Doug's Darkworld

Well, Friday I have my Halloween post. Monsters. Real Monsters. What could be better than monsters for Halloween? However, this means that today I am going to rant about random or not so random things. First, the most important election in decades, or a farce? I’m taking flak from my friends and family, but I still think McCain is going to win, and I still thinks it’s the best possible result. I also still think it really doesn’t matter, the government has been so badly mismanaged the last eight years I don’t think any mortal could pull us out of this nose dive. And that might even be a good thing, being a global superpower is a bad idea that only profits the rich.

While I appreciate comments, I never know quite what to say when someone leaves a comment that’s longer than the post. WordPress as yet doesn’t appear to have any setting that allows me to limit comment lengths. So once again, readers please limit your comments to a few paragraphs. I won’t delete overlarge comments or anything, but I often can’t respond to them. While maybe writing Doug’s Darkworld looks easy, each post takes me four or more hours to write. And what the hell, sometimes a long comment does inspire me to write a long answer, so if the gentle reader feels compelled to comment at length, pixels are free. I’m flattered that my ramblings inspire people to words. Now if I can just inspire them to send money…

Moving right along, a new report is out about an approaching “eco crunch.” Basically way too many people are living beyond their means in a ecological sense. This has been the case for a long time, so nothing new here. Humans continue to treat natural resources as profit instead of capital, and even a shallow study of history shows that has pretty much been the case for all humans throughout history. So no point losing sleep over it, sooner or later climate change will destroy this civilization as it has countless others before. Assuming we don’t blow ourselves up first, always a back burner possibility. When either happens, I will continue to blog as long as possible, no worries.

In world news the USA launched a raid into Syria. The Syrians are rather upset about this, as would almost anyone. The Americans called the raid an “expanded version of self defense.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. Defining every military action, especially an attack inside another country,  as “self defence” is logically bankrupt and doesn’t pass the laugh test. Millions of Americans will fall for it though, but what scares me is that the people running the country might actually believe it. In any event, it’s militarily insignificant, so one has to wonder what the real reason for the raid is. The claim is that it is a warning to Syria, but that seems almost pointless. The Syrians have lived with Israeli raids for decades, they aren’t about to change their tune because now the Americans have joined the party. And the damage this does to America’s international reputation, not to mention the propaganda bonus for our enemies, is significant. Maybe it’s for domestic consumption, but that doesn;t even make much sense. Maybe it’s just stupidity, which is always a safe guess when talking about military operations.

I’m thinking of changing the name of the blog, though It’s not really a blog anymore. Well, the tag line to be more precise, it’s always going to be Doug’s Darkworld. I’m thinking of “War, Science, and History in a Fractured World.” The philosophy part has always bugged me because technically I don’t really discuss much philosophy at all, so I’m using the word in the vulgar vernacular. And I’ve really emphasized the history aspect of this non-blog in the past year or so, I like writing about it, they are fun posts to read, and they often illustrate points I am trying to make in subtle or not-so-subtle ways.

As always, comments are appreciated, especially feedback on the possible tag line change.

(Speaking of random noise, the above is a picture of Japanese War Tubas being inspected by Emperor Hirohito in World War Two. No wonder they lost the war. OK, that was a bad joke. They are acoustic aircraft detection devices, basically they were used before radar was invented to detect the sound of approaching planes. They are Japanese though, and the Emperor is indeed in the picture, but the pic was taken in the 30s. The British used a similar device, some of them can still be seen. I just stumbled across the image, had never seen such a thing before, and wanted to share. No matter how much history I read, there’s always stuff I’ve never even heard of.)