Thomas Edison somehow can't figure out how to power the light bulb, because he didn't drink ... "Red Bull" .... OH MY FUCKING GOD.

In twitter speak that is "OMFG" by the way.

This is so ridiculous in numerous ways. First of all, Thomas Edison really was not the FIRST. Second of all, ALMOST EVERY SINGLE SCIENTIFIC EVENT really is a whole of individual efforts collectively coinciding at the same time.

Read this : Who invented the Light bulb

Okay. Now how simplistic and stupid is the "Thomas Edison invented the light bulb" story. American historiography is bullshit, with self-indulgent and bloviating tendencies ... because we are an insecure culture. We don't have 1,000 years of being in the same place like Europeans, Africans, and Asians do.

One thousand years ago was 1,014. The battle of Hastings and the Magna Carta had not yet happened. The Chinese had not yet burned down their huge navy and were sending ships and commerce between East Africa and Peru. At least this is the current theory: ever notice how Peruvians look unique in their asian features, and why Peru -- isolated from rest of South America -- is also a unique blend. The carvings in the earth, might well have been Chinese characters for all we know. The beings with the ships who brought incredible goods and knowledge.

And now there are archaeologists who think (with good evidence) that copper mines in Canada were responsible for the Bronze Age throughout Eurasia (Western Europe to Russia and South to Northern Africa and the Mediterranean) -- brought by the Nords and Swedes and Fins and large water carrying vessels.

Things are more complex and non-individualistic in the macrocosm.

Less is More

Less is more
More or less
They say it's the best
when you detest the more
because it has too much zest
and doth bequest
your attention
all of the time
all of your mind
like a tourniquet or bind
you lose the seeking for the find
and go blind
but life is really about moderation
easing back and doing less
because less is more
just like a dirty whore
or a drug addict
feeling better even though the story never ends
because
the story never really ends
you just use different words to think life has changed
but life never changes
except
that you evolve
or devolve
going up or
going down
slowing down
finding the solution or the satisfaction
wherever happiness resides.

Damn it's windy today. The temperature is 52 in the sun, but the wind makes it feel 10 degrees cooler. It's gonna drop into the 30's tonight, and maybe into the upper 20's.

How fast is the wind?

Damn. 43 kilometers per hour (26 mph) !!!!!

Liberal: "the ability to feel that all humanity is repairable and that positive forward-thinking solutions can be obtained despite the competitive environment which inherently besets the species. In the past, liberal actually meant to continue the status quo, or be persistent with the mainstream opinion, but nowadays, liberal means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The Liberal Democrats of the 1880's are nothing at all when compared to the self same words used for the 1980's and the 2010's."

Conservative : "the notion that nothing matters except the self and the belief that all things encountered really matter only insofar as they affect the paradigm that one has decided to be called Conservatism. In the past, conservative meant to be desiring or maintaining the consistency of traditions or laws of the past; but in the modern era, this term has been perverted and now is used to defend actions and beliefs that are exceptionally revolutionary and incendiary in rhetoric as well as philosophical origin."

Look at what's coming this weekend. Hurray.

I recall that one Christmas break it rained every single day. The weather pattern was similar to what I'm seeing now. This looks like it is going to be a wet winter with half an inch a day rainfall for 2 to 3 weeks straight.

Hopefully a lot of it will become snowfall.

Thing is, once the Earth gets to the Winter Solstice (December 21) the Earth will begin to tilt back towards the sun, and the weather patterns will start to change. The picking up of the moisture from the ocean is dependent upon the temperature gradient, and right now the upper hemisphere is colder, so it picks up the warmer precipitation from the water and throws it up onto the West Coast. Once the upper hemisphere begins to tilt back towards the sun (after December 21st) this gradient diminishes and begins to increase in the Southern hemisphere.

What also happens is the storms go more Northward, into Oregon, Washington, Canada and Alaska.

If you have never heard it before click here.

This is one of my favorite old compositions from 2001. I can't remember how to play it now, but if I bothered to sit down and figure it out again I probably could. Anyway, I listen to it every now and then. Hope you enjoy it.

I created it over the summer of 2001. While the Cheney commission was busy working with Oil executives over the carving of the oil fields of Iraq. How innocent we were back then. The big issue of the day was a spif in Asia over China getting upset with our military planes flying over their airspace. Who woulda thunk that 5 months later airplanes would be a so much bigger and transformative issue.

Wow, yea, we really were naive that summer of 2001.

The song is named "Wonderall".

Winter Strom #3 is packing some rain, but it drizzles and stops for 15 minutes and then picks up tempo and rains for 15 minutes, repeat. Notice the long North-South cloud tail.

This is typical winter storm formation on the west coast. A weather system "Low" spins counter clockwise and what happens is one of the tails of the "spin" winds up going South to North into the California coastline. West coast weather is a series of spinning bands of water, unlike the East coast. The North-South tail brings the rain and dumps it all over California while it moves Northward into the coast. Then it spreads out a little bit over the valley and slams snow into the Sierra Nevada mountain range. That snow is the water supply of the entire California population (much like Lebanon -- another arid environment that depends on winter storms bringing snow to the mountains just off the coastline.)

Right now (according to the California Department of Water Resources ) the snow pack is about 50% of normal for this time of year, but still only about 12% of the April 1st average. Rain disappears in California after April until November, with rare exception. So these last 3 winter storms are a big help in easing the drought, but California is far from out of danger. We need about 3 or 4 more winter storms to get even close to 75% of the April 1st average.

Let's cross our fingers. We were dangerously close this last summer from water rationing.

This says it all -- despite not mentioning Native American Indians.