Green Skies and Hail

Green Skies and HailShare

Monday, May 17, 2010 at 2:18pm

I do not like green skies and hail.
They leave me feeling cold and pale.

In autumn gentle rains befriend us,
But spring brings lines of cumulonimbus.

The siren sounds to go to shelter.
There follow scenes from Helter-Skelter.

They love it at NSSL.
It's my idea of living hell.

Vacation days are meant for May.
Your *empty* house then blows away.

If safe in May you want to be
You must not go near OKC!

__________________________..____________
(My boundless apologies to Theodor Geisel.)
Chuck Oates
17 May 2010
Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Tornadoes Dance Both North and South of Norman, Oklahoma

More Weather Warning Sirens and Terrible-looking Clouds

Tornadoes Dance North and South of Norman, Oklahoma, 10 May 2010

Chuck Oates
10 May 2010, Last rev.8:34 p.m.
Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Tornadoes Dance North and South of Norman, Oklahoma, 10 May 2010, 5:30 - 5:45 p.m.

They're still blowing tornado warning sirens intermittently as I write this, but it appears the tornado danger may have passed here in Norman. Parts of Oklahoma City, Choctaw, Moore, Noble Little Axe,and the Lake Thunderbird Marina, were not so fortunate.

The following videos were shot from my back yard at the times indicated on 10 May 2010.

Looking Southeast toward Noble, OK
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5:32:50 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GybbPhJirHQ
5:33 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5uB8ddIH78
5:34 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q9P3T4hkNA
5:39 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ir9ofqjqrk
5:39.5p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZyLSymRLXQ
5:40 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtpE3W3aEE
5:43 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77bcOg_Y8IM

Looking North toward Moore, OK
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5:30 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYTjZ7wGtQg
5:32 p.m. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNPIwZFVV9s


So far the Norman HealthPlex in Northwest Norman has treated 20 patients injured in the storms. There is a report on News9.com of one fatality in Oklahoma City. [8:34 p.m.] News9.com is now reporting an additional three fatalities in Tecumseh, Oklahoma, east southeast of Norman.


*** C A U T I O N ***

Making photographs and videos when severe weather is in your area is DANGEROUS. Tornadoes at distances greater than five miles (8 km), in daylight, with good visibility, with a weather radio or TV in hand are one thing; tornadoes at distances less than five miles, OR at night, OR in poor visibility, OR without a working weather radio or TV are quite another. Particularly if you're young, DON'T TAKE CHANCES WITH THESE STORMS. THEY CAN AND DO KILL PEOPLE!

Prof. Oates

Nil, Baby, Nil

Chuck Oates

3 May 2010

Norman, OK, USA

(from a Facebook wall posting)

Support for Offshore Drilling after the Louisiana Spill:

Nil, Baby, Nil

The Nashville Tennessean, a real tree hugger's rag, notes that support for offshore drilling is disappearing like government-haters after the OKC Murrah Building bombing [my words, not theirs]. See http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100501/NEWS08/5010349 .

Instead of drilling offshore, we could, of course, decide instead to capture large amounts of energy from the sun and the wind. Since our only net energy income is from the sun, these methods make very good sense, both economically and ecologically, not to mention the national security implications. (Presumably, OPEC can't turn off the sun!) The wind turbine and thin-film solar panel technologies are ready, but only minimally deployed, at least in the U.S.

If we can build an atomic bomb in four years and go to the Moon in ten, we could get ourselves out of the fossil fuel dependency mess in a decade or so, if we choose to, while generating large numbers of U.S. equipment manufacturing jobs. It's a matter of deploying existing energy technologies and, of course, continuing to develop new ones. Given our squabbling Congress, our still-out-of-control financial system, our behemoth oil lobby, and our vision-less corporate leadership, though, don't hold your breath.

Here's one guy who's thinking, even if he did go to OSU: http://www.pickensplan.com/ .
(Use the Hide ... button to bypass the signup page, if you like.)

Thin-film solar panels are cheap, efficient, and in production NOW: http://www.firstsolar.com/en/modules.php
We need terawatts of production for solar energy farms, though, not gigawatts.

The mid-continent U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of wind ( http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp ), and there's certainly no shortage of sun in Arizona and Nevada (http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html ). Demand for oil is going up, and the supply is soon to decline (2023 by the 18-model average at http://www.trendlines.ca/scenarios.htm ). What are we waiting for?

Infrastructure to carry the electrical energy from the production areas to the population areas and a financial system that's willing to finance it, that's what. And we'll be sitting here dependent on $250/barrel oil and $10/gallon gasoline in ten years (five?) if we don't get busy and build it.

-- Vox Clamantis in Deserto

P.S. And in the mean time, Boone Pickens, much as I hate to admit it, is exactly right: natural gas that we control and have in relative abundance is the interim fuel we'll need until we can get more direct-from-the-sun fuel sources in place. --CLO

A neighborhood house in the winter wonderland following the ice-sleet-snow storm of 28-29 January 2010

Cause for Optimism

If you live in the US and have been paying any attention at all to what's going on around you lately, you've probably picked up on some disturbing trends. Let's note a few of them.

o Fewer and fewer people have access to health care. The apparent solution for this is to legislate that all of us will have to have health care insurance, purchased from private insurers who will be able to charge pretty much anything they wish for any set of services they wish to provide, with no insurer of last resort available. Oh, and we'll have to pay a $750 per year fine for not buying health insurance. Having been without major medical insurance for the past year because it was going to cost me $25,000-plus per year, I have great confidence that this is a fine solution to the health care access problem--or more likely it's health care reform turned into a corporate welfare program for medical insurers.

o Last year, the US and the rest of the world was very nearly plunged into another 1930s-style Great Depression. Wall Street financiers made mortgage loan packages, then made bets on the success of those packages, and then made bets on those bets (derivative instruments and mortgage risk swaps). The purpose of finance is to supply capitol and credit for businesses and credit for consumers. What on earth does making bets on bets on bets about how mortgage packages will perform have to do with that purpose? Surely in response to this economic near-death experience, we now have regulations to keep the banks out of the securities business and to create an exchange something like the commodity exchanges for derivatives and similar financial instruments. Wrong. We do have legislation to cut down on scams by credit card companies, with the implementation date placed so far in the future that the companies have had plenty of time to increase their rates and dream up new scams, though. But that's not really the problem. We have not and probably will not protect ourselves from another economic crisis like that of September 2008. When it happens again, we will not be able to afford bailouts. We will likely then experience another Great Depression.

o In the past three decades, median US income (in constant dollars) has remained flat--no increase at all. We're doing fine, though, aren't we? The Dow Jones Industrial Average is way, way up over those 30 years, isn't it? Yes, it is. The conclusion? US businesses are doing increasingly well, while US wage earners are no better off than they were in 1980.

The list could go on endlessly, but here's the problem. The US government, particularly the Congress of the United States is now owned lock, stock, and barrel by big business, including health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, Wall Street finance companies, even US automobile manufacturers. Their power and influence in Washington can now defeat any serious health care reform, financial institution regulation, taxation changes, or other legislation that might change their short-term profitability.

Why is there no outcry, no groundswell of righteous anger from the populace? It's Stockholm syndrome. Many of us, particularly those in the southern and western US states, have positive feelings for our captors. We've been taken to the brink of economic and perhaps political disaster by Wall Street financiers, medical products and services providers, and idiotic automobile manufacturers who can't make money on a car that costs less than $35,000. Having been delivered from stepping over that brink by providing our captors trillions of dollars in ransom, we are now--incredibly--beholden to them as those who will save us from Big Government.

So why is this blog entry titled "Cause for Optimism"? Here's the deal. As it's often been observed, you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but NOT all the people all the time. Eventually we'll come to our senses and figure out that while bumbling, inefficient government is a BIG irritation, it's not nearly the enemy that well-financed, brilliantly-staffed, accountable-to-no-one corporations are.

But if the corporate world is in control, will we be able to take back the reins when we do finally awaken? It would seem that control so firmly established and financed would endure as long as it wished. In the short run, that very well may be the case. Over a somewhat longer term, however, the outcome is not as clear. Consider the following.

Example 1. This same situation existed in post-Civil War America from the 1870s to the early 1900s. There seemed to be no limit to the power and corruption of the corporate Robber Barrons who ruled that era. Then a pesky, troublesome Republican by the name of Teddy Roosevelt, kicked upstairs into the Vice Presidency to get him out of the way, was propelled into the Presidency by the assassination of President William McKinley. The Robber Barrons were soon ousted from their thrones by the feisty, shrewd, and action-oriented Roosevelt.

Example 2. By the 1920s though, Wall Street, unencumbered by government regulation, was in a frenzy of buying on margin (buying stocks with borrowed money) on the assumption the stocks would continuously increase in value forever. A financial collapse not unlike the one we just experienced resulted. The collapse was badly mishandled for three long years by Herbert Hoover before Franklin D. Roosevelt (cousin of Teddy) was elected President. Though FDR's programs eased the suffering of the Great Depression, no recovery could be sustained. (Once a deflationary economy is firmly established, it is virtually impossible to undo, given any action short of entry into a global war.) Eventually, the wild speculation on Wall Street was firmly regulated to prevent a recurrence of this exact type of collapse, and things went pretty well until the financial wizards of Wall Street, with the aid of Sen. Phill Gramm, planted another financial time bomb in 1999 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act ).

Example 3. The September 2008 financial collapse precipitated by Gramm's treachery is sill playing out, and will require a decade or more to "settle out" as the control systems folks say. It remains to be seen whether the world and the US, in particular, will successfully emerge from the crisis, brought on by the unfettered speculation that derivative "invesment" (gambling) instruments and mortgage risk swaps engendered.

What's the point of all this? The recurring theme is that big business, left to do its own laissez faire bidding, eventually destroys its own power (or produces its destroyer) and often plays havoc with our economic well-being in the process. In the current crisis, big business has very nearly destroyed our economic well-being, but has not yet destroyed its power to unduly influence and control the government for its own benefit.

We've been here before. The cause for optimism is that corporate political power will eventually ebb, if the past is, in fact, prologue. The worry is whether another economic depression, together with the seeds of political upheaval and war that depressions engender, will have to occur before We the People re-awaken and resume control of our democracy.

In the mean time, let's hope our current President is a Roosevelt, not a Hoover!

How to Tawk Texan 2009-09-13

CLOates

13 Sept 2009

Norman, Okla., USA

How to Tawk Texan

Texas: it's like a whole other ... planet. Here's your guide to speaking Ang-lish like a native when you visit.

http://www.chuckoates.com/Misc/HowToTawkTexan.htm

Enjoy!

Prof. Oates

May We Debate the ISSUES, Please? 2009-08-15

CLOates

15 AUG 2009

Last Rev.: 19 Aug 2009

Norman, Oklahoma, USA

May We Debate the ISSUES, Please?

The crazies and the propagandists have, as usual, come crawling out of the woodwork in an effort to derail the overhaul of the current U.S. (non-)health care system, a bizarre aggregation of practices that will soon leave virtually anyone who needs medical care in the U.S. unable to obtain it--unless, of course, they happen to spend an entire career working for an unbroken string of Fortune 500 corporations, a pattern that seldom occurs for most of us.

More or less as expected, we have the Democrats trying to provide everyone with health care and having trouble finding the funding, while the Republicans try to scare the hell out of everyone by dragging out the fear phrase book containing old standards like "socialized medicine," "government take-over," and "health care rationing" (what on earth do you call the current system when it effectively throws about 1/6th of the U.S. population under the bus when they need care--that's a pretty severe form of rationing, I'd say, but I digress).

The level of discussion reached a new height of irrelevance recently, however, when those trying to create fear and panic dreamed up Federal "Death Panels" to decide who should live and who should die in medical contexts. (See, for example, http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090813/pl_politico/26078 .) This horror fantasy is purported to be somehow based on Section 1233, Advance Care Planning Consultation, of H.R. 3200, the comprehensive health care bill currently before the House of Representatives. (See http://frwebgate.access.gp..o.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?d..bname=111_cong_bills&docid..=f:h3200ih.pdf , a large .pdf file, starting on page 424 for the text of the bill and its Section 1233. BTW, official copies of all legislation pending in Congress can be accessed through the search facilities athttp://www.gpoaccess.gov/bills/index.html . Try it with "comprehensive health care" for the search phrase.)

It takes a few minutes to read the text of Section 1233, but even a cursory inspection reveals that it is aimed at permitting the health care system to pay physicians for a periodic medical consultation with patients on use of advance health care directives like living wills and durable powers of attorney that express the PATIENT'S desires for end-of-life care, should they become unable to express those wishes for themselves, as sometimes happens in cases of head injury, dementia, Alzheimer's, and many terminal illnesses.

These health care directives have been in use for decades--Sue and I made ours in 1993--and give the patient the CHOICE of, for instance, whether they want feeding tubes used if they enter a persistent vegetative state and other such horrendous situations. No one is or will be required to make such directives, and the directives can be revoked at any time while one is competent. If no directive exists, the default action is to do absolutely everything to keep the patient alive as long as possible without much, if any, regard to quality of life issues. If this is what the patient wants, they need do nothing with respect to health care directives and nothing in the proposed legislation requires it. If the patient considers the all-out approach a form of medical torture, and I certainly have seen it become just that, the patient MAY choose to direct physicians to use less than all-out means in the situations THEY (the patient) designate. It's the PATIENT'S choice, not that of some non-existent and non-proposed Federal "Death Panel."

With hundreds of millions of people's lives, economic fortunes, and physical well-being at stake, it is time to formulate a working U.S. health care system to replace the non-sustainable, non-working, citizen-bankrupting mess that now exists. Reasonable people can certainly disagree over how that is to be accomplished, and well-thought-out debate can result in a better system than any one individual can create alone. However, use of propaganda techniques like the "Death Panel" straw-man is decidedly un-helpful, is likely to backfire, and has no legitimate place in the workings of a democracy.

Can we behave like grown-ups and conduct a serious debate about a very serious topic, rather than engage in antics more often associated with high schoolers at Boys'/Girls' State? It remains to be seen. (http://www.txlegion.org/boys_state.htm)

-------------------

You can help. Visit sites such as http://www.propagandacritic.com/ to arm yourself with information about propaganda techniques, and learn to recognize their use in political debate. Use critical thinking skills when listening and reading the pronouncements of stakeholders in the health care debate. Get the facts about what's being proposed from the original sources, the U.S. Congress in this case, using the links supplied earlier. Talk with others about the ISSUES, not fear-mongers' fantasies, and contribute to the long over-due creation of a workable, sustainable U.S. health system. I wish you good luck for all our sakes!

Prof. Oates

P.S. Since I gave Sara Palin's views a plug earlier, I'll put a link to the views of Pres. Obama here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ . --CLO

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comments:

Grandpa/Prof. Oates Chuck Oates

If anyone wonders why people are leaving MySpace in droves, at least part of the answer can be obtained by observing the bizarre formatting that MySpace supplied for my text above. It was copied into MySpace from M-S Word, then reworked as an M-S .txt file and put back into MySpace, then diddled with for over an hour to get it back to even this poor state of legibility (improved only slightly from total illegibility). Go to my Facebook account at www.facebook.com/prof.oates to read the text in a legible format. --CLO :^/ Posted by Grandpa/Prof. Oates on 15 Aug 09 Saturday - 12:19 [Reply to this] [Remove] [Block User]

Grandpa/Prof. Oates Chuck Oates

Well, it's a little better now, since I copied the revised Facebook version back into MySpace and spend another 15 minutes tweaking the formatting. I believe I'll be posting my blog entries on Facebook from now on. --CLO Posted by Grandpa/Prof. Oates on 20 Aug 09 Thursday - 11:06