my darling Saturn

Hello my beauty
you spin and sail slowly
with your paper-thin rings in silence.
Everything in its place
eon ofter eon.
In your one slow pass around the sun
I have been born and grown to thirty.

One of your moons has lakes and weather.
Another spews water into space.
Your rings of pebbles are beyond art.
Tiny shephard moons keep the ring-beauty in place.
I could go on and on.
About dazzling beauty.
About baffling mystery.

But here on Earth,
We've got other things to worry about.
How to pay the bills,
and well basically, how to pay the bills.

And so science is what we see on TV.
Crafted and contrived by the feudal priest-lords.

Science is explained by past heroes.
Past heroes
who were somehow fearless enough
to dare to be curious.

Those were different times.

Now it's all figured out.

And so.
Saturn has a hexagon at its north pole.
A hexagon floating in the clouds as storms swirl around it.
We can send ships to Mars and back
but can't imagine how to do that:
how to float a hexagon in stormy clouds.

The photograph of the century. CNN et al, seemed not to care. Far from bolting upright in their seats like I did, the scientific community offered up not a peep. In a week the photo and story were buried in banality.

A fabulous, unexplainable image is beamed back to Earth, from a craft sent to find the unknown, and no one is even curious? Hail victory to the powers that be. The powers that be assuming for themselves more and more of free peoples' power.

But I do not accept this defeat.

My darling Saturn, queen of the deep, born as I was on Saturday, I am amazed by you.
In ages hence, a free people may come to care how you can make a hexagon stand in your clouds. Until then, forgive them because they are too damn busy worrying about how to get by in one of the richest places on this rich, rich planet.

I am not defeated.
I look out, far above the castles of the petty feudal lords, and I am amazed at what I do not know. Yet I know that it is of the same stuff as me. A hexagon standing in your stormy clouds. Indeed.

I stared at you tonight through hazy city skies.
In thanks.

a hexagon on saturn!

There's a hexagon on the north pole of Saturn.
I repeat, there is a hexagon, in the clouds of Saturn. Bigger than our whole planet. This awesome thing has been there for at least 25 years. A perfect hexagon in the clouds. How do you do that?

I'm stunned and in awe and my ponder muscle has hit the wall, and is still going...

Why does no one else seem to care.
What happened to curiosity?

I mean really! Why aren't scientists jumping up and down in front of TV cameras and insisting on missions to Saturn...with HAL...

What happened to us?

There is a hexagon in the clouds on the north pole of Saturn!
(thank god it's not a pentagon)
A hexagon in the clouds on the north pole of the sixth planet. Arthur C Clark where are you now? Where have all the scientists gone?

my anniversary

I grew up in a stable American family. We moved many times to various suburbias. I was a good student with good grades, therefore it seemed to me that I had a good grasp on things.

In the summer after my junior year at college (mechanical engineering, honor student) I went to Europe with a student tour/thing. I have never been the same.

My world view was thrust back in my face. My world view was the American standard, a two dimensional cut-out from a happy meal. Confronted with a greater, more subtle, more interesting reality, it was clear that I was stupid. I didn’t like that. And I wanted to know what I didn’t know.

So I made a plan.

I would finish university, get a job, pay back my loans, save money, and leave America. A one way ticket. And don’t come back for at least one year.

I set myself a date, five years in the future, fixing it in my stubborn mind. On that date I would leave my American life, and go see something else. I prepared myself with German and French classes, art history, architecture, and stuff like that.

And on my target date, I left my friends, a glorious girlfriend (truly glorious), and my American life. (I still bleed a little from those wounds.)

April 1, 1987.

Twenty years ago. (holy shit! twenty years.)

It’s been quite a ride.

dangerously joyous

Beyond my computer screen
birds are singing in the morning sun
singing because they can, I suppose
singing because it’s morning and not yet too hot.
Already I have the fan on
blowing steadily in my direction.
Dang,
our fat red dog
is snoring
cicadas are droning
and someone is moving pots around
downstairs in the kitchen.
There is a secret joy in my belly.
I feel loose and dreamy, like the day in me has not yet woken.
I am glad without knowing why
I feel strange,
dangerously joyous
too aware that I am alive.

Global warming is not what I'm afraid of

Is burning fossil fuels the number one cause of global warming? Dunno. Not really sure at all, because, frankly, there is a lot of stuff going on on the planet. Ms Earth has a nasty habit of warming and cooling, all by herself.

Is global warming the number one danger civilization is facing? I say no way Jose. I say the most clear and present danger is the current capitalist, corporate fascism. Just my opinion. But since you’re here, I’ll tell you why.

One. The present corporate-capitalism is a borg-like machine with one purpose: move money up. Forests are only valuable to this machine when they are broken into pieces and sold. Humans only valuable for their labor-production-profit capacity or the money that can be taken from their pockets. Tigers are valued by the pelt or zoo revenue. To the borg, society is a means to pump money up into high pockets. Nothing else. The borg cannot smell or eat grandma’s cookies, but it can brand and market and distribute them. The present borg system disrespects nature. Nature is invisible to it. So is society. So are you. So am I. It cannot see us. It cannot see grandma and children, nor smell evening flowers or savor the scent of your lover's neck. Instead it is programmed and empowered to consume and pump money.

And so, this one problem, this inability to value anything other than money, causes a world of hurt: poverty, pollution, junk food, dead whales. It's a long list.

So go ahead, control co2 emissions all you want. And while you’re pouring resources into that enormously difficult task, the borg will be busily breaking into pieces and selling even more of what is left of this lovely planet and human society. And we may well wake up in a feudal-corporate wasteland with perfectly controlled co2. With sea levels and weather still wandering around.

Two. Humans are robust and tough and have found ways to thrive in:

• burning romantic deserts,
• mucky inbred swamps,
• hysterical fertile crescents,
• high altitude picturesque mountains,
• tiny beautiful islands with coconut skies,
• anaconda/jaguar/ayahouska jungles,
• freezing arctic seasides,
• Calcutta,
• the outback,
• and American suburbia for godsake.

We’re cool, creative, survivors all right. We can thrive anywhere!

But (when the seas rise and storms come and weather patterns change) civilization could fall! (screams from off-stage).

You mean the civilization where whoever has the most money has therefore the power of law and force behind them to kick the shit out of everyone else and do whatever they please? That civilization might fall? Hope so. I’ll gladly throw some banana peels in its path. I’m sick of that one. Earth-life is literally sick of that one.

But real civilization, the one that’s been pushed to the side of late, where thinking, compassionate, mature humans look at the nature of the situation around them, and with their family, friends, and natural extended community, do their best to find ways to live happy, creative, exciting, challenging, non-destructive lives…well that one I think has a long, glorious (bumpy) future ahead of it.

Sorry, but global warming isn’t scaring me. Life is change. Don’t like change? Too bad you weren’t born a rock. Erosion denial.

But (when the seas rise and storms come and weather patterns change) global warming will change everything! (screams from offstage)

Everything has always been changing. To think that things stay the same is delusional. Weather patterns change. Continents move for godsake. Go with the flow a bit. Please?

We cannot keep sea levels stable, any more than we can stop the tides, or make every day a sunny spring nymphfest. There are seashells in the Rocky Mountains, and not so long ago the Sahara Desert was a pretty nice place to live. This is a planet of change. Check out this graph of sea level changes over the past half a million years or so:
(from: Eustatic sea level during past interglacials)
You recon you can smooth that baby out by controlling carbon emissions? (And if you averaged out the swings, sea level would be maybe fifty meters lower than now...and that means, well, a lot of glaciers up north. Looking at the graph, we seem to be near a peak.)

Before the next conference on global warming, I want everyone present to take a deep breath and say: ‘Nature is always changing. We can’t keep nature from changing. I accept that Nature changes. I am happy to be a part of Nature. I am happy to meet any and all changes whatever they may be. I will do my best not to be an asshole to the other lifeforms on this planet.(repeat last sentence two more times)’

Sea level has never been constant. To whine about it is kind of dumb. To say that if we control co2 emissions then sea level and weather will be stable is even more dumb.
Nature has never been stable because she is evolving. So are we. She's not about a steady state, fixed stars, Dantian reality micromanaged into the dust. She's out there on the edge. Honest and clean. Taking reality as it comes.

I'm happy to live with that.
Are you?

I say the number one problem is the borg.
We need to face the borg. Inject it with an appreciation it now lacks. Or kill it if it can't be turned to serve earth-life.

pushing money

On Bill Maher the other day, David Frum said something to the effect of “they hate us when we intervene, they hate us when we don’t intervene. They hate us when we support the dictator, they hate us when we oppose the dictator.” He sort of threw up his hands, as if those people won’t like us no matter what we do.

Is Mr Frum saying, his 'think tank' has found an entire population, grandmas to nephews, that won’t be reasonable? An entire population of perpetually unreasonable people?

Good research guys.

I’ve got a much, much, simpler idea:

US foreign policy is relentlessly, financially self-serving to big money interests, even when exceedingly cruel to the local people.

Simple.

So instead of finding a perpetually unreasonable society, we’ve found a foreign policy with a perpetual goal: push money, by war, by words, by forked tongue policy, into the pockets of the few. Push money to the top.

Am I moving too fast for you Mr Frum?

Money to the top. Never mind the blood. It's not theirs.

sick of meds 2

From health-care-reform.net:

(An excerpt from an article by Kah Ying Choo)

By citing these statistics, Starfield (2000) [see post below for reference] highlights the need to examine the type of health care provided to the U.S. population. The traditional medical paradigm that emphasizes the use of prescription medicine and medical treatment has not only failed to improve the health of Americans, but also led to the decline in the overall well-being of Americans. Starfield’s (2000) comparison of the medical systems of Japan and the U.S. captures the fundamental differences in the treatment approach. Unlike the U.S., Japan has the healthiest population among the industrialized nations. Instead of relying on sophisticated technology and professional personnel for medical treatment as in the U.S., Japan uses its technology solely for diagnostic purposes. Furthermore, in Japan, family members, rather than hospital staff, are involved in caring for the patients.

The success of the Japanese medical system testifies to the dire need for Americans to alter their philosophical approach towards health and treatment. In the blind reliance on drugs, surgery, technology and medical establishments, the American medical system has inflicted more harm than good on the U.S. population.