The Domesday book, Chapter VIII

My buddy from San Francisco:

You clearly need cheering up; besides large volcanoes smothering the planet in toxic gases (we're over due for those you know) the Earth's magnetic field is in the process of a polar shift and about to collapse bathing the planet in deadly solar radiation. Then there is China running out of water, unlike oil they can't steal if from anyone else (California long ago showed the limits of that). Resulting stress from a lack of food, pollution and radiation damage will make them wide open for a nice pandemic that will spread its deadly tendrils around the world.

You see, the great wheel of life will turn crushing countless millions to a bloody pulp in the process and things with turn out all happy.

Actually, I am looking forward to watching nature push back at our attempts to ruin the earth.

Super volcanoes: Yep, we ARE overdue and there are several possibilities, one under Yellowstone. That sulphurous boiling water is bubbling up for a reason, but we can't predict those things and we aren't even sure that another one will occur without some outside influence like an earth impactor. It's not something we created.

I am very interested in the perambulations of the magnetosphere but not particularly worried by it. That reversal occurs on a regular basis and is happening now. Sometimes it happens in a matter of days or weeks, sometimes it takes thousands of years. Our magnetosphere is weakening and becoming irregular and the polarity WILL flip, but no one knows when or why, or the result, or the actual dangers, but I'm thinking the worse that will happen is we take some hits from solar radiation that change our weather patterns. And cooks our satellites, or some of them. And I'll probably get a lot more basal cell carcinoma than I do now.

But neither of those things are due to overpopulation and all of my 'sky is falling' scenarios are a direct result of overpopulation and our inability, as a race, to deal with it politically. Someone has to go, but no one wants to be that someone. And no one really has the moral authority to decide who goes and who stays, so it boils down to who has the nastiest and most effective WMDs and is willing to use them to destroy much of the world. And THAT is controlled by who has the advanced technology and manufacturing capability to generate food and weapons at the same time and THAT is a function of who controls the energy resources. But the very dynamic of switching back to a coal-fired energy base to support all the people will ruin the planet. We have only 300 million people in the US out of 6 BILLION in the world, but we use 25% of the earth's energy resources and are the largest polluter and we simply are not going to stop 'til we drop.

I gotta tell you that the Muslims are more than willing to die if they can take us and the Jews out with them (although the logic behind that astounds me) but I doubt that living in a mosque in the desert and knowing of only one book in the world, the Quran, is conducive to creating agile politicians or freedom of thought. But the reality is that these sand turbans are going to have nukes and delivery systems in the VERY near future.

Pakistan, one of the most backward countries in the world has an arsenal already. They passed it on to Iran and Iran has the weapons NOW, but not enough of them to be able to offer us a shit sandwich and make us eat it. But they will, and they are not afraid to start lighting those things off. Here's why: Our military is seriously degraded. After Iraq we may not be able to get volunteers anymore. I certainly wouldn't volunteer for the military knowing I would be sent to a shit war over and over until I got killed. At least in Nam we knew we'd get out if we made it for 13 months.

And we DO have nuclear aircraft carriers and subs, but we have only a limited number of delivery vehicles. Once we shoot off the MIRVs in the boomers and the cruise missiles, we are done. The ships can sail, but if there is no jet fuel the aircraft stay home.

We must win a nuclear war in the first round and, to preserve the economy of the entire WORLD, we can't allow nuclear strikes on major US or allied cities. If that happened, it would prove to the world that we talk the talk but can't walk the walk. And we would no longer be a superpower, we'd be down in the dirt with everyone else. The problem is that nuclear war is unwinnable because everyone ends up dead. The USSR understood that. Iran doesn't care. We are better off loosing a biological but.......errr....we don't make them anymore. SHHHHHH!

Power, you see, is as much a matter of perception as ability. We didn't win in Korea. We lost in Viet Nam. We broke almost even in Panama and Granada, but we were run out of Lebanon and Somalia and our efforts in Bosnia....well, no one even knows WHY we were in Bosnia. Now we have destabilized the entire middle east and made ourselves the asshole of the world in the process. And the President's psychotic agenda pushed him to grab most of our constitutional right to privacy and protection from illegal search and torture and imprisonment forever without a hearing. We have become EXACTLY what Iraq was under Saddam and only today have the voters arisen in revolt and proclaimed Bush to be a failure and maybe the worst president ever. History will not look upon him kindly.

But no matter what, Washington rolls on wheels greased by special interests and they don't give a shit if everyone dies as long as they get more than their share. And there is big money floating around in Congress. 40 MILLION dollars was spent on just ONE Senate race. Missouri, I believe, where Claire McCaskell won with the help of Michael J. Fox and Rush Limbaugh who should have stayed home with John Kerry.

This has turned into an actual rant and I am off my subject, so I am going to stop. But as long as politicians and the religious fundies worry about same-sex marriage as though it is going to end the world and then sneak off to their own homosexual encounters, there isn't much hope.