The Damaged Lobe

If you’re not drinking the tea…

…then you’re drinking the Kool-Aid.  I remember when a friend of mine, a devout Tea Partier, posted that comment on his Facebook page.  That is the premise on which the Tea Party movement moves.  You are with them or you are against them and if you are against them then you stand for all that is wrong in this country today.  This sort of clear-cut and definitive philosophy has allowed what was a fledgling movement two years ago to really gain traction and become a serious player in the upcoming 2012 presidential election.  This movement has become so popular it has created a divide between moderate Republican’s (RINO’s as they are referred to, Republicans In Name Only) to the point where 49% of the GOP members have either joined the movement or at least agree with the movements philosophy.  It’s any wonder that such a movement could gain such widespread popularity, with the nation’s economy in ruins, government bailouts of corporations, a monolithic national debt and Charlie Sheen torpedoing his career and my sanity.  Such polarizing candidates as Michelle Bachman (Polarizing if you are not a Tea Party member) are making noise in the early debates, slamming current front-runner Republican and moderate Rick Perry on his mandating of the HPV  vaccine to school girls in Texas (she cites that the vaccine may cause mental retardation.  She may also think that Unicorns should be taken off of the endangered species list).  Whether or not the claim is true, and it’s not, she stands against what all Tea Party members stand against and that is any sort of government mandated health care.  Hell, any sort of government mandated program at all.  The platform of the Tea Party is to bring America back to its roots.  Bring Christianity back into our lives, abolish abortion all together and inform most of us that we are wrong on evolution and global warming.  After all one hundred percent of all liberals and fifty one percent of the GOP are delusional, having been all of our lives drinking the Kool-Aid. 

If you go to the official tea party website you will find that the writing seems almost borderline revolutionary.  If you don’t agree with what the tea party stands for which is less government, individual freedom, personal responsibility, free markets and returning the governing power back the individual states and the people you will be exposed, or if you wait long enough a Democrat will expose himself on Twitter.  Though the tea party is often associated with Republicans they do not associate themselves with either party and would support and elect a member from either side.  Really?  I don’t foresee even the most moderate democrat being supported by the Tea Party. 

In a recent poll conducted by CNN that stated the Republican Party was sharply divided, it found that Tea Partiers were mostly white, no surprise there, educated, older where as your generic moderate republican is more likely to be less educated, female, younger and less likely to say they are either an evangelical or a born again Christian.  What?  Tea Partiers are theological radicals?  Possibly, but let’s remember where the metaphor ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ originated from.  The 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana where the enigmatic Reverend Jim Jones served Kool-Aid (actually it was Flavor Aid but that just wouldn’t sound right) to his devout followers laced with arsenic.  ‘Drinking the Kool Aid’ is associated with blindly following an ideology without question.   So who is drinking what here?  It comes down to you to decide, which ironically is what the Tea Party stands for and when the Kool-Aid guy comes crashing through your living room wall during Jeopardy, hide the arsenic.

The Tea Party wants America to return to 1776 politics and self-responsibility.  Bring the church back; rid the country of the moral decay and selfishness that has brought it to its knees.  We always look back to the old days and think things were different.  Let’s see, Ben Franklin couldn’t keep his fly zipped, Thomas Jefferson fathered a child with a slave (oh, and yes, we were in the human trafficking business back then) and we had revolted against the legitimate government of Great Britain and committed high treason.  

I don’t know.  Things haven’t changed much.  Well I don’t care who’s in charge.  Just don’t take away my internet.

Honestly I do not disagree at all with what the Tea Party is trying to accomplish.  I disagree with their platform, I’m the enemy, but I respect them.  If anything, they don’t mince words.

Pass the salt please and take your time, say about a decade…

Michele Obama has announced that her goal of providing healthier meals to kids is approaching success after Darden foods signed an agreement to reduce sodium in their foods ten percent by 2016 and twenty percent in a decade.  This is a success? We will have a fully functioning moon base by the time we hit the twenty percent reduction in salt.  Are we really that addicted to salty, fatty foods that we can’t just whack ten percent by the end of the week?  We have to take five years?  The obesity rate in this country is appalling, agreed, but making the restaurants yank a grain of salt a day from their recipes so Americans don’t start convulsing on the floor from salt withdrawals is hardly a success.  She puts full blame on restaurants for serving unhealthy meals.  I put full blame on the parents for ordering them.  Hmmm…personal responsibility, maybe the tea party is onto something.

Have things become so bad in our country that our government has to tell us what food to order?  It’s becoming Orwellian.  Soon we will all have to stand in front of a giant screen in a town square with our neighbors and friends being excruciatingly force-fed hours of Wolf Blitzer.  You know I just can’t think straight anymore.  I’m going to LMAO, LOL then tlk 2 U ltr. 

Somebody please be in charge of my life.

To boldly go where no High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher has gone before

I blogged a couple of years ago (see “Nonsensical Ravings of a Lunatic Mind- Week in Review” Oct 22^nd, 2009), which was around the time I stopped blogging, about the flurry of planets outside of our own solar system being discovered using the High Accuracy Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS.  HARPS is a fascinating telescope that, once you tuck away the physics behind it that most of us with smaller brains would never understand, finds planets and determines their mass by measuring the change in wavelengths in the light spectrum as the parent star moves towards and then away from us while in the gravitational tug of war with its fledgling planets.  The change in wavelength is known as the Radial Velocity.  This of course is somewhat similar to my own device I developed while I was in school, the Very Inaccurate Michelin Radial Intestinal Flatulent Gas Spectrum Analyzer (VIMRIFGSA).  It wasn’t much of a success but researchers stood upon the shoulders of my discovery and now we are finding planets left and right.  Announced recently by the European Southern Observatory was the discovery of fifty new Exo-Planets and that one of these worlds, with the elegant, poem inspiring name of HD 85512b, is about 3.6 times the earth’s mass and resides in a favorable distance from its sun that could promote liquid water and possibly harbor life.

These discoveries come at a time in which our own space program is in a sort of space limbo.  Questions as to whether or not our space program is viable or even fiscally responsible puts the future of the space program in question.  Many years and administrations from now it is unlikely we will ever see a space program as robust and successful as the one that got us to the moon and on to Mars.   Predicting the future of NASA is about as reliable as predicting the weather.  Mr. Obama has stated that space exploration will continue, both robotic and manned albeit much more privatized, competitive and with more foreign collaboration.  I agree with Obama’s approach.  Take the government out of it, make it competitive and deliver a better product at the end of the day.  Because at thirty six light years away, we sure has hell aren’t getting to HD 85512b on a Soyuz.  Regardless of what vehicle we are using, getting there will probably never happen but the desire to explore our universe should never be stifled, it’s what makes us human.  It’s the dream of far-away lands and mysterious and fascinating civilizations that give us reason to look up at the stars every night and know that we are not alone.  

In The Name of Love and Kalashnikovs

Iran has been working with the international community on striking a deal that would release American hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal from an Iranian prison.  After reviewing the case, where hiker Sarah Shourd had been released earlier in the year, American authorities have decided to arrest the three for violating international laws of common sense.  Choosing a war zone that borders a reclusive non secular state with a hatred of all things western to go hiking in as if they would prove that the Peoples of the world can be united though love and understanding was at best, a very bad and naïve idea.  A bond of $1MM is being raised to release the two who apparently deserve release much more than the wrongfully jailed Iranian political prisoners just because they are American.  We should all take a lesson from this.  For instance if you want to unite the Peoples of the worlds together through peace, love and understanding, start with Facebook or face a Kalashnikov. 

Is That a Python in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

A man was recently arrested at a Miami airport for trying to smuggle seven baby pythons and an additional three baby tortoises in his underwear and pockets.  What was the giveaway? The full body scanner or the constant need to adjust himself?  I mean to have seven baby pythons in your underwear?  Seems at the least uncomfortable and I would be constantly worried about having a certain organ partially swallowed by one of the Reptiles.  The TSA agents however must have been very impressed…

“Hey Gary check this out.  This guy has seven Johnsons.”

“Jeez Bill, his wife must be exhausted.”

“Could be.  Say, they seem to be moving autonomously.”

“I agree with your conclusions Bill.  His Johnson’s do seem to possess independent thought and freewill, it makes me wonder if this is a genetic adaptation or merely a congenital fluke.”

“I dunno Gary.  Let’s go get a Philly Cheese Steak.  I’m starved.”

Who says we’re intelligent life?

 Hero of the Week

You have probably all have heard about Medal of Honor recipient Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer.  He saved thirty six lives but lost some of his best friends on a fateful day in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.  Driving five times through unrelenting fire to rescue members of his platoon Sgt Meyer acted with complete disregard for his own safety.  All things being equal he would trade his medal and that day for any of the lives that were lost.  In honor of those who lost their lives that day a memorial service will be held at the same time that Meyer receives his Medal of Honor.  A touching move from a man who never wanted to be a hero.  Over 7,000 American and Coalition troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Let’s keep supporting our heroes abroad.

 Keep our Children Safe

I am realizing more than ever now just how dangerous this world is for our children.  It seems as though keeping our kids safe from those who would do them harm is a twenty four hour seven day a week job.  I recently discovered that my twelve year old daughter had signed onto a singles website while at her mothers.  I found this out when I was scanning her I Pod Touch after she got home.  Technology enhances and enriches our lives but it also allows for some of the most vile predators in the country the ability to prey on our children.  To try to get my daughter, who wants to be popular and receive attention, to understand just how dangerous our world is seems like an impossible task at times, it’s just too easy for our little girls and boys to get pulled into the web of deception perpetrated by a pedophile.  This became all too real when to my horror I saw that a thirty five year old man had responded to her profile telling her that she was cute.

If my daughter was looking for attention she got it.  I am paying even more attention than ever now to what she is doing, who she is texting, who she is calling.  We as parents hate to have to intrude so much on our kid’s lives but in this high-tech world that we live in, vile despicable people have the tools to steal our children away from us.  I really scared my little girl when I told how a predator can piece together innocent slips of information gathered over a period of chats telling them where they live, where they go to school and even when their parents are at work.  I think I got my point across, but I also woke up a bit.  I was checking up on her but apparently not enough.  The pedophiles are always one step ahead.

Parents I beg you.  Stay informed, pay attention and most of all, inform your kids.  They need to make the right decisions.  According to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children an average of 2,185 children are reported missing every day in the United States. 

 - SC

Goodnight to you all.

Goodnight to you Jenny.