On Hubbert, and TEOTWAWKI

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains; however improbable, must be the truth.”—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I’ve already written about Jung, and synchronicity, and the lack of coincidence in the universe, I have semi revealed to you some of my thoughts, i.e. being out of place, and time.  As I stated in a previous blog post regarding the lack of civility in the church of ostensible peace (I realized later that more people have died in “Godly” fights than for any other reason I could conscientiously think of, anyone besides me recall the crusades?).

I have also regaled you with my thoughts on something wicked this way comes.  I have begun the study of bushido, not because I wish to become a samurai, but because the samurai had some good thought processes that anyone can adopt to help them get through life.  So it’s not from a swordsmanship perspective, but from a philosophical perspective that I read and study the works of Tsumetomo.  In the bushido, or hagakure, Tsumetomo speaks often of the warrior living each second as if they were dying, and even in dying should always move toward their goal.  My goal is to survive long enough to get to the other side of whatever it is that is coming.

Last week I was in class, learning Microsoft’s WPF framework, I’m a software developer (don’t ask it’s a long story) and we are adopting this as the model moving forward for all of our windows development.  The conversation turned most curiously to on M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that production of oil would peak in the United States in or about 1970, several years after his prediction, geologists came to the conclusion that Hubbert was in fact correct and oil production in the United States had in fact peaked when Hubbert said it would.

I find this very disconcerting, I am aware that the black stuff in the ground is a finite resource, and even if oil were abiotic (renewable in its current form) we still do not know how long it takes for an oil field to recover, it is quite evidentiary however that whatever that recovery rate is mankind is rapidly outstripping the earths ability to put it back.  If it is not abiotic, then we all need to take a page out of the Hagakure, and prepare every day for our death, imagine all the ways we can possibly die, and come to grips with it.  I don’t say this lightly, I believe that we could return to ways that were sustainable, and of course those who cannot will unfortunately perish.

It’s this constant mantra of “business as usual” that will be the down fall of mankind.  I find it almost ironic that those people who currently live on a sustenance existence are the best equipped to meet the new world head on.  After all they already exist at a level that will be below where the western world finally ends up.  I foresee some areas returning to “the wild west” and the areas between the towns will pretty much be a no man’s land, this will not require a terrorist attack, a nuclear weapon discharge, or some other yet unforeseen catastrophe to befall us, we have sealed our own fate by failing to take into consideration that funny looking black liquid that was first mined in Pennsylvania launching the industrial revolution did not have a finite quanta that could be applied.

I’ll leave you with pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, which loosely translates to “plurality should not be posited without necessity”.  The simpler something is, the easier it is to maintain that thing.  I love my high speed internet, my large flat televisions, the cable that brings me mindless entertainment for roughly 30 minutes a day (don’t know why I own 3 TV’s 2 don’t get watched) and the one that does is usually on either food or how to shows.  Time to get simple, or as simple as you can, life is going to get simple soon enough.

Romans, Christians, and Does God Give a Crap

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." –Author Unknown

This hits the nail square on the head so to speak, why is it that the individual religions and their subsequent followers do not question the existence of whatever it is they believe in.  As I have stated previously I am neither atheist nor agnostic, but hold views of a higher power that while not necessarily antithetical to modern religions certainly flies in the face of the established dogmas.

I am currently in the next state over to attend training in Windows Presentation Foundation fundamentals and advanced techniques.  While retrieving my belongings from the vehicle I happened across a “church” group holding their weekly meeting in one of the multiple conference rooms located on the lower level of the hotel.

I still believe that all people are free to exercise their religious beliefs in whatever way they see fit, hey that’s up to them, but it does not stop the ice pick in the ear feeling I get when a group of people get together to “praise God and pass the ammo”.  Do none of them stop to think why they are there, or are they there out of some odd sense of necessity, do their lives stink so badly as to need the comfort of one another while they worship and give song offerings.  I suppose it’s’ better than sacrificing young children mind you, although that thought has crossed my mind from time to time.

I just don’t get it, I may never get “it”, I am unsure of that at this time, however I do know that they definitely did not apply any critical thinking skills whatsoever to their little gathering downstairs in the prince George room.  I know this because I was met with contempt when I simply peered in to see what was going on (ever so curios, one day it’s going to get me killed, and hopefully not in a way I have not imagined yet).  One of our fine church going ladies was out in the hall way taking a personal cell phone call, now had she been on the phone with God taking direction I could understand that, in fact I may have a few questions for him myself.

Anyway, I was walking down the hall, with the door opened in the direction I happened to be travelling so I peered round the corner just to see what variety of gathering had everyone all in a ruckus.  Said and described woman on the phone decided that “whitey” should not be imposing on “her” church service and basically said “excuse you”, I apologized and said I was simply curious as to what was going on, flashing my best smile and trying to be as apologetic as I possibly could.

Her reaction was nothing short of irascible in its nature.  Pretty much telling me that I did not “belong” to “her” church and to kindly remove myself, well that’s kind of tough since I’m at the hotel for the next week (today being Tuesday, yes it takes me several days to write these).

This whole encounter has done nothing but raise the question in my mind of how so called “religious” people can be such hypocrites, I’m not even sure that’s the term I’m looking for.  It seems endemic to me as well, that everyone has a label, and either they are trying to remove the one you’re happy with and replace it with theirs or they want nothing to do with you.  They all seem to lack the critical thinking skills to realize that the person they just rejected could have been their saving grace.

The Bearable Lightness Of Being

“I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

I know how he felt, I feel the same way most days.  If nothing else like I don’t belong here, as much as my friends try to make me feel differently, I just can’t shake the feeling.

I am unable to put it all into words, the general feeling of dislocation is becoming stronger, I have had this feeling my entire life, and now at 43 its becoming stronger.  I feel like I don’t belong “here” in this time period.

Everyone has talents, and skills. The difference is talents are just “there” skills are taught.  Cooking is a skill (to do it well anyway), but the ability to draw is a talent, (one I definitely do not possess, I’d be hard pressed to draw a straight line if you nailed the ruler to the desk). But I do have talents; I have the ability apparently to “see” what others miss, to instinctively understand the world around me, almost in a Zen like way, even if I’ve never studied Zen. I often find myself telling people that I’m not psychic; I personally believe that those people exist, but I’m not one of them.  I can however look at a situation and pretty much tell you what is going to happen in a very broad sense, and sometimes very specifically.  To those whom I have made “predictions”, they themselves will tell you I run about 80% dead nuts accurate, with about 90% of the remaining 20% running in the downright scary category.  Don’t ask me the lottery numbers, because if I knew those I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling you LOL.

I recently had a conversation on the phone with a very dear friend, we got onto the subject of houses, what our perfect house would be like, it would have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a basement etc. all the normal stuff you think about when you talk about where you would love to live, out in the country, in the city etc.  After we hung up, I picked up a piece of paper from inside my desk where I store my excess printer paper, and picked up a pencil and started to draw, now please take note of my missive above about my artistic talents, I aint got none, and I despise pencils, I dislike the scratchiness of them against the paper.  Anyway, in roughly 4 minutes 30 seconds (ok probably closer to 6 but hey time is relative) I had drawn a house. Don’t know why I drew a house; I just let the universe guide my hand, much like I do when I’m writing for the blog.  I phoned my friend later in the day and said I would like to show them my picture, since I don’t draw, can’t draw, and despise pencils to begin with; they are perfectly aware of all of the above and wanted to see it.  Well I ended up taking a photo of my drawing, lacking a scanner and all, and e-mailed it to them.

What came next shocked both my friend and I equally.  They asked me where I had gotten the picture from, and when I explained I don’t know, I just started with the pencil and that’s what came out.  They then proceeded to tell me that as a younger person (were both “over the hill” so to speak) they had drawn the exact same picture, almost 100% identical (at least as identical as one can get coming from two different minds).  They promised me that they would dig out their picture and send it to me for comparison.

Its these and other experiences that tell me I’m out of place, how is it I should know how an engine works, and have since I was 5 years old, I just “knew”, when helping my uncle work on his old Nova, how it functioned, what was wrong, and how to fix it, something no 5 year old should know.  I also instinctively know how to grow vegetables (although this year’s garden has been a bit peaked).  I also know, even though I keep a book around, how to preserve that food for the long haul.  If the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow, I’d make it to the other side.

All of this begs the question, have I been here before (wherever here is, ultimately there might be many “here’s” to be at or from).  If I haven’t then what explains my experience as a child and as a knowledge seeking adult that all, however anecdotal, the evidence of having traversed this existence before.

Others with whom I have spoken, also have had similar experiences, which were repudiated by their ostensibly “educated” elders as utter nonsense, the issue I take with this is that no one bothered to investigate it.  I bothered.  I found that while again highly anecdotal, the evidence is there that all of us have been “here” before, whether we know it or not.

The lonely empty tuna can

“I said grandpa what’s this picture here, it’s all black and white and aint real clear, Is that you there, he said yea I was 11, Times were tough back in ‘35 that’s me and Uncle Joe just trying to survive a cotton farm and a great depression.” –Jamey Johnson, “In Color”

The fact of the matter is we have forgotten what grandpa knew, from the great depression that fomented worldwide between 1929 and 1939, Americas, neigh, the world’s lost decade.  That at some point, whatever you had, whether it was tenable or not, was of value, today’s world is filled with throw away cheap plastic stuff not meant to be repaired.  All based on a finite resource known as “Oil”, black gold, Texas tea, the list of synonyms goes on and on, and the fact of the matter is had oil not been discovered in Pennsylvania when it had, we may still be powering things with steam.  Potentially worse yet, people in the form of slaves, and work animals such as horses and mules.

Rather than blather on and rail against the ostensible wickedness of the industrial revolution, today I wish to examine how we get there from wherever it is we are headed, it is my ever so humble, and usually quite wrong, opinion that the world as we know it has reached an untenable crescendo, and must, as gravity dictates, fall.  The question is, do you have the skills to ride the wave or are you going to drown.

This brings us to the lonely tuna can, that bastion of servitude hiding in plain sight.  I will attempt to chronicle everything I manage to glean from the lonely tuna can; you see I eat a lot of tuna, packed in water, as a low calorie snack, or part of a meal. Normally like any good over consuming American I would have thrown the can away with the rest of the refuse from my daily life.  Then it dawned on me that the can the tuna came in, may be useful in some other way.  So far I have come up with at least 2 ideas, I’ll present the first here, and the second in another post when I get the other parts for it.

Worst case scenario we end up scrounging around for food, shelter, and basics a la “the road” or “the book of Eli” (both excellent films btw).  But what if you could gather the necessary items pretty effortlessly and when coupled with a few hand tools, that everyone should already have by the way, make something that while not exactly aesthetically pleasing to start off in a survival or emergency situation function should take precedence over form.

Now to the meat of the matter, first you want to remove the lid of the tuna can, using a standard rotary can opener, manual of course(you do have a manual can opener right? If not spend the 2 bucks and get one, cheap insurance), I take the “lid” off and clean it up with a paper towel and set it aside, I have a small screen doo dad that I picked up at the store that drains the tuna wonderfully.  This raises the question of what to do with the tuna water, under the auspices of waste not, want not, I pour the tuna water out onto some house plants I keep in my office to make it a bit more cheery.  Trust me, no amount of miracle grow will substitute for tuna water, my plants are healthier and happier since I got tired of walking to the back door to pour out the water.  Anyway, you clean off the lid, set it aside; you’ve drained the water out of the tuna, now you can make a sandwich, or if you’re like me just add some Cajun seasoning to the can and eat it that way.  You can always feed it to your cat as well, that is if you have a cat, and you’re not fond of tuna. We need the can, not the contents per se.

Now, you need to gather a few other things from about the house, a hammer, a block of scrap wood, 8d to 10d nail, and a piece of string about 2 feet long, be certain its cotton string/twine, or sisal/jute.  It is required that it be natural, burning the plastic based ropes will kill you if you breathe the fumes for too long.

If you do not have these things, go immediately to the local hardware store and get them, they could be the things that save your life in an emergency.  I’ll make a separate posting on what I feel are the necessary tools to have around, even if you live in an apartment.

Ok, we have a hammer, nail, tuna can, and some cotton string.  First we need to take a file or other rough surface to the edge of the can to dull it, wouldn’t want to cut ourselves.  If you lack a file, take the lid outside, and while wearing gloves (for Pete’s sake wear gloves), rub the edge of the lid all the way round on the sidewalk or other suitable rough surface (rock, asphalt, brick, whatever’s handy).

Ok, now that there is less of a chance we’ll be removing fingers during the rest of the project, you now need your nail, hammer and your piece of scrap lumber.  Place the lid on the scrap lumber, and use the nail to punch a hole in roughly the center of the lid, make it large enough to pass a doubled over string through, but no so loose the string falls through it.

Take your string, tie the two loose ends together, and hook one end around whatever is handy, a nail, coffee cup hook, chair leg etc.  Pull the loop taught; insert your nail in to the loop at the other end, and twist. Twist it up until it gets to the point you can’t twist it any more than double it over and allow it to twist on itself while keeping the tension  on the string.

If using jute soak the wick in ¼ cup salt to 2 cups water, then lay it out on a pan and allow to dry overnight. The salt solution will keep the wick from charring too quickly.

Feed one end of the wick through the hole in the lid about a half to three quarters inch, fill the can up 7/8ths of the way with either olive or vegetable oil, let sit for 10 minutes or so.  You now have a homemade oil lamp, that will extinguish if tipped over (but with the size of the can that should not happen), the floating lid allows for the wick to always be near the oil, any further away and the oil will not “wick” up fast enough to feed the fire, the idea is that the oil will burn faster than the wick does.

Oil lamps have been around for thousands of years, and this one can be powered by whatever cooking oil you happen to have around. I plan on testing mine with various oils to see what gives the best light, and longest burn.  Now you have light for when the lights go out, you can make up a bunch of these and put them in your emergency kit, you do have an emergency kit right? Just fill them when needed after the lights go out.  You’ve saved the landfills from a few cans, made something useful, and taken something otherwise untenable and given it a new life.

UPDATE: I had to add 4 slices of styrofoam about 1/8 or slightly thicker, the lid now sits on these; to the oil to hold the lid up, it sinks otherwise, I suppose because veggie oil is thinner than I had anticipated.  However, it burns and works well with the addition of the styrofoam, I just used some junk styrofoam I had lying around.  The veggie oil does give off some black smoke, but I may have also had the wick too long as well, will shorten it and refire to see what happens.

Chaos and Synchronicity

“Does the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the amazon, set off a tornado in Texas?”—Edward Lorenz

Dr. Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT coined the phrase when he was researching how to make better weather predictions in the 1960’s.  He realized that ever so small changes in inputs had a radical and grandiose resultant difference in output. He dubbed this the butterfly effect, and set off a wave of research that continues to this day in chaos theory.

If we accept the axiom that Dr. Lorenz was correct, and that small changes in input cause radical differences in output, how then can we reconcile chaos to synchronicity when both are not only present but in effect at any given time as we go about our daily lives.

Take for example an online game, Lorenz’s theory states that in order to be a chaotic system it must first meet the threshold of sensitivity to initial conditions, so the point at which I moved from my position in the game to a random server position where other people were gathered, this random server selection in order to balance load qualifies as a sensitivity to an initial condition.

The second requirement is that there is topological mixing within the system, as I arrived at the place where the people gathered, others arrived and left as well, this mixing of individuals causes the system to be in constant search of balance.

The third requirement is density of periodic orbits, or does a player, as they flit from server to server looking for and finding friends, keep to the same server set, or are do they approach a server only to be moved as their friend whom they were following moves, thus never actually arriving at their intended location.

Having accepted the above axiom as having a modicum of truth is it then synchronicity that the people one needs most in their life at that time, would come from a random chaos meeting in the game?  If it were to happen that someone met and fell in love with someone in the game due to the chance server they ended up on due to the chaotic nature of the system, is that not an example of synchronicity in action?

If the receiver of the gift of love, or friendship, or just that right person to help their career, at just the right time, through events that have no causal relationship is what defines synchronicity.  One could argue that chaos is a tool of synchronicity, or that synchronicity is an element of chaos.  Could one exist without the other is a question that I have a feeling has a negative answer, but cannot prove, Lorenz attempted to prove mathematically that any system that met the criteria, could be considered chaotic, but at the same time have a synchronistic element wherein the universe uses the chaos to meet its own goals and objectives.

Jung was right

“There are no coincidences” --Carl Gustav Jung.

I believe that sentiment.  There is too much that happens on a day to day basis that is wholly unrelated at the time of the occurrence but becomes connected later on in its effect.  Thing A might happen today, while thing B may not happen for a day or two, and due to the fact that most people (especially Americans, sorry I are one too, and its true even of me most days) have the attention span of a gnat they don’t realize that the two events or incidences (incidii?) are related to one another, it may be sometime in the future before they realize that A and B were actually connected.

Jung coined this phenomenon synchronicity, believing that events that appear to be causally unrelated are in fact intertwined with each other whether the observer believes it or not.  This intertwining can take many forms, most people who employ well designed critical thinking skills can see these things as part of a giant puzzle, at the time we may not know where all the pieces fit, or that they are even part of the same puzzle.  There is a potentiality for multiple puzzles to be available at any given time to be put together by the astute observer.

It is not my job to convince you of this, or anything else for that matter, as it would be a violation of my spiritual tenets to do so. The greatest freedom “God” gave us is the freedom to choose, for right or for wrong, the freedom to choose, and therefore it would be a violation of your freedom to choose if I were to convince you one way or the other, I can simply present my case as the facts that I know to be true and allow you to decide ultimately on your own what you will believe.

Case in point, I wrote the second blog post first, and sat on it, Unsure whether or not to start this journey and post it.  I sent it to a friend, who, besides thinking I was totally insane (ok well partially insane anyway), confided in me that they were doing much the same thing, without knowing the reason why, just trusting that it is what needs to be done for whatever reason.  It was with that feedback that it was posted.  The religious asshattery post was actually written second but posted first, and it wasn’t until I read them top to bottom, almost as one posting, since the blog puts the latest on top, that I realized there was synchronicity between the two.

It seems that the universe was trying to tell me something, with the asshats on the side of the road, that maybe, just  maybe, my instincts are right, something wicked this way comes.

The journey begins, with a single step, toward the destination, even if the destination is in fact unknown.  I love the ancient Chinese wisdom as well, which succinctly states that “unless you change direction, you are liable to end up where you are headed”.

Stream of Conciousness

I’m chronicling this not to frighten anyone, not in the least; it’s simply not my style. I went to the “store” (yes that store, the one everyone loves to hate) and as I was gathering my normal apples, grapes, etc. I wandered through the soup aisle, now I should preface this with the fact that I eat soup on a nearly daily basis, its good, filling and low calorie (at least the ones I get), along with cans of tuna, one in the morning, one with lunch and one in the afternoon, so I go get that stuff and a little voice in my head says “buy some ramen” you know the last bastion of food for college kids everywhere, the 12 for 2 buck ramen packets, 3 boxes of chicken and 3 boxes of beef.

So I go up the next aisle, just kind of looking round for anything I might need and I ended up with 2 pounds of salt, I don’t eat salt, I do use it in cooking, but I don’t add it to anything. I’ve felt compelled to purchase these things for reasons unknown, but I think it might be for the same reason that I now possess 20 pounds of rice, 30 pounds of beans, and other legumes. As well as assorted tools and supplies all hand crank variety.

Something is coming, what I do not know, now the end of the world has been coming for a couple thousand years at least, and everyone was certain that their time was the time it would happen, and I’m not saying that the end of the world, just possibly the end of the world as we know it.

The fact of the matter is I’m INTJ (the masterminds) now people of my personality type are not given to fits of compulsion, in fact it’s not unlike us for our contingency plans to have contingency plans. We don’t do anything without a plan, well planned, with contingencies taken care of. So to be compelled to do something totally outside our predefined lists is totally out of character for me.

I also ended up with 1100 rounds of .22 ammo, now I love my .22’s they are cheap fun, but I realized when I put the ammo in the ammo can it belongs in I now have 5500 rounds of .22 ammo, not that it’s a whole bunch, especially for me (I’ve been known to keep enough ammo to start and win a small war), but feel like it’s only about 1/3 of what I really need. I couldn’t help but think that I need several boxes of larger caliber ammo as well. Since the store had plenty of ammo finally, I need to pick up a couple boxes of larger caliber ammo for food purposes.

I also am researching how to keep food without refrigeration, now I grew up canning food, growing a garden etc. I have a pressure canner, and have started to keep things like left over veggies for stocks. I now buy my chicken with the bones in it, so that I can make stock from that. It’s an old school skill set that I feel compelled to learn these things in the event the power goes out on a permanent basis. Heat is easy to generate, I have enough trees in the general vicinity to keep the heat on in the winter and am researching rocket stoves to use this wood in the most efficient manner possible. I also have an earth “rocket powered” oven design in mind that I’ll start building shortly to see how it works out.

It should be noted that up until the invention of refrigeration, food was generally kept in its natural state, walking around until it was needed, in the event the tribe managed to bag a larger piece of meat, or the proverbial ton of fish, they would keep it by either salting or smoking, both technologies I am researching right now, and going to attempt to get right before the feces contacts the high speed rotational device. I am hoping to run into a few books on native American food storage, or older “house books” from the 17th and 18th centuries to use as guides, even if the writing requires a way back dictionary.

I don’t know why this is important, I just know it is. I feel like Shakespeare, “Something wicked this way comes”. Even if I don’t know what wicked thing that is at this time. There have been many prognosticators over the years that have gotten it wrong, and I’ve never claimed to be psychic in any way shape, form, manner, or method. However I have learned to read people very well, I have a high N factor (close to 100, highest of the 4 letters in the Meyers Briggs), N stands for iNtuition, or what your gut is telling you, mine is screaming prepare, but for what?

It’s also telling me that there is another side to this, whatever this is, and that all I have to do is get there successfully. It is entirely possible that I’ve simply driven myself off of the deep end, gone schizophrenic and simply do not realize it, however, the voice really isn’t a voice per se its more my gut telling me to get the hell down off that limb, you’ve done climbed out far enough.

My apologies if this seems a bit disjointed, I wrote it in about 4 minutes as a pure stream of conciousness exercise, so may not follow all the "rules" of course I was never one for "rules" anyway, they are more suggestions than rules.

Heres a question for you.

I don’t write this blog in an attempt to get rich, obviously there are a ton of people out there who do that, and I wish them well. I do this for the catharsis effect it seems to have by writing it down.

Now let me preface this with I am not agnostic, nor am I atheist, I do however have a unique view of “God” and our surroundings, while not antithetical to Christianity, it certainly fly’s in the face of the obvious dogma espoused by the church, any church.

As I was traveling to the store this evening in my duo daily attempt to convince my stomach my throat had not been cut, on the corner were some people holding signs (no not of the Bill Engvall variety, although they certainly could have utilized one of those as well) saying such happy things as “prepare to meet thy god”, and “Jesus is coming, are you ready”.  Now I’m certainly not the type to prejudge individuals, I’m sure some of those church monkeys were really nice people, with absolutely zero critical thinking skills.

It’s obvious to me (although I certainly don’t think the idea even came close to running anywhere near their minds) that there is a large Hindu population in the area, now if I were a Hindu, I would not only be duly embarrassed, but also extremely insulted at the “prepare to meet your god” statement, now don’t get me wrong, this country was built on freedom of speech, religion, and gathering, those were so important that the founding fathers put them in the very first add on to the constitution.

Now back to being insulted, if I were Hindu, I would have been duly insulted to my core, as the Hindu religion has around 27 “Gods”; which “God”, as a “God” fearing Hindu, should I prepare to meet? Or what of our poor Muslim brothers, who believe in the same “God” as Christians and Jews, but believe Allah was Jesus, but Jesus was good too. Or Buddhists, for whom “God” has returned over and over again over the millennia cast into different bodies.

I seek only the truth, somewhere in all of the world’s religions are a true sense of what “God” meant in all of their teachings (as I am unsure of gender, we’ll just run with that).

So there is your religious asshattery for the day. Hope you enjoyed it.  Put on your critical thinking ability for “Gods” sake, I’m relatively certain that he won’t mind you questioning him, his existence, or anything about “them”.