country. I fought a war for it, and would gladly do it again. Secret courts, torture, globally unaccepted practices of spying on citizens, invading countries, and occupying nations is not my ideal goal of spreading democracy and showing the world how great our country can be. Perhaps we can make the next five years a better example to the world of how great America is, how other countries should strive to be like us, and how we, as Americans, can hold our heads high, knowing that our country did what was right and stuck to the moral high-ground of humanity. This is what I hope for.