As I See It

Disgust at USA

It is obvious to all but a bigoted Republican or a total ignoramus that this extract from the "Continue Reading" below makes it clear the USA intends to run, i.e. control, the whole world show. Why, instead of starting an independent activity, didn't we join that or those already running and existant, particularly that with the talent and ability, the UN!

Second, with well over 20% of the world's income and resources why do we only promise 7% - most won't be paid - to this enormous humanitarian effort? Because our government wants to remain the wealthiest and become even richer! Therein lies the power to dominate!

Considering both are good reason for any decent person to have an upset stomach!

"The intention is to use the core group as a launching pad to get others to join in," said J. Edward Fox, assistant administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. "Usually you have a lot of countries working together in one place, under one tent, but you can't do that with a crisis that stretches across 5,000 miles."

Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said that meanwhile, two separate task forces headed by department officials were up and running: one to coordinate an interagency task force on relief efforts and the other to track missing or injured Americans.

Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs, was named on Wednesday as the head of the interagency task force, which includes top military officials at the Pentagon.

A senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that so far, there was no need to add to the $35 million set aside by the United States for immediate relief, but that the money would be available when the time came to distribute it, once assessments are made. The official said that $500 million in government aid had been raised so far around the world, and that this had been matched by a like amount of private contributions.

The idea of setting up a core group of nations outside the United Nations came spontaneously [after intense coaxing and bribery by Bush, still snoozing, and his stooges, also not quite aware of the situation. -ed.], according to officials of various countries, as it became clear that Australia, Japan and India had relief capabilities as well as military forces in the region, even though India was itself a major victim.

Me & Piano

I'm very tempted to finish the blog "under construction" but I should practice the piano. I read yesterday in NY Time Art/Music/Best CD's of '04 about a pianist, Leon Fleischer, highly acclaimed in the 50's who had to stop playing concerts forty years ago due to an injury. He recovered recently at the age of 76 and is doing quite well at it again. That says there's hope for me at 71! I really want to get that story to an outstanding pianist lady friend since she is discouraged due to her 43 years.

No USA Commander in Chief

That tsunami again more disgusts me with the lack of a proper "Commander in Chief" of the USA as Bush and his cronies fiddle and faddle then doubling an initial offer to equal the British after the "cheap" comment about the first! And he is doing the usual Bush routine, fiddling with words and promises: "We will develop a coalition of four nations to provide aid.". The whole "White House" must be sitting in a circle puffing or snuffing or chewing, oxycontin?, on something as they do their thing which is nothing while blabbering!

Billions in Perspective

The billions of dollars GW Bush did and will spend in destroying Iraq and murdering hundreds of thousands could many times over be complete aide to the devastation by the latest tsunami in Asia. And in addition, aid in that greatest tragedy of history in Durban such as by preventing millions from dying and a half million - at least a lot - from being raped. Besides, he could even afford the mental treatment he needs for his psychotic condition!

Oh! France! I yearn to be in your comforting morality! I know you don't have fits about a woman entertainer exposing a breast but you do know shooting cruise and Hellfire missiles into civilian house and dropping 500 pound bombs on them and then rolling over them with tanks is evil!

Humans Cause Earthquakes!

Please USA, pay more attention to what you do to the surface of the Earth!

As the egg has a shell so also does the earth, a mantle or crust of disjoint separate yet adjacent pieces called "Tectonic plates". An egg shell cracks if the egg is put into boiling water as everyone who likes boiled eggs quickly knows. This is because of the rapid changes in temperature in different shell locations and the subsequent differential expansion; one spot on the shell wants to go somewhere the spot next to it doesn't so the eggs crack.

For the crust if different areas expand they may rub or push against, crack, or override one another and differential temperatures do that. Humans make those with changes in the surface of the earth which then absorb more or less heat from the sun or differing amounts are radiated back off the earth. "Global warming" also contributes.

The tectonic plates will also be moved by the molten rock core below them. As can, in a sense, be noticed in boiling water, heat causes a fluid to move internally from one temperature location toward another. That is usually from hotter to cooler due to the expansion with temperature of the fluid in the core and boiling as is particularly noticed in volcanos. The differential temperatures caused by humans will cause some of this. Therefore there is more moving of these tectonic plates overriding or grinding against one another as the fluid under them moves. This is earthquake activity of various degrees.

A third matter is that the crust of the earth is "hydraulic" in the sense that if one part moves so will others. This can be seen occurring in motion pictures of the artic ocean during spring thaw and the winter freezing. The pieces of ice, the ice floes, moving from place to place and over one another have a similarity to the tectonic plates of the earth. Imagine that the floes pushing against one another and forming jagged peaks of ice are like our earth's plates having formed mountain ranges in the past, and to a minor extent today of many hundreds of feet altitude on the surface and thousands of feet height below the ocean surface.

That's enough from an electrical-engineer/mathematician who is not trained in geology. I end with the request to the United States of America that it take better care of the surface of the earth.