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[Note: I’d love to credit the source of this image, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where I found it!]

The plan was for the WAAGNFNP blog to run for one year, and it saddens me to inform you that we’re not quite going to be able to meet that goal.

I’d like to offer my sincerest thanks to my chief blog co-admins christian h. and JP Stormcrow for all their support, hard work, and friendship. Equally heartfelt thanks to James Killus and Kiera who stepped in to help when we needed them most.

To everyone who contributed posts: beyond thanks, let me just say that I’m so proud of the quality of what we’ve been able to do here and so touched by your participation that it feels like a mini-GNF going off in my heart.

To everyone who participated in the comments and made this so much fun, and to everyone who just lurked: thanks for being here in any way that you were. (Never forget: Gojira sees all!)

And although real-world life (stupid day jobs!) may be impeding on blog life, we assure you, as 3Tops is our witness, the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party lives on!

Oaktown Girl
Minister of Justice
WAAGNFNP

In the post-9/11 propaganda game, “safe” is even more corrosive to our Constitutional rights and liberties than “War on Terror”. Why? Because it’s insidious.

Contrary to what the corporate media would have you believe, there’s actually a good number of Americans who absolutely understand that a “War on Terror” is not only illogical and impossible, but a hoax designed to consolidate money and power into the hands of a very elite few. By contrast, “safe” actually sounds reasonable on the face of it, and therein lies the danger.

But let’s back up.

A few years ago I, along with many others of a progressive mind set, got excited by the news that Democrats were finally starting to understand the power of language in “framing” issues. It’s a simple concept: be the on who sets the terms of the debate and you’re likely to be the one who wins the debate. At long last, Democrats were finally going to start engaging in the framing battle and quit yielding every talking point on every issue to the GOP.

George Lakoff was leading the way with his insanely popular book that came out in 2004, Don’t Think of an Elephant, which we were assured Democrats were studying assiduously. It didn’t matter if you had quibbles with Layoff’s “nurturing parent” (liberal) vs. “strict father” (conservative) premise. The substance of the book was sound: take control of the language and you take control of the argument.

Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, also came out in 2004. It had a different angle but a similar theme: how Democrats can win back Red State America by changing their ways of communication and messaging. Frank was the darling of progressive talk radio and blogs for about the next two years straight. I know that many Democratic politicians were well aware of Frank’s book because they were asked about it frequently in interviews. Their response to the book was always glowing, and it seemed as though Democrats were finally understanding what the rest of us had understood for years, decades even. The clouds had parted, the Dems were “locked and loaded”, and we were all ready to roll.
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Forget the caffe latte, screw the raspberry iced tea
A Malibu and Coke for you, a G&T for me
Alcohol, Your songs resolve like
my life never will
When someone else is picking up the bill I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
O Alcohol, would you please forgive me?
For while I cannot love myself
I’ll use something else

–”Alcohol,” Barenaked Ladies

If you take a molecule of the simplest hydrocarbon, methane, remove one of its four hydrogen atoms and replace it with a hydroxyl group (-OH), you get methanol, the simplest alcohol. The hydrogen at the end of the hydroxyl is more “labile” than the others, so it’s relatively easy for methanol to lose it. That leaves the oxygen with a very friendly bond dangling, and it likes to hook up with its nearby carbon buddy,
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[Note: In light of the enormity of the firestorms happening in Southern California, we are reposting James’ Firestorms for those who missed it previously, or who have something more or new to say. And we send our very best wishes to those suffering from and fleeing from the flames.
-Oaktown Girl, Minister of Justice, WAAGNFNP]

So fires always produce an updraft. In truly big fires, the question becomes how the updraft interacts with the local weather. If the local winds are stronger than the updraft, and the fire is big, uncontrolled, and uncontained, you have a conflagration. If the fire creates its own winds, you have a firestorm.

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If you try to light a match under micro-gravity conditions (we all got used to “zero-g” so some smarty pants had to go and call it “micro-gravity”) and just hold it in one place, it will self-extinguish. The match will use up enough of the oxygen in its surrounding volume of air to extinguish the flame. It doesn’t have to use up all the oxygen, either; most flames go out in air that still has enough O2 in it for people to breathe—barely.

Depending on the fuel, (e.g. hydrogen needs less oxygen to burn than methane does), the usual figure given is that 14%-16% oxygen is needed to sustain a fire. People can manage on a bit less; Biosphere II dropped below 14% before they pumped in some additional O2, but they didn’t have to contend with elevated CO2 levels; in fact, what they’d been losing was CO2, by absorption into their nice new concrete structure, with bacteria converting soil organics and O2 into CO2. They’d had a bit of a “slow burn.”

Your basic candle flame is fed fresh air by gravity, specifically, the air coming in to replace the hot gases that have become lighter than air in the hot flame. That’s called the “fire draft” and fireplaces exist to direct the fire draft upwards, so the smoke doesn’t choke the people warming themselves by the fire. The chimney/flue of the fireplace also accelerates the fire draft if you build it right, and both Ben Franklin and Benjamin Thompson, (Count Rumford), invented some tricks that are still in use.

So fires always produce an updraft. In truly big fires, the question becomes how the updraft interacts with the local weather. If the local winds are stronger than the updraft, and the fire is big, uncontrolled, and uncontained, you have a conflagration. If the fire creates its own winds, you have a firestorm.
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Well perhaps it is due to the following insanity in the form of an utterance by the official Tibetan Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli:

“Such a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland has been welcomed by some countries and has even been receiving this or that award,” Tibet’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters during the congress. “We are furious,” Mr. Zhang said. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

Wow, so vitriolic and idiotic at the same time. The arrogant assumption that Tibet is China, predicated on an invasion by Mao, and a cultural revolution that eradicated history for a billion people, seems to fly in the face of any reasonably intelligent human being with access to the internet and an interest in history. But there’s more of course; consider this:

“He should resolutely abandon his Tibetan independence stance and activities,” Tibet’s governor, Qiangba Puncog said. “But in my opinion, some of those activities are actually escalating and setting a lot of obstacles for further progress.”

Has that ring of a made man, you know like Tony Soprano, telling you to just shut up and “forgetaboutit”. “It’s a done deal, Tibet is China, so shut your trap!” And, I suspect most citizens of the US would prefer it that way. Why??
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What’s Your Quirk?

I’m part of the ho-hum right handed majority. In honor of the MLB playoffs, let’s just say if my profile were on a baseball card, it would look like this -
Bats: Right.
Throws: Right.

Yes, there’s no doubt about it. I’m absolutely, positively, right handed.

Except when I’m left-handed.

No, I’m not ambidextrous. I’m what you might call, “selectively left-handed”, and there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to the things that are a struggle for me to do with my right hand, or can ONLY do with my left. Here’s a partial list:

-Using a fork (but get this…not a spoon!!)
-Using chopsticks (cannot do at all with right hand. Not. At. All.)
-Using a computer mouse
-Brushing my teeth
-Using the telephone (speaking, not dialing)
-Wrist watch (goes on the right hand so I can fasten the buckle with my left - no can do the other way around).

Mostly this lefty quirk presents itself in the workplace when someone else has to use my computer for whatever reason. They sit at my chair, and their right hand fumbles for a mouse that isn’t there. Then comes the befuddled glance at the location where the mouse should be, and then they give me “the look”. “The look” is, “Oh yeah. You’re one of them“. Usually “the look” is a jokingly derisive smirk, though sometimes it’s frustrated exasperation. I offer to move the mouse to the other side, but, “No, no. It’s OK” - and they cross their right arm across their body all the way to the other side of the keyboard to use the mouse. It looks like they are trying to play a game of seated “Twister”, and it’s brutal to watch.

So here’s the question: What’s your quirk? Are you the only Jets fan in a family of Giants fans? Do you have two differently colored eyes? Sexually attracted to Republicans? Behavioral, physical, mental, doesn’t matter. Go ahead and share. Nothing’s too big, too small, or too weird. I want to hear about you, but no points deducted for talking about someone else’s quirk. For all I know, your quirk is that you’re a person of incredibly high integrity, except for the fact that you’re a horrible gossip.

Pathetic earthlings. … If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.

- Emperor Ming

I have carried the title** of this post around in my head for a few years as the label for some musings on “knowability” and the limitations on our ability to really get our heads around “reality”. And since blogging means never having to say you’re sorry for inflicting your wandering sophomoric ramblings on your readers - here it is. (But not to worry. Judges say: “That’s OK! they roll big joints have trouble focusing too!”)

My jumping off point is a simple one: A dog will never learn calculus. Nor will dogs collectively ever master calculus. I hope all can agree on that. (And I exclude here some imaginable cyber-augmented dog, or intelligent critters that dogs might potentially evolve into over the next 50 million years.) They just don’t have it - in fact they don’t even know they don’t have it - their “wetware” is just not capable.

So, let’s move on to Canis lupus familiaris’s favorite fellow social mammalian companions - humankind.
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Introduction

It is both a sad and alarming commentary on the present state of men’s character that so many have objected to legitimate feminist challenges, retreated, and finally lashed back. Instead of rising to the challenge, far too many males have regressed into an infantile and dangerous state combining the worst of traditional and modern masculine roles. For many men, a shameless arrogance thrown together with self-absorption has overwhelmed courage and compassion. This mutation has placed manhood, at least American manhood, in crisis. In the micro, there is the man who murders his wife and children before killing himself. In macro, there are political leaders who would be more comfortable destroying the earth than allowing women’s power to reside with men’s in mutual respect, peace, and benefit.

We need the opposite: men who will take the best of the traditional male, the providing, protecting, serving, and sacrificing, and integrate it with the equality-mindedness of the modern male.

Feminist awareness

After growing up on a on farm where girls and boys both fed the cows and washed dishes, my more formal, conscious feminist awakening came in college and graduate school. In university classrooms and on the street, I learned two crucial truths about feminism and its relation to male identity and well-being:
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…well yes you did get some kind of award for “Mostest Detailed Information on an Obscure Topic”. –JP Stormcrow

[D]on’t tempt me to go all photochemical on your ass. If you want detailed information on really obscure topics, I can bury you. –James Killus

Ozone is the key ingredient in photochemical smog. Air quality standards for smog are designed to limit ozone on the assumption that, if ozone is reduced, other photochemical smog constituents will also be reduced. While other air pollutants like carbon monoxide and fine particulates are, by and large, directly emitted, ozone is a “secondary air pollutant,” meaning that it is formed by chemical processes in the atmosphere.

There is, however, a natural background of ozone in the troposphere, the layer of air that contains 90% of the atmosphere, and the part of the atmosphere where we breathe, where weather happens, etc.
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