Aspirations, oscillations and (bullshit) revelations

Aspirations

From the Washington Post: Deputy FBI director John Pistole also said that the talk of attacking the 110-story Sears Tower was "aspirational rather than operational".

So, anyone out there had any aspirations lately, any that you've said out loud that you might have second thoughts about? Anything nasty on your mind? Here's my understanding about what happens if you say to someone, "I'm thinking about blowing away the president": if the Secret Service hears about your vocalized aspiration, they'll come and talk to you, ask you about what you said, ascertain the level of your aspirations, so to speak. I'm not sure, but I don't think you're arrested for that. I'm not saying I know that for certain; it could be that making that kind of statment is akin to making a joke in an airport about a bomb. The authorities take that pretty seriously. And, if you've been out buying guns and ammo, nitro or other such neffarious things, you're in for a rough time from the Feds, and, maybe, rightly so. But, the seven reality-challenged men who have been arrested as the latest cell of terrorists hadn't done anything but talk about what they were going to do (at least, according to news/media reports, relying on statments by the FBI and other authorities). They haven't purchased bomb-making materials, a cache of guns, poison gas, nor any of the other 'usual' materials necessary to cause mayhem on a serious scale.

LET ME BE CLEAR here, I'm not condoning terrorism or anarchy on our shores, but the powers that be here are moving ever closer to the Orwell-ian culture of 'thought crimes', and that's a very serious situation indeed. Whether you want to re-read (or read, if younger than a certain age) "1984", or watch Minority Report, the Thought Police approach to law and order, or the enactment -- by legislation or by a quiet, secret signing of a directive -- of prevent-a-crime-that-hasn't-been-committed-yet kind of policing is a mind-bending nightmare that shouldn't be ignored. It's just so damn close to really happening on a much broader scale that we need to be aware that there's an administration, that nasty cabal, that continues to find success in keeping a huge chunk of otherwise rational people looking over their shoulders because "evil doers" (give me a moment while I vomit), are capable of popping up everywhere. I know there are terrorists, I know most of them are in Iraq, and I know that the seven knuckleheads might have been on the road to death and destruction, but let's keep an eye on this story, because if it falls off the media radar, it will be because there was nothing there to begin with, and that will be scarier, in one sense, than an army of phantom evil doers.

Oscilations

From the L.A. Times comes a report about the melting waaayyyy-faster-than-anticipated Greenland ice sheet: "Two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico, [it] shapes the world's weather..." Essentially, this is a bad thing, really bad, and another (yes, yet another) example of the planet moving towards a state of hostility towards life, at least the kind of life that allows us to, well, live.

In all the give and take about climate change, of which all but the most mutton-headed agree is an increasing, not-good kind of thing, there's a very simple principle that is overlooked, and it's anchored in the natural laws of the universe: nothing disappears. Let me write that again: nothing disappears.

Things 'change state', but they don't go away. The most obvious example is water to steam. The laws of thermodynamics essentially state that 'creating' energy is actually the transferance of energy from one place or state to another, and that what you put into something you do by taking it from somewhere else. That whole cycle of life thing is more than a philosophy, and it needs to be taken just a tad more seriously. I understand the need for balance between industry and the environment -- I am after all, using electricity, silicon, plastic, lead, phosphor, glass and a crapload of other stuff to create these words, and you are using the same to read them. BUT, for those non-believers, doubters, futurists (as in, "fuck it, I won't be around when everything goes to hell anyway") and just plain grumpologists, the very mechanics of the micro- and macro universe (they're the same thing, by the way) make the truth/facts impossible to ignore.

Keep using energy to manufacture and distribute massive amounts of carbon dioxide around the globe, and the teeter-totter of life's playground will finally, sooner than we'd like, just teeter, or totter, but it will not do both.

Nothing disappears.

Revelations

Rep. Santorum, and those with a vested interest, have found the WMD, and SURPRISE, the Administration is rummaging through bank accounts.

Okay, okay, Santorum didn't find them, but he did get his mits on a previously classified document that describes the discovery of 500 munitions, weapons of sarin and mustard gas agents. SecState Rummy says, "They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found."

I can barely go here, but I will: intell officials describe the weapons as produced before the '91 Gulf War, and there's no evidence to date of chemical munitions manufactured since then. Let's kill this story, okay? Someone tell Fox and Limbaugh not to get all orgasmic about this.

As for the bank accounts thing, Chenney's pissed off because, dang, the MEDIA has let the cat out of the bag again. Did anyone really think, especially after the Ma Bell is a spy thing, that the Admin wasn't nosing around the financial end of things. A WMD inspector, who was also a U.S. intell agent, who I've been working with on a story or two, told me some time ago that a senate committee asked him his recommendation for cutting off the terrorists at the knees, and he responded with, "kill the accountants". He wasn't kidding.

More on this whole thing in future posts.