Mars Life?

Can't definitively say anything yet, but this is the most promising indication of extraterresial life humans have found beyond Earth. To me it sure looks like the splotches lichens leave on rocks, but non living chemical origins have not been ruled out. Even if it is proof of ancient Mars life I suppose there is still the possibility that it originated on Earth and was projected over to Mars by an asteroid impact or some other exchange in the early solar system. Either way, scientists would Love to have this sample in an Earth based lab to do more extensive analysis. And as Edgar Mitchell,6th man to walk on the moon said in 1974: "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do somethong about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quater of a million miles out and say, "Look at that,you son of a bitch."

Abortion Restrictions 2 Plus Years on...

"In Texas, the 2022 mortality rate for infants went up 8% to 5.75 per 1,000 births, compared to a 2% increase in the rest of the U.S., according to the study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Among causes of deaths, birth defects showed a 23% increase, compared to a decrease of about 3% in the rest of the U.S." "...its so-called Heartbeat Act went into effect banning all abortions after six weeks, with no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities." "...the study looks at a period from 2021 to 2022 after the Texas ban went into place,but before Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, we should point out. And it found infant deaths in Texas rose nearly 13 percent compared to an increase of just 1.8 percent in the rest of the country.." ...Dr. Suzanne Bell: "Our findings regarding changes in the cause of death suggest deaths due to fetal anomalies that were incompatible with life were the largest source of the overall increase in infant mortality that we saw in Texas.Death due to birth defects increased by 23 percent in Texas from 2021 to 2022, while, in the rest of the United States, they decreased by 3 percent. And in the absence of an abortion ban, pregnant people that receive a diagnosis of a fetal anomaly would be counseled on the option to terminate, which is the choice many people make when the anomalies are incompatible with life or would cause significant suffering for the child." etc etc...So, rather than abort an embryo that likely would not feel the same pain as a fully developed baby... here we are ...The religious right had not, and often do not, fully analyze the implications and consequences of their views.

Trump and the Ten Commandments

Now that Louisiana-a state full of evangelical Trump supporters- has voted to put the Ten Commandments in school rooms, I wondered how Trump behavior stacked up against those dictums from'God'...I found this assessment online, and Know that number 2 also has been violated since the writer posted it; remember a few years ago when Mr.Trump sold those ridiculous trading cards of himself? The hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. 1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me. - - The almighty dollar, or himself - probably violated. 2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. - - He doesn't carve, or order up statues to my knowledge? - probably ok. 3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain - - cussing, twitter, meetings with Pelosi - violated. 4) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy - - generally avoids church, works weekends - violated. 5) Honour thy father and thy mother - - no obvious data - probably ok. 6) Thou shalt not murder - - Iranian general - violated. 7) Thou shalt not commit adultery - - 3 wives, assorted escorts - violated. 8) Thou shalt not steal - - business history, contractors shorted, bankruptcies - violated. 9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour - - endless lies, against everyone - violated. 10) Thou shalt not covet (neighbour's house, wife, slaves, animals, anything else) - - assorted houses, wives, and anything else - violated. Now that the 'supreme court' has ruled immunity for presidents, miltary personnel must ask themselves- "Am I obligated to follow an immoral or illegal command?" from the commander in chief? And not that anyone will be convinced or swayed by humilty and reason and Jesus' true message of compassion, the book 'The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory-American Evangekicals in an Age of Extremmism' by Tim Alberta-a pastors son and longtime observer of Christian behavior- details the fall from grace of the modern evangelical church...Followers genuinely believe the country is going to hell, or, at least Democrats are, and this book offers information from an insiders view of how and why that is happening...

Cash...& perceived wealth

I am not anti-computers nor am I anti-credit cards; both have been very convenient to use for shopping, communication and research. I am also aware of the eventual obsolescence of cash as more transactions are performed digitally. However, I am from a generation when cash was dominant, and I have seen instances when processors at store registers have delayed the transaction due to whatever glitch was slowing them at that moment. About an hour ago I happened to buy something at the counter in the MacDonalds in Warren-something I rarely do-and the bill was $6.34, so I gave the clerk a five dollar bill, a one dollar bill and 35 cents. After working the register the clerk realized something did not seem correct when it told him the change was two dollars and some change, but he was not sure how to correct it. After he summoned a manager, I explained the situation and she thanked me for clarifying it. She too was uncertain exactly what had transpired...Using cash in this instance became as inefficient as a malfunctioning processor, but I hesitate to blame the clerk because he has grown up in a society weaning itself from physical money and likely has not had much experience nor education in its use. The current cost to produce a penny is 3.07 cents-mostly from the cost of the metal- which makes their use totally irrational.A nickel costs about 11.54 cents to produce, so that does not make sense either. A dime costs about 5 cents to produce and a quarter or half dollar also cost less than their value to make. A dollar bill costs 7.5 cents. So it seems that rounding prices up or down to the nearest dime would make sense if physical money stays in circulation. I suppose that when my generation dies the elimination of cash will be less controversial, although considering the security risks associated with digital transactions, maybe not... -Yesterday a retired couple we know-'professional' by trade -commented to their son that he would need "over a million dollars" to retire comfortably, so they advised him not to stop at that amount. Beth wisely remarked that it "depends on ones lifestyle", and we later wondered how people of wealth could become so disconnected from the realities of how most people in the world really live. "According to the 2023 Global Wealth Report, the average wealth per adult in 2022 was $84,718, which is a 3.6% decrease from 2021. The report also states that the wealth share of the global top 1% fell to 44.5% in 2022, and that wealth is concentrated in wealthier regions such as North America and Europe." "According to the World Bank, 712 million people were living in extreme poverty in 2022, which is a 23 million increase from 2019. The extreme poverty line is defined as less than $2.15 per day." So most people on this planet exist on far less than the priveleged few, and many of the latter deny the systematic historical reasons for why wealth has become concentrated in so few people. The covid pandemic exposed the truly necessary people in the world-those doing actual work at the lowest wages-but only by necessity have their wages begun to rise to liveable levels. Why not pay the people growing the food and stocking the shelves and installing the roofs and furnaces and doing all the other dirty, necessary jobs a fair wage rather than overpay lawyers and CEOs and actors and athletes and all the other superfluous people who could not exist without the former? Because money is power and people do all they can to hold onto power. The argument by some wealthy, educated people that Anyone can stock a shelf or pick a strawberry does not mean they themselves want to do it. So the wealth is hoarded by the few and they hold charities to assuage thier guilt rather than live on less. This retired couple and some wealthy people are not bad people; they are typical, church going citizens well liked in their community, but among the womans concerns yesterday was that her new, larger cell phone did not fit in her purse; there is something disturbing about a society where its citizens fret over such trivial problems- and where money can be put to better uses.

Eclipse

These are a few of many pictures my son Forrest took while watching the eclipse with Beth, myself, his wife Barb and daughter/granddaughter Renley. We travelled about 45 miles west to a small dam near Union City, where totality lasted just over 3 minutes...The clouds were threatening to obscure the view all morning, but the skies parted sufficiently in the afternoon to offer us fantastic viewing as the moon slowly covered the sun. As the corona revealed itself a phenomena called Bailys Beads appeared, which occurs as sunlight shines through craters and between mountains on the moon, then a thin red spectrum caused by hydrogen- called the chomoshere-became visible to the naked eye during totality. The drop in temperature as the sun became blocked was very noticable, as was the darkness as light was blocked. Watching a eclipse one becomes acutely aware of lifes total dependence on the sun, and how quickly the Earth would freeze were it to disappear; within months the ocean surface would freeze, as well as photsyntheisis stopping immediately,and most life, including humans would die within months to a year. Fortunately for those of us watching,the earth continued to rotate and the moons orbit continued, so light and warmth returned. Because of the present alighnment and relative sizes of the earth, moon and sun, total eclipses will only occur for another 500-600 millions years, and the next one in the USA will be in the year 2044.

Scenes From the West

        Spent 7 weeks escaping the winter this year, hiking and golfing and driving in circles around the southwest. This will be the last year using the van; in the future Beth and I plan on purchasing a hybrid-probably a Rav 4- and taking our bikes to Air B&Bs and motels around the country then exploring the areas in detail. The first picture is the first tee at a small 9 hole golf course in Jayton, TX, a town of about 1,200 people in the south eastern panhandle. I enjoyed this course because of its varied terrain, making it more interesting than many of the flat, open fairways common in the desert. This course was about two miles from the town which is located 25 miles from the next sizable town in the middle of the Texas desolation. In the same complex were the remains of two baseball fields and playground equipment-evidence that someone 30 years ago had invested a million dollars into their construction, only to be neglected and overgrown decades later. The golf course was being maintained by a few dedicated volunteers, and I could not help feeling saddened by the lost history of the place, where those bold dreams of long ago had become overgrown weeds in an outfield. ( click on the pics to enlarge...)

                That neglect is common across the country, as reflected in the abandoned downtown of Anton, TX , north of Lubbock. Except for a Dollar General store, Post Office, City Hall and a school, many small towns in the nation are virtually abandoned.  Crumbling houses and storefronts are all that remain, and it is easy to see that most of the population has moved on.  

   In central New Mexico is the Very Large Array, a radio telescope located far from light and electronic pollution,where astronomers can study pulsars and quasars and novas and other phenomena. Presently there are 27 antennas located on railroad tracks so they can be moved into various configurations, but plans are underway to replace this aging equipment with 160 new ones which will be supplemented by others across the nation. Personally, I encourage this use of tax dollars over weapons and other wasteful expenditures, and the walking tour enabled me a close up view of this far thinking scientific enterprise.                                                                                     The red canyon view was from a roadside rest near the Palo Duro Canyon area, also in the panhandle of Texas. I randomly stopped here and discovered this viewpoint, because Texas has numerous rest stops and some of them offer these wonderful views; the department of transportation actually makes an effort to consider terrain rather than just crowd people into congested places. There was no one else at this amazing site.

    The final picture is of the remains of a trailer off the Louisiana coast, devastated by a hurricane-the exact one I am not certain. That area south of Lake Charles has been hit by many storms in the past 5 years. The main lesson seems to be that even huge pylons are insufficient to protect against nature, and most of the people there are now living in travel trailers set on the concrete pads where their homes used to be. That seems to be the wisest option, because climate warming will only intensify the storms. Living in a movable house means that the owner can hook up the truck and move inland until the hurricane passes, then return and set up again.

 

Broken down Cars as of May 2024

 Whenever Beth and I take a road trip, we record the makes of the cars we see broken down beside the highway. We update after every trip and will continue to do so as we travel...As of the date in the title the totals were :

 Chevrolet/GMC -108   Dodge/Jeep- 64   Ford- 57   Honda/Acura- 35   Toyota/Lexus- 24   Nissan/Infiniti-23    Subaru-10     VW-8      Kia/Hyundai-14     Mazda- 5   Mitsubishi-5 BMW-5    Suzuki-2    Volvo-1   Also 5 unidentified vehicles of which we could not determine the manufacturer. 

       This is by no means a scientifically accurate indication of the reliability of these brands, because we do not know the age and maintenance records of the broken cars and other important information; generally speaking, foreign cars have a much better reliability record than domestic vehicles, and that pattern shows up in our informal observations. In the year 2022 the U.S. sales compared to 2021 were as follows.

1.	Toyota	1,849,751	Down 9%
2.	Ford	1,767,439	Down 2%
3.	Chevrolet	1,502,389	Up 6%
4.	Honda	881,201	Down 33%
5.	Hyundai	724,265	Down 2%
6.	Kia	693,549	Down 1%
7.	Jeep	684,612	Down 12%
8.	Nissan	682,731	Down 25%
9.	Subaru	556,581	Down 5%
10.	Ram Trucks	545,194	Down 16%
11.	GMC	517,649	Up 7%
12.	Mercedes-Benz	350,949	Up 7%
13.	BMW	332,388	Down 1%
14.	Volkswagen	301,069	Down 20%
15.	Mazda	294,908	Down 11%
16.	Lexus	258,704	Down 15%
17.	Dodge	190,793	Down 12%
18.	Audi	186,875	Down 5%
19.	Cadillac	134,726	Up 14%
20.	Chrysler	112,713	Down 2%
21.	Buick	103,519	Down 42%
22.	Acura	102,306	Down 35%
23.	Volvo	102,038	Down 16%
24.	Mitsubishi	102,037	Down 16%
25.	Lincoln	83,486	Down 4%
26.	Porsche	70,065	Flat
27.	Genesis	56,410	Up 14%
28.	INFINITI	46,619	Down 20%
29.	MINI	29,504	Down 1%
30.	Alfa Romeo	12,845	Down 30%
31.	Maserati	6,413	Down 10%
32.	Bentley	3,975	FLAT
33.	Lamborghini	3,134	Up 3%
34.	Fiat	915	Down 61%
35.	McLaren	840	Down 35%
36.	Rolls-Royce	460