Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
“It
is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time
on earth…and that we have no way of knowing when our time is
up…that we will begin living our lives to the fullest…as if it is
the only one we had.”
Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross
A
while back I was working for the Fluor Corporation as a piping
designer. I was sent to LaPorte, Texas to oversee the erection of
piping systems that we had designed for a chemical plant expansion.
LaPorte is about 25 miles south of Houston. Due to a mix-up in
the symbols on some of the drawings 300 wrong gaskets had been
installed. The client was not pleased and we were kicked off the
plant site. There was three of us that were ordered to Hobby airport
that night where airline tickets awaited us back to Greenville, SC.
We had a stay over of about 2 hours in the Atlanta airport. While
waiting at the gate in Atlanta one of the top five best looking women
we had ever seen top to bottom was walking through a book store across the walkway.
I couldn't help myself and I walked over to her and said “Excuse
me, ma'am. Me and my friends over there have had a very bad couple
of days on a job site in Texas but your beauty has made this day
worth while.” She teared up a little
and thanked me. She said that her Marine fiance' had been wounded in
Afghanistan and had been in a hospital in Germany recovering, he was
coming home that evening and she was there to meet him and it was us that had made her day worth while. God works in
mysterious ways.
Y’all
will be glad to know that disgraced US Army General Stanley
McChrystal, now retired, has avoided all the traps and millions of
dollars offered to military men of his rank by the giant defense
contractors and big business just to have his influence available.
He has taken a job at Yale School of Global Affairs to teach at a
newly founded leadership school. He will be in good company. In
addition to McChrystal there will be John Negroponte, former US
Ambassador and Deputy Secretary of State along with former Mexican
President Ernesto Padilla. As expected, McChrystal was offered
gigantic amounts of money to accept employment with several defense
contractors plus agencies that represented wounded veterans but he
chose another path. This will be strange territory for this man who
was well known in “Special Ops” world as a leader of, or the
planning of, covert missions. General McChrystal is a man’s man.
It has been reported that he is being courted by the Republican Party
to run for office in the upcoming mid-term elections. As far as I
know, there has not been a response from the General.
I
read an essay by Stephan Hawking on Monday. Hawking is the President
of the Lucasian Society at Cambridge University in England. This
society is primarily for those that are mathematical or astrophysical
geniuses. Hawking advocated that we of the planet Earth need to
start right now to plan to abandon this planet for another. He
believes that we have already crossed the point of no return in
exhausting or poisoning the materials required for our existence. He
believes that our energies and resources should be aimed at finding
another planet to migrate to. As we all know, the biggest problem
with space travel is time/speed/distance. Our average lifespan is
less than required just to get out of our solar system. We have not
yet figure out how to even design a method of travel that is anywhere
near the speed of light. Because of the enormous distances involved
and our inability to travel but a couple of percentage points of the
speed of light, travel to another galaxy would require several
generations. The closest galaxy is 4 light years away. This mean it
would take light traveling at 186,000 miles per second 4 years to
reach us from that point in space. Assume that we become capable of
traveling 1% of the speed of light, about 670,000 MPH which is very
unlikely; it will take about 400 years to get to the nearest galaxy.
Hawking said that research should begin immediately to find methods
of time travel such as “worm holes”, etc. I don’t know if I
understand all of this but after all, Hawking has been acknowledged
to be the smartest man on Earth since Sir Isaac Newton. By the way,
Sir Isaac was also the President of the Lucasian Society.
This
Date in History August 19
1812
On the is date a United States frigate named the USS
Constitution encountered the British frigate HMS
Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia. A sea battle ensued
and witnesses said that the British shells just bounced off the sides
of the Constitution like they were made of iron. From then on
the USS Constitution was known as “Old Ironsides”
and went on to glory in sinking or capturing six more British vessels
before the war of 1812 ended. The Constitution was a large
ship built for 44 guns but frequently carried 50, built in Boston and
had it’s oak sides sheathed in copper forged by that master metal
smith Paul Revere. The ship carried a crew of about 485 men that
savored combat, especially boarding and capturing and enemy vessel
equal in size to their own. They loved one on one combat led by the
ship’s commander Isaac Hull. After the war there was talk of
scrapping “Old Ironsides” but public sentiment did not
allow it and it was brought into Boston Harbor and refitted several
times. It remains in old Charlestowne Harbor near Boston as a
tourist attraction but is still seaworthy and is a commissioned ship
in the inventory of the United States Navy.
1862
A small band of Dakota Indians after finding they had lost their
corn crop to insects went to the local merchants near their
reservation in Minnesota to get credit for food lest they starve to
death. The credit was not forthcoming and the Dakota went on the
warpath and slaughtered white families on their way down the
Minnesota River looking for food. The Dakota had to endure hunger
and the chipping away of the tribal lands and this lack of credit for
food was the last straw. On this date they were approaching Fort
Ridgley and decided to by-pass this American Infantry post and fell
upon Fort Ulm later on and killed the inhabitants to a man. Finally,
the United States cavalry showed up led by General John Pope and
captured the renegade Dakota and hanged 37 of them simultaneously.
Earlier Pope had his ass handed to him by CSA General Robert E. Lee
at 2nd Manassas but now he was the hero by executing a few
half starved mostly unarmed Native Americans. What a loser.
1895
On this date one of the most bloodthirsty killers in the history
of the American west meets his maker in El Paso. John Wesley Hardin
killed his first man at the age of 15 and the trail of blood was
continuous after that. For reasons known only to Hardin he hated
blacks and the blacks knew it and gave him a wide berth. He made the
mistake of shooting a sheriff and was given a 14 year sentence. This
jail time seemed to calm Hardin down and he studied enough to get a
law degree. After he was paroled he went to Gonzales, Texas and
opened a practice. He was not pleased with this sedate lifestyle and
went looking for excitement. He chose to go to the wild and woolly
town of El Paso. As luck would have it on this date he went to a bar
and got into an argument. An off duty policeman recognizes Hardin
and walked up and put a slug into his head at point blank range
killing Hardin instantly, thus ending the days of John Wesley
Hardin.
Born today:
1942
Ex-presidential candidate and Senator from Tennessee Fred Dalton
Thompson. He said “I have not found my way around Washington. The
other day I caught myself spending some of my own money.” Fred is
an actor now and plays District Attorney Arthur Branch on the TV
series Law and Order.
Thanks
for listening I can hardly with until tomorrow
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