John Stuart pointed it out.  Ignoring all the crude jokes and spiffy graphics, he talked about four ex-EPA leaders serving four different Republican presidents (all the way back to Reagan) stating before Congress that global warming is a problem we MUST solve.  Those weren’t the exact words, but that’s the idea.  It was amusing to hear this, of course, coming from Republican mouths that usually “speak with a forked tongue” (maybe all the good old white boys that stole land from Native Americans were Republican?).  More amusing perhaps was the global warming denial espoused by the GOP idiots, aka honorable congress people, who were questioning these ex-EPA officials.  What’s with this denial of global warming?

Some of it, of course, is due to this frightening current running through America, a prehistoric, Neanderthal anti-science current, if not an all-out hatred of science.  This covers the gamut of people distrusting science (didn’t it cause all the world’s problems?) to religious fanatics who find science far too secular.  Our nation now has millennials to old geezers covering that whole spectrum who are technical savages, addicted to their technology and enjoying the internet’s social media, iTunes, NetFlix, iPhones, and other technological marvels, but know less about where this all comes from than an aborigine in Australia (who, in fact, probably understands practical weather-related science more than these millenials—or those GOP idiots).  Our nation also has religious fanatics, again from all ages, who love that museum in Kentucky that shows modern human beings coexisting with dinosaurs (all those fossils are just consequences of Noah’s flood, don’t you know?).  And, above all, our nation has unscrupulous business people, mostly wealthy old farts, who deny global warming simply because they want to continue their polluting, toxic chemical leaching, and natural-gas-fracking ways.  The latter are those represented by those GOP congressional lackeys, of course.

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Maybe their bad rep is due to the fact that they’re second-rate citizens in the bee hive, but drones are under attack recently.  The more vociferous attacks come from people who decry how deadly they are in attacking terrorists.  They kill all those innocent people, don’t you know?  I’ve rebutted that in these posts, but I can’t refrain from summarizing: (1) Drones and Special Ops are our most effective weapons against terrorists, a battle that must be fought unless you want to return to the Dark Ages of a radical Islamic Caliphate; and (2) drones and Special Ops avoid thousands of battlefield casualties, among our own troops as well as innocent civilians.  Here stats don’t lie.

A recent editorial in the NY Times (5/21) titled “The Limits of Armchair Warfare” basically ignores both points in a Ramboesque plea about returning to a conventional boots-on-the-ground mentality championed by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team of brilliant strategists.  Our troops fought valiantly, but Iraq is still an ethnic battleground.  Wrong in so many things, Biden was right with this one: Iraq should have been divided into at least three countries.  That worked in Yugoslavia and will end up being the right solution in Iraq.  McCain, that vengeful champion of the surge, also favors boots on the ground.  And Mr. Obama’s mistakes in Afghanistan can be summarized succinctly: he listened to that old Pentagon doggerel, although he knew from experimental evidence that drones and Special Ops are the solution.

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Believe it or not, this is a book review (see later), but first a bit of history.  I’m not into fancy GUIs and sliding icons.  The work in my old day job required mostly UNIX workstations.  There was a GUI, but it was primitive compared to today’s Apple and smart phone GUIs.  No sliding icons or touch screens, but there was enough firepower to handle terabytes of data.  That’s science, or, at least, the dirty kind where you’re given lots of data and you’re supposed to make sense of it.

I hate to admit it, but I don’t have a smart phone.  My fingers are too big and I’m too much of a touch typist to use the primitive keyboards they contain (I suppose touch typing will disappear as people’s thumbs grow longer in future generations).  In fact, touch typing and speed reading were the most useful skills I learned in high school, discounting the ability to run fast when a gang member whipped out his switchblade, or resisting the temptation of getting on the back of that Harley when the driver was stoned (I couldn’t afford my own–Harley, that is).

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[Note from Steve: This is the third post in preparation for Tom Pope’s and my Socratic dialogue on writing thrillers.  It’s more about reading, though, not writing.  The title is a bow to Pete Seeger.]

I read and review in many genres, including non-fiction.  Every author should be an avid reviewer.  And, if you want to give something back to the community of readers and writers, honest reviews help those readers who are looking for new and interesting books to read.  Of course, they help writers too, but I’m pleased when I receive that note from Amazon saying that one of my reviews helped a reader make a reading decision.  That’s my reward.  (I never charge for reviews because money can’t beat that kind of reward.)

Many writers don’t share my views on reviews!  Some will say that they’re busy writing and that they can’t take time to write a review.  Some will say that they have a policy of not reviewing other authors because they’re afraid of being accused of practicing review exchanges, aka a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours review policy.  Whatever the reasons, I respectfully disagree with them.  Authors should write reviews.  They can do them on review websites or places like Amazon and Smashwords and avoid the review exchange criticism (many accept clever pseudonyms for their reviewers).  They can be technical without being erudite.  And their reviews will be useful to the reading public.  Above all, writing reviews shows that the author is also a reader and not just a person interested in selling books.

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Nuclear technology is with us to stay…well, as long as we don’t destroy the Earth!  On one hand, we have the frightening scenario of a nuclear exchange; on the other, we have the possibility that nuclear power plants can contribute as alternate energy sources.  Somewhere between these polar opposites, one finds nuclear medicine.  I’m a person that believes that nuclear technology is not inherently good or bad, but human scientists and engineers who handle it need to ensure its safety.  More than most technologies, human error can have devastating consequences.

The reactor problem in Japan is one egregious example.  That region might require millennia to recover.  The same can be said for Chernobyl.  Estimates are all over the board.  Both cases are examples of human complacency, stupidity, and terrible miscalculations.  For Japan’s case, one can ask: Who would build a reactor close to a fault line?  We do!  California is one of the most active earthquake areas in the world, yet there are reactors on the California coast.  The one on the Hudson in New York State only seemed to have the problem that the river provides an easy access.  I rode by it on a tour to West Point—I didn’t see any special security arrangements.  Moreover, an earthquake did occur not long ago.  I was writing when the room started swaying and felt like I had returned to my youth in Santa Barbara.

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[TANSTAAFL: Do you read this blog?  I’m not asking if you like the posts, just whether you read them!  If so, don’t be passive.  React.  Write a comment—chew me out if you like (no foul language, please).  You can even receive a free ebook—see the bottom of the “Free Stuff and Contests” webpage; or write an honest review of one of my ebooks in exchange for the ebook.  In general, buy, read, and review some of my books.  Your participation motivates me and helps defray the costs of this website and my ebook releases.  Be active.  Help indie authors provide you with inexpensive entertainment.  It’s a two-way street, folks!]

The evil one who shall not be named decided Uncle Jang (Jang Song-thaek), his mentor, was a threat to solidifying his power in this oppressive, dark, and paranoid country.  Exit Uncle Jang.  Hanging…poison…ten thousand lashes…does it matter?  While some people in Washington might think this is just a distraction from their negotiations with the Persian nutniks in Iran, I call on them to remember that, in contrast to Allah’s warriors, he who shall not be named already has nukes and missiles to carry them—if not to the U.S., at least to South Korea, Japan, Vladivostok, and Beijing.  Any of his neighbors that pisses him off and sends him into a spoiled brat’s tantrum better be prepared for a nuclear attack.  And, as the case of Uncle Jang shows, it doesn’t take much to piss him off.  Talk about dysfunctional families.

Like Grandpa and Daddy, the North Korean leader doesn’t give a rat’s ass that his people are starving, that North Korean children are turning into low IQ zombies from malnutrition, that his prisons are just thinly disguised torture camps, and that his economy is the laughing stock of the Asian world.  He’s a sociopathic psychopath so much into establishing his own cult of personality—he wants to become God—that psychiatrists wouldn’t know what to do with him, except put him in a strait jacket and lock him up in a padded cell.  He makes Kaddafi, Pinochet, Amin, and even Hitler look like angels.  Given the state of his economy, he probably smoke-cured Uncle Jang and is slicing ham from the carcass for his breakfast.

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[TANSTAAFL: Do you read this blog?  I’m not asking if you like the posts, just whether you read them!  If so, don’t be passive.  React.  Write a comment—chew me out if you like (no foul language, please).  You can even receive a free ebook—see the bottom of the “Free Stuff and Contests” webpage; or write an honest review of one of my ebooks in exchange for the ebook.  In general, buy, read, and review some of my books.  Your participation motivates me and helps defray the costs of this website and my ebook releases.  Be active.  Help indie authors provide you with inexpensive entertainment.  It’s a two-way street, folks!]

My mind surprises me sometimes.  I’m not just talking about my writing.  I expect that most people think writers are weird, maybe even schizophrenic with all those characters bouncing around in our heads.  (Followers of my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” will remember how the main character in Sing a Samba Galactica had three ET mentalities bouncing around in his—that was easy for me to write!)  No, I think it’s my training as a physicist—I observe the world around me and make strange connections between things.

This happened watching bits of the dog show that occurred last week.  (Never remember the name, but it happens around Thanksgiving every year.)  I started thinking about GMOs.  That Great Dane and Chihuahua are GMOs (for those who haven’t yet mastered the acronyms of the 21^st century, GMO means “genetically modified organism.”)  Humans have been making GMOs at least for 50,000 years—nothing new there.  I’ve mentioned this to several people, including two dear nieces, and the people I speak to usually respond, “Yes, but….”

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In many states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures—even here in NJ with a Republican governor and Democratic legislature—teachers’ unions and public school teachers have come under fire.  The issue here isn’t black and white—issues rarely are.  I can’t pretend to be comprehensive in a simple blog post, but let me throw in some loose change to up the ante and gray up the issue even more (forty shades, remember?).

Most of us have heard the adage that goes something like “People who know, create; people who don’t know, teach.”  Like many stereotypes and adages, there is some truth to that statement.  Back in prehistoric times when I attended college (I’m a product of state-run universities–when I started, I paid about $300/quarter + room and board and everyone with a B+ HS average could enter some state university), this adage was somewhat formalized, at least in the math department—there was a track for math majors and another track for students who wanted to teach primary and/or secondary mathematics.  This bifurcation engendered a bit of what nowadays we call bullying.  Moreover, for whatever reason, students in the first track seemed to do better than students in the second.

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I read most of Tom Clancy’s books until he started writing about a secret, privately financed, vigilante organization…a bit over the top for even this old thriller writer.  Up to that point and independent of his politics, I thought he could spin a good yarn backed by enough techno-babble that it all seemed real (see the Clancy quote running across the banner of this website).  In fact, I’d wager that some higher mucky-mucks in the Pentagon weren’t happy at times with his description of U.S. and Soviet military capabilities.

More importantly, Clancy covered an era from Cold War to counterterrorism.  His first two books, Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, portrayed anti-Soviet operations featuring the U.S. Navy (the latter is an interesting Tolstoy-length account of what World War III might have been like).  The last books I read focused on terrorism (did the Japanese pilot who flew his aircraft into Congress in Debt of Honor provide ideas for the 9/11 terrorists?).  In between, he even touched on the emergence of China (The Bear and the Dragon), although he didn’t predict the kind of fascist capitalism that has taken over in that country.

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In the U.S., one of the myths we have lived with is that everyone has access to a basic education, grades 1 through 12.  Another myth is that if you want to go to college, there’s a way for you to do it.  Social engineers, often in service of elites, love to parade these myths, but they are myths.  Like religion, they promise a better tomorrow.  The problem with the first myth is in the definition of “basic education.”  The problem with the second is that it’s just not true.  And the problem with both is that the elites, that famous 1% (you pick the percentage you want—it depends on your stats), want to make sure that neither one is true.

The definition of “basic education” has been forever a moving target.  In colonial days, neither women nor slaves went to public schools (at that time, you could just lump both those two groups together as slaves as far as voting rights were concerned, because women were also treated as property).  Those few who went to these schools learned the basics: the famous three R’s.  Most of the “learning” was through rote memorization and repetition.  If you happened to be a leftie, you were whipped until you wrote with your right hand, not the left; but, oh my goodness, what penmanship they had (e.g. the signature of John Hancock).  But heaven forbid you learned to think!  That was the job of the private schools that taught the children of the wealthy elites.

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