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Gaffer Variety:
Interesting Times V064:
By Willie Gaffer:
An old Chinese proverb offers this though. “May you live in interesting times.” There is no doubt in my mind that we do indeed live in interesting times. Depending on our attitude toward life, that can be understood as a curse, a blessing or a challenge. I prefer to think of our current conditions and events as a challenge. In that mindset, we are confronted with a delightful plethora of challenging problems. The cool thing is the challenge of solving them belongs to me. Of course, it can also belong to you if you wish.
Let me list two of the most intractable problems we face and consider their magnitude. Perhaps the biggest problem we face is the determination of a mob of primitive religious savages to destroy Western Civilization. That is indeed big. If these madmen are successful, our children and grandchildren will live in a world quite similar to the world of the European Dark Ages. One of the interesting things to me about this problem is our willingness to finance the people who are bent on the destruction of everything we treasure.
Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Every
time we fill up with gas, we are sending money to the Saudi royal family who
use it to train and finance the so-called terrorists. What we like to call
terrorism is not terrorism at all. We know exactly who is dong this. They are paid
agents of the Muslim leaders of the
Let me get to what I consider our second most pressing
problem. That is what we sometimes call the energy crisis. The crux of this
problem lays in the fact that Western Civilization, in fact any civilization,
is dependent on cheap energy to function. The solution of earlier civilizations
to energy was slavery. For a people who want to be truly civilized, that
solution is untenable. It is also self-limiting due to the resources required
to sustain a subculture of slaves.
Now, this energy problem should yield to a technical approach. I see no hope of the Mad-Muslim problem yielding to any kind of approach right now. However, when I solve the energy problem I will be moving toward a solution to the ‘ignorant religious savages’ problem. With the proper solution, they will lose wealth and perhaps gain wisdom. They will surely lose wealth. We can only hope for the wisdom.
Let me point out the effect and magnitude of this energy
problem. One big thing I have already pointed out is we are financing our
enemies. That need not be the case. There really are plenty of sources of oil
if we wish to exploit them.
Here are a few facts. Automobiles produce 47% of the oxides of nitrogen in our polluted atmosphere. They produce 39% of the hydrocarbons and 66% of the carbon monoxide. Those are the ground level pollutants that cause smog in every major city in the Western world. They shorten the human lifespan and they kill important plants like trees and grains. Automobiles are a little better with carbon dioxide (CO2) producing 14% of the total. We used to think carbon dioxide was harmless. Now we know it is not. It is one of the largest causes of global warming. It gets into the upper atmosphere where it allows short wavelengths of light to enter our atmosphere and prevents the longer reflected wavelengths from exiting. The result is the gradual accumulation of heat energy that causes global warming. We do not know exactly what all of the long-term effects of global warming will be, but it is a serious problem.
So, solving the energy problem is what I will first direct
my attention to. In truth there are two problems related to energy. The big one
is global warming. That we must address if civilization is to survive. The
second is the economic disparity in
What was once a gap between the middle class and a few working poor has become a chasm that separates a relentlessly growing body of working poor from the shrinking group of well off middle class. These folks literally cannot afford to drive. In fact we are in the process of creating a new subculture of slaves by default. These are those people who struggle along at the bare subsistence level and do all of the dirty work we don’t like to talk about. It is wrong and we know it. It would not happen in a rational culture.
I believe I can solve the energy problem, so I will work on that. That may also solve some of the economic disparity problem if the solution makes personal transportation less expensive. If it helps to restart our butt-dragging economy, it will be a real boon to the working poor. There will be more jobs and more training for workers. Instead of crapping on their workers, the evil managers will have to train them to get enough workers to satisfy their greed.
One other problem we face is the vulnerability of our power grid. I was just reminded of that when our Detroit Edison power went off, for no particular reason, while I was working on this document. I did not lose much because I do frequent saves while working. I do frequent saves because the power goes off frequently. That problem too could be solved by a good solution to the energy problem.
We face many other problems that I must take in turn. Just
consider AIDS and healthcare in general. Education looms larger and larger as a
problem. We have a poorly trained and poorly equipped domestic police force,
and on and on and on. I need not worry. I do not expect to run out of problems
to solve. Ain’t that great?
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