Classified Documents

For an extended period of time the US media has been chattering about the subject of classified documents or paper work that has markings indicating that it is "confidential", "secret" or "top secret". Classified material was found during an FBI raid on the home of former US president Donald Trump that perhaps has the potential of causing serious legal problems for him.

More recently, the personal attorneys of current president Joe Biden have discovered unsecured classified materials at his home and other places. This is an embarrassment for Biden if not a legal problem but since the FBI didn't dig through his closets he's probably OK.

There are some serious questions about this whole situation. While the national media is devoted to keeping us informed of the latest events in the lives of the Kardashian family and Harry + Meghan, no effort has been made to actually describe the classification process and its meaning.

While the marking process itself and other aspects are detailed in this government document,  which is produced for the Department of Defense, there doesn't seem to be any description of who might mark a document as classified, at what level and what the nature of the classified information must be. Only those with a security clearance at the same level as the document are authorized to view it. No explanation is given of how an individual becomes qualified to view "Top Secret" files.

 

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Apparently, we don't need to know anything at all about classified files. If they are laying around Joe Biden's garage perhaps the information they contain is meaningless to the public or a potential adversary. Further, we can't know what federal agencies are permitted to make use of file classification. It's obvious that the Defense Dept. and Homeland Security classify documents but how about the Depts. of Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, Education and so on? Don't they have bureaucratic secrets that they wish to keep from the populace? Do state and local government agencies also have levels of secrecy in their files?

Finally, just as the government issues flimsy paper cards with an applicant's social security number for a lifetime of use, why do they seem to be so freaked out over paper documents? Hasn't the world in general moved on to electronic record keeping? Wouldn't it make more sense to search the Biden palace for information hidden away on tiny flash drives? Even the infamous Hunter Biden laptop seems to be a relic from a bygone age. With the increasing use of electronic communication, keeping a secret is going to be more and more difficult, regardless of the red label on the file. However, using paper files might actually be more secure than internet communication, just as a private verbal conversation between two individuals should be the most secure form of communication.   

Whores Gather At World Economic Forum

The convention of the world's most important people, none of whom are impoverished, also brings together others wishing to do business with them. According to a number of publications the meeting in Davos, Switzerland creates a bustling market for sexual services.

Americans don't need to be too distraught about this, after all there are events in the USA that attract big numbers of ladies of the evening as well. First and foremost of these is US Open Golf Tournament. Spectators don't bring their wives, they leave them at home with a credit card and spend a week following their golfing idols around the links. Since no one takes on the challenge of golfing at night, there's plenty of time for paid romance. Other major tournaments have their own similar celebrations.

Another event that now extends to almost a week in duration that includes some of the planet's most attractive ladies is the NBA All-Star game. It' worth going just to get a glimpse of the glamour.  

A Time Line of Planetary Climate

Ian Plimer,Professor of Mining Geology, the University of Adelaide, has written an article for the Australian magazine Spectator that supplies the basics of earth tectonics and its effect on global climate. Ever reliable Wikipedia adds this to Plimer's CV: He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterpreting data and spreading misinformation. Of course, there is no scientific consensus on climate change. We don't know the qualifications of the Wikipedia writer. Maybe he's more qualified than Plimer. Probably not.

Plimer points out some significant facts that have been arrived at through the scientific analysis of geologic structures:

  “For more than 80 per cent of time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice. We live in unusual times when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight. The great southern continent, Gondwanaland, formed about 550 million years ago. It occupied 20 per cent of the area of our planet and included Antarctica, South America, Australia, South Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Gondwanaland was covered by ice when it drifted across the South Pole 360-255 million years ago. Evidence for this ice age is in the black coal districts of Australia, South Africa, and India."

He moves on:

 “The Earth has been slowly cooling for the last 50 million years from times when life thrived and rapidly diversified. In these warmer times, there were no mass extinctions due to natural warming and, if the planet is warming today, the past shows us that life will thrive and diversify even more.”

In conclusion Professor Plimer makes this statement: 

“We are putting all our efforts and wasting trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into trying to prevent mythical human-induced global warming, yet we still don’t prepare for the inevitable annual floods, droughts, and bushfires, let alone longer-term solar – and orbitally – driven global cooling.

“We have a crisis of single-minded stupidity exacerbated by a dumbed-down education system supported by incessant propaganda, driven by financial interests and political activist authoritarianism.” 

 

It's a fair bet that Professor Plimer hasn't been invited to the now-opening World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

 

Public Use Electricity

 

 

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The conversation about renewable resources, in particular electricity, is almost always about its use in the private sector. If there is a failure in the electrical grid there will also be a failure primarily in home heating, cooling, lighting, communication, etc. The same issues will also affect businesses. What we don't hear much about is the dependence on reliable electricity by the public sector.

The photograph above is an aerial night view of Los Angeles, CA. As can be seen much of the artificial light in this and all cities is used to illuminate public spaces, buildings,streets and freeways. Heating and cooling public buildings also depends on reliable electricity, as does water and sewer, elevators and other normal services. 

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A NASA photo from space of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Incredibly, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, no statistics are kept that differentiate between private and public use of electricity for lighting or building applications.

The question is, in the event of not being able to supply all of electrical power needed at any given time, how will the available power be allotted? It's difficult to imagine that street and freeway illumination will be cut off, despite automobiles having their own source of light. Sure some public facilities, jails, hospitals, etc. are equipped with emergency generators but they won't supply enough power to keep various state legislatures running. 

 

 

Peer Review and the Legislative Process

Peer review, a process where the details of scientific studies are examined by authorities in their respective fields for applicability, reliability and merit before being published, have been in the news a lot recently. In order for the results of a study to be published in The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature or any other periodical with a pretense of scientific integrity, it must be scrutinized by a largely anonymous but influential group of recognized experts. Some times this works, sometimes it does not. Some studies are accepted and published and are later disregarded as erroneous. Others are rejected for publication but in the future turn out to be meaningful.

Nobody regards the construction of bills being put before the US Congress as a scientific process or the result of one. Bills like the trillion dollar plus monstrosity budget bill are a repudiation of science. What's important is that there is no "peer review" of the various parts of this bill, or any other bill, by recognized experts. Even worse, no names of  authors are attached to the sections of the bill for which they are responsible. There is zero transparency. 

No congressman can truthfully say that they've read the entirety of a 4,155 page budget bill. Worse yet, unknown people who were never subjected to the electoral process wrote the provisions of a bill that after being signed into law will affect the lives of every one living in the US and other countries as well.

What this does is insulate the individual Congressman from any responsibility for the negatives of the legislation, a primary goal of all bureaucracies in general and republican governments in particular. The President himself, the last piece in the jig saw puzzle of legislation, has never read the complete bill and is unlikely to understand most portions of it.

It's noteworthy that a culture that worships science and technology dismisses its role in government.

 

The Commercialization of Menopause

 

 Getty Images for Stripes

Silver screen star Naomi Watts, already a business success with her own line of clean beauty products, Onda, has formed a new company, Stripes, to provide salves and ointments to women undergoing the "symptoms" of menopause, as if the biological process was actually a disease.

The 54 year-old lady says her own experience of perimenopause and menopause led her to establish the firm, which vends "Power Serum" for $85 and "Oh My Glide" a vaginal lubricant for $40.

 “We hope to inspire women to reach out to one another in solidarity to end the stigma and normalize menopause,” she said, adding that she hoped “women start to understand that getting older is a privilege and a time for us to feel proud of our cumulative experiences.”

Non-profits have also been established to deal with the inevitable. 

Statistically, women make up 70% of nursing home residents in the US and their life expectancy is 81 years. Male life expectancy is 77 years.

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