Jackspace » journal http://www.jackspace.com doing a hang-ten on the surfboard of reality Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:35:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Introducing Grover http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/12/introducing-grover http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/12/introducing-grover#comments Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:53:00 +0000 jackspace http://www.jackspace.com/?p=358 Grover has been with us a week now and he’s really grown on us. Poor little dog was found on our neighbor’s front porch sleeping in a cat bed.

We took him to the vet who pulled eight abscessed molars, shaved his severely clumped fur that had thorns embedded through poking into his skin, and removed a ping pong ball-sized tumor from his neck. He was under anesthesia during all of this, thankfully. We named him Grover. He was apparently abandoned.

He’s doing well now. He’s getting on well with our other four dogs. Our cat Nellie is still a bit of a mystery for him.

Grover's Makeover

Grover's Makeover

]]> http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/12/introducing-grover/feed 0 VLT (Very Large Telescope) HD Timelapse Footage http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/03/vlt-very-large-telescope-hd-timelapse-footage http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/03/vlt-very-large-telescope-hd-timelapse-footage#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:55:36 +0000 jackspace http://www.jackspace.com/?p=354 Amazing:

]]> http://www.jackspace.com/2011/06/03/vlt-very-large-telescope-hd-timelapse-footage/feed 0 Tsunamis from the Past http://www.jackspace.com/2011/04/07/tsunamis-from-the-past http://www.jackspace.com/2011/04/07/tsunamis-from-the-past#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:16:59 +0000 jackspace http://www.jackspace.com/?p=350 There are signs up along the coast of Japan, some 600 or so years old, that say do not build houses below this rock:

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

]]> http://www.jackspace.com/2011/04/07/tsunamis-from-the-past/feed 0 “The Second Coming” – Yeats http://www.jackspace.com/2010/07/22/the-second-coming-yeats http://www.jackspace.com/2010/07/22/the-second-coming-yeats#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:26:22 +0000 jackspace http://www.jackspace.com/2010/07/22/the-second-coming-yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

]]> http://www.jackspace.com/2010/07/22/the-second-coming-yeats/feed 0 Some problems I have with using a nuke on the oil gusher http://www.jackspace.com/2010/06/17/some-problems-i-have-with-using-a-nuke-on-the-oil-gusher http://www.jackspace.com/2010/06/17/some-problems-i-have-with-using-a-nuke-on-the-oil-gusher#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:07:55 +0000 jackspace http://www.jackspace.com/?p=341 Some problems I have about using the ‘nuclear option’ on the oil gusher in the Gulf:

• if they ‘dropped the bomb’ down there, think of all the people that would be fleeing the south, moving-in next door, taking your parking spot, complaining about the people coming across the border.
• the NFL and Major League Baseball would have to redraw their franchises
• I guess hurricane season then becomes fallout season: fluorescing gumbo anyone?
• I’m still trying to figure out why any sane person thinks we have a delivery mechanism for a nuclear payload that could withstand the immense pressure at that depth. Even if we do have one, that’s just insane. :)
• you have to realize all surface operations in the Gulf would have to cease to allow for this, that means everyone and everything being ready with their fingers in their ears; everyone who lives along the coast would just be fine with this and would willingly leave their homes to make way for Dr Strangelove’s new hard-on.
• based on everything I’ve read today about fractured rock and compromised casing, will a nuke really make things better? Would you run any of the oil they recover in your vehicle? How about that radioactive exhaust? (what else would we do with all the now-radio-active oil?)
• generally, non-nuclear methods for fusing work well up here at the surface, but we don’t know how this would work down below. And we REALLY don’t know what a nuke would do at that depth, especially exploded on top of a 25,000 square-mile oil reservoir that reaches vent heads as far as Florida, Alabama, Texas(!). Extra points if you also remind yourself that reservoir is mostly methane under extreme pressure and a lot of vent heads from this same reservoir have been traced INLAND to, ding ding ding, you guessed it: Florida, Alabama, Texas. Some folks have asked me about why Mississippi isn’t listed, it’s because they “just couldn’t tell their (vent) head from a hole in the ground
• what will become of the ‘southern drawl?’
• what will happen to southern hospitality if no one is around to be hospitable?
• will they finally relocate Space Camp (now in Alabama) to . . . Space?
• oh please tell me they’re NOT going to do this on . . . Independence Day
• this doesn’t fly with Web Bot’s predictions, or does it?
• It would really disturb me to think we’ve been worried about suitcase nukes all this time and here we get taken down by a ahem, pipe bomb.
• We would have to add another stanza to Ginsberg’s “HUM BOMB” (see entire piece below for you your edification and amusement)
• Are still worried about those parking spots? That’s nothing compared to the incessant (radio-active) glow of their children all damned night long!

HUM BOM!

by Allen Ginsberg

I

Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?

What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb you!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb you!

Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb? You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!

May 1971

II

For Don Cherry

Whydja bomb?
We didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
We didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn’t wanna bomb!
Whydja bomb?
You didn’t wanna bomb!

Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you hadda bomb?

Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
Who wantsa bomb?
We don’t wanna bomb!
We don’t wanna
we don’t wanna
we don’t wanna bomb!

Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!
Who wanteda bomb?
Somebody musta wanteda bomb!

They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!
They wanteda bomb!
They neededa bomb!

They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!
They thought they hadda bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!
Saddam said he hadda bomb!
Bush said he better bomb!

Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?
Whatdid he say he better bomb for?

Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!
Hadda get ridda Saddam with a bomb!

Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!
Saddam’s still there building a bomb!

III

Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job

Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog

Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog

Ginsberg says Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job.

February – June 1991

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