Month: July 2026

“A tall ship and a star to steer her by.”

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Not that I was looking; but I did not see one mention about the Apollo 11 moon landing 57 years ago. It was a race to the moon that ended on July 20, 1969. I know it was a basically a bunch of white men doing their thing; but it was still one of the greatest achievements of mankind, until they did it five more times. And now we are talking about going back in another race, this time with the Chinese. Historically speaking it should be a day remembered.

Like most Americans of that time I was swept up with the Space Progam. It was an outgrowth of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and became the noble quest of President John Kennedy who challenged the country to begin searching the final frontier. Or was it a modern version of Camelot with space as our search for the Holy Grail–on the moon.

We shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away, a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth. But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.–President John Kennedy “Moon Speech” on September 12, 1962 in Rice Stadium. 

It is interesting in what motivates man. I really do think President Kennedy comparing space flight to sailing was apropos. He said, “we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.” But when you think about it, most voyages of exploration are hazardous and dangerous excursions into the “unknown.”

Take Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage to around the Earth. With five ships and 270 men he left Spain on September 20, 1519. His expedition returned September 6, 1522 with one ship and about 40 men–he was not one of them. Magellan’s three-year trip would be more on line with going to Mars today. Currently it would take Elon Musk about three years to get there and back.

But blasting off for the moon was an adventure on the level with the ancient mariners. I love Kennedy’s metaphor of sailing. It reminds me of John Masefield’s poem Sea Fever:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

Man has always been blessed, or cursed, with a natural curiosity of what is on the other side of the mountain or beyond the horizon. When I think of going into space it reminds me of the sea voyages of the ancients, particularly the Greeks. The various Greek city-states might have been in competition for land in Greece but it was the open sea that allowed them to expand their horizons.

Geographically Greece is on the Balkan Peninsula with the longest coastline in Europe. The real factor though is that the land on this peninsula is mountainous–80 percent. Greek city-states trying to feed growing populations on mountainous land became a real problem. The solution was to establish over-seas colonies that relieved over population; but colonization also increased trade bringing to the city-states much needed food stuffs from as far away as the Black Sea and Spain. (I am not sure if the concept of colonizing the moon or Mars would either ease any over population issues on Earth or create trade.)

Dipal 1965 via Wikimedia Commons

Greek sea travel was not so much the age of sail as it was a man-powered voyage. Facts and Details says, “a ‘long day’ journey by an oared vessel” could be 140 miles “believed to be 16 hours traveled at seven or eight knots an hour.” Most Greek mariners hugged the coast line using line of sight and recognizing land features. This type of sailing made it easier to navigate. Plus, it made necessary stops for resupplying essential needs, like fresh water, easier.

Although longer voyages across the Mediterranean were not uncommon it wasn’t until more sophisticated navigational instruments were developed, like the Astrolabe, did mariners become more confident in pushing further out to sea. It took centuries for Mediterranean sailors to refine navigation that would allow sailors, like Columbus and Magellan, to take longer voyages across the Atlantic and to circumnavigate the globe. It took centuries to build better ships to utilize better navigation.

“The astrolabe, which is a precursor to the sextant, is effective for determining latitude on land or calm seas. Although it is less reliable on the heaving deck of a ship in rough seas, the mariner’s astrolabe  was developed to solve that problem. It is able to measure the altitude above the horizon of a celestial body, day or night; it can be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time.”–Wikipedia

Khalili Collections /via Wikimedia Commons

And since we are talking about seafarers one cannot omit the Polynesian. Seafarers whose navigation skills, according to Wikipedia relied “heavily on constant observation and memorization. Navigators have to memorize where they have sailed from in order to know where they are. The sun was the main guide for navigators because they could follow its exact points as it rose and set. Once the sun had set they would use the rising and setting points of the stars. When there were no stars because of a cloudy night or during daylight, a navigator would use the winds and swells as guides.”

In the 1960s NASA was tasked with assembling, scientists, fledgling aerospace companies and test pilots to come up with how to traverse 240,000 miles of open space and put men on the moon–with no stop overs. And, to do it in less than 10 years. Unlike past seafarers NASA had to invent and improvise. There was very little institutional knowledge of human space travel. What they did from Kennedy’s Moon Speech in 1962 to that one giant leap in 1969 is really a technical miracle. Especially if we look at what they had to use compared to what we have today.

For instance if we just look at the computer used on Apollo 11: the Apollo Guidance Computer. Apollo 11Space called this 70 pound computer, about the size of carry-on luggage, “a pocket sized pioneer (for its time.)” It was a 20th century astrolabe.

Each Moon flight carried two AGCs, one each in the command module and in the Apollo Lunar Module. AGC in the command module was the center of its guidance, navigation and control (GNC) system. The AGC in the lunar module ran its Apollo PGNCS (primary guidance, navigation and control system).”–Wikipedia

The original uploader was Grabert at German Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I am not some sort of techno-geek. I do not know the first thing about what RAM is or how it works. I know nothing of processing speeds, or what 4G or 110 Megabits per second translates to. So comparing the AGC on Apollo 11 to the iPhone by the numbers means nothing until it is put into layman’s terms. I find what RealClear Science says “that the iPhone in your pocket has over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon” pretty impressive. There is our giant leap.

A leap, to paraphrase John Gillespie Magee, Jr. poem High Flight: Man has “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” and has “trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space,” and has “touched the face of God.”

Whether it was the ancient sailors on the seas or the astronauts in space, it really gives meaning to what Masefield meant when he said “all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”

A Conscious Awareness of Consciousness

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Personally, I believe that the world is constantly riding spiritual waves of awareness. And when I say this I don’t mean it as a religious wave like say the Great Awakenings which swept this country in (and others possibly) the 1700s and 1800s. It is not mysticism either. I think philosphers, sociologist and psychologist beat around the concept of collective (universal) consciousness; and its role in our personal consciousness and in our collective life. Right now we are in the trough of spiritual consciousness. 

Two man-made institutions play heavily into creating our collective consciousness and awareness–and our material reality: governments and churches. (I would add a third entity to this: multinational corporations. But we know they are for-profit, godless heathen organizations.) Too often we Americans think of separation of church and state effecting just this country. God may have made man in His image and likeness; but man has made religion in his image and likeness, governments too. And all of this seeps into our awareness and our concsiouness.

Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? –Pema Chodron

Collective consciousness knows no international boundaries nor time. Most of us do not realize the influence it has on our own consciousness and reality. It exists at levels we are not totally cognizant of. The latest flare up between the U.S. and Iran is a perfect example of where governments and churches come into conflict. This conflict is much like a strike-slip fault in the Earth’s Crust. The sliding plates of the Earth’s crust, like governments and churches pass each other creating tension, transforming human consciousness. (For the most part Americans had no real concept of Iran. To us the Persian Empire was something the Greek city-states fought way back in 499 BC to 449 BC. It wasn’t until the late 1970s AD did Iran’s chants of “Death to America” enter our national awareness and then into our consciousness.)

It happens all the time and it doesn’t have to be a war where empires clash. Henry the VIII transformed English religion and government without nocking an arrow when he broke with the Catholic Church. It all started in 1517 when Martin Luther rattled religuious awareness when he posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Within 20 years Henry broke ties with the Catholic Church. In 1534 he set up his own church. Naturally, he was the head of this church. He also felt it was his job to seize church property in England, thus adding the church’s wealth to the royal coffers–religion for fun and profit. His strike-strip actions transformed England–and transformed the country’s collective consciousness, and ours. It spawned Separatists, Pilgrims and Puritans who ended up in what would become, collectively, the United States.

Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.–Charles Lindbergh

Man may not always act in spiritual ways. But that does not stop religion from determining ethical and moral codes that help collectively keep society in line. Historically speaking, it is some sort of religious beliefs that influences the citizenry, the government and the institutions and hence the country collectively, The United States of America is a case in point.

Although we do not subscribe to one church, and some would preach the need to change this, we cannot deny that the spiritual beliefs of the collective consciousness of those who wrote the Constitution in 1787 still impact our nation today. To say they were not influenced by Judeo-Christian beliefs, as well as the collective beliefs of the Enlightenment, would be wrong thinking. These men combined a unique combination of beliefs to establish rule of the people–and not a monarch or some sort religious swami–or Ayetollah.

We are celebrating our 250th year of independence from a religious infused monarchy. This is something uncommon in human history. We took Henry the VIII’s concept of forming a religion in the image of a government and turned it around. We created a government based on religious and moral beliefs without the sanctimonious trappings of some sort of religious leader anonited by god in the mix. Our president has many roles as chief diplomat and commander in chief but he is not a shaman, medicine man or Levite in charge of a church. 

For 250 years we have managed without religious rules enshrined into our laws. The ancient Jews had 613 laws: 248 do’s and 365 don’ts. According to Chabad.Org only “369 mitzvot are still operative” today. But for centuries those laws have settled deeply into the Jewish collective consciousness, something we Americans may have a hard time comprehending but our awareness of these beliefs run deep in our collective consciousness.

As a nation–a nation basically a collection of immigrants from around the world–we have formed the basis for our national collective consciousness from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And although property-owning white men wrote both documents, there was enough Christian diversity and mutual distrust of European religious disputes in their collective awarness to enshrine the belief of popular sovereignty over religious rule.

According to The Journal of the American Revolution the Constitution is purposely religious neutral, as is the theory of the government it embodies. “Whereas the Declaration explained and justified a rebellion to secure God-given rights, the Constitution is a blueprint for stable and effective republican government in a free country. The Preamble to the Constitution declares that its purposes are ‘to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.’ These are wholly secular objects; religious references are extraneous in a document drafted to further them.”

If Christianity started out as an offshoot of Judaism then Judaic thought is a part of the Christian consciousness. Beliefs like: the love all humans, do not to stand by idly while another’s life is in danger, do not to cherish hatred in our hearts, or to bear a grudge and seek revenge are just a few Jewish beliefs that have effected our collective consciousness. And although these beliefs are not codified in our Constitution we do expect these sorts of beliefs to be reflected in our society; to guide our government and our leaders–to guide them and us in our collective consciousness.

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.–Romans 2:15 New International Version

The news today is full of stories on how our democracy, the Constitution is being shredded up before our very eyes. There may be some truth to that but it is not our Constitution that is failing us. It is how quickly virtue has been sapped from our collective consciousness and put us in a trough of spiritual (un)awareness. Each day we look up at the growing wave that surrounds us and see nothing but a gray wall of water fermenting discord and hostility within–not insuring any sort of domestic tranquility; or civility.

It is not that we are losing our democracy, that is only a side effect of losing our collective awareness and consciousness. We now debate what is morally and ethically right. We have collectively begun to abandon or Christian “values” that are ingrained in our consciousness whether you believe in God or not. We are being guided more by expedient pseudo-political/religious values that satiates the moment.

The current administration and its sycophants realize that collectively most Americans don’t hold the same zealous motivations that are being used to justify their actions. The current administration realizes that it could lose dramatically in the midterms if Americans recognize the fact that there is nothing wrong with our government. It is the lack of spiritual awareness, virtue and integrity of our leaders running government that has put us in this trough.

What America needs now is not an attitude adjustment but a retuning to its wave of awareness.

JD, You are No Dick Nixon–at least not yet

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The other day Vice President JD Vance compared himself to President Richard Nixon. I think it is strange that he would compare himself to Nixon. In the very least Nixon is someone like Charles Dickens’ Fagin character in Oliver Twist. The leader of criminal gang. I am not sure if JD has risen to that level of malevolence.

To be clear, Nixon was a burglar. And a burglar, like Bilbo Baggins, no matter how honorable or lovable, is someone who breaks into a building with the intent to commit a crime. Is JD telling us that he intends to commit a crime; or maybe he already has.

With that said, Nixon himself did not break into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Building. He had Bill Sikes and Fagin do it for him.–E Howard Hunt and James W McCord, ex CIA operatives, to plan and take care of that. These guys along with G Gordon Liddy, an ex FBI agent, led a group that was known as White House “plumbers”. The original Mario and Luigi plumbing brothers leading a bunch of bungling burglars. I am not sure who was Mario and who would be Luigi in that group. Their original intent was to find out who was leaking info from the White House. I guess their investigation led them to the Democrats. From there it morphed into stupidity. Or as ex White House Attorney, John Dean, testified at the time: “a cancer on the presidency.”

Staying with Vance comparing himself to Nixon, I take it Vance could be comparing himself to a more gentler kind of criminal, a thief, maybe. A thief unlawfully takes another person’s property without consent. Maybe he should be comparing himself more to Dickens’ Jack Dawkins, “the Artful Dodger” than Nixon. After all, Nixon was breaking and entering. The Dodger was a pickpocket.

Politicians can easily fall into the pickpocket/thief category. The big difference is that politicians can legislate their thievery; as Trump is trying do to with the 2026 mid-term elections. Although I would not put Trump in the pickpocket class of thief, more like grand theft auto.

What is happening in our government now is a premeditate heist, an Ocean’s Eleven, one we are watching live right before our eyes. JD should be comparing himself to Rusty Ryan while Trump could be Danny Ocean. But stealth has never been one of Trump’s strong suits. What Nixon and the plumbers were trying to do through covert operations Trump and his merry band of Trumpsters are trying to do legislatively and judicially–or legalizing the actual breaking and entering.

I have never been one to try and figure out the various Generations used to describe the demographics of our country. And I am not sure if JD is a true representative of the Millennials in this country. It is obvious that this 42 year-old Vice President has a different take on Nixon’s clandestine- criminal organization that was run out of the basement of the White House. I think conservative revisionist history has mesmerized him. I think like the 18 minute gap in the Nixon Tapes, Vance has a historical gap in his understanding of American history.

To some current GOPers, Nixon is the subject, object and the predicate nominative of a deep state witch hunt. I think maybe they have watched too many X-File reruns. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were not real FBI agents being tailed by the Cigarette Smoking Man, The mysterious operative who worked for a “Syndicate” that according to Fandom allowed him “top level access to both the FBI and the Pentagon.” All this to thwart our heroes and conceal the truth from the American public.

Nixon’s use of former CIA operatives and various government agencies to help cover up his criminal missteps was a big breach of faith in our government at the time; and a step way out of bounds. It seems we take that for granted now because we have blown right through that X-File phase of our history and living in Jackass Forever.

Today, there is no need for a “deep state.” Now you just buy an entire political party, brow beat GOP legislators, let billionairs lose in the bowels of government and try and pack courts with sycophants like, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to throw downfield legal blocks. Now you simply bypass the covert ex CIA and FBI agents; because, who needs them when the agencies are now being run by a never drained pool of boot-lickers and cronies. No more stealthy midnight raids busted by a minimum wage security guard. Just send the FBI in to raid whomever you choose in broad daylight. Oh, and get the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad range of immunity from prosecution that places the office above the law. We should check the US Geological Survey for strong earth tremors emanating from the Nixon gravesite in Yorba Linda when that decision was handed down.

Sorry Dick. You were 50 years too early for that one to save you. But your spirit lives on in JD Vance.

A/I, Follow the Money Part II

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Way back in March of 2019 I wrote that “America is due for a big-time governmental/economic scandal of tsunami proportions.” I never considered myself as a some sort of wizard with a crystal ball or prognosticator of future events. And from the looks of it, if I did, I would consider myself ill-equipped to make it that in that sort of profession. Another words: Don’t quit your day job.

But yet here we are in 2026, seven years later with the stock market humming and the economy hanging tough; despite tariffs, tax cuts, Doge and a military excursion/operation against Iran–that’s only real accomplishment has been to raise inflation and gas prices around the world; and maybe spike EV sales.

It is easy to say something is going to happen, if you say it long enough it is bound to come true. I am sure there were New York Knick fans who said in 1974, and every year after, that the Knicks are going to win the title next year– 53 years later they were right.

Throughout history, for instance, there have been some bold predictions on when the world would end, which I guess could be a harbinger of economic scandal. Much like our recent belief in a computer meltdown with Y2K. We live in a tech world swimming with malware and hackers. It seems as if we are just one click away from possible doom. Especially now with all the talk of A/I ending humanity as we know it.

For a lot of us our first encounter with A/I was with “the computer” on Star Trek. We sat back and were absorbed with how the computer in Star Trek could figure out how many Class M planets there were in a certain quadrant of space. Or how some unknown space disease was mutating human bodies into some sort of alien creature–and then figuring out a cure to reverse the process! The other side of the story comes out around the same time. We learned from 2001: A Space Odyssey how a computer without “parental” controls could lock humanity in deep space.

But when it comes to the ending humanity it is religious leaders who squawk the loudest with their predictions of fire and brimstone. And like Y2K it was the millennium change as a reason to fear the end. According to historysnob.com, Pope Sylvester II put the Medieval world into a dither with the belief that the Second Coming was imminent when triple zeros showed up on the calendar. As if God is working on a manmade calendar. And then, I ask, which calendar: The Julian or the Byzantine. Or is God working of a lunisolar calendar? Just asking, because I think Sylvester didn’t inform God. I mean, who knows maybe the world ends in 2037 in the next year of the Snake. After all the snake shows up early in Genesis. That slithering serpent put an end to the Garden of Eden. I am just saying.


It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
(It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
(It’s time I had some time alone)
I feel fine–REM

But back to the Popes. Not to be out done, Pope Innocent III predicted in 1213 “the world end in 1284–exactly 666 years after Islam’s founding.” I am not sure of the significance of that. An easy google search says: “The number 666 is commonly linked to the Roman Emperor Nero, known for his persecution of Christians. This connection arises from a method called gematria, where letters are assigned numerical values. This sounds more like figuring out the cryptogram quotes on the puzzle page of the daily newspaper. (What’s a daily newspaper?) When Nero’s name is transliterated into Hebrew, it adds up to 666. Good enough for me. I like the logic. However, my gut tells me the snake thing makes more sense.

Here in the United States we have had our religious prognosticators, too. Cotton Mather predicted the end times in 1697, 1716, 1736. I am not sure what methodology he used–the entrails of a witch, maybe. However, he died in 1728 not knowing he was wrong.

And then there was Harold Camping. History Snobs says: “This radio preacher twice announced Judgment Day: first on May 21, 2011, then again on October 21, 2011. Billboards went up worldwide, announcing the end of the world.” Both dates came and went and we are still here.

 There are others like Isaac Newton. I think I might take his prediction a bit more seriously. After all, he did give us the Law of Gravity and three Laws of Motion that seem to be pretty consistent over time. Newton “studied biblical texts obsessively and predicted the end might come around 2060.” We will have to wait and see.

I am more in the mode of Charles Wesley, a founder of Methodism, who had a more open-ended approach to predictions. History Snobs says, “To his credit, he didn’t try to set an exact date or time, although he made it clear in his sermons that he felt Christ’s return was imminent.” I am not sure what Wesley said about the Second Coming in his sermons, but he died in 1788. We may need to define the word imminent. However, I feel the same way about an economical scandal of Biblical proportions in the near future. It is imminent.

But to get back to the looming economic scandal just around the corner. I base my prediction on technological innovation and greed and a simple concept of follow the money. In my March 2019 blog I mention the coming of the railroads and the land grants handed out to railroads, particularly the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. These two companies were involved in an 1860s version of a moon race. However the Russians were not involved. And like A/I today, the problem back then was not so much engineering as it was financing. Engineers and hard labor cleared the Sierra Nevada mountains but it was the good old use governmental funds greasing the palms of Congress that kept the Greenbacks flowing and the trains rolling.

“It’s gonna take-a money, a whole lotta’ spending money. It’s going to take plenty-a money. To do it right…”–George Harrison’s

The axle turning the wheel of this scandal was the Union Pacific’s construction company, the Credit Mobilier. The company over charged the government to the tune of $44 million and spread the wealth amongst their shareholders and several dozen Congressmen as well as the Vice President of the United States, Schuyler Colfax. Nothing really happened, nobody went to jail. A few Congressman were censured, the railroad got built and it was just chalked up to a typical business project during the Gilded Age.

The next governmental scandal centered around oil–drill baby drill. The global economy was shifting from a coal based economy to oil. One institution making that shift were navies of the world. So it really made sense back in 1910 to set aside land with known oil as a reserve for the US Navy.

This was an era before petrodollars. But shrewd oilmen knew the value of buck. There may not have been gold in “them there” Wyoming oil land reserves; but there damn sure was money to be had just lying there to be pumped. The Navy Department convinced President Warren Harding to transfer the land to the Interior department where Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, began leasing out the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Mammoth Oil Company and Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company–both in non-competitive bids. Sound familiar?

Interestingly leasing of the lands was not a crime. The real problem with these sorts of scandals is in the creative art of accounting; particularly when somebody is left out of the art of the deal.  It only takes one disgruntled individual, in this case a left out oilman, to start following a money trail of  illegal interest free loans and bribes. Just a few of the financial incentives Fall received as compensation for his generosity to Harry F Sinclair’s  Mammoth Oil Company and Edward L Doheny’s Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. A Senate investigation of Fall’s financial shenanigans lead to Fall serving nine months of a one-year sentence. Sinclair spent six months in jail not for financial malfeasance but contempt of Senate. Doheny was acquitted of any charges. And so goes Jazz Era justice.

Now I will be honest. I could be shooting in the dark here. I don’t know whole lot about A/I. I am smart enough to figure out we are moving into the next phase of the Information Age. I also realize that there are various companies lead by very rich men that are developing the computers to run A/I and setting up data centers. (Check Forbes as a list of the top 50 A/I companies: forbes.com/list/ai50/) I do know from watching the news and reading about A/I is it is going take a ton of financial investments to get A/I to become a reality. And here again, I don’t want to sound like someone predicting the end of the world when A/I spreads its roots deep into humanity and really comes to some sort of fruition. But before that happens it has to be built. And if history is any indicator there is always somebody ready to jump the line with a paper bag of cash or stocks to get a leg up.

From what I can gather, A/I is here and being used today. My guess is we have only scratched the surface. It took the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific nine years to complete the transcontinental railroad. In 1914 the USS Texas was the last US Navy battleship built with coal burning engines. The “Mighty T,” was converted to oil in 1925. I am sure A/I can be rolled out just as quick as linking the coasts with a railroad line or putting a gas station on just about every corner in America. Of course with the right financial government funding you can send celebrities into low earth orbit. I am sure right now there is a money trail being laid out from Wall Street to our governmental hallways attracting the right palms to grease to give somebody a leg up on everybody else. But as George Harrison sang it is going to take a lot of spending money, which brings us to the mantra “follow the money. Once the grease is applied, then we can worry about the end of humanity.