Shaky Danny

Start with fire. You are going to build a fireproof house. Once you have a plan to build a fireproof Los Angeles house build an architectural model using the same materials, say an aluminum foil roof etc. Then take a blow torch and hold it to your model for a day. Dena means valley, Pasadena, Altadena…A valley is a wind tunnel. Say you have a surviving model. Then blast it with your garden hose, raising the water level to half the level of your model. Desert valleys flood. Make sure your model is somehow anchored, so it doesn’t float or slip away. Check your model for mold. The seals on your model must survive fire and flood. Then take a large pail of gravel and dump the gravel from some height on the steel framed model with the fancy Swiss made seals. Valleys also have rockslides. Make sure your model can withstand the landslide without moving. After that, take the entire diorama, including the model, lift it up and bang it on the table as hard as you can. Earthquake proof means...

I felt the cold water go down the back of my shorty wet suit. I should pay someone else to do this. Do my work outs, sleep with my wife…Why do I always get sick on vacation? If you can’t equalize your ears at the surface, then you can’t equalize your ears. Holding my nose through my mask, I equalized my ears. As I descended, I felt pressure on my ears. Don’t force your ears. Ascended to where my ears where clear, equalized again. Up and down until I reached 40 feet. At the ledge I crossed my legs and by inflating and deflating my buoyancy compensator was able to reach the state where I raised and lowered slightly with my breathing. Crossing my legs kept me from compensating with my feet. Over the edge I dropped to 80 feet facing the wall. I took my mask off and rinsed my eyes in the ocean. Put my mask back on, cleared it, checked my depth. 120 feet, not good. Went back up to 80 feet. Elmers’s watersports had set me up with lenses in my mask. I was on an Elmer trip to Bonaire. Bonaire...

  Back when Chicago had winters, I once dragged myself through the slush into a travel agency and said: -Get me out of here. I hate to travel. There is some remarkable geology. In Lacrosse Wisconsin there are bluffs. There is a fun mix of prosaic and profane seeing people living on and around the bluffs. There are also the plaques. In Pennsylvania there is mention of Jumonville. George Washington at the age of twenty murdered Jumonville causing the French and Indian War which lead to the Seven Years’ War, which lead to our revolution. The revolution was not popular, ask the Tories, who respected the king, paid their debts, and opposed slavery.  The Evanston Illinois light house, built in 1873 after the North was freed of the South’s hatred of boondoggle. Why of all the stretches of sand along Lake Michigan was the light house built here? The light house was an emotional reaction to the sinking of the Lady Elgin in 1860. In Milwaukee there is a wonderful plaque explaini...

  Christine asked: -Why is Canada burning? Without hesitation I responded: -Lumber companies planted the wrong trees and it got warm. Seems glib, but in this case my cynicism was correct. If you go out on Google Earth, it is clear that the arboreal, original Canadian forest did not burn. Lumber companies proffer all sorts of rationalizations. Whatever they say, it didn’t work. If they take refuge in regulation, consider the Exxon Valdez. Exxon Mobil went into court and said that Alaska did not require double wall tankers. Everyone laughed because the reason for that was because Exxon had lobbied against it. Covering North America in soot is a lot worse than dumping oil on beaches. Lumber companies have no refuge. This is their game. They ran it. Lumber companies don’t own all the land, but they did the cutting. They didn’t know it was getting warmer? The cutover areas flamed. Arboreal sometimes burns, not like this. Please prevent these boobies from planting trees. Th...

Many people in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, are installing sewer valves for their homes. Some years back we had an impressive deluge and this is a reaction. Your stack or stand pipe may drain directly out to the street sewer. Putting a check valve or flapper in the way means that when the system hits load those houses refuse service and the overall pressure on the system will increase precisely at the time it is stressed. If you don’t have a flap then super tough on you, the effluent has to go somewhere. A product that creates its market. Once everyone has flaps there should be popped flaps or broken pipes. Flaps are necessary on flood plains. As flood plain construction is common it is difficult for other municipalities, such as Oak Park, to deny their use. Chicago used to require a basement floor drain. You were expected to share your suffering with your neighbors. Most people have their stack drain into their own sewer that then drains into the street sewer. This is a nice fea...

1. Kennedy nearly blew up the world. Eisenhower had been waving the bomb around but now there was reprisal. Berlin, Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, Assassination, it was called brinkmanship. 2. Reagan was just running his mouth, but middle management on both sides was listening. Brave Petrov, Able Archer, Fleetex, KAL 007, Reagan calmed down after he was shot. Both Irishmen believed they had a special relationship with the Soviet Union. 3. Jefferson unleashed Napoleon on Europe. The only real consequence of the Louisiana Purchase was funding Napoleon. Jefferson said he expected Napoleon to attack the British, but the French direction was clear after the Seven Years’ War.   Napoleon was a general not an admiral. Dropping guns in Haiti, backstabbing Washington on the loan, stopping the tobacco deal, don’t say it turned out for the best. We don’t know what would have happened. Jefferson was slime. 4. Wilson’s intervention in World War I led to World War II. 5. Teddy Rooseve...

Usually historical inevitability means the king is great, the empire will last forever and I want to keep my job. The counter story, Noah, Gilgamesh or Ur, is that when you live on a delta surrounded by mountains things may change, someone building a boat in the middle of a plain may not be ridiculous and you should be nice to the hill kids. The first to directly disagree with inevitability as permanence was Adam Smith. Smith liked explanations. Smith said empires inevitably fall because they are inefficient.   He attempted to convince England to abandon empire, particularly the American colonies. Wealth of Nations , Smith’s book, is not taught despite its central place in political and economic philosophy. I think the fall of civilizations is more basic. I was in Cahokia, Illinois at the Native American trash heaps. The museum said that this town only lasted about two or three hundred years and they didn’t know why. Two or three hundred years is a decent run. How long can pe...

At first I was sort of pleased with the increase in declared atheism. I told my son: -I just don’t want to hear about flying saucers. I suspected that most atheists had some sort of belief; we just hadn’t added the conspiracy or UFO check boxes yet.  But now I’m getting irked. I had blamed Benjamin Franklin. Once lightning was explained, God didn’t seem as necessary. But there seems to be a general failure to declare, not just religion, but anything else. Is other going to become its own gang? Caucasian is a racist term, predicated on the belief that we all came from some group in the Caucasus that was considered attractive.  Colors seem to be acceptable for black and white, but the brown, yellow and red people don’t approve. Now we need ten check boxes for sex: -Sex? -Yes I can see why people resist classification. I’m worried that we will lose culture. Christine recently dragged me to church and they had a reading from Jonah. I don’t know of any other stor...

Since the Deep Water Horizon rig is no more, it is more accurate to refer to the blowout which is still leaking: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/09/2011912175412109550.html     A year after the well was believed permanently sealed, the oil is back.    At first I thought that I should rush this piece but then I realized that the blowout will be leaking as far into the future as I can envision.    In addition to the environmental issues and loss of life, wasting that immeasurable quantity of nonrenewable resource is appalling. It is ridiculous to be calling for hearings into the advisability of deep water drilling while the blowout is still leaking.    How can they claim to drill safely while they still can’t stop the current leak? How do they assess the damage while new oil is being dumped on top of it? Forget the hearings, BP is already drilling a new deep water well in the Gulf, safe or not: http://english.aljazeera.net/...