Bench stock – or – Patton had it right…

It was in the comment section afterwards, and it said something to the effect of “if you read this article, if you even hovered to long over the headline, you’re now in their database.”  I’d say those are probably true statements.  All I can say is freedom ain’t free, these days that’s the price of patriotism.

“You hold ‘em by the nose and kick ‘em in the ass…”  You’re fast, aggressive, arrive with overwhelming firepower and don’t stay any longer than it takes to dispose of the target you were sent to neutralize.  The kind of warfare Patton learned from his mentor enemy Rommel.  The way wars used to be fought, WW2 evolved into version 6.4 or so by now (I don’t play Call of Duty so I’m just guessing at the version number), the styles of warfare where physical geography is the prime factor in separating the combatants out into those called US and they known as THEM.  The kind of warfare Patton espoused as a necessary evolutionary function within the global community of mankind.  The kind of warfare every nation’s military was designed for, what the vast majority of mankind thinks of when you say “war.” 

The key factoid (to understanding today) is in the paragraph above.  Did you notice it go by?  I’ll be back to the thought here in a bit, but in the meanwhile a humble example of what I’m talking about from me world of real life.

Pavlovian Pillowblock…

Pretty sure that’s what they call them, in the catalogs where you buy such things, they call them pillowblock bearings.  You find them carrying things that turn, things that ride on shafts with electric motors and pulleys and belts like the big exhaust fans that keep the air in a commercial kitchen breathable, the ones that suck the fumes off the grill and dispose of the contaminated air. 

Just one of the ten gazillion and one humble things providing us our techno-industrial way of life. They are humble and they are noble and they commonly labor for decades totally unnoticed.  When things are right there’s really nothing there to notice.  Even when they start to wear out it’s not uncommon for them to run for years, vibrating just a bit, making just a bit of noise, but still turning, still doing their job, just complaining a bit I guess you might say.  Can’t say as I blame them for that, like I said, they get ignored an awful lot when all they really ask for is a nickels worth of good old axle grease every six months or so.  Such things as they have my deep and sincere respect, I often feel akin to them.

On the other hand the fellow Pavlov was a psychologist whose work is so well known his name is all but synonymous to what he investigated.  I suppose that’s about the highest honor a true psychologist can aspire to, having your name migrate out of the nouns into an adjective or adverb defined in terms of the thing you studied.  Pavlov made it, in greater or lesser degree what he studied will impact on pretty much everyone, me no exception. 

Tech Note: Buried...

It were the bitch bolt from the fornicating front gates of hell it was. Buried beneath everything, barely visible, about the last thing I pulled loose when I pulled the engine out to overhaul it, the first thing to go back when the engine was back on the mounts.  And of course pursuant to Murphy's law, chapter five, section thirteen, that was the one bolt that had to come loose.  Go figure.  I had the victory though,  at the cost of multiple minor wounds to me knuckles and a new set of fancy flex head ratcheting box end wrenches and eight hours of most deliberate patience it did, finally, come off.  Nike!

Concerning names

Originally Published 5/13/2010...  the beginning of this blog

Cyranos DeMet is not the name the government knows me by. It is my pen name, my public name, it is the only name I'm known by on the internet. My reasons for maintaining a pen name go beyond personal privacy. Think me a raging madman if you wish, imagine me an icon of the academic if that is more to your taste, either might be true, or neither, both is not beyond the realms of the possible. It is my intention the truth of that issue remain undefined. So long as the name Cyranos DeMet cannot be linked to a street address, a social security number, a face, a life, so long as it remains the only call sign for an otherwise anonymous writer then only my thought is on display, the life that produced the thought is not available to mark which social bias or political bigotry from a reader's private stock of assumptions should be assigned to my work.

I want my work judged only on the accuracy of the observation expressed, as some thought might accrue support or rebuttal within the contemplations of my reader. I may at times present personal anecdotes to illustrate the manner in which a thought arrived, but I will not be citing sources for these are my thoughts shared, not a collection of the world's thoughts on some subject presented as a proof of study. It is entirely possible I will cross terrain already mapped by another, if so it is of little concern to me. I walked that terrain without the map they drew, my reader is most welcome to compare our two maps for accuracy against his own observations.

Why such drama you ask? Why such arrogance? My answer is this: in posts to come I will be developing a theory concerning the human condition, a theory that bridges between what in conventional studies would be the disciplines of psychology and sociology, a theory offering a unique explanation for the complexity of the interface between the individuals and the society in which those individuals make a home. The theory to be put forth in some ways simplifies the task of understanding the human condition, and yet in other ways opens an entire new dimension of complexity. I use the word dimension here in it's most literal meaning, an expansion to the stage of reality equivalent to a two dimensional "flatland" creature (whose universe existed on a single geometric plane) being enlarged into the three dimensional space you and I take for granted.

This theory is either a work of genius or a work of insanity, and I myself do not know which. What I do know is that it is in my head, and I'll have no peace from it until it has been let out of my head into words. Since it is being offered to the world essentially anonymously I'll never make a dime from it, but equally I'll never have to carry the burden of it on my real life either and so can assign the effort of sharing it as nothing more than the effort of providing one's own entertainment when what the world offers has gone stale, which is I suppose my ultimate motive in the matter.

Shaken, not stirred...

Originally Published Nov 6, 2011

We've had a couple of earthquakes today.  No, no bullshit, genuine honest to goodness earthquakes right here in Oklahoma.  Nothing terribly bad, high fours, low fives maybe, no damage here but definitely enough to get your attention.  Thought I'd left those behind when we left California.  I guess that's what you get for thinking.

I was there for the one in '71 that rumbled Los Angeles to a standstill for a couple of days.  In the end I think they decided to call that one a 6.3 or so.  Of course, those numbers are deceptive, they're on a log scale so a 6.3 would be like fifty times more powerful than a 4.9 or a five.  That one tore up more than a few things.  Got us a week out of school, almost got the school itself. 

A month or so after the quake old man Raleigh snuck a few of us in where we weren't supposed to be to show us what had saved the school for us, to show us just how strong wood can really be.  Awesome strong, in point of fact.  Stronger than steel.  The school was originally built in the 'twenties as two three story buildings sitting over full basements, concrete and steel construction with a brick veneer.  But during the thirties, during the depression, the WPA added a large auditorium between the first two structures to create one "T" shaped building about four hundred feet long from what had been two.  I know how long it was because me and my buddy Jay stepped it off trying to get a comparison to the main saucer hull of a Constitution class starship.  The starship was bigger. 

Anyway, it was a nice auditorium, dished out for theater seating, big stage, proper arched ceiling three stories above the floor.  There were six huge laminated beams carrying the roof across what had to be at least an eighty foot jump, and it was those beams saved the structure.  Mr. Raleigh had been there when the engineers first surveyed the building, told us both of the older structures had tried to collapse towards the middle, that the walls were something like six inches out of plumb after the quake.  The roof was in ruins where those huge oak beams, each one was like two feet by three feet of solid laminated oak, had bowed up taking load, but they'd held.  Held both buildings.

I remember feeling very small right then, thinking of how much force they'd carried. I remember feeling kind of spooked by the huge jackscrews they'd bolted across under each beam, big hunks of threaded metal they'd screwed out until the walls were again vertical.  The jackscrews would never be taken out, they stayed on to reinforce the wood, made of soft iron designed to bend if they couldn't hold strait and reinforce the wood.

Up until that point I hadn't really been scared by the earthquake, not really.  But looking up at those beams and the big rods and being told if the next one was no worse than the last one they might be able to hold again well, yes, that was scary, the thought of another one.  Yea, that brought it home to me, that if nature loses her temper mankind don't stand a chance.  Kind of makes a lot of other things look rather small by comparison.

***   ***  ***

In postscript?  This fracking bullshit has got to be brought to a halt, the habit of putting back dirty water (so very thin and prone to transmitting vibration) where there had once been crude oil (so very, very thick and prone to defeating vibration within its' own molecular structure).  Is oil an important resource in the modern world?  Of course it is.  But... it isn't that important.  I've got this distinct sense that mother nature has about had enough, and yea, when she loses her temper you really don't want to be on the same planet with her, much less sitting right on top of what pissed her off in the first place.