400

You are  reading my official 400th post on this blog.  Along with the 100 or so in the incomplete folder, this represents about six weeks of 24/7 writing over the past two years.  At an average of 1,000 words each, the 400 posts add up to 400,000 words, minus illustrations, which would be a respectable novel on the order of "War and Peace".

The primary criticism I've received is that my blog doesn't seem to have a hard focus.  Of that, I am guilty as charged.  I didn't start this effort to have a single focus.  I started it as an exercise that would be a legacy to my children...an effort to expose the mind of their father in a way that few children are privy.

As a writer, I've pumped out millions of words for money.  I've written hundreds of scripts, thousands of press releases, manuals, reports, and all manner of printed communications.  As a sideline, I've contributed hundreds of updates to urbansurvival.com, first as Oilman1/Houston Bureau, and later as the Indonesia Bureau.  I've written dozens of articles and ghost written books.  The vast majority of my work is uncredited, which is fine.  I got paid well for it, so who's complaining?

I wanted an outlet, though, that was just me.  No committees.  No editors.  No deadlines.  Only my own inner drive to write.  I don't get paid for this, though I have gotten a couple of jobs because of it.  In the end, it is a practice ground where I develop my thoughts and ideas for later polishing.  Most of what you read here is first draft with only minor edits for spelling and grammar after the fact.  In the parlance, it's 'spew'.

What's particularly gratifying is that, in two years, I've watched the hits go from zero to 8,000 per month.  Of those, about 1,000 per week are unique, meaning about that many individuals read this site on a regular basis.  In all, I've served up 100,000 pages in the time I've been at it.  I've also had Rense and Icke, and a dozen smaller sites, pick up posts for redistribution.  It's exciting, really.

But what is really gratifying are the folks who've written in to say that this or that post made them think, or gave them a new perspective, or taught them something they didn't know before.  The teacher side of me beams with pride when someone 'gets it' and takes the time to say so.

I titled this blog "Life on the Far Side" because it gave me latitude.  The original idea was from a friend who encouraged me to write a blog about my experiences living in Indonesia.  But I didn't want to get trapped into a travelogue.  I wanted to be able to write about all the topics that swim in the ocean of my mind, and about which I spend hours of my life reading and studying.  I wanted to be able to switch from Jakarta traffic to the gods of Olympus seamlessly.  This was to be my 'signature' work.

It's been a real education, too.  For instance, the most popular themes here are the articles on semiotics and acupuncture.  They run neck-and-neck.  The all-time hit leader is "GlobalRev and the Pig's Lipstick."  Close on its tail is "Adventures in Acupuncture II."  What my hit-counter tells me is that people are thirsting for any information on how symbols and hidden communications work, and information of alternative medicine.  We can extrapolate ad nauseum on what that means, but suffice it to say that the audience here is hungry for good, solid information on how the world works.

Interestingly, it matches my own thirst to understand how the Universe works, and why.

I'm taking this moment to thank you, the reader, for your support and encouragement.  It is like a shot of espresso to read an email from readers who got something from my work.  Gratefully, my readers are not ditto-heads, but thinkers who appreciate (as do I) a catalyst that gels their own thinking, or offers additional lines of research.

The lamentable thing about the modern world is that most folks don't consider research and learning to be life-long pursuits.  They have been trained to think of these things as work of 'experts' and 'authorities'.  It doesn't occur to them that we can all become such with a little volition of our own.  If anything, I want this blog to be a celebration of on-going adult education that is self-motivated and doesn't require the confirmation of outside 'authority' for verification.

Cogito ergo sum.  I think therefore I am.

One criticism that I should address is why I don't publish more links.  Well, if I link everything I refer to, then I limit your personal research to what I have found.  Your job is to take the names and references and find your own sources.  I don't have any pretense to tell you WHAT to think.  When I do link something, it's because that particular article or site offers something that must be communally experienced to understand what I am saying.

At any rate, enough of the reflexive analysis.  I just wanted to pause and mark the 400th post, and to address a few things that newer readers may not have picked up yet.  With that many articles online, folks are bound to find something they like.  Click around in the archive in the right-hand column.  See it you can't find something that challenges and entertains you.

One thing I hope I never do here, though, is amuse.  If you don't want to take the time to figure out why, it's because the word comes from French via Latin: a muser.  It means, 'without thought.'

Space: The Spineless Frontier

I've just about had it with NASA and JPL.  These (pejorative) geniuses couldn't find their ass with both hands!

These bozos have literally stumbled over aliens to go look at...ROCKS!

Here's the story:
For at least 200 years, people with telescopes have been watching the polar ice caps on Mars grow and recede with the seasons.  For at least 100 years, water clouds have been observed in Mars' atmosphere.  Since the 70s, we've had photos of water channels, snow and possible ancient ocean shorelines.  Since the 90s we've had photos of lakes, ponds, geysers, and seeps.  In the past few years, their little dune buggies and gotten mired in the mud more than once.  A couple of years ago, Phoenix landed near the north pole of Mars and found all kinds of ice in the dirt.

And these freakin' idiots are still spending billions of dollars to send bigger dune buggies to look for 'evidence' of water on Mars?

Here I thought these guys and gals had degrees in exo-this and planetary-that, but from what I see, they could be standing in flood waters in a torrential downpour in eye-sight of an ocean and still couldn't find water.

The Viking landers found strong evidence of metabolism with a circadian rhythm in Mars' soil.  A lot of smart people, including Arthur C. Clark (who conceived of geo-synchronous communication satellites) have seen trees, pond scum, and lichen.  Some folks with a lot of credentials and letters after their names have put up a strong case for past civilizations on Mars, including Tom Van Flandern, who was the head of the US Naval Observatory.  Tell me he's a kook, would'ja?

Yet, the mental midgets at JPL sent Phoenix to 'look for signs of life' without any equipment to test for life.  Just pick up more rocks and take pretty pictures of them.

These putz' couldn't find life on New Year's Eve in Times Square.

Are they REALLY this stupid, or is there another agenda?  I mean, after all, how much evidence do you need before you can say, "Hey, look!  There's water!"

Like any 'scientific' organization, NASA and JPL get money through grants.  The grants come from individuals and organizations with agendas.  Those agendas influence the scope and use of the grant money.  JPL's charter is to hunt for rocks.  Thus, everything they do will be hunting for rocks.  NASA's charter says they are to look for evidence of life off of the Earth, but it goes on to say that it is under the control of the military and they can't tell anyone if they find that evidence.

So, hey!  Let's give them more money to go find life on other planets!  After all, together they will look in the wrong places, and if they find it, they won't tell us!

If this isn't the classic definition of a circle jerk, I don't know what is.  If the CONgress is serious (hahaha!) about saving money, they can start by whacking NASA and JPL off of the public teat.  Let 'em fend for themselves.  After all, how long do you think these guys would get private money if they kept sending the wrong tools to do the job and then were prohibited from sharing any really good info, if they found it?

So, now they've got a new toy.  It's a car-sized, nuke-powered dune buggy that weighs a couple of tons that they're going to drop in the middle of what amounts to the Gobi desert to look for signs of 'past water.'  The reasoning behind choosing such an arid location is that the buggy might get stuck in the mud if they sent it somewhere where there's ample water.  Bet you think I'm kidding, don't you.  Look it up.

They want to look for water in a dry hole.  They want to check for signs of life without any instruments to do it effectively.  And they want to take lots of pretty pictures with wildly expensive cameras that can't produce a simple image with correct colors.  Hell, my cell phone could do better for a lot less.

With all the billions and billions of dollars that have been spent since the 60s, we've landed 12 men on the Moon.  That's it.  Other than that, we've put lots of whirly-gigs in orbit that go round-and-round-and-round.

The US has a manned space program that can't put a man in space.  It has a shiny space station with no where to go that is supposed to do zero-G research, but every time the positioning rockets fire, that all goes to hell.  The world has tons of pretty pictures of rocks and dirt taken by robots.  And we're blessed with Tang orange drink and velcro.  Furthermore, in 60 years of technological development, we still use controlled explosions at the butt end of ballistic missiles to launch stuff into the endless go-round.

Jell, Burt Ruttan can build a REAL spacecraft in his garage, and NASA can't?  The Chinese invented rockets 800 years ago, and we can't do just slightly better for all the R&D?

Tell me again...what precisely have we paid for?  I mean, we're going to all this effort to explore strange, new worlds, and then going out of our way not to talk about the 'strange' bits.  WTF?

Here we've got pretty strong evidence of really unusual features on the Moon, so we stopped going there.  There's unbiased, computer-based analysis that shows there's a better than average chance of buildings on Mars, so we poo-poo anyone who says so.  There's a moon of Mars that even Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, says is really, really interesting.  So we ignore it.  There's a moon of Jupiter with possible oceans underneath its crust.  So we go back to sleep.  There's a moon of Saturn that is a dodecahedron with a massive seam precisely on it equator that no one can explain, so let's go look at something else.  There's another moon of Saturn that has methane clouds and ethane oceans, but we still say Earth's oil comes from rotten dinosaurs.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results.  By that definition, NASA and JPL are certifiably nuts, and anyone who keeps funding them is crazier still.

If we had taken all the money, time and effort wasted on going in circles around the Earth, and had pointed it in one direction, say at Mars, there'd be a bustling civilization there with interplanetary trade going on.

Basically, what we've achieved so far is akin to Columbus sailing in circles around the Mediterranean for 60 years, expounding the virtues of far off lands and exciting trade prospects.  Meanwhile, he's got robots in Central America sending back photos of Mayan cities and massive gold deposits and telling everyone that's not what they show.  Oh, and can he have another couple billion to send more robots to show the same damn pictures from different angles...or 3-D..or infrared...or ultraviolet?

It's like Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe painting.  Four identical panels, different colors.

Cape deh!

Cost cutting idea: get rid of the yutzes at NASA and JPL.  China and India got the exploration thing covered. Use the money to pay down the national debt.  You're not really putting scientists out of work, because they don't meet the definition of a scientist.  A scientist wants to discover new things, but these crack-pots put more effort into looking the other way, than in actually dong something useful.  We've got enough pictures.  Let some real researchers and explorers take over from here.

The new Mars dune buggy is called Curiosity, which is an apt name.  After all, it's a curiosity why people put up with their crap and don't demand actual results for all the billions spent.  The more money poured in, the more backwards it goes.

Send 'em all back to their Masonic lodges and Satanic temples, and let real men take over.

Let's have a little Final Frontier for a change!