Ben B.

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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White thin hair limped along his scalp, threading rivulets over his ears. Tall. A person questioned his feeding habits when they looked at him. A slight tic shuddered his limbs every so often.

The girl had shucked off the aura of school and its diesel stunk bus. She’d flung the worn leather saddle over the taut blanket onto her horse’s red back and kicked him into slow trots up and down. She turned her horse into a corner and noticed the frail elderly man approaching the pasture gate, noticed his slick black oxfords toeing dibbets of mud. “Nice Paint! Mind if I ride once around?” he called.

She squinted between the horse’s ears, seeing that her Dad stood behind the austere stranger. He doffed his cowboy hat. The girl reined in her mount, descending to the patchy turf. She rolled back the gate, frowning as a splinter nicked her thumb.

“My name is Ben Breezee. Your Dad and I walked Chuckanut and hunted black bear when you weren’t even thought of.”
Not a twitch. He took the extended reins, gathering them in his right hand. One matchstick leg first dipped into the stirrup and the other bird-winged over the saddle. Ben sat wooden ruler straight. The girl’s eyes mirrored his steady becalmed ride around the squared off pasture. The Paint’s hooves clop-whopped, his teeth dinner bell dinging against the steel bit.

She exhaled when the reins once again warmed her fists.

Ben said to the girl’s Dad as they walked together to the farm house, “I’m ready now. Take me back to Laurel Manor, Laurence.”

 

A Tale of Two Yogurts

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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Making your own soy milk, and both standard and soy yogurts

I want to talk about three things in this little article. These are all things that have been known about by lots of people, but not by most people, and generally not all found in the same place. I’ll start by telling you how milk yogurt is made by me at least; and I’m lazy and like to do as little work as possible. In part 2 I’ll tell you how to make soy yogurt, and the milk it’s made from.

 

Moo Yogurt (Or Baa)

 

Ingredients needed

 

Thermos bottle

(vacuum flask) as wide a mouth as you can find

Milk

cow or goat, preferably not that low-fat stuff.

Powdered milk

if you wish a thicker yogurt.

A yogurt starter

(just plain unflavored, not vanilla yogurt from the store. I usually use Greek culture because I admire Socrates.)

 

Procedure:

pour a pint or more of milk into a sauce pan, place over low heat. Stir frequently till it heats to about body temperature. If you have a thermometer, 95 F or 35 C is good, but you can use your sense of touch to test that it’s not really not nor cold. Think tepid bathtub, or baby bottle.

When desired temperature has been achieved, fill your thermos with hot water from the tap to preheat.

Stir a couple of table spoons of your starter yogurt into your warm milk. This is harder to do than one expects. A bit of spoon work is wanted.

Now pour the water out of the thermos and the milk and yogurt mixture in. Screw the lid on tightly. I like to wrap the thermos in a bath towel for further insulation. Put it on a counter or in some other warm place and leave it alone! Overnight or even 24 hours if you wish. If you live in a cold climate, you can set it on top of the water heater or on top of your fridge. Let it sit overnight.

(Note If you want thicker yogurt, a few tablespoons of powdered milk can be stirred into the whole milk prior to heating.)

That should be all. By morning, the yogurt should be a smooth, fairly solid mass.

You need no special thermostatic yogurt maker or mail order starters. Slice in a peach or throw in some raspberries and you’ll have something just as good and a lot cheaper than those syrupy 5-ounce tubs they sell in the store.

 

Soy Milk and Soy Yogurt

I recently found that I could do exactly the same thing with soy milk. I don’t like soy yogurt as well as I like cow or goat yogurt but I’m choosing at this time to stay away from dairy products so here is how I make soy milk.

 

Ingredients needed:

 

4 ounces (around a half cup) of raw soy beans.

Look for them at an health food store, co-op or ask a local feed store if they can provide them.

Blender

Sauce pan

Nylon stocking, knee length

You can get them at your grocer’s in boxes of five pairs or something and they’re useful for lots of things. You can even wear them if you want!

Procedure:

Place a half cup of beans into a large bowl or pan and fill with cold tap water. Let stand for at least 8 hours. After this time, drain water off of beans and let that go down the drain or into the flower bed. I use a colander.

Place soaked, drained beans into your blender, fill to near the lip with cold water, put on the lid and process until you have something smooth and relatively thick. Sometimes it takes a while and you may want to use a spatula from time to time (with blender turned off) to move unprocessed chunks toward the bottom of the blender jar.

When you judge it’s done, move your bean slurry off the blender stand, take your magic knee sock and stretch it over the open mouth of the jar. Holding with one hand, tip the jar over your sauce pan. With the other, shake the jar a bit, try to coax all of the slurry down into the stocking.

Remove the sock from the jar and hold the stocking shut, twisting it is good. From here on it’s a process of kneading, gently squeezing the mash within the stocking to get the bean juice out of the pulp. This takes a little while but is sort of transcendental and even a little bit sexy so it can stand in for yoga or meditation or something.

When you have the pulp inside the stocking at a consistency about like homemade salt clay, put the sauce pan on about medium heat and cover. Turn the stocking inside out and dump the bean leavings into a bowl. Now run, go feed that to your chickens. (I did tell you to buy chickens did I not?)

Bring the virgin soy milk to a gentle boil and continue cooking for ten minutes. This will kill off some unwanted organisms and lessen the amount of gas you might experience on drinking the stuff. When done you can pour the now “experienced” soy milk into a jar or pitcher and refrigerate. It’s funny how foamy it is at first.

Should you want to make soy yogurt, cool it to body temperature and follow the yogurt recipe above including the starter. Soy yogurt is good in veggie stroganoff, or mixed with dry onion soup mix as a dip for baked corn chips.

A caveat:

Soy is controversial. It does contain phyto or plant estrogens, chemicals which mimic the female hormone that some of us manufacture independently. Like regular estrogen, the plant type has been accused of causing certain kinds of cancer and it may contribute to infertility in males. I tell women to use soy or flax seed meal in their bread because it will cause their husbands to talk with them more freely but I’m joking—-mostly. As with everything else, it’s probably best to use soy in moderation. A serving or two per day perhaps.

 

Robert Heinlein

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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Originally posted on on November 5, 2014 at 11:50 PM

I’m currently reading the second volume of a biography Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue with his Century by William Patterson.

It’s interesting how hard he had to fight to keep any semblance of works he originally conceived and most of his juvenile novels were evidently changed a good deal due to editorial intervention. Though always patriotic and essentially pro-military, Heinlein actually saw himself as a traditional liberal until the mid 1950s or so when he began to feel the U.S. government was drifting away from liberal values and going increasingly to the left and even enabling communism. At that point he resigned from the Democratic Party and voted for candidates whom he considered less odeous than others which is essentially what I do.

Also though he participated in some meetings and correspondence around the formation of the John Birch Society, he requested his name be struck from the membership roll quite early on because he considered the organization to be misguided and it’s leadership to be unacceptably controlling. One of many valuable takeaways for me from the book was the notion that traditional American Liberalism is really quite a bit different for what passes as liberalism today.

Most of us I think, believe more or less in womens’ rights, that people shouldn’t be enslaved, that there should be help for persons less fortunate and a lot of other essentially altruistic notionsbut there are so many radical agendas today masquerading as liberal that I’ve always been suspicious of the L-word.

Right now I’m to about 1959 in the biography and he’s written most of his juveniles by this time. One of his last, Have Space Suit Will Travel, was the first RAH book I ever red and in some ways, one of my favorites, mostly because of the discussion of space suit operation which I’ve used with other sources to design life support gear for my own stories and practical designs.

Guest Post: Ignite Address

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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An address given by Dave Plassman

Originally posted on November 3, 2014 at 5:25 PM

Hi, I’m Dave and I’m a recovering sighted person…

but I try to be at least two things at once! Blindness isn’t generally as much of a barrier for me as what others do with it; the assumptions, sometimes neglecting to notice I’m even there. When I was young, people talked about my vision being restored someday. When I was in grad school a man stated, as if fact, that I was working off a debt from a previous life. A woman I’ve known said we choose our adversities in order to grow spiritually and strangely enough, I think I agree most with her.

No I didn’t choose at age 5 to be blind but I think it’s possible at some point, perhaps elsewhere or elsewhen , I chose life goals which caused me to pass through this process. I’ve always had a sense of destiny; of things I should accomplish, things I should become.

At the University of Washington as the only male member of The Society of Women Engineers, another member asked if I’d help her go through card files (remember them?) in The Dean’s Office to identify female engineering students. I said the spirit was willing but the flesh wasn’t quite up to it. She was embarrassed but I was smiling because she’d forgotten I was blind. My being male was enough to wrap her head around.

On another occasion a member said she didn’t want men coming to a particular event. I asked “What about me?” She said “You’re different. You’re a member.” And yes, I realized, I was. Something of which I’d had glimmerings but hadn’t quite come to terms with, I did in large measure see myself as a feminine person, though others didn’t.

A number of years later, at a gathering of The Center for Christian Feminist Ministry, a Seattle based spirituality group, I sat in a circle of my sisters listening to one then another talk of her poor self-image, her feelings of being devalued, her diminished sense of worth. As I listened I had a strong feeling of love for them and I said “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, because to me you’re beautiful and worthwhile people.” Since that time I’ve not regretted being blind.

Now in the day to day business of documenting, being in meetings, answering phone calls; the big picture can become blurred but I do try to ground myself every day with my major life goals and I try to bring a measure of that love and the spirit of feminism I shared with that circle, to my work with clients.

I had a preponderantly female case load and when once in a while a woman (though sometimes a man) comments on the Goddess I wear, this is usually someone who’s been abused and has experienced emotional hardship. They tell me they felt safe when they saw The Mother. Whenever I work with a domestic violence or rape victim I tell that person that I am honored to meet and know her (or sometimes him.) When I see my folks in the community they almost always come up and greet me warmly.

There’s a rather humorous side to being ‘Differently Insighted’ you could call it. One day a young coworker came to me. “There’s a guy applying for food benefits and he’s wearing a dress.” I said “yes sometimes that happens and we provide services to him just like anyone else.” “Yes,” she said “but he’s a man and he’s wearing a woman’s dress!” I said what a person wears likely doesn’t prevent us from providing food.

When in 1986 I told Feminist Pastor Jan Anderson I wanted to help abused women in the same way that others had helped me; she said in effect “Don’t come planning to help women. Women can help themselves. Men helping women is the cause of much of the problems we deal with.” (Okay, not what I’d wanted to hear but honestly stated.) At that point I determined to hand people tools.

Hand someone a tool and she can throw it down, give it away, sell it or pick it up and build something. No one is being condescended to. Nobody loses anything. That’s my first take-away point. In January I’m teaching a tool using class for the Grant County Housing Authority and I’ll give away a cordless drill as a door prize.

An engineering prof many years ago, told me “You have a problem visualizing.” I said “No, I have a problem communicating.” I may have an entire machine in my head but I have trouble making You see it.” I think I’ve demonstrated that point. My wife of 36 years and I live on a 3-acre farm where I’ve built fences, chicken coops and a good deal else. I’ve now written a software drawing program which can enable interested blind persons to draw most things they might want to build.

My other take-away today is therefore, if a problem exists it’s nature may not be as obvious as first impressions indicate and what may be a problem in one sense may actually turn out to be a solution to another, perhaps unexpected problem.

I know that had I not been both blind and what I call Gender Different I’d not have the insights I have today. Others can arrive at them too but it’s how I came here.

I thank you for hearing me today.

Elections

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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Originally posted on October 18, 2014 at 3:10 AM

Elections are again on the near horizon. Incumbents are going merrily along as if they should continue in what has become for many, a lifetime subsidy. Let’s not forget that not so many months ago, denizens of both parties paralyzed (our) Federal government due to their obstinate refusal to work together for compromise.

Both parties were and are at fault as well as the President. Both sides have valid points and both have glaring faults. What had been throughout the 20th Century however, an healthy rivalry perhaps with a leavening dash of good old-fashion hatred, has so far throughout the present century turned into a posture of total intractability on both sides of the political spectrum that nothing is being done.

If Senators and legislators could be taken off the clock like most other persons who refuse to work, that might be one thing. I suspect they’d find a way to compromise in order to maintain their privileged existences. Since they make the rules governing their own pay (along with just about everything else) this won’t happen. The only apparent solution is a massive infusion of new blood.

The old system isn’t working. In general I like my U.S. Senators and legislators but nobody in either house deserves much credit for making our government work. Let’s oust incumbents and give new folks a chance. Let’s try more folks from beyond the legal (frarority—cool word what?) Let’s send a strong message that however divided ideologically, our leaders must hammer out compromises or be fired. Also in 2016, let’s try to elect someone with at least Centrist pretensions? The transition from Bush II. To Obama has seen a continual and maintained widening of the political rift, only the polarity has changed. This is not adequate or acceptable!

They keep coming back

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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Originally posted n October 2, 2014 at 5:05 AM

Are there books you read when you were very young to which you keep returning whether by reading the books themselves or revisting them in thought and daydream?  If so, do you know what it is about the books that keep them resurfacing after so many years?  One of my favorite pastimes is discussing old favorites and interesting oddities with friends and acquaintances.  Having done this for many years I have rather come to the conclusion that it’s the images in the books which are so powerful to me; Whether it is six children summering on a private island (Swallows and Amazons—Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome) or a lone Native girl builds a pole hut surrounding it with a palisade of outward-curving whale bones (Island orf the Blue Dolphin Scott O’Dell) or Anna Lavinia seeing the sky within her aunt’s house which looks quite ordinary from without (Beyond the Paw Paw Trees Palmer Brown) there is something in these stories which creeps right into my dreams.

Before I’d read the Narnian stories I had a night dream about a talking horse with whom I was travelling across the desert.  Though I knew that a mirage was a thing insubstantial and uncatchable, we glimpsed a wonderful sight of water and trees up ahead and managed to overtake it.  Somehow I got a licorice ice cream cone and was happily eating that.  My horse told me he wanted us to go on and I said as soon as I was done with my cone we’d be off but as with most good dreams, it ended before we could have further adventures. This was a mixture of imageries from Beyond the Paw Paw trees, a largely forgotten story about the conflict between dreams and practicality, and possibly a dream long had even at age 6 or so, to talk with animals.

Certain authors have stood the test of time, Beverly Cleary, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Newton Peck. Some are perhaps less well-known, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey author of Miss Hickory about the twig doll who lived in a corn cob house, Lucy Boston of the Green Knowe books and Carolyn Haywood of the Little Eddie stories.  Though less well known, these and many others, were at one time, household names and fillers of much leisure time fantasy. I recently remarked to a friend that in researching a number of the writers of old favorite or well-remembered tales, I found that many of them appear to have lived quite lengthy lives and we hypothesized that to live a long time one should write children’s novels.

In a writers’ group I attended back in the ‘90s I was told by one woman that whenever I wrote dialogue for children or described children’s play, AI always got it just about perfect.  I said I supposed that was because I’d never really grown up.  Some of us pass at some time through a door, leaving childhood things behind.  Once I started to do so but somehow got stuck or came back the other way and still love a great many of the things that attracted me when I was preliterate. I’ve not forgotten the images nor ceased to dream.

Scottish Independence

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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Originally posted on September 19, 2014 at 12:30 PM

I should be remiss if I did not offer a few words regarding yesterday’s referendum on the issue of whether Scots should once more have their own nation.  Sometime I;n the early ‘80s I heard the Late Jeannie Redpath perform on the NPR radio show Prairie Home Companion.  I don’t recall what she sang but at one point she said of a particular piece “There are man Versions of this song.  There are English and Irish and Scottish Versions.  So now we’ll start right at the bottom with an English Version.”  This occasioned from her Minnesotan audience a vast amount of clapping and cheering. “Oh,” Quoth Jeannie, “That’s wonderful!  Would you like to come home with me and start the Third Jacobite Rising?”

What what we’ve been hearing about over the past few months, the Third Jacobite Rising with yesterday’s attendant failure?  Not really.  The term Jacobite refers to Jacobus, Latin for James, in this case James II of England and Scotland, one of the last Stewarts to rule.  He was deposed in 1682 in favor of his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange and hence the Irish Orange and Green conflict.  Jacobitism was not only a movement to restore Scottish rule Specifically Stewart rule, but also to restore Catholicism as the faith of the land in Britain.

When in 1707 England and Scotland formed a union, adopting The Union Jack as their common flag, it was done in royal and parliamentary circles with no reference to the peoples of the land Scots or English.  A Jacobite rebellion ensued in 1714 and another in 1745, more royal manipulating to be sure but the outpouring of support they garnered from the common folk on both sides of these conflicts showed the strong feelings of the peoples affected by a system imposed from above.

To be fair, the rebellion of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Collodon and all that was more of a civil war than a revolution.  There were Scots standing with the British Army and obviously those ranged against them as well.  We sometimes forget that what has been represented as a bid for independence was really an enterprise of Charles Edward Stewart (whose claims appear dubious and his character even more so) to rule both England and Scotland, I.E. to impose Scottish will on the neighbours to the South.  (Sound familiar?)

No, yesterday’s referendum didn’t look anything like a Jacobite uprising, perhaps more like the old Confederacy of the American Southern States, a more idealistic movement and a conflict conducted mercifully without blood.  It failed not because anyone defeated the dream on the battlefield or imposed the outcome from thrones in London and Edinburgh but rather, because Scots themselves agreed to disagree but to accept the will of the majority.

Though touted as a quite decisive victory for the “Nos” the margin of 10 Percent being given by the news pundits, the victory may not be as significant as first impressions might indicate.  Firstly, when we’re told that a measure wins or loses by a margin of 10 percent, it’s not always clear what this means.  Did 10 % more of the voters vote one way than did another, (55 to 45) or were there 10 % more folks voting one way than the other? (more like 52.4 to 47.62.  Let’s be generous though and assume that 55 Scots voted for continued union with Britain against 45 voting for independence or secession.  What does this actually look like?  Shrunk down to ten people in a room we have 5 persons fully for Union, 4 persons for Independence and in between, one person unable to make his or her mind up which way to go.  All’s needed is to change half a mind in order to declare a draw.  Hopefully both English and Scots will bear this in mind because the matter appears closer to me than others may find it.

Though the referendum failed and I must say I am saddened by that; I am in another way cheered because for the first time in 307 years Scots have been given to choose for themselves what the nature of the country in which they will live shall be.  They stay within the United Kingdom by their ayne sufferance, three hundred years from the Great Jacobite rising of 1714 and a decision made without fire or blood or steel.  Scotland forever but also God bless Great Britain!

Glynda Shaw

Interactivity

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Glynda's Writings, Science

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Originally posted on May 29, 2014 at 1:35 AM

About a week ago I heard a feature of NPR in which a restaurateur discussed his holistic approach to serving organic food. Tomatoes were popular on his menu and since tomatoes require a good deal of nitrogen to grow, he co-planted legumes with his tomatoes in the dedicated restaurant garden, in order to maintain the nitrogen balance of the soil. He said that if he were to serve tomatoes, he needed to serve legumes in the same meal to ensure that wastage didn’t occur. A similar practice was observed among the Natives of the American Southwest, who co-planted corn, beans and squash which formed the basis of their diet. This arrangement balanced soil nitrogen, conserved water and provided a “Complementary” food diet, making the major nutrients available.

I wondered how many people today and in this nation, think about using something because it occurs as a byproduct, or “coproduct” of something already in use. I’ve tried to do this sort of thing for many years. For instance when I make beer I try to get my egg-layers to eat the non-alcoholic, high-protein mash. When I’ve made Gluten from wheat, I’ve tried to find ways to use the starch and fiber which are left over from the sticky protein extraction process.

Villages, then towns, finally cities developed largely because farmers were sufficiently successful in tilling the fields to make it possible for some people to leave the farm and take up crafts. Since it was easier for everybody to go to one place to find most of the crafters in the area, communities tended to develop. We’re still doing that sort of thing today with our industrial parks and our Silicon Valleys etc. When people moved away from the natural interactivity of the ancient farm however, production processes became more and more isolated in the sense that individual processes operated more or less in isolation and did not necessarily feed back into the overall ecology which keeps the planet alive.

While a tree cut down on a farm might be burned for winter fuel and the ashes put into the soil to grow perhaps corn or cabbages, a tree cut down and hauled to the city to make a table for instance, might yield it’s best heart and sap wood to the artisan while bark, branches and shavings might molder in a pile or if burned, might never again reach the soil. These processes have progressed to the point that a modern farm may send away all of it’s produce to a foreign country and be fertilized with ammonia generated from petroleum or natural gas. The land is merely a stopping place for material streams to touch down and interact for a time.

The problem with this is that “Balance” is virtually impossible when there is no real concept or practice of “Residency” keeping materials at the point of origin to whatever extent is possible. Ideally the restaurant should not only be located by a garden/farm but should water the garden with dish water and provide composting toilets for paIMG_0040.jpgtrons.

In order to take advantage of distributed energy such as sun and wind and to slow the loss of vital minerals, I think we must think in terms where possible, of small businesses/factories/shops which either recycle their own scraps, either making a secondary product or exchanging with neighboring businesses. An example of the first option is a business in Western Washington, near Mount Vernon, where cow manure is anaerobically fermented to yield methane gas for fuel and liquid effluent for agricultural fertilizer. Some cellulose residue is left over from the process and this is dried and pressed into biodegradable planting pots. If an alcohol operation can’t suitably process it’s grain residue then a feed producer or bakery might be enlisted. Carbon dioxide given off by the fermentation process can feed a green house. Even a coal-burning power plant, generating millions of kilowatt hours of waste heat per year, might heat an algae pond or evaporate seawater.

No these ideas aren’t new nor are they simple but if we wear cotton, do we find a use for cotton seed oil? If we use wood for fuel do we see to it that the ash returns to the soil—somewhere? If we grow a lawn do we even consider feeding the grass clippings to chickens, cows, anything? Obviously we won’t always know what else is produced along with something we’re used to consuming or which things are consumed to make that thing we use but we can find out and even in so doing, we become more aware of how the system which supports us all works and become more sensitive to the complexities upon which we depend.

Time Rewrinkled

30 Friday Sep 2016

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Originally posted on May 23, 2014 at 8:40 PM

Yesterday I was thinking about Madeleine L’Engle’s incredible children’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time” and how it has passed into the realm of moral and social commentary since I read it in November 1963, and as we original readers grew toward Seniority. The book has many things to offer and is still worth rereading but the engrossing nugget of the story, this Tessering Thing, this leaping through space without benefit of spaceship or matter transmitter; this concept that resolved me to take physics in college, long after I ceased believing in my ability to Tesser, seems to have been largely neglected.

In reading reviews of Wrinkle online and descriptions of the Tessering process, it seems that nobody (at least nobody I’ve found) has thought much about how tessering really works on a practical level. I don’t mean exactly how it can be made practical for you and me, but how do we think the three W. Ladies and Dr. Murray made it work.

Tesser of course comes from the term Tesseract which in geometry means an hypercube, which can be represented by placing eight cubes at the corners of a larger, imaginary cube. It’s what a cube is supposed to look like in four dimensions. Don’t worry about that so much though, how do we use the concept of four dimensions, (or as Ms. L’engle described it, five dimensions) to travel from one planet to another? When we first read the book, my friend and I mined the text, reading the book over and over for clues. What was that blue liquid Mrs. (Dr.) Murray was processing in her home lab the afternoon Meg Brought Calvin home for dinner? What was the significance of Mr. (Dr.) Murray grabbing Meg’s wrist as he Tessered them off that frightening planet of Camazotz? (A planet in fact, which reminds one more and more of contemporary America.) Why did Dr. Murray (father) tell Calvin while Megt was trying to unthaw on Aunt Beast’s Planet that the scientific team that developed Tessering on earth wondered if the process might simply cause one to disintegrate? I know I spent hour upon hour trying to get my head around being able to transport off a planet, possibly through structures, to some other place entirely.

Whether ESP was having a renaissance at around the time I read Wrinkle or I just happened to stumble upon the concept at the time, I somehow got hold of the idea that tessering had something to do with the mind. Nobody seemed to have any little pocket devices or any essoteric elements about them when it happened. I thought perhaps there was more than one way to make it happen but perhaps if two minds could connect in a particular way, perhaps this mind-melding might also somehow warp time and space and cause a physical body (like mine) to shift to some distant place and since nobody knew how large these effects might turn out to be, perhaps one could leap between star systems through Tessering. Of course this gave no hint how a person might aim for a given destination unless one could visualize the destination as one tessered. Also why could Dr. (Mr.) Murray tesser all by himself, though he missed Mars and wound up on the C. Planet?

Only twice have I found references to tessering that suggested the mind might be involved. In the Wrinkle in Time movie the Tesseract appears to be some sort of universal phenomenon/structure? Into which people can somehow tap, sort of like an interstelar tramline I guess. Well that’s fine too though the original question remains how does one tap in? With the mind? With some sort of conditioning? With some sort of technology we don’t get to see? I think I’d have been happier with Wrinkle as a book had Ms. L’engle given us a hint. (It has to do with some mental techniques a psychophysicist taught us, Guys).  This concept, via a drug worked well enough in The House on the Strand by Daphne Dumaurier, for time travel. Perhaps though, is she had directed us toward PSI or extrasensory phenomena, I might not have developed a fascination with physics.

About a year after I read wrinkle I was told by a Responsible Adult, a woman in her mid-20s, that if four people sat around a metal card table, with one on the north, one on the south, two on the west, leaving the east open; and if everyone places her/his fingertips on the table and thought the same thing at the same time, the table would raise off the floor. Does this really work? I can talk about mechanical forces, the enrgy needed to lift a table compared to the amount of energy produced by four brains and it seems like a marginal possibility, but has anyone tried it? Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped believing in a personal ability to tesser. Who knows?

Smart Guns

30 Friday Sep 2016

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Originally posted on May 7, 2014 at 12:25 PM

Recently Rockville, MD gun shop owner  Andy Raymond felt forced to remove Smart Guns from his stock of personal weapons.  In doing so he responded to numerous death threats and even threatened action from the National Rifle Association.  Earlier this year a Los Angeles gun store made a similar decision for identical reasons.  A Smart Gun as defined here, is a firearm, in this case a pistol; which has an electronic lock which won’t allow the weapon to be fired unless it is within ten inches of a watch band worn on the owner’s wrist.

Thugs will be unlikely to respond to blog entries but the NRA should take note.  Though I’ve never been a member of the NRA, I’ve generally supported them, not that I’ve agreed in all cases with their campaigns and other actions but the opposition is typically so asinine that one feels that maintaining the status quo is about all that can be managed.  Gun control can be compared only to  the abortion controversy for acrimony and steadfast resistance to compromise.  With the smart gun however, there is some glimmer of hope for some meeting of minds between persons who demand the right to armed self defense (like myself) and those who have a sincere concern about the dangers of firearms being dropped, lost, or snatched by assailants (such as I). The crux of the controversy for the NRA appears to be a New Jersey law which states that three years after smart guns are marketed anywhere in the U.S. all hand guns in New Jersey must contain a similar locking feature.  This flies in the face of everyone being able to choose her or his mode of hand-held fire power.

While I don’t take kindly to persons telling me what mode of tools, transport, clothing or food I must adopt, it is true we do live with restrictions of one kind or another in all of these areas.  Sure the smart gun can be seen as a slight curtailment of a person’s ability to choose, it can also be seen as a stipulation on the part of gun non-enthusiasts that personal firearms may be appropriate in some situations.  I wouldn’t support a smart gun requirement for all firearms, not even all handguns, merely those who are sold for concealed carry.  We already have laws requiring gun locks, which rather fly in the face of armed preparedness.  Since by nature, the personal self-defense handgun needs to be available and ready for action it would stand to reason that some extraordinary precautions are in order when such a weapon is being carried or kept in a bedside nightstand.

Smart guns are a largely unexplored area of technology.  A revolver can be supplied with a small unit, fastened to the barrel, which projects a solenoid-driven peg into the groove between the revolver’s chambers, making the weapon unable to be cocked or fired, unless a signal is sensed from a wristband or bracelet.  This is a fairly cheap and easy approach.  With automatic weapons, other sorts of safety locks can be introduced into the gun without compromising the operation or effectiveness of the gun.  Future models could be designed to sense via a laser or infra-red range finder so the gun won’t fire unless a target is within a certain distance, say 100 feet.  This would eliminate wild shots or hitting persons outside the target area.  Self defense weapons should be used for taking out assailants who are directly threatening the gun user, not for chasing fleeing assailants or for long distance hits.

The attitude of gun extremists that there should be no restrictions of any kind on firearms, can I think be shown as untenable to most people.  Should we be walking around with recoilless rifles?  How about a howitzer?  Bombardment mortars anyone?  Yes it is difficult to draw the lines when emotions on both sides are so high but most of us accept that there are limits.  We don’t typically use semi trucks for personal transport and most of us get sanctioned if we eat human flesh so though the basic right to keep and bear arms is appropriate (and is protected for “the people” in the Second Amendment) we should be able to have some restrictions without inviting death threats.  Perhaps the New Jersey Legislature could be prevailed upon to slightly modify the previously-mentioned restrictions in the interest of making smart guns more popular nationwide (probably not but the point could be made). It’s also worth mentioning that New Jersey is a state in which it’s not all that easy to have a hand gun in the first place, if you want it for self defense.  I do think it is wrong and nonproductive in any case to treat the smart gun as a make or break issue for gun rights generally in the same way that hand gun bans are put forward as reasonable “since you can still have rifles or shotguns.”  If we can’t agree about guns, let’s at least be open to some degree of interchange and compromise.  It would be the smart thing to do about guns.