A Google Earth Moment: Wilcox Road, Oswego Cty, New York

Wilcox Road, East of Ley Creek Road  (14), West of (48)
West of the Oswego Canal

Just west of the railroad right of way at Lat  43°16'29.89"N  ; Long   76°24'18.57"W

An Adventure In Art (39)

Duaflex IV

Christopher Greco

Christopher Greco, A New Painting Everyday

http://www.christophergreco.blogspot.com/

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Periodic and Dog

In September of last year, a dog died.

He was the friend of English - as Oscar Homolka might have said: English,  the Periodical One, whose blog, unfortunately moribund, is listed on the right hand column.

This is a photo of the time they took Virgin Space to the Moon, a boy and his dog.

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A Google Earth Moment: Flint, Michigan

 West Maple Avenue at Bishop International Airport, Flint, Michigan


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Air Farce

As Dennis Kucinich put it, by launching air strikes in Syria, we are on the verge of becoming Al Qaeda's Air Force.

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Syria Gas Attack

 

Are The Birds of Peace Arriving, Or Are They Departing?

Prairie Weather has a post from an NPR interview with Alistair Crooke, former diplomat and intelligence officer, which asks the pertinent question as to whether we could be wrong about the nerve gas attacks, since we have been very wrong often in the past, and are currently offering no substantive proof that the Syrian government is responsible:
http://prairieweather.typepad.com/big_blue_stem/2013/08/could-we-be-wrong-about-the-nerve-gas-attacks.html

NPR: We just heard ... that the Russians believe that the opposition, not the Assad regime, might have carried out this chemical attack. How do they know that? Do the Russians have actual intelligence that they're going on?

CROOKE: Yes, the Russians have very good intelligence. Because essentially, not only do they have people literally on the ground, throughout the geographical area of Syria, but also because they have people inside the government working closely on a day by day basis with the army, with the security services. They are right there sitting alongside them in many cases.

NPR: Is it plausible that the rebels would do something like this?

CROOKE: It's quite possible and we've seen evidence of it before. In fact, Carla del Ponte, the UN commissioner inspecting war crimes in Syria, said very clearly, that most of the evidence that she saw pointed to opposition use of the gas sarin. The other point really is that sarin is not a complicated gas. It's something that doesn't require a government laboratory.

 And what the US should do: 

CROOKE:  I would recommend that the first thing that they should do is to leave aside, if you like, the flaming(ph) match with Russia that has been characteristic of this period and actually try and engage seriously with Russia and Iran, and the other regional players like Saudi Arabia, in an effort really to deescalate the violence and to be able to facilitate the beginning of some form of discussion.

Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, because of course it requires not only influence to dissuade President Assad and the Syrian government to deescalate the violence, something which they have offered in the past, but it also requires the same action to be taken with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states like Qatar and with Turkey if it's to be successful.

And there's been a notable reluctance on the part of the West to use any pressure at all on the Gulf states or on Turkey to wind down the level of violence and to commit politics to begin.

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Some States Are Red....

... about the Affordable Care Act.

From The Daily Yonder:
http://www.dailyyonder.com/wednesday-roundup-medicaid-rural-issue/2013/08/28/6728

...   “Too Poor” to Qualify for Help. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Kaiser Health News report that the failure of states to expand Medicaid creates a big gap for low-income uninsured residents, and the Affordable Care Act has no way to fix it.

Residents who make less than $11,490 ($15,510 for a couple) won’t get any help from the government in paying health insurance premiums because they make too little. Medicaid was supposed to cover folks in this income category. But people who live in states that don’t expand Medicaid won’t be getting that assistance, and the Affordable Care Act has no provision for helping these low-income residents with private health-insurance premiums.

The story estimates that the gap will affect nearly a quarter of a million residents in Missouri alone.

Hard to comprehend.

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An Adventure In Art (38)

Swansboro in the Afternoon

Mike Rooney

Mike Rooney Studios

http://mikerooneystudios.blogspot.com/

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Who Will Weep For Adonis?

The neo-cons had a grudge against Saddam Hussein.

They also have a grudge against Al Assad of Syria.

They will lie, cheat, and steal to prove... what?

The Arab Spring is dying in the Summer, like Adonis nearing the harvest time.
The people will rise again, and again be beaten like chaff.

Who Will Weep for Adonis?
Who will sing his praises, and welcome him again?
Who will keen for him again?

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Wal-Mart

My local Wal-Mart is no longer a dump.

The workers seem human, and the place is clean and right.

The Great Value extra thin pretzels are back in stock  ( the best pretzels in South Eastern Michigan... ... we only have things like Rold Gold and New Era and Snyders... none of them have any salt, and the Snyders are jaw-breakers. We do not get Utz's around here, and not all Utz's are that good. Some are heavenly. Best pretzels ever are in Vero Beach in a Publix Super Mart... forget the name of 'em. They're little dark small ones.)

I am sorry for all the nasty (but - at the time - true) things I have said about my Wal M.

The coffee filters are in order. I have not checked on-line. All retailers say that their on-line sites are dependable, but they rarely are. Nobody's site is very dependable. Store workers always laugh, and say things like, "Them guys at HQ!"

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An Adventure In Art (37)

Savannah Study #2

Kenneth Eugene Peters

Kenneth Eugene Peters, Visual Artist, Raleigh, North Carolina

http://kennetheugenepeters.blogspot.com/

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Easy Come, Easy Go

War Gets Ready To Chow Down

The White House says that it has positive proof that Mr. Al Assad of Syria, after struggling and finally making progress against the invaders of Syria, has thrown all his accomplishments away by using chemical weapons.

It seems that Mr. Al Assad also unwisely chose to gas mostly children, for those seem to be the predominate number of victims shown on the evening news.

Perhaps there are more civilians suffering somewhere.

Oddly, no soldiers or jihadists seem to be among the gassed. Odd...

As for "positive proof", I have heard it all before. We had a "sure thing" on weapons of mass destruction, just like we had a "can't miss" on yellow cake uranium...

We bet on it, and we lost a couple trillion dollars...

Easy come, easy go.

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pic: Ansel Krut

Freedom Box

Garry's Subposthaven:
http://sub.garrytan.com/schneier-the-internet-is-built-on-mass-surveillance-and-government-intelligence-is-addicted


Security expert Bruce Schneier on what has come to pass:

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.

If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-mail to Google, Microsoft or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon, AT&T and Sprint; and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever other site is hosting them.

The primary business model of the Internet is built on mass surveillance, and our government's intelligence-gathering agencies have become addicted to that data. 

I really like the Internet.
Yet, it seems true that the business model of the Internet is built on surveillance on a mass scale, from businesses watching what we are interested in and what we are purchasing, to the government watching what we say and whom we say it to.

Can it be changed?

Perhaps Freedom Box?

The Logic of Constant War

From The Mex Files
http://mexfiles.net/2013/08/19/the-war-profiteers-on-the-border/

>In 2012, the Migration Policy Institute reported that immigration and border enforcement spending totaled almost $18 billion. That is 24 percent more than the $14.4 billion combined budgets in the last fiscal year of the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Add the billions anticipated in the Senate bill, and you have what the trade publication Homeland Security Today calls a “treasure trove” for contractors in the border security industry.

Projected as an approximately $19 billion industry in 2013, defense contractors seem, in the words of one representative from a small surveillance technology company hoping to jump into the border security market, to be “bringing the battlefield to the border.”

and that is the logic of the military-industrial-surveillance complex:  To Bring The Battlefield To Wherever it is that we may make billions.

War on Drugs, War on Terror, War in Iraq, War in Afghanistan, the list goes on. And now because the neocons in Washington have had a grudge against Al Assad, we apparently will walk blindly into a War in Syria on behalf of radical Islamists backed by the Saudis.

The Logic is to reshape everything into a war.........

IF YOU recall, back in Waco, the ATF initially described the situation as being not just an arsenal of guns, but also some sort of drugs in the Branch Davidian compound, which then allowed them to get much more fire power and put the operation on a War on Drugs military footing.
The profits there were normal profits for supplying the weapons that killed them Davidians!
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Abso-Aztec !!

or... Absolutely Aztec !!

It has been a good past week for death and slaughter.

Just in time for the pre-harvest Blue Moon. That is a very good (or, depending on which side of the axe or gun you are, very bad) omen!

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Another Day Which Will Live In Infamy

 Hans Blix, the Unheeded

The intelligence available to the White House about Syria and the chemical attacks is the same type of intelligence that was absolutely certain - 100% certain - that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, even though Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors said that there were no such weapons of mass destruction.

Now the UN inspectors go into Syria.

Predictably, the White House and the Congress say that that is too late, for the UN inspectors  cannot do anything to make the situation clear. They are merely marching into a war zone because they have nothing better to do.

If and when this country makes the horribly mistaken decision to take any military action in Syria, it will probably be preceded by a warning to the UN that their inspectors may be at risk.

Thus, the war monsters will make sure 
(1) there is no competent and independent evaluation of the evidence, and 
(2) by a little judicious bombing, any remaining evidence will be destroyed.

These actions are not those of the country I knew. That USA has left the building a long time ago.

NOW,
Why does it matter to me?

We cannot continue to live under a Political Leadership, Executive and Congress, that allows themselves to be lied to and misdirected, and then allows the entire country to be lied to, its funds misdirected, its happiness turned into suffering, and its pursuits rendered pernicious or futile.

We must draw our own line in the sand... our own red line.

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Balancing Budgets Upon Your Backs

The oil and energy boom has taken such a toll on Texas roads that the Texas DOT is converting some asphalt roads back to gravel roads, since there are no funds to maintain them as higher grade roadways.

The Texas Tribune:
 http://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-to-gravel-met-with-concern/

...The sharp increase in heavy traffic from a historic oil boom has damaged many farm-to-market roads in South and East Texas. The damage related to energy development has become so extensive that state and local authorities lack the funding to make all the repairs. Last month, the Texas Department of Transportation announced plans to convert more than 80 miles of paved roads to gravel. The conversions are expected to start Monday, TxDOT officials said. But the plan has been met with criticism from lawmakers and some of the farmers and ranchers who live near those roads.

"Since paving roads is too expensive and there is not enough funding to repave them all, our only other option to make them safer is to turn them into gravel roads," TxDOT spokesman David Glessner said.

Dimmit County, near the Texas-Mexico border, will be hit hardest by TxDOT’s decision. More than 30 miles of the county’s farm-to-market roads are slated to be turned to gravel.

“We want the state to continue to maintain those roads as they are now,” said Dimmit County Commissioner Mike Uriegas.

In the final days of the 83rd regular legislative session, lawmakers found $225 million to repair county roads affected by energy development, and the same amount for repairs to state-owned roads. That funding, though, was only a temporary fix. Efforts to increase taxes on the companies that are profiting from the energy boom to cover the road repair costs failed to gain traction. TxDOT said repairing and maintaining the oil field roads into the future will cost about $1 billion a year in additional funding.

The conversions will affect roads in four South Texas counties — Live Oak, Dimmit, LaSalle and Zavala — and two West Texas counties — Reeves and Culberson. Glessner said the farm-to-market roads that will be turned to gravel were picked, in part, because they are rural routes that are ineligible for federal funds.

State Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, whose district includes Dimmit County, is one of the harshest critics of the conversions. He said TxDOT did not consult lawmakers and community leaders before unveiling the plan.

“By failing to do so, the agency imposed a unilateral solution on these communities with no notice, no opportunity to seek alternative solutions, and no clear understanding of what to expect in the future,” he said in a statement...

Crushed stone roads are good roads, and if properly maintained the worst said about them is the dust in summer. However, a road grader should be readily available, since they do tend to "washboard" rather quickly.
I used to sell crushed stone for roads. They are dear to my heart.

What we see here is a "famine in the midst of plenty".
I just had a post a few days ago about how important roads were in the view of those of the 19th century: bad roads on election day means voters lose the chance to vote. Roads are the blood vessels of the body politic.
( see   http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/08/voters-rights-and-ease-of-voting.html  )

In Texas, the problem is Economic Boom and an unwillingness to fund the road required; boom, not bust; there is an unwillingness or inability to maintain essential infrastructure, since infrastructure is long-term and the boom will pay off near-term.
So the roads are allowed to relapse into a state less capable of high load-bearing and requiring constant grooming and application of calcium chloride to keep the dust down - an environmental and health concern.

It will be the farmers and small land-holders by the side of the roads that will suffer, not the Oil companies, not the Legislature.

The budget will be balanced upon the brawny backs of the less wealthy and the less powerful... which is what I have always said.

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Syria Proof

The only "proof" I can see that the Syrian regime did indeed use chemical weapons is the fact that they have agreed to allow UN inspectors into the area tomorrow, and that the 5 day interlude is too long.

I suppose the UN inspectors do not know that.

Just like the ones in Iraq did not know that only the USA could find the non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Congress and the Government are filled with liars who will stop at nothing to maintain their power and profits which flow from war.

I condemn this now, and forever. There is a limit to how many bald faced fabrications even I can stomach.

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Denizens In Their Own Land: 我们不是公民而是居民

我们没有真正属于自己的土地、房屋甚至墓地，没有生育权，没有出入境以及言论的自由，没有保护自己不受不公平待遇的能力，我们不是公民而是居民，我们是一群暂住在中国这片土地上的租客。

We don’t have any land, houses, even cemeteries that truly belong to us. We don’t have the right to choose how many children we have, to cross the border freely, or to speak freely. We don’t have the power to protect ourselves from unfair treatment. We aren’t citizens, we are denizens, renters with temporary residence on this piece of earth called China.

From the internet in China, this occurs in the China Digital Times in a discussion of the China Internet Phrase of the Week: Temporary Residence.

暂住 (zàn zhù): temporary residence
Permit to work or live in certain major cities required for those without local household registration (户口 hùkǒu or hukou) must obtain to work or live in 21 cities in China [zh], including the metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. Those in the cities without a temporary residence permit may be fined or deported.
While the disparity in development between China’s countryside and urban areas has made it economically necessary for many rural migrants to live as temporary residents in large cities, the permit system prevents them from enjoying the same privileges and rights as city natives.

 Police officer weeding out people without the proper permit. (Southern Metropolis Weekly)

There are Words of the Week and Sayings and more from the great and various land of China.
Get started at this point of "temporary residence" at  
 http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/07/phrase-of-the-week-temporary-residence/

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Super Affleck

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/ben-affleck-petition-warner-bros-change-org_n_3805994.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

A new petition on Change.org demands just that -- that Affleck, who will play the role of Batman in the upcoming sequel to the Superman film "Man of Steel," be stripped of his cape before he even gets to put it on.

I have seen a number of Mr. Affleck's films, the latest being Argo, which I thought was a superlative film, and a chance to see how he acts using an intelligent scripts.


Every film of his that I thought was jejune or worse was a film based upon tedious and sophomoric script.
I consider even Good Will Hunting to be very derivative (The Brothers McMullen), not nearly as enchanting as its model (where Brothers McMullen scintillates, Good Will sputters), and almost verging on deadly caricature (Robin Williams caricaturing himself in, oh, take your pick: The Fisher King, What Dreams May Come, yadda-yadda-yadda...
Of course, the only alternative they had would have been Morgan Freeman doing voice-over...)

Of course, Ben Affleck is one of the credited writers, the other being Matt Damon, of Good Will Hunting, so his wounds there were self-inflicted.

Argo was a masterpiece, and Mr. Affleck was perfect; he engaged our attention and never hit a false note, nor did he let us down.

The character he portrayed was uniquely delineated, and it was the believable detail that allowed him to demonstrate just how good he is.

Superman? Batman?  Daredevil?

Depends on the script...

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Eleven-year Old Will Blow Your Mind !!! And More !!!

I dunno... like he wrote an app or something.

Like, I don't care. I try not to get into that hothouse of navel-gazing tech flunkies.

I am glad the young boy experienced the thrill of accomplishment.

Then this was on FaceBook - advice from a divorced guy - and it's. like, exxtremely viral:

 1) Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love. 

2) PROTECT YOUR OWN HEART. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.

3) FALL IN LOVE OVER and OVER and OVER again. You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other every day. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.

He should write an app. 
Tony Robbins better watch out!

I'm going to get my teeth whitened. When this guy goes on Oprah, his teeth will assuredly be white.

The only problem is that words fade faster than attraction... so what really works? Dunno.

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Syria Today

Syria will allow UN inspectors immediate access to the zone where it is claimed a chemical attack occurred.
It sure sounds like the act of a guilty party.
If the result come back inconclusive or pointing to some shady Saudi deal with someone else in the region, there should be regular heck to pay from those who seek to engage us in another endless war.

Yesterday, my mother was listening to FOX, on which network a blond doll was interviewing a retired army guy. The old army fart said we must immediately ship arms to the rebels, not mentioning how we keep the arms out of the hands of the radical factions... a difficult project since the rebels are now fighting each other in places.

Otherwise the 2 million refugees now will turn into 6 million!
His method of stopping the increase of war refugees is to increase the war... which we started along with NATO and Saudi Arabia and Qatar when we began backing rebels. It is like curing a bacterial infection with more of the same bacteria.

I have heard the Monsters that Lie my entire life, and I am very tired of it.

As far as I can ascertain, President Obama is the sole President since Eisenhower who was able to resist the Military-Industrial lobby's efforts to spread war.
He has fallen prey to the new-since-2001 Surveillance complex, but he is nobody's fool.

As for FOX, if it is not populated by fools, then it is populated by monsters slavering for war.

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La Boulangerie de Ma Tante

My Aunt's Bakery

I edited the story and made some amendments.
I found some pictures that are closer to what I see in my imagination, and I tried to make some others clearer.

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/08/stories-from-shell-beach-la-boulangerie.html

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Visions and Seizure

The cosmic events of our lives have a profound effect on us, and they "seize" our cognition. We are quite fully grasped within the visionary seizure experience of a cosmic event, such as the cycle of the year through Winter and death, through Spring and rebirth, Summer and growth, and Autumn and harvest, then decline back to Winter.

Without any Science or Desire to direct this cognition, our minds Play with it, thereby creating the entire basis for experiences of Cycles.

We play first.

Later we muse upon our experiences, and we create a Science or a Dogma or a Religion.
These items have lost most of the sense of play, except in their moments of explosive creativity. At that time, the prelates dance, the scientists laugh, and the skinflints of society crack a smile upon the lust for life.

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Syria

Both sides in Syria are capable of using gas against civilians.

Both sides.

As far as I'm concerned, President Obama's reluctance to heed the mindless war hawks is the only thing keeping us from another catastrophe.

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Stories from Shell Beach: La Boulangerie de ma Tante

My Aunt's Bakery


My Aunt Sophronia returned from Jakarta back in the late 1960's, and she had brought with her an Indonesian floating fishing hut, which she has disassembled into pieces, and numbered the pieces - just as William Randolph Hearst has done with entire medieval cloisters to transport them to San Simeon - and brought it all back to Shell Beach.

She immediately recreated it, then set to work to re-design a similar land-based structure to function as a bakery and cafe at Shell Beach. It would be raised - as is the hut - to allow for storm surges. The main superstructure had as a kernel a Sears gazebo:
(illustration from Sears catalogue)

and was expanded upon.
It was enclosed in the places which were to be the main working and baking areas:

and there were areas that were not "enclosed", but were - in a sense -  more "captured" for a brief period, perhaps like a song bird might be captured within a photograph, or as fresh air of mountains is briefly retained within your lungs. This was done with frames and canvas and fabric:

These were typically the eating areas, some sitting areas, and a few of the summer sleeping spots (It was a combination home/work structure).

The ambiance was charming, as the few remaining pictures - as that above - show us. The photo above is one of the last few remaining.

The bakery became, in the course of time a center of a small Shell Beach business community.

The structure was more like white work embroidery, rather than ordinary architecture. It was a frame of drawn threads filled in with just enough fabric, so that there was enough body for a door lock and enough clean air in between to render the security device laughable.

Consider a white work cottage:

Then take this building, formidable enough, and stretch it open, such as is done with drawn thread work:

and imagine the results as a haloed lady dancing, linen and air, flax and finesse, a pennon of the arts:

Such was the bakery and such were Sophronia's croissants: the substantial made aerial.



I remember that next door there was a bar. It sold liquors of anisette and the various tinctures of youth, manhood and womanhood, and various herbals for inflammation of rebellion as well as the relief of it. The alcohol of lavender was the acrobatics of ancient Egyptian Nut and Geb, and had no hang-over; there may have been a sense of remorse, but that was the tristesse of all creatures and beings.






I can still hear the fabric walls stretched like Christo's Gates in Central Park
blowing in the on shore breeze, the rattle of the wooden framework and
sticks, and the bright sunshine scattered omnipresent by the turbidity of the smoke-like linen that formed the walls of Sophronia's bakery.











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The Theft of Color

Hidden camera record of urban crooks stealing color from a patio. The color was fully 95% removed illegally from the premises.

--

Notes From Aristotle

Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies,

by distracting them with foreign wars,

by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution,

by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action...

--

Vintage Books

--

Photos And Captions

  

War of the Worlds 1

 

War of the Worlds 2

 Morsi Barada Nikto

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The Eurasian Union

Should the West be afraid of Moscow's plans for a Eurasian Union?
by Vlad Sobell
Moscow (Voice of Russia) Jul 15, 2013

In 2010 a Customs Union comprising Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan was launched as part of a Russia-led project aimed at economic reintegration within the former Soviet space (as Russian President Vladimir Putin explained in an article published in Izvestiya in October 2011).

Evidence gathered during the short period of the Union's existence suggests this project has been a success to date. For example, the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - a multilateral institution whose main function is to lend to the former Communist states - has concluded that its launch has led to a strong increase in mutual trade, thus helping boost economic growth in the member countries.

The drive toward deeper economic integration within the former USSR accelerated in 2012 with the formation of a Single Economic Space (SES), along with a Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Commission. Apart from the gradual reduction of trade barriers, the goal is the full liberalization of intra-SES flows of goods, capital and labor and ultimately the creation of a unified market of nearly 180 million consumers, underpinned by the tried-and-tested principles of liberal economics.

Among other measures, businesses from member countries are to enjoy equal rights within the SES, including in the bidding for government contracts. Russia's ultimate objective is to establish a Eurasian Union (EAU) by 2015. It hopes that more countries from the former Soviet bloc will become interested in joining the group, including the second-most populous former Soviet country - Ukraine...

Sounds like a dream scheme for a  bunch of people that loved NAFTA and the EU.
However, since it involves Russia, most of the power elite in Washington think it is a bad idea.

Essentially, Washington really would like other countries to be economically viable and powerful... but not too powerful. They would like them to be democratic...  but not (like Hamas), too democratic.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, we had an unparalleled chance to welcome Russia as an ally and an important friend.
We did not do so. We pretty much stood by with our hands in our pockets while Russia underwent the throes of creating a new nation.

Then we went on a spree with NATO, expanding the heck out of it, signing on to defend countries in a manner that would have made our Founding Fathers gag, remembering - as they would, being classically trained - the fate of the far-flung Athenian Empire.

I like Russia. If they want a Eurasian Union, so do I.
Personally, I believe good things happen when equals treat each other with respect, and do not attempt to impede each other's pursuit of happiness.
--

Copenhagen

In the play Copenhagen, the two main characters are Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and the situation is Heisenberg's visit to Bohr during the early part of World War II. The question is posed why did Heisenberg stay in Germany?

Some think that Heisenberg was committed to making a real effort to secure an atomic weapon for the Third Reich, and some say he knowingly stayed behind to hinder the efforts.

Read the following and see what you think.

Thomas Powers, 1993: Heisenberg's War, p. 41 (the references to notes at the end of the book have been omitted.) Little, Brown and Co., 609 pp.
 

...In this struggle Heisenberg was exposed to the full force of irrational Nazi passions; his enemies had little understanding of his real work, but focused on him the accumulated anger of decades. A leader of the attack was Johannes Stark, who bitterly resented the mathematical theorists who patronized his work. Sommerfeld had even mocked his name -in German stark means "strong"- by calling him "Giovanni Fortissimo." In December 1935, in a speech at a ceremony renaming the physics institute in Heidelberg for Philipp Renard, Stark singled out Heisenberg as "the spirit of Einstein's spirit." Heisenberg responded with an even-tempered defense of theoretical physics, including relativity, in the Nazi party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter in February 1936, but the editors appended a Stark counterattack which dismissed Heisenberg's work as "an aberration of the Jewish mind."

Back and forth the paper salvos went over the next year, until Stark in July 1937 backed Heisenberg into a corner with an unrestrained assault in Das Schwarze Korps, the newspaper of the Schutzstaffeln or SS, calling him a "white Jew." By this time all traditional standards of scientific discourse had gone by the way; Stark's attack was relentlessly personal, charging that Heisenberg's career was based on Jewish friends and influence. Heisenberg's friend in Leipzig Baertel van der Waerden told him that being called a "white Jew" was something he could be proud of. But the honor came dear. The University of Munich promptly dropped its efforts to name Heisenberg to Sommerfeld's post, and Stark's vendetta threatened still worse: in an anonymous note the editors of Das Schwarze Korps recommended that "white Jews" like Heisenberg should be caused to "disappear". Since the SS was the private army and police of the Nazi party, and since Jews were openly beaten in the streets while Communists and other opponents of Hitler had been disappearing into concentration camps, this unambiguous threat had to be taken seriously.

At this point Heisenberg's struggle with the Aryan physicists took a burlesque turn: Heisenberg's mother could claim a tenuous connection to the commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler -their fathers had taught and been friends at the same high school in Munich, the Max Gymnasium. Hoping to reach Himmler directly with a letter protesting the attack in Das Schwarze Korps, Heisenberg asked his mother to open a private channel to the SS commander through Himmler's mother, Anna Maria Heyder, a widow in her early seventies who lived in a comfortable middle-class appartment in Munich. The mothers reached immediate understanding.

[...]

With Mrs. Himmler's introduction as entrée Heisenberg wrote to Himmler on July 21, vigorously protesting Stark's attack and stating he had no choice but to resign his post in Leipzig if Himmler could not put a halt to attacks in the SS newspaper. Heisenberg's new wife, Elizabeth -they had been married only a few months- was much worried when she learned of this letter; it struck her as extremely risky to invite SS scrutiny. But no lightning followed; Heisenberg's effort unfolded with glacial slowness. Not until November did Himmler finally respond to Heisenberg's letter, curtly inviting him to defend himself in detail against Stark's charges. This Heisenberg immediately did, and in the months following others came to his defense as well, including Ernst von Weizsäcker, by then the second-ranking official of the German Foreign Office, and Ulrich von Hassell, the German ambassador to Rome. An official SS inquiry under the personal direction of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo and Himmler's closest associate, ground on into mid-1938. More than once that spring Heisenberg was summoned to the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin, where he was interrogated about "the Einstein affair." These sessions were full of danger, since the SS was attempting to rule on the political implications of science it did not understand. Heisenberg was aided in his defense of the objectivity of science by a former student now in the SS, Johannes Juilfs. But despite hiw own gentle treatment, Heisenberg on these distressing trips saw clearly the fate of the friendless in the faces of others brought in for questioning.

[...]

At last, a year to the day after Heisenberg's letter of protest, Himmler wrote to say that he had been exonerated: "Precisely because you were recommended to me by my family, I caused your case to be examined with special care and intensity. I take pleasure in being able to inform you ... that I have ensured that there will be no further attacks on your person." In a footnote he stipulated a condition: in future Heisenberg should stick to the science under discussion, and forgo mention of the men (Einstein, Bohr) who had made it. Heisenberg was still forced to toe the line. But things might have turned out very differently. On the same day Himmler wrote to Heisenberg, July 21, 1938, he also sent a letter to Heydrich to say he had concluded that "Heisenberg is a decent person and that we cannot afford to lose or to silence decisively ["oder tot zu machen"] this man, who is still young and can still produce a rising generation in science."

But Heisenberg's "rehabilitation" came too late to save his appointment as Sommerfeld's successor. The problem, he was told, was Rudolf Hess, political director of the Nazi party, who personally opposed the appointment on political grounds. Heisenberg continued to waver on the question of emigration, telling Columbia University that he was still thinking about teaching there for a semester, but declining to make a promise or set a date. In the end he went only for a few weeks in the summer of 1939, not to live and work but to say goodbye.

Political Purity and Heisenberg, the White Jew

 Governor Chris Christie

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed a bill barring licensed therapists from trying to turn gay teenagers straight.

Anyone who has read the history of psychological therapies knows full well that therapies that are obsessive and crazed actions aimed at destroying the well being of the subject have existed alongside helpful and loving therapies since the beginning of time.
Since there are no well-defined guidelines for such therapy, allowing for the possibility of "cruel and unusual" therapy would seem to be a hazard society might not wish to take.

Some see it as an issue of parental rights.
However, the notion that parents have the right to establish, amend, and re-write the sexual orientation of a child is an "interesting" stance to take, in my opinion. It is rather like stating that Germany held a therapeutic intervention with Poland in 1939.

Anyway, I am often wrong, so I may be wrong here.

However, some people have brayed out that Gov. Christie is a RINO, Republican In Name Only:

comment from TIME http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/15/chris-christie-lays-out-argument-for-2016/

SilenceNobody 4 days ago

Christie is nothing more than a plus-size RINO who follows the Alinsky model.He has been a pawn for the Obama dog and phony show.

It seems to me that such adventures into name-calling are attempts to purge the Republican party of unwanted tendencies, an attempt to decrease the so-called size of the tent rather than increase it.

How important is a narrow and radical focus to a political group?

In the 1930's, the great physicist Werner Heisenberg was called a "White Jew" (weisser Jude) because he did not sufficiently divorce himself from the "Jewish" physics that the rest of the world studied, particularly the physics of Relativity as formulated by Albert Einstein, who was the paradigm of "degenerate" and Jewish science to the eyes of the Aryan science of Germany.

 Werner Heisenberg

This Aryan physics was termed "Deutsche Physik", and had prominent scientists, such as Nobelist Phillip Lenard, involved.

"Weisser Jude" was a by-word of a radical effort to effect political purity, even by denying Science. Politics trumped Reality, in other words,and the madness and suffering this caused is well known.

I do not mean to set up a parallel between the Nazis and certain elements of the Republican party.

However, I obviously do intend to set up a parallel between their methods of radical political purity.

Draw any conclusions thereby you wish...

--

Holidaze

It was all back in the day when July 4th fell on July the Fourth.

It was a Sunday that year. All the big holidays fell on a Sunday that year.
They call it The Year Of Sabbath Merriment in the almanacs yet, sort of combining stern disapproval with a calendrical amazement.

The 5th was a Monday... just the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

So my mother thought that the 5th was the holiday. I told her that the Holiday Bingo that has been done with our national holidays did not extend to certain important ones: Christmas, Easter... July 4th; it still had to be on July 4th. How could it not be? Could Cinco de Mayo be on the 20th?

But the obsessional notion was firmly implanted, regardless of the fact that she did apprehend the absurdity of celebrating the 4th on the 5th, or the 6th, perhaps, if the 4th had been a Saturday... which, I guess, it had been last year, according to the famous scientific maxim of the "Precession of the Days-Off". How we had coped with the 4th on a Saturday, no one seemed to remember... a sure hint that we were dithering, but that never stopped us before.

Now you may find it odd that my mother would obsessionally believe this to be the case: there was no pay-off, no one was going to give her a million dollars for believing that the 4th was the 5th; no one was going to congratulate her on her devotion and faith. It just came into her head, and that was that.
She is a ravin' maven of "a bird in the hand..." school of cognition science :

if the idea is in one's head, it is worth at least twice as much as the reality, which has so far escaped notice.

If we had made reference to the Holiday Anomaly, she would have gone on forever, or - at least until July 8th. She had already culled her memories of youth and college days and WW II to come up with examples and counter-examples to bolster the "5th = 4th" hypothesis. Her major argument was that the Post Office was closed, followed by City, State, and Federal offices. In my hometown, the library was closed; I know for a fact, because I checked it out on the 2nd.

Monday is Garbage Day in their parts, and is pushed back to Tuesday in the event of Monday being a holiday. So the garbage sat sequestered in the hot garage, marinating yet another day. I had to go downtown to Sans Souci - the name of the quaint village - and on my return, I passed the garbage truck.
What excellent refutation! I thought.

So I drove in, waved my arms, and said that the garbage trucks were a-comin'!
My mother reacted by asking me whether I had actually seen a garbage truck. Perhaps she thought I had been hanging around downtown with some "drugstore cowboys", shooting the breeze, and one of the less reputable ones had mentioned that he heard tell that the garbage trucks wuz comin'.
I don't know.
My mother's first response to any situation is to question the cognitive basis of the reported events: whether tragedy or comedy. If someone were to rush in, saying that terrorists had set off a dirty bomb in Sans Souci and best head for the root cellar right quick!, my mother would question the source of this information, citing liberal bias as a basis for disbelief, and probably say that Obama was behind it... ... all the while, a dirty cloud of radiation begins to fall about our ears.

So my nephews and I headed for the garage, followed by my father, who - at 90 - stills thinks we are not quite competent to set out the garbage. Well, we set it out. We set it out at the road immediately across from the garbage of Cornelius across the road. My father caught up and said "he" always put it next to the mail box... about 100 feet to the east. At this moment, the garbage truck rounded the corner off South Channel Drive, and we were the first stop.

So we dragged the smelly garbage up to the mail box. I'm not sure why the mail box is so important. The guys wrestling the containers did not seem to care whether the junk was next to a federally-protected mail box or not. And then they went 100 feet more and stopped and chucked Cornelius' junk into the compactor at the rear of the truck. Then everything was quiet, and we felt the high point had passed. We felt the adrenalin being washed out.

When we re-entered the house, my mother jumped into a discourse about the matter, wondering how anyone could have known, since the 5th was the holiday, and so on and so on. And the City offices were closed. My brother ventured that some people were off on the 2nd, Friday, as well as the 5th, and the 4th had become a four day holiday. I stated that businesses were always squealing about lost productivity, so why would anyone believe that they would chuck two more extra days off to their employees?

I said that I was quite sure - as sure as I was standing there on Monday, the 5th of July, 2010 that Wal-Mart was open and Wal-Mart had its wraith-like employees flitting about their great cavernous, dirty stores, staring at people with empty eyes, muttering "Welcome to Wal-Mart..."  with cadaverous mouths, or their other employees that look like part-time bouncers and roust-abouts up to no good were stalking customers in the aisle maze.

She repeated the fact that government offices were closed. Then I said something I hadn't said in a long time:

"Well, it might not be a holiday for people that have to work for a living."

And that, constant reader, was that.
No one said another word about it. I did not mean that government workers - or people in offices - don't work, but... ... you know what I mean.

And I had carved my codger status in stone; "work for a living", indeed!

We had not only stooped to folly, we picked it up, and we crowned ourselves with it!

--
reprint 

My Nephews and The Gift Of Nepotism

 My Three Nephews On Whitey Bulger Look-Alike Day

[note: I'm with my mother in Port Huron to get a new battery for her pacemaker. She has no internet access, so I have some reprints. ]



Humbled and exhausted, we try to form up our ranks after the Christmas season. People have actually gone to airports and gone somewhere on an airplane, not spending endless nights sleeping on cots in the airport. Hereabouts in Michigan yesterday was Airport Day, or, more realistically, Remember-To-Wear-Clean-Underwear-Day!!
Yes, we have come full circle from the days when our mothers told us to be righteous in our choice of briefs on the far off chance we may be in an automobile accident and be taken to the hospital and the ER personnel may have to remove our outer clothing to swab our wounds, discovering to their dismay - and it takes a lot to dismay urban ER personnel!- that we wore our underwear on bi-diurnal cycle: changing every other day.

Nowadays there is a very good chance that the TSA will touch and view your undergarments... while they are still on your person! Had our mothers only known what a baneful breed their monitory cautions would grow into one day.

60% of the flights leaving  DTW  were on time, 30% were late, and 10% were really, really late. I was not flying  myself, thank heavens ( May God turn away such plagues!), but the numbers game did not instill much enthusiasm. I had noticed that etymologically this was the very same "really, really" that George Bush had used to justify the Iraq War, saying Saddam Hussein was a "really, really" bad actor. I had a sense that someone was about to steal one trillion dollars from me, as well as wiretapping my phone and forcing me to wear clean underwear with a relentless intent.

As is the case in the popular  mind, what goes around, comes around. This is a philosophy which stands us well and is perennially verified by all of us, having been based on the Farmers' Almanac's observations of a whirly-gig or weather vane back in the day when maiden aunts still believed soon-to-be-General George McClellan to be quite a catch for their as yet unmarried wards.

As some airplanes took away, others landed and brought gifts. As I stood on the tarmac and noted these things in a desultory way - thinking that this may have been a cognitive state similar to that of St. Joseph who noted a lot of things in the first couple years of his marriage and kept them under his yarmulke - it dawned on me that this was the type of logic that gave rise to the Cargo Cults during World War II: on Polynesian islands certain inhabitants prayed for the airplanes to come back down from the heavens bearing gifts (war supplies, weapons, and Hershey's bars) and angels (US air men).
They even used driftwood to build crude idols resembling the remnants of balsa-wood gliders I used to play with. I know this. I saw it all in the film Mondo Cane back in the 60's.

This airplane brought the gift of Nepotism; nepotism being derived from Latin nepos, meaning nephew... all three of them - Ayden, Austin, and Aloysius (pronounced a-LOY-shus for all you who are not Sons of Hibernia). Once again they had flown in on Lucky Airlines. All this lines' craft had a picture of a winking card sharp - one hand holding a royal flush, the other on a glitzy lady's anatomy - painted on the vertical stabilizer and rudder. I had to admire it all since they had just come out of bankruptcy, and I had expected that Lucky Airlines might have changed their logo to "The Busted Flush" or something along those lines, along with a suitable icon on the fuselage. But they had come out of bankruptcy better than ever, and were a real success story of the period of the "Financial Unpleasantness".
 
Ah, I thought: good things come in threes, shortly followed by three on a match is bad luck. This got me into the suitable mood of feckless befuddlement which people have come to expect of me and are mightily disappointed if, perchance, I show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed: they say afterwards that there was something wrong with old Montag, didn't seem himself... wasn't properly spaced-out; displayed unsettling signs of being-with-it, and so on.

We embraced with avuncular joy - on my part - and nepotistical joy on theirs. (By the way, nepotistical is the only word that rhymes with nepotistical. It is unique that way. Look it up in a rhyming dictionary if you don't believe me; it is considered mono-rhythmistical, as they foppishly put it.)
We bundled into the venerable VW - which I now refer to as The Hindenburg, referencing the General, not the Dirigible - and prepared to run the gauntlet of the various devices in parking lots, airports, and toll roads which suck currency and specie from one's pockets.

They had been some time at their Aunt Sophronia's in England, and had welcomed me with a number of endearing sobriquets. In the space of five minutes, I was quickly and seriatim referred to as "old puddingstone", "old stub", "you-old-soak", and "great Booley"!

I did not recognize any of these, but I was not deceived, either. I knew my nephews, and if they were to refer to me as "The Boss", they would not mean it in the sense of  "patron" or "chief" or Springsteen; they would mean "boss" in the sense of a massive protuberance, such as are often on the intersecting wooden ribs of a church roof whereon medieval artisans sculpted grotesques and gargoyles.

We drove home to Linden Lea - as the goodwife calls it - to be met by an designedly artful display of joyful barking and slavish fawning put on by Cymbalta and Zoloft who well remembered Xmas three ships, three gifts, and three the kings... or three nephews bringing treats for the canine palate.

They will be here for a while. I shall issue an update.

--

The Sultans of SWAT

Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/texas-swat-team-conducts-_n_3764951.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
Posted: 08/15/2013 10:42 pm EDT 
| Updated: 08/18/2013 7:26 am EDT

 A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers," after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said...

This is exactly what to expect from the Surveillance State and its incredible need to know everything and compel complete obedience.

This "over-kill" is exactly like what happened at first in Waco, Texas.
In order to secure the most fire power and support, even a small visit to grandma's garden becomes part of the War on Drugs.

There is no awareness that American citizens are the objects of these types of actions. They are glorified military actions put into action by our military worshiping police state flunkeys.

--

On Egypt

A Point of View

Roger Scruton

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23723465

...In Western democracies our governments are aware that many people, perhaps even a majority, did not vote for them, and that they must therefore make themselves acceptable to their opponents.

Look at the pronouncements of the recently elected and recently deposed President Morsi of Egypt, however, and you will find little or nothing to suggest that he is aware that there are Egyptians who disagree with him and whose consent must be constantly solicited. It is impossible to discern from his speeches that there is a substantial minority of Egyptian citizens who are Christians, others who are atheists, others who, while following the Muslim way of life, would rather it did not make a show of itself as the state religion.

His view of elections is that they grant an absolute right to impose the ruling party's agenda, and that opponents have lost all right to an agenda of their own. And the response of the army is to say, not so - the only ones with a right to impose their agenda are we, who represent the interests of all Egyptians and not just those of the Muslim Brotherhood. The fact that we have to kill quite a few Egyptians to prove that we represent them is just one of those things...

--

Hell On Wheels

 Psychpathic Pasttimes

I watched my first, and probably last, episode of AMC's Hell On Wheels, which is sort of a drama based on the transcontinental railroad, aspiring to the vast sweep of Lonesome Dove, but lacking all charm.

I think it is a capital notion that there is so much of our media time devoted to the portrayal of psychopaths.

I mean, Psycopaths, the good ones as well as the bad ones,  are sort of the Poster Boys of the Modern Age, say 1914 to the present...

Hannibal Lecter was big for quite a time, but new killers sweep clean, and we are renewed in the blood of the tormented.

Crazy people...

--

Distaff Relations

My wife has many nephews, too. Most of their names begin with the letter "M", however. There are some three that immediately come to mind: Maier, Meyer, and Meier.

In New York lived Meyer Hans Joachim H______ (whose last name we will  not disclose). When he was a child, the other kinder in the neighborhood would ask him his name, and he would answer with the whole megilla:

Meyer Hans Joachim!

which was the cause of merriment to the other children, who decided to call him  

Meyer Hansy Waffles

and the name stuck.

[I don't know how Waffles came from Joachim (pronounced "Yo-a-khem" ) other than the "yo" went with "Hans" to create "Hans-y", leaving "O-a-khem" and the only thing they could think of was "waaaa-something-something" and they thought of breakfast.]
This led to variations: flapjacks, griddle cake, and cornbread...although a less cornbread person never have I seen.

--
reprint

What If Annie Oakley Were My Mater?

Mum is getting a new battery for her pacemaker, so I am going to her place Sunday night.

As I wrote about it earlier, I saw the word "pacemaker" and wondered, "What if "peacemaker"?"

If my mother were to get an update to her "peacemaker" - a Colt 45 pistol - then she might have been Annie Oakley... and I would not have to buy any more sunglasses, either.

--

Voters Rights and The Ease Of Voting

A Country Road After A Heavy Shower

"Let us admit that a general downpour for three or four days before election will rob 100,000 intelligent farmers of their votes;  and that many a state government has been changed by a change in the weather, and that many a public officer whom the people did not want has been lifted into place by a lingering equinox."

Picture drawn from a photograph in possession of the publisher.

Country Roads, Isaac B. Potter
Google Books


Back in the day, it was important for good government to ensure that as many citizens as possible exercised their franchise.

Today, right wing politics takes the opposite stance, and creates what appear to be imaginary cases of "voter fraud" in an effort to disenfranchise.

History - among other things - will judge us.

--

New Theme

My new theme song, inspired by Oliver Platt and Stanley Tucci in The Impostors.
(I'm going to put it into the right column.)

--

Snowy Memories

--

I Predict....

As the total amount of information increases, and as the methods for accessing it and ordering it correspondingly grows, the actual serious use of such information will decrease.

In other words, as the ability to incorporate history into our understanding of the present and the future is augmented, we shall find ourselves more and more ignoring it.

More shall we listen to oratory and rhetoric, and less shall we depend on industrious understanding and science.

--