Aflockalypse, Apple and solar power plants

It came to light yesterday that Apple has begun “user-proofing” the iPhone with a new type of security screw in an effort to keep users from opening the device.  Apparently the screws are swapped out anytime a customer brings an iPhone 4 in for service, and the owner of the phone is not told about the switch.  Apple has refused to comment, but it is widely known that it tries very hard to protect its secrets.  I think this has more to do with trying to protect the $79 they will charge you to replace the battery instead of you being able to do it yourself for considerably less.  One more reason not to buy an Apple product as far as I am concerned.  I don’t own one, don’t plan on owning one.

Everybody can take a breath of relief, according to a New Jersey Institute of Technology source.  The giant red star Betelgeuse will not explode in 2012 as previously predicted.  While its distance from earth can only be estimated, the current best guess is that Betelgeuse is 640 light years from earth.  For those who may have napped through that portion of sixth grade science class, a light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in a year through free space.  That means that if Betelgeuse exploded today, the people on earth would not see it until the year 2651, or 640 years from now.  If you want to keep tabs on it for yourself, go out on a clear night and find the constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is the pinkish star in the upper left corner of the constellation.  If you look tonight, you are looking at history.  The light you see is at least 640 years old, if the estimates are correct.

A new species of crayfish has been discovered in Tennessee, and is said to be at least twice the size of any others that live there.  Found in a creek that is frequented by human visitors, this 5” long specimen has managed to elude detection until now.  Makes you wonder why we spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to investigate the flora and fauna in places like the Amazon jungle and ignore our own back yards.  (Side note…I love fried crawfish tails!)

The “Aflockalypse” continues with reports of more mass bird die-offs.  These happened in California and Italy this time and the “end of the world” fans are all abuzz about it.  As I said in an earlier issue, this is just the normal workings of Mother Earth, it’s just now people are actually paying attention and have the technology to document it.

In the last issue of this blog, we talked about several renewable energy sources.  One of the best and the most abundant energy sources is our own sun, which brings us all sorts of energy every day, free of charge.  Many folks have taken up the task of inventing ways to harness this bonanza, but as with everything else it has its opponents.  There’s a new solar power plant under construction in the California desert which is being challenged in court now by a group who claim this project poses a threat to migratory birds, the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, ground water resources and rare plants.  The proposed facility will produce 370 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes.  It never seems to matter what gets proposed, one or more of these “environmental” groups opposes it, yet these same groups are the first to say that we have to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. So what would they have us do? Just stop everything?  Life will go on in spite of all this, and we should do what we can to preserve the natural condition of the earth, but we have to have food and power.  A return to living in harmony with nature is not possible, and will not happen.  You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  We are an industrial society, and will continue to be so until the actual “end of the world”.  We may bring that about ourselves, or it may be a cataclysmic natural occurrence, but it will end sometime.

Methane, wood gas, hydrogen...which to choose?

This edition will explore a few alternative fuels.  Some are more practical than others. Some hold legitimate promise.  Others….well, let’s just say that they are ok, if you can make it work.

Let’s start off with a look at home produced methane. Methane, commonly known as natural gas is a renewable resource and can be produced at home.  The internet is full of plans to build your own effluence digester.  Yes, I said effluence…the stuff that any animal that eats leaves behind.  If you live on a farm, the raw materials for home made methane are all around.  Chickens, pigs, cows and horses will provide you with plenty of it, to be had simply by shoveling it up.  Don’t laugh; if you have a large dairy farm and get hooked up with the right people and equipment, you can make as much or more money from the methane as you can the milk!  Many cities make methane as a part of their sewage treatment facilities.  It’s relatively easy to do, but on a small scale, can be a lot of work.  The leftovers make great fertilizer too.  Methane can be used as a vehicle fuel, but specialized equipment is necessary, as well as extensive modification to a standard vehicle.  There have been some vehicles commercially produced to run on methane, but they are not widely available.

Ethanol is another fuel that can be made at home as well as on a large scale. There are lots of sources on the internet for information on the how and why (and why not) of making ethanol. Home production is possible, but as with methane, it’s a lot of work, and can lead to legal entanglements.  Check your local and state laws concerning making and using ethanol.  Already widely used commercially as a fuel, it’s sold in most states in various mixes with gasoline.  It’s detractors say that using ethanol can interfere with the food supply since it’s made from corn, beets, sugar, and other potential food crops for both humans and animals.  A 25% or greater mix with gasoline can damage engines that are not equipped for its use, and some say performance and mileage is somewhat degraded by using ethanol as a fuel.  Any mix with gasoline, while reducing the overall amount of gasoline used, only prolongs the problem of using gasoline as a fuel in the first place.

Biodiesel also holds potential for relieving at least some of our dependence on petroleum, but it has its own problems.  Yes, it’s a renewable resource, but like ethanol, it’s a bandaid.  Most biodiesels need to be mixed with normal diesel or ethanol to burn efficiently  in today’s engines. On top of that, it also runs the risk of affecting the food supply.  Most homemade biodiesel is in created by recycling used cooking oil from restaurants.  Let’s face it folks, there simply isn’t enough to go around.

Wood gas…this pops up every time gasoline prices skyrocket.  Produced in a contraption called a “gasifier”, this fuel is made by partially burning wood chips, sawdust, charcoal, coal, natural rubber or similar materials. Waste products like rice hulls can also be used. Wood gas itself is a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and in some cases methane and tar.  This process is widely documented and will not be explained in detail here.  Suffice it to say, you can run an internal combustion engine on this fuel with little modification to the engine. The first gasifier was built in 1839, and the first use as a vehicular fuel was in 1901.  Commercial gasifiers are available for purchase, and make a good source of fuel for use in emergency situations, but do you really want to drive down the highway with a wood fire burning in your vehicle?

Hydrogen is in many circles the holy grail of alternative fuels. Stars run on it, so why not cars?  Early attempts at using hydrogen as an automotive fuel were fraught with problems, mainly that of safely storing enough of it on board to get you to where you wanted to go.  While burning hydrogen technically doesn’t produce as much energy as gasoline, it’s much easier to ignite.  A crash could result in an enormous fireball. Fortunately, the invention of the fuel cell alleviated that problem to a great extent.  The internet is full of scams about running your car on water, so if you venture into this arena, be careful how you spend your money.  While it can be produced at home, safely doing so in quantities sufficient to power an automobile is probably beyond the capabilities of the average do-it-yourselfer. Still, it is the most abundant substance in the universe, so we should be able to figure out how to use it, don’t you think?

Hybrids and Full Electric cars? Maybe, maybe not...

In a recent edition of this blog, I made the comment that making batteries for hybrid automobiles did more damage to the environment than just driving a regular car would do over its life. An admittedly broad statement and one of my readers asked if I had any sources to back up that statement.

Actually the source for that comment was me. And no, I don't have any actual facts to back it up, just an application of common sense to how my limited knowledge of how these things are made. He made mention of two articles in his blog that have opposing points of view on this issue. Both make valid and interesting points, and below I offer a few of my own. The following is an edited copy and paste quote from the comment I left on his blog in reply and I have added links to the articles he mentions so you can read them for yourself.

The TreeHugger article (found here: Life Cycle Analysis of Electric Car) is interesting and I don't dispute the information in it with one exception. It concentrates on lithium-ion batteries and those are used mainly in full electric and "plug-in" hybrids and there just aren't that many on the roads. The Prius and other popular gas-electric hybrids use a nickel metal hydride battery pack, not lithium-ion. Nickel mining has been linked to all sorts of ailments in humans and to any number of environmental problems from fish kills to acid rain. Toyota has recently announced a lithium-ion plug in version of the Prius will become available sometime in the future, but it has yet to go into production. The eHow article (found here: Environmental Impact) make mention of the tremendous amounts of energy consumed by mining and processing these materials, but neither article explores the logistics of it all. The mining equipment consumes an enormous amount of energy, as does the refining process. This is true whether the metal is lithium or nickel. That energy is in the form of diesel, gasoline, and electricity, natural gas and propane. It also takes a lot of energy (trucks, forklifts, cranes, railcars, ships) to get from the mine to the refinery. Once the metal is refined, it gets moved to the factories that make the batteries. More trucks, ships, rail cars, cranes, forklifts, etc. That factory uses lots of energy as well, but now we have to package these batteries so that they can be shipped safely. That creates a demand for cardboard, plastic and wooden crates, and all sorts of energy must be used to produce and ship these to the battery factory. Once crated, they then are shipped to various warehouses around the world until needed, when they get shipped again to where ever they are installed. Then if you think about it further, there is even more energy consumed to haul away the waste products from each stage of this process. The amount diesel exhaust alone would give Al Gore nightmares. If you then add the energy and materials consumed to make the equipment necessary to produce and ship these batteries it just gets worse. And for what...a car that gets 5-15 more miles per gallon than its gasoline powered counterpart? Not to mention that a diesel version of that same car would get about the same mileage as the hybrid (end of quote).

It’s currently very fashionable to drive around in a hybrid and pretend that you’re doing your part to save the planet, and if the point of these cars are to give everyone warm fuzzies about doing that, then fine.  If the point is to simply reduce the cost associated with getting where we need to go, ok these cars do that quite well. But are they really environmentally friendly?  Hardly.  Most of these batteries are made in Japan, Korea and China. The nickel used in the nickel metal hydride batteries comes from Russia, Canada, Australia and Indonesia. Most of the world’s lithium comes from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and the United States. Large reserves have recently been discovered in China as well.  So if you have to ship this stuff all over the world, how is that “green”?

Let’s take a look at some of the currently available hybrids and plug-in electrics. The source for this information is Hybrid Cars.com . At the top the list is the Prius, made by Toyota. They start at around $22,000 and get an estimated 50 mpg. Its closest competition is the Honda Civic Hybrid, which costs more and gets less gas mileage (42 mpg est.). Following closely on the Civic’s heels is the Honda Insight at 41 mpg and and MSRP of around $18,000. This car bears a striking resemblance to the Prius, by the way.

Ford makes two entries at 39 mpg, in the form of the Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrids, but with a much higher MSRP at more than $28,000.  Hyundai throws it’s hat in the ring with a hybrid Sonata tipping in at 38 mpg and and MSRP of just under $25,000.  Of course, if your tastes run to more exotic and luxurious cars but you still want your warm fuzzy about saving the planet, you can get a BMW ActiveHybrid 7.  It has an MSRP of $103,000 and gets all of 20 mpg, but you can feel good about driving it because it’s a hybrid, right?

Keep in mind too, that for about the same money as a Prius, you can get a Volkwagon Jetta diesel that offers 140 hp, will get an estimated 42 mpg on the highway and comes in a wagon if you need one. And a big plus to any diesel powered car is the option of biodiesel, which frees you from petroleum based fuel all together.

On the petroleum free note, let’s take a side trip down the “all electric” lane for a bit.  There are not many of these to talk about and unless you live very close to where you work and shop, they aren’t very practical. First up is the Nissan Leaf. According to Plugincars.com, the Leaf is a 5 seat sedan, with a base MSRP of $32,800, a zero to 60 time of around 8 seconds and a top speed of 90 mph,so it compares to most small gasoline powered cars in performance.  There’s no transmission, so no need to shift gears and it is very quiet. Where it falls down is range. Nissan says you can go up to 100 miles on one charge, which is great if you intend to use this car as an in town commuter with a short trip.  Add heavy cargo, or hilly terrain, or cold weather, or 4 full grown adults, or all of the above, and you could be looking at as few as 40 miles on a charge. Recharging has a couple of options, but the standard 3 prong 110-120 VAC outlet at home can take as long as 17 hours to fully recharge a depleted battery.  For those of you who live here in Arkansas and are familiar with the area, let’s put that in perspective.  If you left Fayetteville at 8 in the morning headed for Ft. Smith, assuming it took 90 minutes to get there and it depleted your battery, you wouldn’t get back home till 4 a.m. the next morning. Still, if you could afford it as strictly a “work” car or “grocery getter”, you could make a stand for the environment if you drove it for 50 years or so.

The Chevy Volt, while technically all electric, does have a gasoline powered generator on board to charge the battery pack, and extends the range up to 300 miles. This use of gasoline at least in my book makes it a hybrid and at an MSRP starting at over $40,000, there won’t be many of these out saving the planet.

Tesla on the other hand claims an impressive 245 miles per charge, as well as 0-60 in 3.7 seconds (as fast as a Viper or Corvette) and a top speed of 125 mph for the Roadster. They also claim that using the Tesla High Power Wall Connector at 240VAC will recharge the battery in 3 ½ hours (see Tesla for more information).  All this performance is not cheap, with the MSRP at over $100,000. These are by far the best looking of all the electric cars, but at that price, they will be toys for the wealthy. 

That’s my biggest beef with any of the so called “green” vehicles. For a vehicle to contribute in a positive way to saving fuel, or reducing emissions, it is going to have to be in the hands of the masses.  Having a few thousand of them out there sitting in garages and going out for a spin in an “eco-race” from time to time makes these things have a much greater impact on the environment than any contribution they make. If you only drive 50 miles a week, even if your car only gets 10 mpg, you’re only going to use 5 gallons of gas a week.  Even at $5.00 a gallon, it would take 23 years for an electric car that cost $30,000 to pay for itself if you paid cash for the car. And there’s no way one of these things will ever save enough fuel to make up for what was expended in creating it.

Granted, most of us drive much farther than 50 miles a week.  My wife’s commute is a 34 mile round trip each day. With the terrain and the extremes of weather in this area to consider, and the fact that the bulk of that trip is at high speed on a highway, she would be pushing the limits of what the current crop of all electrics would be capable of doing just to get there and back on one charge. If it takes 17 hours to recharge, it wouldn’t be ready go before it was needed again, so she’d only be able to use it every other day.  So in reality, if you are really concerned about saving the planet, keep the car you have now. Fix anything that’s wrong with it, keep it in good operating order and drive it 25 years.

There is one very bright ray of hope for an answer to all this…the new Honda FCX Clarity (see it here: Honda FCX Clarity. This car uses no petroleum based fuel at all, relying instead on something called a Vertical Flow hydrogen fuel cell stack to create electricity to power the front wheels.  The only emissions from this process are water vapor and heat.  It can be refueled as needed by the average driver, and even though it’s totally electric, like a gasoline car it can keep going as long as there are refueling stations within its range. Instead of taking hours and hours to recharge, it refuels in about the same amount of time it takes to fill the tank on an ordinary car, and for about the same price currently. 

The Clarity is currently in a testing phase, with about 200 slated to be leased to customers in southern California over the next 3 years.  Its greatest advantage is that it is completely free of petroleum based fuel, but that is also its biggest problem.  Hydrogen fueling stations are few and far between.  However, since hydrogen is sold by the kilogram, it will be easy to attach taxes and the government will be easily convinced to support this technology since it will work the same way sales of gasoline and diesel do.

This technology holds the greatest hope for freeing us of the need for fossil fuels of any that have come along so far. Let us hope that it becomes a reality.

Next time we'll explore some alternative fuels, and why you'll never see some of them catch on.

Magnetic north and the end of the world

Magnetic pole moving…dead birds, crabs and fish all over the world…2012 looming on the horizon…nations rising up against nations…prophecy, or business as usual?

If you’ve looked at the news services lately, you’ve no doubt heard about the mass fish and bird die-offs all over the world this week. Some would write it off as coincidence, others believe that the movement of the magnetic poles has caused it.  Still others believe that it’s a sign from God of the impending apocalypse.  Others point to the Mayan calendar’s end at 2012, or Nostradamus’ predictions for all these things.

Well folks, I don’t pretend to be an expert in human history, nor would I claim to be a theologian.  I do consider myself a to be a literate man and a Christian, and having read much of human history and the Bible, I have to say that I don’t think these are signs of anything more than the normal course of world events. While many prophesies in the Bible refer to fish kills, birds survive.  In fact there are many Biblical references to birds picking over the carcasses of men killed in battle or gorging themselves on the dead fish, but the only mass die-off of birds in the Bible that I am aware of is in the book of Genesis, chapter seven. All the birds died except those gathered in the Ark with Noah along with every other living creature.  I don’t think there is Scriptural support for dead birds being a sign of anything.  I don’t have the Bible memorized and am not an expert in its contents, but so far I haven’t found anything there to support it.

In the New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke all relate Jesus’ instructions on how to tell when the end time is upon us.  Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 all tell of coming wars, earthquakes and famine.  In fact, the texts are almost identical. Yes, we’ve have had all these things, in abundance in the last few years, but I don’t believe it’s an indication of the end times.  Why?  Well, whether you are a person of faith or not, looking back through the many thousands of years of recorded history both Biblical and otherwise, you find that such things are business as usual for the human race.  War and famine go hand in hand.  You can’t grow crops or raise livestock when the fields needed for these activities are full of men killing each other with rocks or swords or bullets or bombs so people starve. Most of us are aware of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what about the other conflicts that don’t make our nightly news?  Are you aware that since 2003, there have been at least 49 major armed conflicts in the world, many of which are ongoing?  These range from drug cartels that have overthrown legitimate governments to ethnic conflicts; some have been religious wars with different varieties of Islam at war with each other to the never ending fight between Israel and its Islamic neighbors. 

The US-Iraq war is the most famous of this group, some feared that it would spark a world war. How many nations would it take to call it a world war?  Did you know that almost 50 nations have been involved so far in the Iraq war? By far the most war torn part of the world is Africa with an estimated 400,000 deaths in Somalia alone.  There have been more than 20 major civil wars on the African continent since 1960.

What about a little closer to home? Are you aware that there have been more than 30,000 fatalities since 2006 in Mexico’s Drug War? That’s just one door south folks.  This is why I don’t think what’s happening now is an indication of the end times.  War is what humans do best.  No, it’s going to have to be something beyond the normal  course of history to live up the Gospel predictions.   

Well, what about earthquakes? Ok, what about them?  There are more than 1.3 million earthquakes every year on average. Most don’t do any damage and many go unnoticed by the mass of the human population of the earth. Of these, about 15 per year are magnitude 7 -7.9, which can cause significant loss of life and property.

As I said before, famine follows war and natural disaster.  People in the wealthiest of nations perish from hunger every year, let alone the war torn areas.  The only thing a human  does  as well as going to war with his neighbor is ignoring him so completely that the person can literally starve to death right under his nose and he won’t even know it. 

No my friends, the “wars and rumors of wars” will be something far worse than the normal state of affairs.  You won’t have to wonder if it’s the end, it will be very clear. Civilization will collapse quickly and  completely. Anarchy will grip the entire world in a matter of days. No one will be safe anywhere.  Am I basing this opinion only on Biblical references?  No, look back through the history of the world.  Every civilization that has ever existed has followed this pattern.   The Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Greeks, Romans, and any others you can come up with have struggled together, found prosperity and wealth, became convinced of their own “immortality” or in some cases their own “divinity”, set out on a time of conquest to enlighten the barbarians, then fallen into decadence and chaos and even disappeared completely, leaving only ruins as evidence of their existence.    There are a few exceptions, those being the civilizations that have been wiped out by some natural cataclysm like a volcanic eruption (Mt. Vesuvius comes to mind) but the end result is the same. The survivors will set upon each other like dogs, justified in their actions by the need for self preservation. This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

So what do the dead birds, fish, and crabs and the movements of the magnetic poles have to do with it?  Absolutely nothing.   Our world has become so populated, our people so technologically interconnected that these days, anything that happens can and will be witnessed, photographed, recorded on video and out on the evening news before the sound of whatever happened dies on the air. Fifty or a hundred years ago, no one would have paid any attention much to these things let alone hear about it half way round the world.  When people were fewer in number and had to struggle for food, a mass die-off might even be kept secret by the few people who knew about it.  The potential for extra food was enormous and precious.  Not the dead animals necessarily, but the other creatures that would arrive to eat them.  Such an event would draw all manner of feathered and wooly beasties to scavenge off the dead and present a valuable chance to harvest food and other resources from the scavengers.   Fast forward to today, such a thing is an opportunity to harvest not food or resources, but ratings and money.  Sensationalize it a bit and you sell more subscriptions or have a story before your competitors get it.  Same thing with the magnetic pole movements.  It moves around all the time.  Scientists first started recording and tracking it’s movements in 1831 (nearly two centuries now).  One of the first things you learn in a map reading class is how to figure the difference between where your compass says north is and where your map plots it.  This difference between magnetic north and “true” north is called declination and that difference is usually noted on a topo map.  These things are not a sign of the apocalypse, just the normal workings of the earth, but it causes a stir to hear it on the news. When the ramp up to the apocalypse begins, you won’t have to wonder if it’s started, you will know beyond the shadow of a doubt.

What's going on in the world today?

So what’s going on in the world today…..hmm…lets see…Starbucks is changing it’s logo. Taking their name off the logo and going only with the sea nymph. Until I read the article, I’d never paid enough attention to it to recognize the lady without the words.  I don’t drink coffee, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Phusion Products has pulled their “Four Loko” beverages off the market, and I hear they are being recycled into ethanol for use in automotive fuel. If you’re not familiar with these drinks, they were energy drinks containing alcohol and caffeine.  In a 23 oz serving, you could be a wide awake drunk after consuming these, leading to even more bad decisions about driving and what have you. Since they are converting the drinks to fuel, I wonder if the caffeine will make your car jittery?  That last sentence is a joke, in case you didn’t get it.

Probably the most important thing that happened in this country today was the reading of the Constitution of the United States, word for word on the floor of the House of Representatives. Critics have said this is nothing but showmanship by Republicans, but I think it is a great idea. This was the first time in the history of the nation that this most important of legal documents has ever been read in its entirety on the House floor. I am convinced, looking at the past performance of our legislative body, that this is probably the first time most of them have been exposed to it, let alone having read it. They will have to get schooled in the Constitution’s provisions however.  The house approved a package of rules for the 112^th Congress that requires all bills that come before the house cite their constitutional authority.  No telling what may happen if we start getting laws that are actually based on the Constitution.

Further update on the dead birds.  Seems there was a similar occurrence in Sweden a day or two after the dead bird events in Arkansas and Louisiana.  More than 100 jackdaws, a bird similar to and a cousin of our common crow fell out of the sky on to a road.  But birds aren’t the only things dying in great numbers.  Over the last two weeks, there have been reports from all over the globe about various animals dying en-masse. There were of course the thousands of drum fish in the Arkansas River, and Kentucky is now reporting a mass die-off of black birds, robins and starlings. A beach in New Zealand has been covered with what is being called a “carpet” of dead snapper numbering in the hundreds.  More than 40,000 dead “devil crabs” washed up on in beach in England.  The Baltimore Sun reports an estimated 2 million spot fish have washed ashore in Chesapeake Bay, and more than 100 tons of sardines, croaker and catfish have washed up on beaches near Paranagua, Brazil this week, and finally in Port Orange, Florida, hundreds of dead fish float in the waterways frequented by kayakers.  The boaters report seeing dead fish at every turn, surrounded by swarms of pelican and buzzards.  Animal apocalypse? End of days prediction? Or did they die of shock after hearing that US Congressmen had to actually read the Constitution?

Things are getting interesting in other parts of the world too.  Iran and North Korea have (apparently) some form of nuclear weapons and now China appears to have a new stealth fighter jet.  Russia has stealth fighter technology now too.  Both Iran and North Korea have the capability and the will to set of major conflicts in the world. Are Russia and China arming peacefully, simply assuming a defensive posture in response to these very real threats that are literally on their doorsteps?  Or is there a more insidious plan at work?  Both are current allies, or at least not enemies, but in this day and age of political correctness and neutered politicians, if something did happen,  we’ll all be eating rice, and turning towards Mecca to pray in Russian before they sort out who might be offended if we defend ourselves.

See you all next time.

Stuff and Nonsense

My last post mentioned Tiger Woods and his adventures and how through his lack of self control and poor judgment he got to spend Christmas half a world away from his kids.  Now Brett Favre is in hot water for harassing female masseuses.  What is it about being rich and famous that makes these guys think they can do anything and there’ll be no repercussions?   If the two that are after Favre now are successful, you’ll probably see women coming out of the woodwork to get their piece of the pie.

Well, at least the lawyers will have a banner year.  This should greatly increase their incomes.

It gets worse than that though.  The commander of the USS Enterprise, Capt. Owen Honors, may be relieved of duty over making some stupid videos.  His supporters say he was just trying to relieve some of the boredom and tension that goes with being deployed in the Middle East.  Detractors say he is a gay-bashing pervert. Whether the videos  were offensive or not, a man in that position should know better.  To clarify, Honors was not captain at the time, but was serving as the executive officer, which placed him second in command.  If you are a professional or amateur comedian, people expect something offensive. Eddy Murphy has built a career being offensive. If you are in a position of authority either in the military, civilian government or the private sector, you take your career and your bank account in your hands when you do things like this.  These days, there are people out there just waiting for a chance to bring someone down.  You let people take photos or videos of you in compromising positions, enough money will allow those things to leak and you better be ready for it.  Honors was a member of an elite group. There are only eleven aircraft carriers in our Navy, and the carrier is always at the forefront of our naval defense.  Whatever his intentions, this will no doubt be a continuing embarrassment both for him and the Navy.

Back to silly television celebrities…let’s take a look at Gordon Ramsey for a minute. If you are not familiar with him, you’re probably better off.  He is a famous chef, who now has a couple of television shows where he goes to different restaurants and eateries that are struggling to stay in business and miraculously fixes everything that is wrong and turns them profitable.  He’s foul mouthed and has all the on screen personality of a sledge hammer but from what I’ve been able to gather, he knows his stuff when it comes to the food service industry.  At any rate, even he is not immune to a bit of vanity.  Saw a headline where he’s experiencing some difficulties, some complications I guess you could say, with a recent hair transplant procedure. Seems he’s had more than the normal amount of swelling, causing his face to puff up. His docs say it will pass in time.  The article I read said he paid $45,000 for the procedure.  Always did think he had “the big head” as my grandma called it.  Forty-five grand just so he can continue getting haircuts. Could have gotten a new BMW 5-series for that.

Oh, I almost forgot.  An update on the birds and fish that have been mysteriously dying in great numbers here in Arkansas…depending on which source you listen to, the dead birds number between three and six thousand, and the dead fish anywhere from seventy to one hundred thousand. Suffice it to say, lots of feathers and fins.  The preliminary reports from the necropsies performed on the birds seem to indicate fright induced trauma.  The likely culprit was New Year’s Eve fireworks that frightened a whole flock of roosting blackbirds into taking flight.  The dead birds have injuries consistent with colliding with each other and objects on the ground like trees, buildings and the ground itself, as well as indications of elevated stress levels. There is now a report of a similar occurrence in Louisiana.

The fish at last report, were all of one species, that being the freshwater drum. They are bottom feeders, considered rough fish and can get quite large.  World record is over 54 pounds and they put up quite a fight when taken on rod and reel.  The die off appears to be some sort of disease that as yet has not affected other species.  The fact that it is only one species makes it unlikely that this is a pollutant or some other man made calamity since those things would be extremely unlikely to target a single species.  It’s more likely that they became overpopulated, and Mother Nature hit the reset button. More will be known when the test results come in.

Stay tuned boys and girls…more to come.

Some things just don't add up

Ok folks, this addition to the blog will be a collection of things that just “don’t make no sense” to borrow a phrase.  First of all, gas prices….what is up with that?  They claim that increased holiday travel has increased demand.  Humbug, I say.  Every school vehicle in the country nearly has been parked for 2 weeks, teachers’ cars at home in the driveway, parents have not had to take children to school…ain’t no way a trip to Grandma’s made that much difference.   But of course, we can’t drill for our own oil, thanks to current administration orders so we are at the mercy of OPEC.   All I know is that it cost $67 to fill my truck up this morning. That’s got to be good for the economy, right?

Shania Twain is married again boys.  A sad day for men everywhere, I know, but what gets me is that she’s married the ex-husband of the gal that Mutt left her for. I question Mutt’s manhood outright for leaving a babe like Shania anyway but what’s up here?  Misery loves company, I guess.  The ultimate revenge:  You run off with her, I’ll marry her ex.  Oh well, who understands the lifestyles of the rich and shameless anyway?

There’s a headline talking about Heidi Montag and all the problems she’s experienced after a “plastic surgery binge”.  Supposedly she had ten procedures in one day, and some of them went wrong.  I just got one question…well, ok, two questions.  Who the heck is Heidi Montag, and why do I or anyone else for that matter care about her plastic surgeries?

Miley Cyrus in in the news again with “racy photos”.  She’s an 18 year old celebrity, whose money and fame is going to her head, along with the normal crap that teens have to go through.  So what?  I got a bottle of whiskey at home older than her, so why does anybody over the age of 19 care?

Then there’s Tiger Woods.  US Magazine has as story about his “magical Christmas without his kids”.  As if that’s supposed to make me feel sorry and at the same time all warm and fuzzy for him.  Horse hockey!   He didn’t get to spend Christmas with his kids because he couldn’t keep his willy in his pants.  There were what…14 or 15 women he cheated with that the media found out about?  Sounds to me like he was too busy to even know who his kids were, much less miss them at Christmas.

The last story in the news I’ll mention this time is a quirky one.   Beebe, Arkansas is a little town northeast of Little Rock population of about 5000.  Not much goes on in Beebe to catch the attention of the national press, but they finally got noticed.  Story has it that on New Year’s Eve, about 3000 blackbirds rained down out of the sky in the middle of the night, dead as doornails.  Lots of theories about what caused it, but no scientific conclusions yet.  Freak of nature or omen of impending doom?  You decide.

Happy New Year everybody.