John’s Blog

THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG

Most of you are familiar with the fairy tale about the goose that laid a golden egg.

It did so on a regular basis and brought a steady flow of wealth to its owner until it was disemboweled to get to the source. It died and produced no more golden eggs.

When the new Soviet government came into power in Russia and was struggling for its existence in the early 1920’s it turned to its arch philosophical enemy, Capitalism, for survival.

The new government, against all the principles of Communism, understood that without trade from the Western countries, the so called Capitalist Imperialists, and without investment from within, its own capitalists, it was doomed to collapse.

In short, Capitalism saved Soviet Communism from failure.

Fifty years ago George F. Kennan, who had been an ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote a book, “Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin” in which he said:

“The Western governments came to hate the Soviet leaders for what they did. The Communists, on the other hand, hated the Western governments for what they were regardless of what they did.”

The Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung professed the same goals, that is the complete destruction of Capitalism within their country.

With the publication of Mao’s “Little Red Book” in 1966, “The Quotations”, we saw the reduction of a powerful and huge country to that of a life-style that existed in Medieval Europe.

China eventually learned that it required Capitalism to support its productive output. Today the US is deeply in debt because of the lesson that China had learned, that is, Communism does not work and without Capitalists to invest the profit that they have accumulated, China would become a country of peasants living only off the land.

Most people in the US and the rest of the world don’t seem to understand that without Capitalism, that is the reward for the effort of production and reward for the risk of investment of the surplus of production, an economic system will eventually wind down and collapse.

Nothing can long survive without nourishment—whether it is a plant, an animal or an economic system. We are presently seeing the effects at this time in the US of banks being overly cautious in their policies of loaning money to potential home and real estate investors or business ventures. Our economy is dying.

The absolute goal as stated by the true Communists is the total destruction of the Capitalist system.

Although the words “Capitalism” and “Imperialism” are used interchangeably by many people they are not the same thing. US Imperialism has not existed for a long time but the word is still used to attack the only economic system that can expect to be viable.

There are many in the US and most of the other countries of the world who want to see the Capitalist system replaced by Socialism and Communism.

That, in my opinion, is disemboweling the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs.

Copyright: John W. Malenda June 2010

DIPLOMACY & PUBLIC OPINION

In a democratic society, in which actions are taken based on decisions made not by individuals but by consensus, compromises are made until acceptable conclusions leading to action are accepted.

This seems obvious and should require no elaborate explanation of how democracy works.

However, the conclusions that are reached never satisfy all the parties involved; there is always some discontent. Each of the individuals involved wants his stamp of creativity on the final document but this can never be.

As a result, government by coalition can never achieve the goals of all of those involved.

Decision by consensus on an international scale becomes even more complex and creates discontent on even a larger scale; not personal recognition but protection or advancement of sovereign interests.

Every country involved in the decision making and goals in international agreement wants something as a result of the decision for a course of action.

That “something” had been in the past territorial gain, trade advantages with respect to manufactured goods or raw materials or direct financial gain through loans, either at low interest rates or hopefully, for the recipient, ”debt forgiveness”.

Unfortunately for the United States it had always been the most productive and hence the wealthiest country on the planet and all other countries looked to it as a source to provide those things that they did not possess.

This is no longer the case. The American debt has become unmanageable but the rest of the world either does not understand that or does not accept that as the truth.

This is because of the perception of public opinion both within the United States and abroad. The people of the world do not understand that the United States is no longer the “owner of the means of production”; the broad definition of which is Capitalism.

As long as propagandists within our country keep advancing this myth it will become more and more difficult to deal realistically with problems within our country and our relationships with the rest of the world.

We are no longer the “source of plenty” for the world or our own citizens.

Copyright: John W. Malenda June 2010

Miss Smith enjoyed her job as a Third Grade teacher. The enthusiasm of the 8 year old’s made her work meaningful and exciting.

The one problem that she had though is that she was in a minority.

Her brother was a Marine on duty in Afghanistan. Her father had been a Marine in Vietnam and her grandfather had survived the winters and the bullets of Korea while in the Army.

Miss Smith, because of family history, was a “Conservative”.

One morning on her way to school she heard something on the radio that disturbed her very much. She decided to try an experiment with her class.

“Who would like to pretend to be a General…..” but before she could finish her sentence little Willy Simpson was running to her desk waving both arms yelling, “Me. Me”

“You didn’t let me finish. We are going to play a little geography game today and the General will be the most important General today.

He will have to make a serious decision because he will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Do you know what that means, Willy?”

“No Miss Smith.”

Willy was far from being the brightest kid in the class but she always appreciated his enthusiasm so she said, “OK Willy. You will be the General.”

She handed Willy a piece of string with a lot of knots in it.

“Willy, each one of those knots represents a thousand miles on the globe on the table over there.

Everyone who has watched TV must know where Iran is so Willy, put one end of the string in the center of Iran and hold it there. Move the string over to the Capitol of the United States, Washington, DC.

How far is it from Iran to our Capitol?”

Willy stretched out the string and said, “About six and a half knots.”

“Very good”, Miss Smith said, “That’s about six and a half thousand miles.”

“Now Willy, holding the string look at the globe and tell me what country is about two and a half knots from Iran.”

Willy looked and said, “Poland.”

“Very good Willy. Can you see the city that the string passes over?”

“Warsaw.”

“And what’s just past Poland?”

“The Baltic Sea.”

“Now General, suppose that someone in Iran wanted to shoot an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, an ICBM, at our Capitol and you wanted to shoot it down before it hit Washington would you want to shoot it down over the United States or somewhere else?”

“Probably somewhere else,” Willy answered.

“Willy, an ICBM travels very fast, about 15,000 miles per hour, and in ten minutes after it was fired it would pass over Poland. What would you do?”

General Willy answered, “I would ask the Polish people to shoot it down.”

Let’s get back to reality. If an ICBM fired from Iran fell short of it’s projected distance to Washington it would land in either New England or a bit further on, New York.

Do we have an anti-ballistic missile defense system in the US? According to the media we do not and will not until near the end of this decade.

Did we have an anti-ballistic missile system that could have been deployed in Poland?

Even a third-grader could figure that one out.

Copyright: John W. Malenda April  2010

I have been on this planet a long time and I have been hearing that phrase ever since I was a kid.

I hear it sometimes many times a day, from everyone who thinks about running for Town Council up to and including the President of the United States.

“We need clean and affordable energy.”

Let me tell you something about energy. It comes at a price.

We generate electricity in a number of ways but in all but one we need to crank a generator. The exception is a solar panel, the photovoltaic conversion of sunlight energy into a flow of electrons.

We crank generators with a turbine powered by steam, water, wind or burning fuel—the jet engine.

With the exception of wind and water all the other systems use steam made by heating water by burning hydrocarbons or heat generated by the decomposition—fission—of nuclear material.

Generators turned by jet engines burn either gas or burn refined jet engine fuel.

Those are our only options. The dream of generating heat from fusion, the squeezing together of hydrogen atoms to form helium with the byproduct of heat only occurs on stars. The best minds on the planet have been attempting to achieve this for decades but have failed. The temperatures and pressures required are not attainable on a continuous basis.

Now to some of the reasons why we will not have “clean and affordable energy.”

The best deal that you can get regarding energy is to hang your wash on an old-fashioned clothesline but your neighbors and environmentalists don’t want to see your underwear flapping in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags.

Neither do they want to see wind turbines against the skyline on their hills.

Neither do they want to see solar panels on your roof or in your yard if there is not enough sun that hits your roof.

Neither do they want to see dams on the rivers.

Neither do they want to see power plants and transmission towers on their favorite beach.

So to keep saying, “We need to find new ways to generate clean and affordable energy”, accept the fact. There are no new ways.

KNOW WHAT WE NEED?

“Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”

Looks good on a Christmas card but it ain’t gonna happen anymore than we will get affordable and clean energy.

It’s esthetics versus utility.

It’s wishes versus reality.

When you are done chewing your nails, go to Whole Living Today to get your blood pressure back down to normal.

Two years ago we lost our dog of 13 years. We have always had a dog but after the last I felt that I did not want to buy another puppy.

A puppy takes a lot of care. You must feed it, make sure it has water, take it for walks, play with it, teach it to interact socially, take it to the vet and spend a lot of time with it.

Yesterday I opened a can of worms that I have been trying to avoid since I started this BLOG–politics and Global Warming.

They are intertwined.

Now that I have, I must follow through on a series of related articles….or look like an idiot.

In short, yesterday, “I Bought a puppy”.

The planet is warming. There is enough good data to support this at the present time. We do not know if it will continue to warm up or if it will start to cool.

So far this winter some seriously cold weather and snow have been seen around the world.

In the 1970’s the fear was that the planet was cooling.

As I said yesterday it is cyclic and unpredictable.

There are greater amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere today than there had been as shown by measurements in core samples from ice.

Whether the Sun started the warming cycle a couple of centuries ago and people are adding to it now is a possibility.

Warming of the northern regions releases carbon dioxide from the permafrost along with a far more effective greenhouse gas, methane.

Glaciers are melting. That too is verifiable.

Iceland and Greenland are volcanic in nature and some of the glacial melting can be coming from the rock under the ice and not just the atmosphere.

Science is full of symbols and numbers. Symbols frighten some people but they are “shorthand” for abstract concepts: momentum, energy, force etc.

Numbers indicate magnitude or quantity.

I will try to keep these at a minimum

Most people have heard of “Carbon Dating”.

There are three isotopes of carbon. An isotope has the same chemical properties but different internal configuration for an element.

Carbon 12 is the most common form of carbon and about 99 % of all carbon exists in this state.

Carbon 13 makes up most of the rest.

But there is also Carbon 14, a radioactive form that disintegrates to about half of itself in 5600 years. This is termed, “Half Life”.

Carbon is the major constituent of plant life and it is from this that we derive all of our common energy sources, our hydrocarbons: firewood, coal, oil and natural gas.

No matter what hydrocarbon that we burn to extract the energy that the sun originally put into it, the by-product is water and carbon dioxide.

By measuring the residual carbon 14 contained in ice samples we can determined when that carbon was captured and stored.

Ice core samples do indicate that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has been increasing during the period of the industrial revolution and  the increasing population on the planet.

It seems obvious to conclude that people are the cause.

Maybe but maybe not.

If the Sun triggered this warming trend agriculture would spread and populations would grow because there is more food to support them. It may be a corollary rather than a cause.

I am in total agreement that we must reduce carbon emissions but not catastrophically destroy our ability to lead reasonably comfortable lives until we really understand what is happening.

I will continue with this subject in a series of articles that deal with power generation, electric vehicles and nuclear energy.

“Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of…. Will the World Turn?”.