Grumping and whining

Most people would not have the problems I have re security of my intellectual property. You have no idea what it is like to stumble on an idea that would be a total game-changer in the world of giant corporate wealthy folks, who are extreme experts at controlling things.

After I discovered back in the mid-1980s when all my files on my ground commute transportation concept had been snatched from the manila folders in my file cabinet, and related files erased on my Adam computer, with no obvious trace anyone had been in my residence while I was gone, I began to realize the extreme expertness these folks have. Later I found they had been back, since they swiped the top page of all my copies of a magazine article I had written for submission to the L-5 News, re my 1972 Mooncable Project (Lunar space elevator) concept. The title page had my name and the recipients name, of course, and that was now all gone; the folders still looked fat without only the first page gone from each. And the ripping off has continued over the years, dragging in law enforcement at times, tricking them into helping via false accusations. I would generally characterize the "operators" as being bullies and masters of deception. Kind of folks one does not want to mess with. And they have been on top of me for at least … 1984-2010 … 26 years. It has become increasingly clear to me that they are not just after my intellectual property, my concepts, but also that they are intending to ruin me personally. And I live in poverty.

I realized that all I could do with my creative technological concepts, lacking security enough to gather stuff for a patent application and thus be able to get financing, was just to either let my brainchildren die with me, or to freely give them away to the world. Which is what I have been doing, such as with my Centristation (construction of wheel-type space station using prefab modules that are also used as teh fuel tanks for their own launch into orbit) and KESTS to GEO (hoop type centrifugally supported space escalator that obsoletes the anchored tether space elevator technique) and applications concepts. At least it levels the playing field, I hope, instead of having the concepts directed by those who would steal them from me, and thus would use the concepts probably wrongfully, to the detriment of civilization, instead for the betterment of civilization as I intended when creating the concepts.

I don't see any solution to the overall problem, considering the bottomless pocket paid snoops messing with me and my life. Paranoid-making. And sometimes apparently deliberately. It must be a fun game for some kinds of people.

How does big business tick

In my quest to find comprehension of what makes things do what they do, the subject of "big business" seems important. Especially since big business is so influential in politics as well as on who gets a job and who does not have a job, which is a scary thing for the vast majority of Americans. I have compiled some factors that seem to me to be about "business," so here it is:

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The maximizing of the dividends given to the investors is the ultimate goal, all else is subservient to that.

Must buy from the lowest cost source.

Must sell at the highest price the market will bear.

Provide the least product and service for a given price.

Buy advertising, not just to let the customer base know of the existence of your product and service, but also insofar possible convince the potential customer that he/she needs your specific product&service.

Acquire virtual business territory to prevent competition in it.

Pay the hired help the least amount they will accept, regardless whether or not that is enough for them to live comfortably, safely and in health.
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Insofar as business, particularly the huge corporate conglomerates, are running the country, it is important to know the actual principles by which they function. And expect little more. "A leopard does not change its spots" it is said.

Most of my life I assumed that business existed to provide the goods and services that customers need. "The customer is always right" used to be the principle. Somewhere all that got changed. It might be wise to reconsider values. A larger viewpoint helps provide wisdom.

Does Advertising Rule

I'm still struggling to figure out what makes things happen the way they do. So this blog post is related to that.

Does Advertising Rule? The many appeals during elections such as the ones going on now, constantly ask for money for spending on advertising, saying the good guys won't get voted for unless they get advertising money spent on them. And lots of advertising money, in the millions of dollars each. It seems to be in the belief system of America that whoever advertises most wins the right to control the country for the next umpteen years. The advertising can include the forms of bashing the rivals, proclaiming the greatness of the candidate, and/or just yelling "vote for candidate x."

Insofar as this is accurate, then the folks who put the most money into the advertising, tend to be those who have plenty of money, and thus tend to specify who rules the country for the next go-around, Senators and Representatives this time. People with the most money to spend on such things tend to know how to play the system so as to gain wealth, and thus tend to spend on advertising to get those elected who will tilt the system such as to enable the wealthy to gain more wealth.

Somewhere in it all supposedly are the vast majority of Americans. Who are casting the majority of the votes. Yet the way they choose who to vote for apparently is only partially influenced by their belief in the competency of each candidate, and far more by the impact of the advertising blitz that has impacted them. Since the more wealthy folks tend to be the ones who own and run the businesses that provide jobs for the vast majority of Americans, the need to keep one's job at a place which easily determines the political leanings of each employee - and probably shares in in a political database in some instances - this also can influence the majority of Americans' vote. Since the wealthy in recent decade or so have been hiring the workers offshore to replace American workers - who require much higher pay because their housing costs vastly more than does housing of workers offshore - so as to maximize the business people's coffers, they can scare their remaining workers even more, pressuring them to vote for a particular political party.

Advertising also leans heavily on the tribalism type motivation, so-and-so candidate is a member of the Republican tribe or a member of the Democrat tribe, or some religious designation tribe, or even the tribe of one's home town. for the most part. Some people are heavily influenced by this kind of belongingness membership factor, vote for one-of-us. Nevermind if he/she can do the job best; and after all, how do we know if a candidate can do a job well? That he/she has a record of voting the party line, means that he/she is a reliable parrot for - whom?

The ultra powerful impact of advertising - including the low-key advertising utilized by one of the political parties all year long - is also displayed in the ability to get Americans to forget what was done to the country by the previous administration's eight year rule, taking a surplus down into the biggest deficit in recent history (whose pockets did those missing trillions go into, I wonder), from where the current administration is struggling to get the country going again. All this is apparently forgotten in the hubub of advertising's calls. We all make mistakes, of course, and we can forgive and move on. And we are conditioned to let the other team get up to bat in turn. But to do so ought to be based on a clear demonstration of having learned from mistakes and figured out a much better approach for next time. By a political party waving the American flag and declaring they are Americans thereby, but then sitting on their hands and not helping the elected folks get the country running again, is puzzling to me. It is like saying "We won't play unless we rule." Does this eventually wear America down so much they give in and let them rule again?

This is all quite a complex mixture of causes and effects. But per the above, at least to me, a few of the factors seems to be appearing out of the chaos. And the implications are not all that comfortable or provide optimism for the future. Yet is loudly said that it is the best system possible, and it prevents tyranny. I wonder. Tyranny takes many forms, and often involves lots of deception and trickery beside occasional physical arm-twisting. The loudest voice - advertising - seems to rule.

Puzzling about drugs and business

Meandering through the day's news this evening, I ran across an article that in retrospect seems like old news, over and over again. But this time something impressed me differently. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/10/thirteen-killed-in-execution-style-raid-on-tijuana-drug-rehab-center.html where it says "... A total of 28,228 people have died in Mexico in drug-related war deaths, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon has ordered about 45,000 troops to 18 states where drug trafficking organizations are battling for access to the U.S. market...." The "US market" is paying for this? Paying enough to power such horribly lethal battles in Mexico? Really? The "US market" has bought the deaths of 28,228 people in Mexico?

Well I have learned that calling something insane or nutty does not solve much. Even calling something irrational. Somewhere something re this has to make sense.

Apparently I am missing something about "drugs." The word has so many meanings, from the local "drugstore" to the mammoth pharmaceutical manufacturer's products to the stuff dispensed by pharmacies per doctors prescriptions, to ... "substance abuse drugs." In the context of the article I assume that it is the "substance abuse" category that is involved. More exactly drugs that are provided outside the normal medical business chain and tend to be materials grown by natural plants, that cause an altered state of mind.

Now, there are lots of ways to achieve an "altered state of mind." Go to a movie. Listen to a stirring musical composition being played well. Listen to binaural beat audio tracks. Take a doctor's prescribed sedative or tranquilizer pill. Meditate deeply. Attend an opera. Smoke a cigar. Down a significant amount of ethanol beverage. Make love.

There must be something quite different about these "drugs" that the "US market" is sending money to Mexico for, that is worth killing over 28,000 people to provide, however. What is it? Get addicted to something then have to pay the bucks to get relief from the addition cravings?

I'm addicted to pizza and yet I have to avoid it most of the time due to a wheat gluten intolerance. So I understand the "addicted" thing a bit. But this still seems it must be a completely different thing those 28,000-deaths-bought "drugs" provide. If it was just the relief from cravings involved, most people would get fed up with it and just kick it. Who needs another nuisance?

So there must be more to it. A really lot more.

And enough more to have some lawmakers in the past pass severe laws against the use of the subject "drugs." And that "enough more" is what I am puzzling over right now. Something is not being told up front by the powers that be.

I'm also familiar with the old saying that there are two things one does not want to know how it is made: sausage, and laws. And once on the books a law tends to stay there, especially if its enforcement provides fine jobs for enforcers. MonoSodium Glutamate, MSG, is not listed among these addictive drugs, and MSG clearly is addictive and harming the population neurologically and via obesity-caused injuries like diabetes, but there are no enforcers removing that substance from the grocery shelves; thus it is not related to harming the population. Must be something else.

So I refer to what I have learned in my 74 years so far, that might be relevant. I have been taught about "drugs" in hotline training, and by subsequent years of serving on a crisis hotline. I have personally known impoverished people who grew marijuana in their backyard so as to keep their glaucoma from making them completely blind. Decades ago I knew several people who routinely smoked the stuff; none of them hurt anybody or themselves as a result, as far as I could tell. In fact it seemed to mellow them out.

Yet, per the subject news article, 28,000 people have gotten killed to provide it. There is a non sequitor involved here. Got to be. The article says we Americans are paying for that mayhem, to provide us the "drugs." There just has to be a lot more involved, and apparently it is not being told.

Recalling more re "drugs:" I recall reading in a credible place that using a drug called "hashish" enables street vendors in foreign countries to determine shopper's intentions and thus provide data for haggling for a higher price for the merchandise. How does that stuff work? Clearly something is involved that was not taught in the conventional schools I grew up in. The stuff apparently enables the user to have a cognitive or perceptual skill that us non-users don't have, that provides the users with an advantage in business transactions. And maybe other things.

And I have experienced what seemed impossible, that a few folks who were said to be "drug users," to be aware of what I was experiencing, totally out of their sight. And clearly not by spy camera, either; was too detailed, for one thing. Many instances. Again, apparently whatever they were "using" was providing a skill that I don't have. And many others don't have either, at least assuming what is taught in school covers everything in life.

Thus this is beginning to point to substances that provide a competitive edge in human affairs. Why would harsh laws be passed to prevent that? If everybody has the same advantage, it would be fair. And if some are certain to have the advantage, then the solution is to enable all to have it too, to level the playing field.

But the game of life often is not fair. Rulemakers often strive to set the rules so they have an unfair edge in the game. Probably part of that is about those who crave to control others. The above-mentioned skills that seem to be provided by use of specific "drugs" would provide snoops and control-freaks a winner's edge in the game of life; but if some of those they are stalking also have access to those substances, they might not be assured of always winning, and that might be frustrating or even scary. Thus laws to attempt to prevent others from access.

Is this worth the "US market" being so enormous that it causes 28,000 deaths in our neighbor Mexico? Apparently so, since it happened.

To fix this, it seems that there has got to be a lot more transparency in the whole subject. Accurate and complete, no holding back. Enough so that everybody knows what is really involved. And that might embarrass some powerful folks, so it is not likely to happen. So the prediction pointed out by this might be that the "US market" remains stuck in the muck, with occasionally lots of exciting hoopla re the chasing of the "drug providers" so as to provide news reading drama to spice up the lives of the hordes of drudgery workers. What was it the Romans provided, "bread and circus," to entertain and calm the hordes of subject peoples? And the status quo, business-as-usual, remains, and life is good, for those in the know... and maybe with unspoken access to something we won't tell, those advantage-giving substances for some winners in business and other life games.

And this blog post is another one that is likely to get another black checkmark put next to my name. But it clearly is a subject that is in dire need of some fresh air. America is supposed to be able to deal with that. Clean up the act, take a shower, get on with life, now a bit better overall, more real.

Mean and tough vs responsible aware solving problems

Looking at a Sierra Club email I just received, asking people to sign a petition to stop the creation of an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to Houston Texas, it points out that we ought to be creating jobs for clean energy here in the US and not importing either that oil nor the billions we send each year to the oil rich nations in the middle east.

It is a hard decision for me. A better solution seems to me is to get the nation into a major mode of focusing on efficient economical transportation for America - and that is not at all limited to making electric cars and high speed trains - and focus on wind and solar energy gathering and efficient appropriate uses (eg solar cooking ovens are quite efficient and usable much of the time but not always, and could be built into houses), creating productive jobs for Americans at home. (Of course my own solutions to the energy, toxic wastes, and even living space construction, via the KESTS to GEO transportation structure concept, would have already prevented many of the problems; but powerful conventional business and politics intent on staying in total control are still heavily suppressing all that, so it is not an option - I did my best to help, by providing the conceptual keys to solutions others missed.)

The realities of the situation I see, looking around this desert town is not much different from other places in the nation I have seen: the neighbors and townspeople will not accept not having their big muscle SUVs and trucks in which to go get groceries in style; and moving those tons of metal around that way costs lots of petrochemical energy, mostly the money gets sent to the countries in the middle east, where they build fantastic cities with the money while we just burn the corresponding petrochemical fuel up here and nothing left to show for it but more CO2 to breathe. Is that very wise, or even wise in the slightest?

In other words, we apparently are simply not smart enough to figure it all out and deal with it responsibly. We are tough and a bit mean; that is about it. What can I say.

We wait for giant wealthy corporations to give us jobs doing whatever those folks think will make them the most profit, nevermind what we as a nation need for prosperity. This is flag-waving Free Enterprise, apparently. Sure, we don't want a dictator telling us what to do. That is just not at all the only other option of how to get things done. Are we not educated, have brains?

Thus we are stuck with the need to focus on getting oil from Canada neighbors tar sands ripping up the environment there, or else continuing to send all those billions to the mid east so we can continue to strut around in our gargantuan wheels. And to power our industry and much of our electricity needs too.

I wonder if there is a way to use our marvelous communication systems of TV and internet to make people aware of what their individual actions are causing to the big picture, and offer options for moving towards far more wholesome solutions and ultimately a better lifestyle. Most likely those whose success is assumed to be derived from being mean and tough - and the women who worship those mean & tough guys with their big wheels - would ignore such options, but among them might be a few who are of a more responsible nature. Would have to make it interesting, and in places even involve competitive games to keep their interest, perhaps. Although I would prefer it all be done with full comprehension of all involved - that means all Americans, homeless and billionaires alike - with the common intent to solve the problems for all of us, that the standard of living would rise in the country; but in my 70+ years I have learned a bit of the reality of "human nature" so I realize that is mere fantasy.

But civilization has not advanced and solved its problems and prospered by not going for solutions, intermittent that that progress is.

I wonder just how bad the situation will get before it finally gets people's attention, and the women to realize that their mean & tough men are not getting life fixed at all. Will it be here like in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Checknia? Will they have to fling around all those nukes and warcraft in frenzy, making one heck of a mess, before we get around to thinking of getting responsible?

Well, maybe another cup of coffee will help my viewpoint later. I have a nice new roof over my head keeping the rain off, thankfully.

Resource management and individual needs

Reading an online article about how part of the Fertile Crescent has become desert wasteland in recent years, has helped me congeal a basic significance involved, which is equally applicable to us Americans too. Wording of this in some effective form, I came up with:

- The individual human need's acquisition and utilization, and the individual's responsibility to the resource system of which he/she partakes: how to adequately balance those two interrelated requirements for long term survival? The mechanism for providing that "balance" is a major question here. -

The tendency has been to just let the individual partake of all that he/she can manage to acquire, without any further concern about it all. Competition, rivalry, deception, skill, knowledge, all are tools to obtain one's portion of the resource base; but there is no awareness of responsibility for the resource base's continuance and replenishment.

Deserts, such as where I live, are deserts due to insufficient water from the skies, to grow luxuriant vegetation that provides the food base for animal life including humans. Importing water is thus necessary to bring the desert to productive life. Here there are hydroelectric dams and lakes behind them with an associated irrigation canal system to water the deserts. And there are many deep wells which draw up underwater water, in this case water that came from the ice age, and most likely cannot be replenished short of another long ice age. Lots of water for the town to drink at present time, but huge amounts of this non-replenishable water in the desert is used by farmers to water their crops. It is a matter of taking from the common pool of underground water reserves, limited only by the farm's water needs and availability of electricity. The food grown on the farms is, in the overall picture, that which enables people's life in the town, too. No doubt people here just assume whatever resources that are here that they can access, is theirs, and if the resource base dries they will just move on to some place that still has adequate resources. We still have hunter-gatherer roots in our minds.

The online article points out that their (Syria and Iraq, in the article) similar underground water reserve wells have had to go ever deeper, then finally water turned salty and had to be abandoned, along with the associated farms. One country's oil reserves are also about depleted, reducing national income from its sale, so it is harder to import supplies to make up for what is no longer able to be produced in their individual countries.

The "resource base" has both local and ever-widening areas involved, finally to the planetary resource base and eventually hopefully even to space resources.

But right now, the news article points out that hundreds of thousands of people have abandoned their farms and towns and homes, which have all turned to dust; there is no water nor electricity. This is not fantasy, this is fact of life for those people.

In this desert agricultural area where I live, it looks all too potentially similar. Except that the shifting long term weather patterns that have brought desert to Syria and Iraq in the past four years, have at the same time brought amazing amounts of precipitation here, a place where historically it never rains, just 15 days a year it would have fog or snow. The houses in this town, such as my 60 year old one, have no rain gutters on the roof, for example.

The article claims that the desertification of the historically Fertile Crescent is as much a matter of human mismanagement as of drought. The weather we may have little or no control over - I won't deal with the CO2 issues here - but the "human management" factor has potential for solutions. Governmental regulatory function is currently a hot issue in American politics, so it is at least getting some attention. So in this blog post I have been looking at that question too, avoiding getting trapped in some "politically incorrect" bind in the process. As I said above, the problem boils down to "the individual human needs acquisition and utilization, and the individual's responsibility to the resource system of which he/she partakes: how to adequately balance those two interrelated requirements for long term survival? The mechanism for providing that "balance" is a major question here." It is an effort to get beyond the hunter-gatherer mentality, even that of tribalism. In the big picture, we are all on the same boat, as it is said.

One thing that seems to be forming out of this chaos is a need to measure and evaluate the world's resources and their locations, acknowledging that these resources are ever changing, too. We mine copper ore; the mine does not replenish itself and eventually no longer functions as a copper mine anymore, the resource has then changed, for example. Historical rain that has watered agriculture, stops coming anymore. Or overwhelming amounts of water come where it has not happened before, wrecking lives with too much water. Mankind has prospered where they unite to utilize natural resources over a wide area so that it is harnessed responsibly for the larger group's available resources, such as the hydroelectric dams here that provide electricity, store large water runoffs, and provide lakes for irrigation of deserts, for example. Can the whole Earth be considered for such utilization? Huge numbers of people, very powerful people, will say their current grab of the resource base is all theirs, to plunder as they see fit, end of subject. For example, oil is found under a farm and then drawn out making the folks wealthy and living high, nevermind any other consideration. Potable well water is found under a farm and used to the maximum for watering crops and a little for household use, nevermind that the water level is going down and cannot be replenished by nature in practical time spans.

But do we want some bunch of control freaks to have implacable rule over who gets to use what resource how much? Such power over life and prosperity nearly always eventually attracts those who crave to rule others without consideration of the well being of those ruled.

So my thought here is to establish impartial measuring and evaluation agencies from local regional and worldwide resource bases, and make that data available in understandable terms to everyone on the planet. I would like to think that people have a tendency to be responsible to others, given a chance to do that. If they have the knowledge, then they have a chance to deal far more responsibly with how they utilize parts of the worldwide resource base.

With such a knowledge base, how do we prevent such business games such as buying up all of some limited resource (remember soybeans) and raise the price to those who need it - all to make the businessman rich without having added to the value of anything. Such practices are considered honorable in America, too, shrewd business practice. One thing is that with the worldwide resource system in detailed availability to all people, then it is possible those people will all observe the business trickery hoarding a resource to force price uppage to provide wealth without corresponding value added, and the world of people would then know the nature of the tricky businessmen doing it, and deal with them accordingly, somehow.

Or, unfortunately, it is possible that various groupings would be formed and play hoarding power and control games with each other - much of this is already ongoing even in America, not only as in the article's mention of Syria. The customers, those in need of the resources, are the losers in such manipulations, because wealthy empires can be created that way without adding any value to the resource base, and that wealth comes out of the livelihoods of the customers that need the resources.

Yet there is the hope I have that with every person's full knowledge of the total resource base and one's effect on it, that in general people can and will act more responsibly to their neighbors both next door and around the planet.

Then there can be more focus on the utilization of the world's greatest potential resource, the vast human resource. We humanity could be doing such incredibly more than we are doing now, and managing the world's often finite natural resources as a major part of that, for long term viability. The planet is covered over 70% by water, why have drought anywhere on land, needing only a tiny fraction of that water? The area of half the planet at any given time is receiving a thousand watts per square meter of solar power for free 24/7, why are there energy shortages anywhere, why burn dwindling forest material to cook in the hot desert, when a cheap solar oven will work? There is great potential for water conversion and distribution; and solar energy utilization and form conversion, for example. Put our six billion strong human creativity smarts and industriousness to work, fitted into the big picture, and maybe we will be amazed at what we can do.

And that also seems like lots more healthy fun kinds of drama, to me.

(The referenced news article that stimulated this blog post:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/middleeast/14syria.html?_r=1&hp )

T Rex's romping

This evening I sipped my 1 oz ethanol and watched the rest of the DVD movie "Lost World" which I had bought in the bargain bin at Walmart; the parakeets have been fascinated by watching that movie of the bird-like T Rex's romping around munching people; I told Squawk to not fall out of the cage while watching it this time and they both were on the front perch watching and did not fall off this time.

Earlier I had watched the news re the last of the Chilean miners getting rescued from the mine, welcome energy, people getting things right for a change. The kind of drama that hopefully inspires people to help people who are in desperate need.

Football/baseball/basketball/soccer etc teach teamwork to achieve by good performance as individuals and as a team, but unfortunately also integral to it all is the overwhelming motive to cause others to - LOSE - so "we" can "win:" I think that mentality may be a poison to our culture. It may help win wars, but it is an internal destructive rot when big problems involving us all need to be solved, as is the situation now. So sad this past Congress playing such inappropriate games instead of taking care of the nation; hope we all can - somehow - survive that monkeybusiness. I wonder how. It is more complex than just preventing giving the nation's helm back to the power-drunks. Far more complex, and problems long in the making. But not unsolvable, I think.

But now I'm remembering those cracks in the St Francis dam - and the pair of bankers who were hiring the dynamiters to stop the water flowing to Los Angeles, so that the banker's town might flourish again. What is my subconscious telling me?