All You Can See is the Forest Through the Trees! Use Them to Get Out of the Forest

"A fungal life form of larger diameter or of a bright color is a good landmark because there will be others of the same variety in the vicinity. Definitely observe rock walls in forests, I'm not sure what they are exactly, but they all seem to go in a straight line to somewhere."

Trees Can Save Your Life! No B.S! Survival scenario: Say you are in this forest (pictured) and you are several miles from the nearest signs of civilization. You went off trail on a hunch you would find a primo campsite and you did, except the next morning you could not find your way back to the trail, because a boat-load of leaves fell overnight and everything looks almost unrecognizable. And guess what? You're a veteran backcountry hiker but this has never happened to you in all of your years! And you're barely concerned as to why all the green leaves fell off the trees overnight. [That's the case in many people who become lost (and they have been drinking) and often it only happens once to them in their lives and it's usually a multiple days doozy.] To make matters worse it's overcast but bright and light is diffused throughout the sky and so you can not identify the location of the sun. And worse the night before you stayed awake watching Dr. Who for four hours and completely ran your smart phone's power down. Worse, you remember you gave your magnetic compass to some occupy protester because he said "I just wish I had some direction in life." And you were a dramatic sap and took advantage of the beautiful timing of the moment of giving him what very well might have been your only way out of this forest! First thing you think of should be to attempt to locate the linear pattern of broken twigs and crushed leaves, bent saplings, ferns ripped, crushed decomposing log and branches, that you created walking in. But the amount of leaves makes that possibility slim, and so you can't find your own impact trail.

Time to observe nature like you were Sherlock Holmes with a forest green safari hat in camouflage green combat fatigues, so that you can possibly save your life. See how those two darker mature trees in this forest picture are leaning to the left (for best light)? [go play Rush, The Trees now] At our latitude premium sunlight passes on average of about 15-35 degrees southerly over our heads throughout the year (that bald spot on your head being 0 degrees). And you know what time of year it is. The direction of the right side mid image where it seems darker, is west north westerly, along the side of the hill, which I deduce is running east by south east by north by west north westerly. This hillside is why those trees needed to bend away from the hillside all of their lives. Mature trees have reached there pinnacle of sorts in their growth and their struggle for light (and water) is spelled-out biologically on their fat trunks to tell the story of their lives and clearly the specific direction they were headed for. Like it or not we often prejudge the quality of someone else's life and history by subconsciously observing the lines and absence of lines on their faces! Are we that shallow? Often! As young and middle aged trees these two mature (genetic twins also) trees and the others around them are not and did not get direct morning sunlight from the east because the hillside is blocking the south east, and the thickness of the forest from their light reception perspective is too much to even get good indirect light from that direction (behind you) and so the trees are biologically programmed to compensate to meet their normal carbohydrate requirements. If those mature trees had grown at the equator without nearby competition for light, they would be straight as an arrow, they would not have had to bend. Knowing this you deduce facts about your direction from what trees are not doing.  A tree bending it's trunk to reach premium light is doing so with sacrifice - a bending tree is a weaker tree because weight can not be well distributed toward the base of the trunk, and so it is a tree far more vulnerable to downing from high winds, ice and rain. A bending mature tree has some advantage in staying alive because it has seated it's roots deeper and thickened them in opposition to the weighty bend of the trunk.

About 285-295, or "west north westerly," is the view.

Okay now you've figured-out which directions are around you. But which direction were you walking when you went off trail? Tip, perhaps you don't' need to find the trail to get back out, but consider that trails are created over time usually for a good reason, like crossing a river, a mountain and etcetera. You recall that while walking on Main Street in the small town next to forest that you had thought about how the solar charger was getting good light at that time. You recall that had occurred about a eleven o-clock, and you surmise that you had noticed a high-sun and you were on the right sidewalk with merchant's buildings on your right, putting the sun at your left shoulder at that moment and walking westerly, and you remember Google Maps had placed the entrance to the park on the north west side of town. Now you're cooking, but you've been squatting on the leaves while contemplating all of this and fire ants have found you and are apparently making plans for a tremendous deadly ant-hill right there, because you're in f-cking southern Alabama! So you dance around slapping them off and shouting "ouch you bastards!" and you pull your pants down and check your crotch and your ass, then you get back to getting out.

Consider clearly, you are conceptually standing and lost in point B and you have a good Bering on point A where you want to return. (Bering was a nineteenth century Russian naval explorer and Admiral of great fame, inventor of the 360 degree navigation and communication method!). But before you formulate a plan of direction try this: feel at this moment for your intuition, like a tiny consciousness is tapping on the wall of the rear of your brain. Feel because now you have much related information and imagery to draw on - intuition isn't magical and it's not psychic, the feeling has basis in your mind you may not be fully aware of when it happens to you. Which direction now feels right to you? The answer from intuition or not is to turn around 180 degrees from facing the view in the picture and walk south east along the ridge, through the forest, and do not deviate, until you meet the trail or meet the roadway that the trail's entrance was located on. To maintain your path on a straight line, turning too frequently is very bad during your escape, pick out the farthest tree straight in front of you that you can distinguish, keep an eye on it, when you reach it, pick another far tree that is directly behind the tree you are currently hugging and panting on. When you start walking through empty Jack Daniels whiskey mini bottles you are almost at the road near town. Congratulations! But oh no! You're still in southern Alabama! Why are you there? So don't put away your new Sherlock Holmes persona yet.

How to never get lost in the first place:

1. Know your direction always! It's just like that classic R.E.M. song "Stand in the place where live. Now face north. Think about direction wonder why you haven't before." And so on like that. If you're a person who is not one of those genetically blessed with an internal compass which provides strong intuition about direction (related to one of the gently balancing bones of the inner ear), then you may want to stay out of the forest alone. And don't even get into a car with me, okay? I mean you're a genetic freak man! A mutation that got by our eugenics practicing god!

2. Be more observant of nature's breaks in the seemingly blurry mosaic of your visual pattern. Notice that branch that has been growing downward that you just walked passed off trail. Puzzle for a moment why you stepped over deer scat that appeared to have been dropped while running, and then ask yourself "Is there a werewolf in this forest?" A downed tree is memorable enough. A tree half down, held by another is of interest enough to be recalled. Notice trees with tumors on them, and wish you could do something for them, anything. A fungal life form of larger diameter or of a bright color is a good landmark because there will be others of the same variety in the vicinity. Definitely observe rock walls in forests, I'm not sure what they are exactly, but they all seem to go in a straight line to somewhere.

3. Blaze your own trail! Get some spray paint and . . . no - kidding! I promised my p.o. I wouldn't touch another can of the stuff within one-thousand feet of a national park again. The greatest thing out there now for doing this is neon colored rubber flex bands, available as a package of many sizes, but the small ones can hook over a small branch, loop over a branch. These cost a little so you'll remember to collect them on the way out, if you need to use the dark colored ones stuff some leaves under so it looks very odd to you in the morning. Here's a tip that Sierra Club will want my ass for: blaze a trail with your fingers and hands. Choose mature bark covered trees you are walking passed, turn around and face the way you want to exit and pull a thick piece of bark off the tree, try to expose a couple of inches of under-bark which should appear a yellowish whitish, there's your trail blaze. The under bark is a protective layer, and exposing it air you will cause a hardening to further protect itself. In the life of theses bark-blazed trees this activity is amazingly insignificant.

4. Make and observe an impact trail. Deer make small "deer paths" from a few inches wide to about 8 inches, and if you see one it probably crosses the very trail you walked-off of, use that. Those deer path have something in common. . deer make them horizontally mostly to travel around a mountainside rather than over it, to travel to water and to travel deer orgy grounds. And you can make a human path or a Debbie path, or whatever. Except your path has to be looked for to be followed, and will be only temporarily seen in local nature. While walking to your lost doom step on that branch hard, mash your heel down into the dirt now and again, rip the end of a fern or a handful of leaves off of a branch and toss it to the ground where you walk. Play ACDC Thunderstruck as you trample the forest and rip branches down left and right of you with your bare hands. Step on mushrooms. Torture a cockroach to death on a little execution pedestal so you'll remember exactly where that scene you staged from Insect Braveheart took place.

The End.

Some more tips I just can't help giving: If a plane fly's over at low altitude, your rich wife has called the governor because you didn't phone in two hours ago like the good ass-kisser husband you are, or it may be because there is an airstrip nearby. If it's not windy that pilot is probably landing on runway 270, toward the west! Observe flaps positions before your run-off on a hunch because you remembered some of this article, if the pilot is moving flaps, or flaps are downward he's/she's probably within a few miles of the runway, in that case just go to the airport, they'll have a vending machine and comfy chairs, you can rest-up and go back into the forest the way you entered the airport at the wooded end of runway 90 scaring the hell out of everybody like you were a Sasquatch (except Sasquatch aren't in southern Alabama, they're too intelligent! More so than you apparently.). Lost and see geese flying south? Forget that idea. I've tried it, they mostly fly in broad semi-circles, and if it's evening or even late afternoon they're looking for a good pond they remember, that's why they're flying so low. So the geese will get you further lost, face down in some pond, and exhausted from chasing them all over the forest - but you might stumble onto the trail that you lost while you are wildly thrashing through the woods in random directions trying to watch a flock of a seemingly aimless geese. FYI: A flattened Mountain Dew can in the middle of the forest does not mean you're on the right track, it's a mystery to me also. But if I had to guess I would say airline stewards loading the plane's refreshments, drop the cans on the tarmac, the plane rolls over them, flattening the cans and causing them to stick to the tires of the plane, then the plane rolls over a thumbtack (I hate those on the runways!) and it sticks right into the Mountain Dew can adhering it to the tire. Once airborne the steward realizes he's short a Mountain Dew for the demanding guy in 19-B, and he says to himself very disgustedly "Oh shit, we're gonna bomb the state forest again with another flattened Mountain Dew can, shit shit shit!" "Oh calm down and man-up girly man! See if he wants a 7-up and get back to work!" Said the stewardess in charge. When the cold air of upper atmosphere is reached, the thumbtack contracts, pops out of the tire and the can and falls to the ground, a flattened Mountain Dew can following it in a fluttery fashion. As least that's what seems like happens when you find a flattened Mountain Dew can in the middle of the forest.

That's it for today's Crazy in the Wilderness Show! Now go out and get lost with confidence!

Copyright Reserved, James G. Mason, May, 2014

http://jamesgmason.blogspot.com/2014/05/all-you-can-see-is-forest-through-trees.html

Morning Journal: Submarines in space. Audio embedded writing. Cars melting roadways. Sonic home dental hygiene. Giant rubbers for bathrooms. Carbon crushing machine makes diamond ring for Earth.

Submarines are complete with most of what space travel needs.

The following is very possible. Why are we not putting a nuclear submarine in space to see how it performs? I know they would be a heavy payload, but they don't have to be for launch, they could be stripped of all non spacey materials for the launch. Even the nuclear engine could be launched separately. Once in orbit we retrofit the vessel as a space workhorse and the ships' weapon systems will be ready to attack Earth bound objects and reach firing range quickly all over our system. Additionally because a submarine is tubular in shape, it can spin to provide simulated gravity for the the crew.  Anthony Zuppero phD who works for the U.S. Department of Energy, really wants to get us into space and he proposes  we could use steam for propulsion from the ice that is known to be beneath the surface of the moon and expected to be within over twenty planetary bodies/moons in our solar system. (PDF: Propulsion to Moons of Jupiter Using Heat and Water Without Electrolysis Or Cryogenics) It would be the most powerful blast of steam the world has ever known from a man made object. He proposes we dock close to the surface of the moon, where a drilling station will withdraw the ice, melt the ice and and pump it into a giant hollow donut which encircles the submarine and is affixed to the submarine. This water becomes the submarines propulsion and nuclear coolant component and the giant donut will hold enough water for all the crew needs to get around all over the system. A planetary taxi. It is estimated the speed in space of the steam propelled nuclear powered submarine will be about 270,000 miles per hour! Arriving at the Mars sex colony in just a few days! 

Doctor Zuppero has thought allot more about this than I have, he's done all the math,  and the details are great, although the concept it is relatively simplistic and efficient and practical as a methodology of exploring space, and owning our solar system: Neofuel

 Audio embedded writing would add a new dimension for writers and readers.

I'm sick of the same old blogging. Here's what I want next on my blog interface while editing; Audio Embedded Text.  The ability to put a dramatic musical sound track and emotion targeted audio special  effects and explanative chords and punctuation inflecting music within my text as I'm writing.  An audio track that begins the moment the reader sees the first letter of the first word, that is integrated to the reader's webcam and follows the reader's eyes with precision while they read, and then pauses the instant the readers' eyes turn away. The editor would let me add real music, or creatively write my own sequence music. Oh the joy all writers could provide to readers! Imagine . .

A dialogue section where the antagonist farts while talking to someone - and it's not in the text, but in the next paragraph the characters mention it!  Birds chirping while Snow White awakens in children's stories. A truck backing up during a dialogue section which actually causes the reader to misread what the speakers are saying, because it's digital media the letters could get blurry, or leave the page - the author doesn't have to write in these environmental necessities any longer. Corporations spending millions of labor hours adding soundtracks to all new books and classics of our time! Millions of couch dwelling television and movie oholics begin to read enthusiastically! Instruction manuals for imported do it yourself furniture with calming new age backgrounds, that don't stop when the Nordic lovers look away. 

Drivers of cars melting our roadways automatically.

I stuck my all wheel drive car in the icy snow back in February, it was the fourth time in my life I carelessly trapped my vehicle in snow. I’m sick of it. My tires were stuck on top of two inches of glassy smooth hard ice and that contact became lubricated by water when the temperature rose above freezing and three days passed before I gathered the energy to dig-out allot of heavy snow and ice. What if getting my car out of it’s rut meant taking a half-hour or an hour to go have some breakfast, watch the news, have a shot of whiskey then return to my car and drive off? Sweet!

Why are we not heating our tires from within and relatively quickly melting ourselves out of trouble? Dig, the steel belts within the modern steel belted radials can be heated electrically. Or a simple heating element can be conjoined to a tire air-valve stem. A temperature and pressure relief valve assures the heat has not over expanded the tires. We know that modern rubber can take temperatures of 120º on the hottest of road pavements without dangerous degradation to the material. This would be perfect for the self inflating models of car because when the tire temperature cools down the air inside will contract and tire pressure will be reduced by several pounds and would have to soon be adjusted.

There is great possibly with this invention that what saves us from being stuck can make the snow plow and tons of road salt (poisonous) in large part unnecessary. We already very much melt the under center of the roads with our engine heat, the tires could add even more heat. What if it were snowing hard and the storm threatens to strand hundreds of thousands of commuters on the highways (i.e. Atlanta, February, 2014)? What if at this point drivers all remember to switch on their tire heaters? A fold-down heating element secured underneath each quarter panel, at the wheel well, could also melt tracks for our tires to get us out of freezing cold road-side traps.

Dentists beware. Technology may replace most of you soon.

Dentists and dental hygienists, look at another career. The desire for clean and healthy and white teeth could lead to the invention of one of the most important home medical tools in our history. A sonic and microwave tooth and gums cleaning device for home use. Anyone who could afford the device can stand in their bathrooms and removes calculi and carries in minutes, and remain free of them in just seconds per morning. Can easily be computer guided to quickly target only our unwanted mouth debris so as not to disturb soft tissue, best done by a micro depth and texture detecting laser which feeds the direction and depth of an ultrasound and microwave frequency broadcast. Beneath the gum line and under the tooth hygene on a daily basis will then be possible.

Inventors should experiment with various sound frequencies known to vibrate and loosen materials. Many hospitals are using ultrasound water baths to successfully loosen and break-up kidney stones and have been doing so for more than twenty years. It makes sense and I believe someone in the dental profession already knows this and knows it will remove millions of billable hours from dentists and dental hygienists - a corrupt position to be in which is likely.

If it can happen I foresee huge drops in tooth decay and sepsis from tooth and gum infection. Hundreds of grueling hours in a dentists’ chair throughout our lives will no longer be normal.

The same concept of technology for home dental care, can be upgraded and transformed to be one of the worlds greatest medical inventions. With it’s use we’ll seen an almost end to arteriosclerosis and heart disease as contributed to by plaque among western economies. Because we should also be able to point this instrument at all of our arteries and veins, organs, and maybe one day our brain to prevent senility diseases, or at our bloodstream to remove carcinogens and metals like lead and mercury and clear every artery and vein of sclerosis.  I’ve said it before, if necessity is the mother of invention, than heavy labor maintenance to prevent and heal tooth decay exceeds qualification to require an invention.

Big giant bathroom rubbers make bathroom maintenance a piece of cake.

 If a retail brick and mortar business wants to increase their customer base they would advertise Free Restrooms Inside. Congenial, this welcomes potential new customers, and what they see they may buy. It's very basic business, offer an amenity everyone needs, and see more customers.

Paradoxically the lack of local government sponsored public bathrooms has caused merchants to also shut their bathroom doors, as the influx of all walks of people needing to evacuate themselves was too much mess for the labor involved in maintaining those bathrooms.

When I was a boy, in the nineteen sixties, every store had a sign hanging that directed customers to the bathroom. It was taken for granted. Now what happened? Gas stations began tying their bathroom keys to bricks, and the signs all came down by the nineteen nineties, even gas stations can no longer be counted on to have customer bathrooms. Here's what happened I think; gang graffiti and pornographic graffiti on bathroom walls is an offense to have to scrub off. Drug users whose homes were the streets began using any accessible bathrooms to use-up in. Homeless would crawl into bathrooms to sleep, to clean themselves. Drunks would vomit in bathrooms in businesses and especially in or near where alcohol was being served. Bathrooms are disgusting to have to continually clean up. Even employees told to so so find ways to not clean the bathroom.

Once in San Francisco I came upon a automated public bathroom across from the city university. It was at least a two minute wait after each use for the apparatus inside to sanitize the room. It was overkill. Like the machine was looking for ebola virus between crappers. I did not go inside, I had waited too long and just pissed along the subway tracks later. It was considered by the majority to be a failure. Often it was closed for repairs for days to weeks sometimes.  And it was a monetary boondoggle, a pit of taxpayers' dollars.

Boy I wish I had time to invent this: What's needed is something in-between filthy hard to maintain standard bathrooms and the expensive super bathroom with sanitary overkill.  What if a plastic glove could be attached to every wall, every floor, every ceiling of a bathroom expected to get high traffic? The grainy/bumpy anti-biotic plastic surfaces many children's' products are now made of, are graffiti proof from pens and pencils, and their design of increased surface area (the little bumps) cause wetness to dry quickly, which means bacteria and other waste is made harmless. But if this plastic was made glove-thin it would be ideal to form in the shape of toilets, paper dispensers, sinks, the trashcans, and shaped for every wall outlet, both sides of the door and door handles. Clear plastic vanity condoms shaped for the bathroom mirror can fit over a mirror in ten layers, peeled off to reveal a clear clean reflection. It would be about making maintenance of a bathroom a piece of cake. More accessible bathrooms for everyone as making them available would not be a pain in the ass for merchants who see the public. A gas station employee would grab a trash bag, throw open the door, make the hooker leave, then proceed to grab and pull the corners off of about 10-15 rubbers off the walls, the floor, the toilets, the urinal, the sink, the door handle, and grab the ceiling rubber by pulling a string. They could be decoratively printed. They could be solid colors, completely changing the appearance of a bathroom. They could be mix and match, mirrored surface condoms for mirrors, or walls or wherever, every surface capable of transferring bacteria to someone else can be peeled away and thrown out. And changing the bathroom walls colors and schemes could become addictive.

A giant carbon crushing machine that puts a diamond ring around our planet and cleans our atmosphere of everything bad.

Here's a science based fantasy that could be made a reality one day and save us and our planet: What if we built a machine, assembled in orbit, that removes billions and billions of tons of carbon from our atmosphere in a short time? What if we could solve climate change virtually overnight? What if the same machine became Earths' air filter for all harmful substances in our atmosphere? Of course, there's always been some carbon in the atmosphere because we are volcanic, but we leave safe and normal (before the industrial age) levels so as not to cause biological rapid evolutionary growth and mutations.

We build it in orbit because it's got to be huge. Too huge for structures to suspend the machine by materials and equipment in Earth gravity, one G. Along side the machine we build the space station that will tether the machine which will be lowered into the atmosphere and put into operation. The dream machine might weigh more than a skyscraper and be of similar size. It could be nuclear powered, but fusion powered would be better and that technology might be here by the time this idea gets any traction. It should lower from space to the highest altitude of a known air stream, where carbon combinations are brought high and travel attached to pollutants that also circulate in our lower atmosphere. It takes tremendous pressure and heat to squeeze pure carbon molecules into shards of diamond. A fusion reactor (still very experimental) could put out enough energy to create the incredible pressure necessary to transform the carbon molecules at a rate far faster than we can throw them into the air. Perhaps more than one machine and space station will be needed to beat the rate of carbon creation on Earth? We must be careful not to overheat the atmosphere with our desire to clean it. The waste will be one beautiful harmless thing, and one nasty black mess of goo composed of a bit of every living thing that has every lived on Earth that ever became airborne and stuck to the marvelous carbon atom. Imagine, this muck will be a little bit of ashes of great aunt Nancy, whose carbon/ashes were thrown to the wind in a beautiful ceremony with a clown and a new age  piano player. The muck will harden quickly on earth but until it does it will be hazardous waste like no one has ever seen. If the machine would pump this bad waste to a rural part of the planet, it could become a Kilimanjaro sized monument to life on Earth and the waste we put in our atmosphere. 

The beautiful harmless waste will be the pure carbon microscopic sized diamond flakes and shards and they like the bio-muck waste would also have to be placed somewhere. If we can direct all of the dust into stable orbit, we could build the most beautiful and spectacular intelligently constructed planetary ring ever seen in our galaxy. The diamond ring around around our planet could be built and added to by bringing the machine out of the atmosphere and into orbit where the permanent ring will be, and then discharge the pure carbon/diamond waste. It would be beyond beautiful. In space the diamond ring will be a shot for every alien's camera. For us on the ground a prism view through the receiving side of a rainbow of intricacy of the entire light spectrum would be viewable from everyone on Earth at once. From the ground a permanent rainbow that if built in a polar orbit will move across the land as the day proceeds! A rainbow clock, it's accuracy unquestioned, it's beauty paramount on Earth for civilizations after us to come.  It's nighttime view as it reflects lights from the other side of the planet will be incredible. The new diamond ring around Earth might just place our planet on the most beautiful planet in the galaxy list. It could be called the greatest work of art at Earth ever. It must be assembled broadly as a wide ribbon from pole to pole, and not thickly, so as not to turn the ring into a giant death ray (a magnifying glass) of heat and fire. Get to work someone else besides me!

Young Guns Military is No Longer Needed

For this Memorial Day: This is a solution to the suicides and the many domestic and family issues. There is an answer to the vast isolation from society that many veterans feel, who have joined while young.

If you need support now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255

Often when a vet gets home, they feel as if their community does not understand. They can not adapt quickly enough, and by seemingly no choice of their own begin to destroy their own lives in that battle for acceptance. A struggle to fit-in and gain acceptance that an older veteran who has already lived as an adult in society does not experience.

Adaption to society is a young person's ground, the change into adulthood while in the service creates a different universe - it's another world in there.

Please read this with this solutions in mind. Thank you. - James.

~~~~

By raising the minimum entrance age into our military to twenty-five years old, we could significantly reduce many problems involving the quality of the lives of military personnel and the cost of the issues associated with those lives. In our ancient world, the need to assure military populations are large existed. It no longer exists. So, we no longer need to pluck youthful freedom and the trials of the early years of adult discovery from our young people lives and put guns in their hands. 

Additionally, it would be ethical and prudent to ban the entrance to anyone with a dependent/child.

The military does not have to be a social services machine for young people learning how to live with themselves and others. The military should not have to enforce responsibility among developing young adults. It's time for an army which is far less parental. An institution which values personnel without emotional baggage. Not one that instead will expending hundreds of millions in tax dollars, on reigning in grown-ups not yet quite there. We could instead spend a higher percentage of our military funds on strictly military and far less on social services.

This plucking of youth is no longer necessary while our planet's population has reached seven billion. There is no shortage of strong and healthy men and women of more mature age to volunteer in our military. There is no shortage of childless men and women to conduct battle either.

Veterans will tell convey proudly "After I joined after high school my years in the military honed me into the person I am today." I ask to counter this statement "So what did it cost the taxpayers during these developmental years, becoming the person you are today?" I would add the question, "Was it not more difficult to teach you and train you, than it would have been, say if you were twenty-five and not just eighteen?" And "Would you have had an easier time of it had you been twenty-five when you went in?" The answers should be, "Yes, my immaturity cost my government a lot." And, I guess the older guys seemed to pick-up things better and have an easier time of it, overall."

What would we get in a mature military? Mature and smarter and wiser personnel who have made-it confidently to the post developmental age of twenty-five. Consider, the male brain is still in development until the age of approximate twenty-five. We'll have new personnel very likely to have already their civilian life planned when entering service. Many personnel may have already completed college and even began their career, which they may be confident they can return to after service.

~~~~~

An interesting science report of a study of young brains:
Brain Development among youth/males 
NPR Story; add to Young Guns in the Military:


Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years: Google Search Results:


~~~~~

It was recently pointed out to me by an older baby boomer that leadership was mostly missing in the Vietnam war, and that was a frequent complaint. In that war, it was common for a platoon to have a young officer assigned to lead them in combat. An absence of trust and confidence in these baby-faced officers was immediately sensed in the unit. This trust and with it confidence in leadership was rarely achieved with these young leaders. Not the case during WWII, where the department of war knew very well that mature enlistees be made sergeants and lieutenants non-com. The Department of War, figured-out, that they statistically better would perform as respected leaders in their units, far more so than the newly shaving wearers of bars.

Some ideas:

We could pay college tuition and a stipend to young people to complete a four-year degree before entering service. They would contract with the military to a term of service beginning at age twenty-five. We could then at age twenty-five, re-offer the ability to fulfill their contract or pay the tuition with interest, within for example 10 years. It's a win-win for society economically and educationally, and for all other reasons, a mature military would quickly reveal. Imagine a mostly college-educated fighting force! A platoon of wisdom and massive firepower, where several members are qualified to take the lead. It would be a very lethal group of soldiers, indeed.

We would get personnel less likely to violate code or commit crimes. A significant reduction in events such as assaulting each other or fragging each other, less engaging in brutality and torture against a prisoner. Perhaps, personnel would be more likely to fully identify a family or a wedding party before pushing the fire button from 5,000 miles away in a small steel building?

Domestic abuse among military families and single young people would be significantly reduced with a mature armed service. Domestic violence in the military has risen sharply. In the seven extra years an 18-year-old has to live his or her civilian life, they will be far more practiced at all relationships. Even having likely already experienced a crisis with a friend or loved one, or several crises in relations. We learn with practice, so why make our military a relationship learning grounds? We get personnel who have life skills, because they may have been living on their own for several years of their early twenties. We get people with adapted social skills, who have learned the benefits and consequences of young adult relationships.

No arrest record should be present, as usual, for our new twenty-five-year-olds. The seven years of living as a young adult with no arrest record is an excellent measure that that recruit will likely never have trouble with the military police.

We'll get personnel less likely to go awol as they will know more of honor and commitment than our young military. At twenty-five, our military personnel will be less likely to abuse alcohol and other substances. As the legal experimentation with alcohol years will be behind the twenty-five-year-old volunteers. Pride and honor will more likely be understood, and it's merits practiced on the battlefield more so with a mature military. 

The well known early twenties diagnoses of bipolar disorder and clinical depression and schizophrenia will have likely already occurred before age 25. The frequency of personnel receiving psychiatric diagnoses, of an underlying condition, through the military medical system, will be reduced.

We get personnel less likely to impregnate and become pregnant. If a young adult has not learned the benefits and responsibilities of birth control use by the age of twenty-five, they should not get into the United States military. We get personnel less likely to have dependents like a young spouse and babies, a condition that stresses the soldier. Pregnancy surprises and mistakes are the domains of young people and teenagers predominately. During service, these young families cost our government a great deal, in healthcare, housing, daycare, PX resources. No longer does society condone young families. But when they happen, we all embrace the young couples and adore their children anyway - because that's natural and very human. But the military is not their extended family, and an obligation to care for them must be forgotten as an old tradition. A pre-twenty-five-year-old who has their heart set on a military career, will likely, keep in close mind that they won't get in if they have a child.

Perhaps a rule that the military will not extend benefits and services to service person's dependents until 5-10 years in service is reached? Allowing encouragement for career followers to achieve a family as a stable family.

The military doesn't teach life skills, and that should not be their business. While our people are fighting our wars for us, they are not fully living in society, which is a factor in the known difficulties and hardships a veteran young adult encounters. Imagine having to catch-up with the culture after years of military life. Being still inexperienced and having to learn living skills, like applying to jobs, getting into a college, feeding and housing your young family in a real job competitive and low paying economy. Imagine, finding out you are ignorant of much of life's non-military facets? But there you are out in the thick of it. It must be very depressing for many. We should not be surprised that as of this writing, the pentagon's figures for veteran suicides is averaging now 22 veterans per day, and this is very disturbing. With twenty-five-year-old personnel, this misery will be significantly reduced as older young adults are more likely prepared for a sophisticated and tough society in and out of military life.

Not being prepared to be a close witness to something horrific in war makes acceptance more complicated, this is more often a summary in the description of a post-traumatic stress disorder sufferer. A military person who is experiencing the memory of an event which haunts him or her is not moving on in life. The twenty-five-year-old has had several more crucial developmental years in which to contemplate his or her acceptance of the horrors we humans are capable of. His or her choice to risk being close to these horrors is far clearer. The situation they may place themselves in, more thought-out by proxy of the years of real-life they have lived before their service. Age is not the always the predominant factor in PTSD, but young age is there consistently. The misery of PTSD occurrence would be significantly reduced with a mature military.

I see only benefits to our nations' defense from having a mature military at this time. If we had a shortage of able-bodied people in society, I could reason that we need young blood to be military personnel. But that's not the case and likely never will be again as our population is so large.

James Gray Mason

#military #recruits #younggi #washouts #privates #army #navy #airforce #marines #youngguns #freshrecruits #pentagon #bacistraining #parisisland #bootcamp #youth #enlistee #veterans #vetsuicide #suicide #domesticabuse #brigg 

Rewrite 09.06.2019

Morning Journal: Road Kill, Organ Donation, Public Campaign Financing, Bake Sales for Bombers

1. I'm sick of both the pedestrian and driver deaths and the wild and domestic animal horror and carnage on our roads and highways. I'm especially sick about it because we do so little to stop it. We can bring the bloodshed and vehicle and driver destruction almost to a halt right now using technology found almost anywhere. Motion sensor technology is now cheap and abundant. We could intall it on every stretch of highway at a fraction of the time and cost of hundreds of thousands of miles of fencing. We should line the perimeters of our roads and highways with motion sensors that signal a warning light to drivers in both directions of traffic for two thousand feet that an animal is near the highway or road, like a flashing yellow caution light. They could be solar powered like many roadside emergency call boxes. They could send data to the state highway authorities so that fences could be built where animal traffic is high. They could report data to a public web site so interested animal lovers and drivers can understand the animal hit danger areas in their communities. We should even consider adding spot lights that follow the animals into the road until they have left.

One of the ways our race will be determined civil and fit for contact and inclusion of trade by the neighbors of our galaxy is our ability to extend our human rights to our lower life forms.

2. Why everyone isn't a registered organ and or bone marrow donor, I don't fully understand. Perhaps it is the personal relationship with the body that non donors fear? Is it a spiritual connection to the organs "within my temple" that prevents them from being benefactors to the sick and dying in their own community? Is the disembodiment of one's organs on a surgical table after one is dead a future assault? Does it feel like personal crime prevention to resist volunteering organs? 

Bone marrow donation is a living donor process requiring a hospital stay. There used to be pain and discomfort involved, twenty years ago, but not much worse than a dentist visit now. But the rumor of this pain persists, contributing to fear of donation. 

Minority donors are especially needed in the donor pool, and because of this a minority donor can almost assuredly know that his or her donation will be used soon if not immediately.

3. If this nation doesn't come together and pass a new constitutional amendment to change the status quo of American election campaign spending, money raising and politicking we will be f-d as a nation! The headline of the amendment should be called Public Campaign Financing.

 Included in this amendment should be run-off elections when needed at every level of government. Campaigning should begin ninety days before the election primary or election and no sooner (when public campaign funding is released). Voting days need to be re-established so that America has three to four days over the weekend to vote. The voting age should be lowered to sixteen because American children at a younger age are far smarter and far more involved, and would represent all American teenagers as a voting block close to the needs of children. And like any adult in a democratic process, no teenager is going to vote if he or she does not want to, and does not care.

4. The Obama administration has recently announced plans to dramatically reduce military spending. I was thrilled by the news, as I felt as if something I had been waiting for since I was a six year old was finally going to happen: I was just

starting to read when I was traveling with my mother one day in 1968. I spotted a big purple bumper sticker with allot of white lettering on the car in front of us. Being the bumper sticker had too many big words for me, I asked my mother to read it for me, and she was glad to "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." I repeated the words several times during my mother's explanation of the social ramification of the message. I was then and am still a concept and imagery learner, so these words were learned quickly on that day and never forgotten. I hope you can remember them.

Morning Journal: National Wingnut Association, How Straight am I, Efficiency of Dating Thin Sisters, Medicaid Expansion & Immoral Governors, Honorable Use of Military, Premature Obamacare Attacks, Shoot Me if, Self Honesty, Ignorance Paradox

My hyper-controlled vegetable garden, 2002.

1. One day the National Rifle Association will be remembered with a fondness similar to our memories of the Ku Klux Klan or the cigarette makers.

 2. I'm so straight (sexually) that when I see a set of male genitals in pornography ([alternative text here] I've heard about male genitals being in pornagraphy), the first thing I think of is "the space program needs more funding." And perhaps "I haven't been fishing in a while." Sometimes I think "fire fighting is cool."

 3. Thirty years ago as a young invincible I was an occasional black-out drinker. I think I once went to an ac/dc concert in Washington D.C. and blacked out most of the experience. I was with a guy named Chuck who I had been hanging out with and getting into various trouble with for several months. Chuck knew these two thin sisters (I said t-h-i-n not twin sisters) and I think they came to the concert with us. But they were not just thin, they were Karen Carpenter thin, like they had been eating food void of nutrition like rocks for breakfast and lunch all their lives. Anyway, taking both of them to the concert was not a problem with dating economics since the two of them together were like one person. Like one mouth to feed, half as much alcohol for each of them, half has much attention needed to be paid to either of them. Unfortunately I don't recall if I was intimate with either at one time or both of them at the same time. That memory is just one half naked blurry reasonably sized woman, who I knew were actually two skinny women!  And what a shame to see a great concert like ac/dc and black-out the event!

4. Being a stubborn conservative governor who has refused to accept the expanded Medicaid program funds is like refusing to install poor citizens' vehicle air bags even though doing so would be free of cost. Where you know the bags could save lives and unnecessary suffering if installed. How many busted heads occurring among what segment of the population are enough to keep under the radar of the press and then get-away with - governors assholes? For these governors it's about sticking to their anti-federal government philosophy of conservatism at the cost of the suffering of the silent population who could use that Medicaid funding a great deal.

5. If I were commander in chief of the most powerful and globally extended military force in the world I would . . 

A. Shift hundreds of billions in annual Pentagon funding into research and development toward a large and effective space fighter fleet. Hundreds of single pilot multiple use fighter craft that can fly very fast in atmosphere or space, that can land vertically, that can pivot 180 degrees upon an enemy. I would involve all capable nations in following suit. Not only could we then defend the planet but the craft can be the workhorses of space, towing everything needed in space from satellites to equipment and personnel to colonize the Moon and Mars. They could also destroy incoming planetary bodies like asteroids and meteors, or falling spacecraft. Technical hint for the pentagon: pilots encapsulated in fluid can take far more g-force especially if that fluid container is computer pressure by chamber controlled!

B. Intervene with troops or air support in other nations only in these circumstances:

1. Starvation and or genocide is occurring due to war. In this worthy and honorable cause I would use all available military means, beginning with taking-out whatever leadership is causing the suffering, to alleviate the suffering. I would establish two or more international refugee zones which would be strongly militarily guarded near each point of refugee populating. If a warlord needs to be taken-out I would revive the mass paratroop drop behind enemy lines technique of overwhelming the enemy. 2. If a burgeoning democracy is falling apart and military solutions could keep it together. For example in Egypt in 2012, I would have supported the current regime, as corrupt as it may have been, because elections were coming. I would have rapidly deployed a carrier battle group to the coast of Alexandria to let the Egyptian army know we do not support revolt. I would do these things because having as many democracies as possible in the world is the single best known way to reduce the frequency of war and thus human suffering. A worthy and honorable cause and a good use for unbeatable military power.   

 6. For any conservative group or think-tank to exclaim "Obama care has been a failure," is just stupidity. It implies the program is in full effect - and the truth is far from it, as tens of millions of uninsured have yet to brave their way forward and sign-up. It implies that enough of the program has been working long enough for experts and economists to have any opinion worth any merit - or an opinion that can be deduced true by reasoning. Imagine you're a conservative in America, you actually want millions to not have good health care, because they'll have shit insurance or none under conservative proposals for Health Savings Accounts, and other such rubbish speculative health care delivery systems.

7. This is my declaration of sound mind: If I'm dying, and I indicate that I'm going to heaven, somebody please shoot me or smother me with a pillow. Because I'll be acting like a delusional fool during my last time on Earth, and I won't go-out a blithering fool.

8. It is also lying to be dishonest with your self. Therefore we must show respect to ourselves and get "intellectually honest," about everything of which we deceive ourselves about. We must discover these lies and get them the f*&k out.

9. Example of mental illness stigma by institutional delivery: "I told my psychiatrist something a few weeks ago and she looked at me like I was crazy!" Or, "I saw my new physician the other day, he looked down at my chart, then looked up at me like I was crazy!" Or, "I asked the shoe sales lady if she had it in a wide size, she looked at me like I was crazy!"

10. The great and unsolvable paradox preventing human progress involves ignorance. That a great many people do not know they have it makes decreasing ignorance like trying to drink a lake fed by a river. So we must find a way to educate all humans using high technology beginning at the fetal stage of development, ensuring that children are born knowledgeable. Unfortunately many of the new smart-babies will be smart-assed and manipulative and conniving little shits. Perhaps we could send those babies to colonize Mars?   

The Priority to Accomplish as Much Good as Soon as Possible Must be Public Campaign Financing Now

Unrestricted sums of money given to political candidates cannot be considered free speech if the ability to speak in the same manner and level of access of the majority of citizens is impossible, and the unaffordable speech of the masses attempting to express ideas is made valueless to our candidates and irrelevant. This is not freedom despite the warped perspective of Republican dispensers of empty and non reasonable rhetoric and evidence less economic hypothesis. It is the legal corruption of the tool of democracy. It is definitely a form of oppression of the masses. Now all the masses of the United States have left is their anger, their ideology, their philosophies. Precious things thought to be protected by the first amendment, thought so by James Madison when he wrote it. Money and it's spending in political campaigns was not a concern of the founders, read on.

It is time we give something kind to the American voter which also ensures democracy as a sound government structure we can all trust, for the first time in our history. It is time that every vote really did count - but not just every vote, every person whether he or she chooses to vote or not. A thing the founders never thought would be necessary.

The founders were men who foresaw that only white land owning and merchant men would be voting and that campaign funding would never be an issue due to it's largesse because that scenario was unfortunately, not conceived of. Because, campaigning at the time involved free activities like letter writing to newspapers, speaking publicly and so forth. Our constitution lacks the following seemingly as if by purpose but more likely due to eighteenth century ignorance and an innocent narrow view (normal for it's time) of what the future might be: no mention of any limits or ceilings on campaign money that could be raised by candidates and sitting politicians. No mentions of who or what controls that purse/bank. No restrictions of from who, from what interests, from conflicting interests. No mention of who keeps the money after a campaign. This absence must have been noticed when a conservative Supreme Court ruled in the affirmative for Citizens United vs. the United States.The Super Pacs now born of that decision will make democracy further and further from representative to us all. A point not understood by the conservative court.

We have proven beyond a doubt that our current electoral campaign finance system mostly does not work for anyone but the wealthy. This inequity is why United States representative democracy has never truly been in place. If you think that historically what works well for the wealthy, works well for you in the long run, then you may not agree with this solution.

The route to Public Campaign Financing has to be a new Constitutional Amendment, because obviously Constitutional amendments are not ruled unconstitutional except by another amendment. 

The anger and disappointment over our Supreme Courts' decision in Citizens United verses the United States, is swelling the ranks of democratic activists and unifying them toward a goal of a Constitutional Amendment to repeal Citizens' United.  I say whoa. Citizens United is horrible, but lets use this opportunity to both fix Citizens United and correct something long over due that will reap benefits for democracy well beyond just the repeal of Citizens United. Public Campaign Financing would remove the target for every corporation and superpac benefiting from Citizens United. Many democracies around the world are succeeding using their own form of Public Campaign Financing. There have been several periods of time in our recent political history where Public Campaign Financing was offered by many people as a solution to the corruption and misrepresentation and under representation that occurs constantly under our current system of campaign financing. The call for Public Campaign Financing is so old it is almost traditional American rhetoric.


"The greatest moral question which now confronts us is: Shall the trusts and corporations be prevented from contributing money to control or aid in controlling elections?" 
                                                         
-Defeated Presidential candidate Judge Alton Parker, 1904.

I support overturning Citizens United - and it's underlying warped philosophy that corporations are people. But it is foolish to NOT make use of the huge energy and anger in all political parties currently to finally create Public Campaign Financing, which would cause Citizens United to become MOOT and introduce full representative democracy where over 100 million non voting eligible citizens finally become represented. The advantages of PCF are numerous and the arguments against these advantages are very hard to make. The whole proposal for PCF makes so much logical sense it makes the effort to introduce a constitutional amendment to defeat Citizens United look trivial in comparison.

Candidate campaigning has been tainted by the dollars of the few wealthy over the interests of the poorer many since our inception. I don't need to mention examples of the corruption, the resulting absence of representation, the conflicts of our interest created by massive dollar amount campaigns. I won't mention the many examples of decades of fighting against large money donors to get our congress to do something, anything. I don't need to mention that after that fight, when we think we are about to get something with all of our interests in mind, that we get watered down half measures of legislation that are partially representative of us all.

Nearly 50% of our federal representatives, 261 members of Congress, are millionaires. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023147-503544.html Among us the numbers of millionaires are 3 - 4%. The first priority on their first day as elected representatives is to start raising money to get re-elected. A US Senator from a rural state will have to raise on average $20,000 per week once elected to prepare for re-election. That Senator will have to ration his time for meetings with those most able to re-elect him, not time finding solutions to our problems. Our two presidential candidates will spend nearly $1 billion on this election, up hundreds of millions of dollars from the last general election.

How much are we spending on elections? From Ryan Borek, Executive Director, Take A Stand PAC: "In 2010, researchers believe approximately $4 Billion was spent on the midterm election. 2008's Presidential Election cost over $1.7 Billion not including other elections, and likely topped over $5 Billion. The off years such as 2009 tend to lag significantly behind at around $2 Billion. The average US Senate race costs around $4-7 Million, with the average US House race costing $2-6 Million. State elections cost significantly less, usually around $500,000. Local elections can cost as little as $5,000 depending mostly on filing fees. It is difficult to ascertain exact costs as the system is not designed to keep track of state or local spending in any central location. You can find the exact spending for any single federal candidate at FEC.gov, however you would need to contact each individual state's election office to find the spending on a state or local candidate."

Per person based on current population and the above estimate of $5 bilion per year, a standard General Election would cost approximately $15.87 each. Who would not be willing to pay $16 per year to better ensure real representation for all of us, without conflicts of interest, without corruption of our elected officials?

In the ruling of the Supreme Court in the now famous "Citizens United," corporations were given the status of an individual in the practice of petitioning government their grievances and exercising free-speech. Essentially in the invisible center of every corporation lies a being, a being that pays taxes and wants legislation that favors them, as if they were individuals with unalienable rights like us.

This interpretation of free speech and who or what can participate monetarily in our elections was greatly damaging to representation in that it tipped the scales even more toward more robust representation of those of greatest means. It was not enough that the entire executive board of a corporation is entitled to use free speech and vote their minds as individuals, now an invisible new being in the middle of the conference table is able to pool its larger amount of resources and out-bark the general populace or any target population they may, thereby manipulating all of our futures unrepresentatively.

Enter the only best answer: the 100% public financing of every electoral campaign in the United States of America. Below is educated speculation of what happens after Constitutional Amendment number twenty-eight that mandates this change, has gone into effect:

1. With literally no more purse for the coinage of the lobbyists to be dropped into at our elected representatives offices, the lobbyists for corporations and unions and smaller governments get real jobs in the private industry and vanish in one day from Capital Hill never to be seen again, so long as the 28th Amendment is the law of the land. Citizens United and all other rules as they pertain to corporations or any lobby, will matter no more because all campaign material and money must come from the public fund only, and gifts to our representatives and candidates will remain illegal.

I explained to Tuvok as best as I could (in dog spkeak)
the methodology of our current campaign
financing system, but all I could get
from him was "dog bone." So there it is,
Public Campaign Financing will definitely
 lead to increased dog bones. Because when
 working people are finally represented fairly,
wages will rise to meet the needs of every family,
 and increased packages of dog bones will be purchased.

Some lobbyists find a job in a related field practicing an American tradition: marching around all day outdoors in front of the capital building carrying protest signs advertising slogans about issues. No wooden handles allowed guys! Stay within the yellow tape please!

2. Do the corporations or the unions still have free speech, representation, the ability to give money toward campaigns? Yes of course! The public fund for electoral campaigns is also contributed to from corporations made of individuals who pay a flat rate toward the public campaign fund, just like the citizen who pays the same exact rate who may own a small house right-next-door to the multi-billion dollar corporation. If a corporation is a person and that person is entitled to the free speech act of giving to a political campaign, then under Public Campaign Financing that person/corporation has given, with taxes, toward the political campaign, just like every body else under the new 28th Amendment.

This is a new shared representation in free speech ability the nation has never known. The "individualist" corporations' argument will then have to be "we have more money so we want to be able to give more money because we are more important to the nation than the little people!" And perhaps "This is not unfair to the great majority of the population!" Opinions that will be hidden from us and that the public would find distasteful.

3. Equal campaign funding for equal candidates everywhere. Knowing that your competition has not one more dollar than you do to spend on the campaign, makes the issues and your position on them far more important than ever before in determining a winner. As a representative you won't know who to support more on any one issue unless you delve into your constituency for real information on the issues. Information you then use without influence in dollars, while keeping in mind that it's your stand on the issues that will get you re-elected.

4. Equal political air-time. The media will have to abide by the rules just like individuals. They can not use outside funding for any political propaganda unless it is from the Public Campaign Fund. And they can not get that money until campaign time. Like Great Britain we have restricted the number of calendar days before the election in which television and radio and newspaper advertising can be displayed by anyone in favor of in opposition to a campaign or an issue of political purpose. Perhaps 60 days prior to election. When the millionaires' public relations manager calls the television network to try to gain advantage in an election, the manager would tell him or her "Sorry but you can't advertise for a political issue or a candidate until September 4th of this year and then you'll have to prove your money comes from the Public Campaign Fund. My hands are tied by the 28th Amendment. If you like we can interview you at any time, but your opposition gets an interview also."

Is it not time for the frenzied race to the top of Capital Hill lead by the wealthiest to end? How much more evidence needs to pile-up for us all to admit the system as we know it, as it's structured, does not work? The Founders did not imagine our present could become this bad, I'm sure. We are not the few land owner, white, businessmen voters and congressmen the framers did imagine, any longer. In attempting to fix our electoral system few if any better solutions exist. Any answer must eliminate the power of the big-money contributors and return our nation to the people.

But this seems unconstitutional! . . .

Keep in mind successful Constitutional amendments are not ruled unconstitutional except by another amendment. The purpose of the First Amendment is not damaged by Public Campaign Financing. The goal of representative democracy is shared and more fairly distributed, rendering the political speech concept of our free speech more representative and so more powerful than before.

If public funding of election campaigns is somehow unconstitutional then since 1976 checking a box on your income tax return that gives $1-2 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, is also unconstitutional. Because that is nothing more than what Public Campaign Financing does, it's our government managing and collecting a fund for election campaigns specifically. So, prove that philosophy unconstitutional.

Public-Campaign-Financing.Org

The clarion call out of the windows of our homes should be "It's my money and I want my politician back!"

Please sign the online petition! http://bit.ly/LCjp17

Please post critical and constructive criticism in the comments section below. I will try to answer every question.

Thank you. Grace on the United States.