boscohorowitz
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Apropos of nothing and everything, a slice of life from a catch-up letter with an old friend whose mother died just days before Hurricane Ian left them powerless for a long stretch. Shared not for itself per se but because how it fits in with what I feel is the best cover, the definitively done evolution, of a very great 20th Century musical masterpiece, T. Hardin’s If I Were a Carpenter, which version I found only because I’d written said catch-up letter:
“BTW, you’re a genius. How do I know? Well, look at the guy you married. Just some bohunk ex-jarhead to most people’s eyes, but you have the eyes of a true teacher. It’s fun watching a man turn into the best imitation of a saint that he can. Well, men have to try. It’s all they’ve got, lacking reproductive organs.
“btw, most of my wife’s college buddies encouraged her not to marry me. They were sure I was just another good-looking loser cashing in on the fat broad. I’m exaggerating but it was there. But she saw some fool man trying to be a saint, and she fell in step with him just as if I were a carpenter.”
I’m still a loser just no longer good-looking. As for sainthood: we all have our moments, yes? 🙂
***
Re: Russia/Ukraine: I’ve seen the movie. Spoiler Alert: Russia wins. Also, it’s surprisingly free of blockbuster special effects. They did focus groups on the original ending’s wipeout of the Eastern USA coast with tsunamis induced by Russian nuclear torpedo drones after Euromerica nuked Lisbon (why Lisbon? something to do with cabalistic occult numerology and the Great Earthquake of 1755. something-something plausibly deniable Hollywood movie plot credibility. part of the fake realism/real fakeism cinema movement.)
Focus group didn’t like that Eastern seaboard thingie because, in the end, even Joe Biden and His Furry Friends don’t want to die that way. Nuked, sure. Ground Zero is a sweet way to go. Wait for the green flash!) But drowning in a 500′ tall tsunami of radioactive seawater could be painful, and provide even less escape time than ICBMs. Focus group did admit, however, that the image of MArine One taking off only to be swallowed by a giant wave, was awesome.
Besides, with gain-of-function viruses and patented genetic poisons force-fed by magic spells from magic screens…
…who needs nukes?
Now, major cyber-attacks, even full-blown bipolar fusillades by both sides, I could see that happening. Gubmint rich guy underground *bunkers (look for the Golden *Archies!) have their own power and what not. Maybe even schedule it for the worst possible weather so that the most people die. Ah, Europe under snow during neo-covid VAIDS time.
I really enjoyed Polemos’ remarks yesterday using Stranger in a Strange Land as starting point.
“Face-Dress in Vegas? Can’t tell if it’s day or night in there.”
It’s daytime in some lurid casino in rural Oregon. I don’t gamble but my wife does. I walk around and freak out at the whole thing until security gets nervous, and then I commandeer them and make them listen to me babble.
You can smoke tobacco and drink booze in there, but you can’t smoke weed, which is what such places are obviously designed for. Can we get anything right? *sigh*
“The American people collude with their government in using the totally corrupt elections as an excuse to get on with business as usual.”
I like the sentence above. It reminds me of a thought I had today:
Do the right thing now while you can (and the need is apparent: you may not get another chance).
***
Elections are not a ruse. They’re a legitimate form of consensus assessment that people unfortunately expect to work all by themselves, with or without people bothering to vote much less supervise to make sure the results are counted honestly. And so they become exercises in corruption.
But then, buying is how we get everything except air to breathe, gravitational attraction, and solar radiation. Other than grinding out mostly meaningless toil for a few increasingly meaningless dollars, we prefer not to get involved in reality beyond earning and spending money. We vote with our dollars, I suppose. From a staunch paleo-conservative view, that’s how it should be. Universal suffrage is bad for a healthy aristocracy. Pay-to-play is the essence of capitalism, which we long ago conflated with democracy. After all, I trust a dollar more than a politician’s promise or the will of our benighted electorate.
If we charged people to vote we might get more results. People don’t believe in anything they don’t pay for, if said pay is only watching countless mind-harming commercials. Maybe if we put ballots on the backs of cereal boxes, we’d be more involved with these mysterious parades called “elections”, and they might begin to mean something congruent with their claimed purpose.
Not that I believe in democracy as some proper form of government. Nor monarchy or what-have-you. I view humans as being incapable of governing ourselves rationally, fairly, and beneficially. Ultimately, large-scale governance comes from our inability to produce surplus without then fighting each other in groups over said surplus.
The concept of the Individual has been reduced to the grinding abrasion of grains of sand upon each other. Standing alone on one’s convictions has become almost unimaginable to most people.
The Apple in the Garden; Pandora’s Box… our older myths seem to reflect an understanding that we’re kinda messed up. It’s not our fault; it’s our nature, they say. I agree.
Not Just Yet, Please: I prefer indefinitely forestalled consequences for my sins.
Since I have attempted to pass myself off as a poet, I feel obligated to present an example:
Table for One
The world eats me, as words made flesh
Digest themselves. As combines thresh
The grain from stalk, so life by lives
Divides itself with sentient knives.The big and little fish that eat
The smaller of their kind, the meat
That through the slaughterhouses flow,
“All beasts and fowl”: these ones knowThe table spreads around the globe,
That — “mindless” beast or soul in robe —
Are scurried victuals, that all
Must fight to lose, to founder, fall.This need to breathe and procreate,
To relay signals passed by fate,
Makes a communal house for us
In one anothers’ bellies. ThusWomb by womb, we start to crawl.
One by one we join the all.
Through self and love, from soul to rind.
Eat heartily, I do not mind.6-82 Charleston, S.C.
As for mosquitoes and squishes: everyone’s arse is up for kicks. One either does or doesn’t, and the outcome of this does as it will.
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
~ Dalai LamaMarvelous little proverb. I wonder if it’s an old folk proverb.
We talk a lot about East vs West of late. Concerning that, I like this:
“Russian culture has much to offer us. The Russians know the darker side of humanity, but they also understand the extraordinary capacity of the human soul for sacrifice and love, and they have the ability to accept both sides of man with greater equanimity than we in the West. They know how to take a long view, something we have all but forgotten in our anxious desire for immediate gratification.”
Land of the Firebird, 1980, Suzanna Massie
***
Ah, VP’s straw-clutch obsession with his deliberately self-misinformed concept of my relationship with gender and social dress norms.
Sorry, VP. I ain’t putting out for some pampered princess daughter of the Ming in your mind. I choose fire (if only to light this reefer in front of me). Since I genuinely am veracious (and fairly poetic as well), I’ll seriously note that you’re deeply suffering inside, and that thing won’t heal if you don’t stop picking at it.
Why are we here? Dr. D often says it is to maintain our sanity. I think he’s close except in his assertion that any of us are sane. Ah, sanity, that mysterious human concept whereby we judge our interpretation of reality to be superior to someone else’s, apparently because we lack sufficient pride in being whatever God(t) made us, and so we therefore feel the need to dismiss someone else as being cuckoo in order to convince ourselves that the bats in our belfry know for whom the bells truly toll.
I feel sorry for VP but I also feel sorry for me, and you, and that funny-looking chap in the corner with the hunting cap. Everyone is suffering. Maybe if VP stopped projecting (insert possessive pronoun of choice) suffering onto others, some healing might commence.
But it’s hard to let go. If I should publicly say that I hope your suffering eases, that can only sound condescending in this setting, but the truth is like that, and the truth is I wish you healing, VP. I smack you a bit when I feel the mood, because you are to me an extremely obnoxious muddle of self-deluding narcissistically self-imprisoned bullshit braggadocio, but I also pray for you (as well as for po po pitiful me) because, well, we’re all suffering.
But so long as you feel disposed to throw your particular flavor of self-glorifying animosity around, I will periodically succumb to the temptation to remind you that not everyone believes your bullshit… beginning with that face you see in the mirror.
Plus, you hit like a girl. I call you a deceitful hack and the best you can come back with is that I, like most males, look funny in a dress? Especially an itty bitty doll dress worn over my face to supposedly protect me from toxic nano-bugs?
We could bounce our silly ass egos off each other all day if we chose to, VP. But fomenting schadenfreude in ourselves and pain in others will only keep picking our respective wounds.
Here’s my Rx, VP: stop publicly telling people how much better you are than them and you won’t experience so much public ridicule from folks like me.
Oh. I almost forgot. Part of my established online persona is sharing songs cuz I succumb to the delusion that I have great taste in music:
Cross-Dresser Blues She wears cowboy clothes pretty good for a girl, though.I go now to enter the apartment of someone freshly diagnosed with covid. I doggy-sit her pooch on her workdays. I intend to inhale deeply and touch all the physical surfaces that I can without appearing too acquisitive. Keep my immune system strong even if it kills me like a runaway vakzine running wild down a government forced giveaway program.
P.S. The RVWilliams was most excellent. This, neither choral nor classical, is my counterpoint.
Why yes, I’m bored. Why do you ask?
“so many Explainers… … Odd that with such deep insights they don’t also point to any (collective) actions to be taken, for the common good..”
I suspect this isn’t welcome coming from me, but: I totally agree.
“Now back to your regularly scheduled TAE fearporn, rants, raves, warmongering, hate east/west junk dump/spam fest 😆 EOT”
I consider VP’s posts to be TAE’s official “regularly scheduled TAE fearporn, rants, raves, warmongering, hate east/west junk dump/spam fest”. Even our trending alleged trolls (currently these appear to be Redneck and chooch) seem to be the currently favorite tag team) can’t even begin to compete with VP’s talent for presenting himself as the Rightest of the Right, which is interesting since he claims his audience is mostly incapable of perceiving the true righteous rightness of VP’s self-serving output. Why tell us if we’re too foolish to understand? Who’s he talking to?
It’s like a well-bosomed woman wearing a tight t-shirt sans brassiere, which t-shirt bears the words: Don’t Stare At My Tits, You Nasty Tit-Starer… even as they (the aforementioned bosoms) nod and wink beguilingly.
I find VP to be neither Veracious nor Poetic, but oh well. It takes all kinds. And I take an odd comfort in his predictably reliable lack of self-awareness. I’m sure he’s flattered by the attention.
***
I highly doubt that Joe Biden is faking being as fucked up as he is any more than I think Trump fakes being as fucked up as he is. But Trump has some kind of method to his madness, something that got him elected despite duopoly resistance, while Joe is more an example of madness as a method. Being old and deranged and dementedly senile is what Joe DOES, period, seems to me. Electing mentally disturbed compulsive pedophiles seems to be what the duopoly DOES.
They can’t keep him locked up in the White House all the time.
Concept: conspiracy theories like this rely on our faith that the charlatans in charge have a clue of what they’re doing and how to accomplish it. Maybe they do. But evidence available to me convinces me otherwise. I think Kurt Vonnegut captured my feelings on such things:
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
I’ll add that, in a business de facto policed by kompromat, an old pro like Joe surely has his share of kompromatt on the Gotham Mob, etc. Trump was naming a few names and spilling some beans too. He did it almost as incoherently and erratically as Joe, but still, he was as loose a cannon as there ever was. Joe is actually a safer expose’ risk than Trump, imo, because it is obvious that he is failing. Nuts as Trump is, he could say things like how he could “shoot people in the street and still get elected”… and still get elected.
Also, Joe is now president. Fact. He can tell his handlers to fuck off any time he wants and they know it. Life is not a video game. The only character one can control is oneself and, as we’ve often mentioned here, self-control is more of a wish than an accomplishment for us humans.
My personal theory: Joe rammed Jeffrey Epstein’s dossier of dicks up the DNC’s ass so hard they had to give him the nom.
The planet of my dreams
The earth, my earth
Is bulging at the seams
The earth, my earth
It’s full of many schemes
And as the sunlight beams
The glory of our sciences
And militant alliances
Reveal their basic worth
Along the mounds of dead appliances!
The planet of my dreams
The earth, my earth
I hear it’s muffled screams
The earth, my earth
And though it often seems
From television beams
That ignorance is rampant there
And governmental goons don’t care
I know that I shall not despair
And cheat like all the rest
I’ll just keep on
With what I do the best!
Cheat-cheedly-cheat! go ahead!
I can’t do it!
Cheat-cheedly-cheat! go ahead!
I can’t do it!
Cheat-cheedly-cheat! go ahead!
I can’t do it!
Cheat-cheedly-cheat! go ahead!
I can’t do it!
<end>And now my ego and I will resume our mutually antagonistic but utterly codependent pretense of being in control while ignoring the other… we both know it’s a facade, but it get us to cooperate at least a little bit.
It’s been a slice and all that, people, and now I’ma stop chattering on this here internet and comence real communication with real people now that they’ve been cognitively tenderized enough to be receptive.
Be true to yourselves or someone who looks just like you!
I have no skin in the Tulsi hope (or other hopefuls like Desantis) but I’ll noten that if she were to do any tattling, she’d do it after running as an independent and creating major buzz.
That’s how El DOnaldo did what he did. He slimed Hillary as lying warmonger and ghot elected.
Not that I think Tulsi will get elected. Just saying that if she were to lob some truth bombs she would wait for maximum strategic opportunity just like Putin waited until he could get people’s attention in the best way. After all, he could’ve wiped Kiev off the map, using conventional weapons, on 02-22- 2022, everyone’s favorite spooky dog whistle almost a palindrome.
It shall be what it shall be.
And now, a few words from my favorite shaman:
In the old days, before peak oil peaked, Saudi Arabia could be counted on to jack up a blitz-load of production and balance things out in the global supply market. Now they have openly and very publicly announced that they can’t do that any more.
***
Is somebody ghostwriting for VP?
His prose was actually colorfully informative with a relative minimum of self-braggadocio concealed as sadder-but-oh-so-wiser-than-thou humility. I even think I learned something. Strange things happen as the world falls apart. Hail Atlantis!
***
The Oaficial Narrative is eroding fast. Some say we should watch for an October Surprise. Quite likely. Also quite likely, and in my opinion even moreso, is a black swan no one expected. I just say that cuz I like extreme corners and a sense of drama, I suppose. But that kind of intuitive nonsense has served me at least as well as rational logic, so I’ll stick my neck out and say that about now seems a good time for the Rube Goldberg political golem AI running Joe Biden’s wetware to blow a gasket.
***
I know what’s in Putin’s mind: a really fine brain with what appears to me to be an extremely well-balanced and highly ethical psychopathic mindset: calm, cool, courageous and educated enough by a hard life in harsh crazy time to understand both loyalty and patience.
Even if the purpose of this release of information about oil capacity is to manipulate for higher prices, the truth is the truth, and the truth often hurts.
Be good, y’all.
One surmises significant overlap with the crippling labor shortage and those who refuse to be vaxxed to keep/get a job.
“The above post, black size matters, is a tasteless piece of garbage…
Just because one can post almost anything here doesn’t mean one should…”You need to get out more often? You might develop a sense of humor if you did.
In Astoria, OR, there is a sizable metro-hipster presence. I saw this in a restaurant window:
This old lunatic sometimes curbs the urge to spray paint gang graffiti over Black Lives Matter posters. Meanwhile, this was inevitasble?
This caught my eye:
(experimento):
While we lob opinions into the infosphere like so many wayward cruise missiles armed with names that ever hurt we, people are peopling. Last Sunday, we burnt a buncha fuel to haul our carcasses at an average 60mph so that we could spend a few frivolous hours at the beach. So did many other people:
Hail Atlantis!
Terrorism was always a stupid word. It’s a word stupid enough to provide the semantic basis for a “War on Terror”. Violence is violence, period, whether one-on-one, many-on-one (our favorite kind) or many-on-many. Reasons may vasy, but killing is killing, maiming is maiming, and kicking ass is kicking ass.
Also, wood is wood and carbon is carbon. In Euromerica, we switched from wood to coal because we’d run out of wood. We switched from coal to oil for similar reason plus the amazing flexibility of utility that petroleum provides. We’re gonna miss that stuff when it’s gone.`
Below is my favorite wood-burning device. Salvaged from a hunter’s cabin left to ruin, I used this to make conductive/convective heat from wood in a way that didn’t all go up into the air above before it could warm my bones a bit when I lived in the woods back in 2016:
“Putin , “When we send our missiles to bomb you it is a Special Military Operation , when you strike back at us it is terrorism.” What a vast masturbator.”
I think you should write a letter to Congress. Or Putin. Or someone. Tell them you don’t like how they’re doing war stuff. Or terrorist stuff. Or something. They’re not boom-booming right, right?
Coming up next: Emperor Kerxes has the sea flogged by whips as punishment for bad weather ruining his nautical military plans:
“Say what you want about Persian King Xerxes I, he knew how to fight a battle. That is to say, he always brought enough men and material to get the job done. Yes, this is the same Xerxes seen in the movie 300, but before the Persian Army could get to Thermopylae, they had to cross the Hellespont, what we call the Dardanelles today. It did not go exactly as planned.
“Like a lot of things the Persian Army tried.
“Xerxes was coming right off of victories over uprisings against Persian rule in Egypt and Babylon and had acquired a massive army, as-then-unheard-of in ancient times. Some 300,000 troops were ready to pour into Greece to avenge the ass-kicking the Greeks perpetrated on Xerxes’ father, Darius. Xerxes was not one to overthink things. The simplest way to get a massive army from one land mass to another was to simply build a bridge and roads to it. Xerxes even had the bridges built in advance so his army wouldn’t have to wait to get to Greece.
“This did not go exactly as the Persian Army planned. Before he and his troops could arrive, the seas swelled up and swallowed the bridges, completely destroying them. When the King arrived, it was just debris. Infuriated with the seas, Xerxes marched out to the sea and whipped it with a chain 300 times as his soldiers watched and shouted curses at the water.”
WHere are the genuine skeletal metal robots with laser eyes and photogenically creepy unnecessary teeth? I want that not itty-bitty bytey bots.
We were talking somewhere on the internet, me and some fellow internuts, about the ever-growing volume of hipster outrage wherein who knows most about Who Is Really In Charge,and who can cite the most horrific reasons to believe we are even MORE fucvked than you thought we were fucked…
and I said this:
“This morning it was announced that General Sergei Surovikin, a veteran commander and a hard-line defender of Russia, will now be in charge of Russian troops in the Ukraine War. It may be significant that he is the leader of their Space Force.”
I help myself through the Big War obsessive anxiety trance states by reminding myself that Putin said he can’t imagine a world without Russia, which bristles outwards with implication of MADD but is even more valid inverted: nor can one imagine Russia without a world.
If Putin is to save Russia (which he obviously wants; I can’t even begin to imagine that he buys into juvenile Davosian Euromerimaniacs’ dream schemes), he has no choice but to save the world from Euromerica.
People believe in 5-G global nanomagic unified zombie fields but can’t imagine a savvy seasoned blooded triumphant global gangster playing a successful round of 5-D chess. Well, either Putin and crew do just that or they lose their entire.friggin.planet to the Western dominatrix complex superficially headed by an anally anointed sock puppet named Joe.
You Can’t Fire Me! I’m Not Dead Yet!
…and then there are geriatric groovesters like us who don’t mind a good rant now and then but would rather laugh or cry or hurl than bitch-bitch-bitch all day.
“Now consider that our ‘universe’ is simply quantum representation of distinct ‘atoms’ from as many different ‘universes’ simply participating in our own on their off time. And if this might be so, is it possible that all the ‘universes’ taken at once are simply a solid? All ‘particles’ roiling within their own, but when all instances fill all possible positions of the spin, they’re whole?”
That is a lovely bit of deep-woven fancy. Very coherent manifold logical hologram. I’ll call your concept, of a wholly whole and solid Universe of Interuniversal Universes, the ‘solid state level of teh Mind of God’. (oy… just using a phrase like Mind of God makes me want to take an anti-serious giggle-laugh at MOngo POnders Life:
For that matter, one wonders if one engaged all one’s synapses in all possible combinations at once but by self-direction not driven by external stimulus. Hmmm… I think I ate a major chunk of Gummy Bear cannabis tonight. Feeling all cosmic and shit.
“Thus we are absolved from being rapacious gits. Not our fault!”
On a material level, sure. But I see all this phenomena as just the engines of changing chaos that an entity as bored as God must be to keep Itself alive and kicking, i.e., paying attention to ItSelf. Which is just a nit I pick since I agree that we’re absolved, for sure. We don’t know what we’re doing. We got a brain lift or ate an apple or (here’s my favorite theory ) something.
All that said, I believe that spirit or “spirit” or Spirit or whatever one’s fave flavor be, is the underlying reality of all this stuff. Raw sentience, the wonder of awareness, of the world, others, oneself, the thing that turns and keeps the lights on in Monsieur Id, if one likes clinical terms; so I believe that we are literally killing the planet by reducing the amount of raw sentience (including within ourselves as we increasingly spend times in simulacra and abstract ephemera in our hypermediated multi-MegaPlex) to a critical paucity and the lights of interest go out in this corner of God’s eyes.
We flick the remote when the show bores us, jah? I don’t mind humanity passing much, but I rather like this little hellhole of crawling horrors and enthralling wonders and (most of all) this weird ability to love
LOVED that video concert of Das Bund. Much better performance than that movie they made that everyone oohed about while I ‘meh’-ed myself asleep. This is them seriously kickin.
Some nice Rastafrian chap who does viniculture in southern France hepped me to this the other day.
What a voice!
“maybe even save someone from dire harm — maybe even my silly old self”
“(bows to imaginary applause, admires reflection ins carnival mirror)
“But I generally don’t dialog with people who don’t answer”
Crazy edit functionSomeone did a nice analysis earlier on Swedish involvement in the Nord Stream nastiness. This seems relevant:
A New Alliance Between Poland, Sweden, and the United States for Baltic Security? MAY 30, 2019
***
“Just my 2 cents.”
You’re even older than me, WES. What was two cents’ worth to you in your prime has increased via wisdom inflation to $2k-ish.
While my chances of survival once things get seriously hard are currently miniscule, I believe in and aim for miracles. Why not, eh? So it just might be that your advice will help me hit a necessary target at the necessary time. Not every act of desperate scared-shitless heroism is quixotic. Sometimes even the losers get lucky and fools prevail. I might actually hit my target and maybe even someone from dire harm. Either way, it’s more fun than not.
I resemble that moment. I am very much a home-grown lunatic and proud to be one. It was a long path getting there. I worked hard for it. And man, you should see the size of my ego! (Ladies, don’t blush.) But the only thing larger than my ego is my awe-inspiring humility. Oh, how I have transcended my arrogant self! (bows to imaginary applause)
Since I’m waxing melodramatic here, I’ll quote one of my favorite Nabokov short story endings, a story that describes a young woman in ’20s Berlin hitting her 30s, her first taste of growing long in the tooth, while Germany’s economy tumbles. She’s going broke, a woman alone, the future looks dark. She meets a fine gentleman, they fall in love:
“Early in the morning, she came out again and sat down on the porch step that was already hot. Forstmann, wearing a dark blue bathrobe, sat next to her and, clearing his throat, asked if she would consent to become his spouse—that was the very word he used: ‘spouse.’ When they came to breakfast, Vera, her husband, and his maiden cousin, in utter silence, were performing nonexistent dances, each in a different corner, and Olga drawled out in an affectionate voice ‘What boors!’ and next summer she died in childbirth.
“That’s all. Of course, there may be some sort of sequel, but it is not known to me. In such cases, instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale: Which arrow flies forever? The arrow that has hit its mark.”
The EndThe whole, nicely short story can be read here:
Bishko: I adore how well you wrote your view on greenhouse warming, and deeply loved your modest rhap[sody on sonoluminescence. But I generally don’t with people who don’t answer questions about major claims they’ve made. I don’t know how much blowing smoke up someone’s ass (maybe even one’s own) contributes to greenhouse gases, but either way it smells like bullshit when it happens.
Answer the questions of leave me alone.
“Whatever happens, once we have done what we can, the key seems to be to embrace honest reality.
This is especially true as death approaches. No more time left to learn.”
Amen.
I bought a smallish used compound archery bow at a thrift store today. Next, I’ll look into arrows. Also time to get a wrist rocket and practice my David skills for when some dumb Goliath comes at me wearing Kevlar and a buncha noisy disorienting gunpowder ballistic devices.
Not that I expect to make it. My body is frail in many ways including old age. But I can at least set an example.Plus, I love the thought of a high-velocity marble knocking someone out and his comrades not knowing what hit him or where it came from. Get away from my tree fort!
Regarding German/LNG/delivery pressure:
This might apply:
Compressor Stations
As mentioned, natural gas is highly pressurized as it travels through an interstate pipeline. To ensure that the natural gas flowing through any one pipeline remains pressurized, compression of this natural gas is required periodically along the pipe. This is accomplished by compressor stations, usually placed at 40 to 100 mile intervals along the pipeline. The natural gas enters the compressor station, where it is compressed by either a turbine, motor, or engine.
“Turbine compressors gain their energy by using up a small proportion of the natural gas that they compress. The turbine itself serves to operate a centrifugal compressor, which contains a type of fan that compresses and pumps the natural gas through the pipeline. Some compressor stations are operated by using an electric motor to turn the same type of centrifugal compressor. This type of compression does not require the use of any of the natural gas from the pipe, however it does require a reliable source of electricity nearby. Reciprocating natural gas engines are also used to power some compressor stations. These engines resemble a very large automobile engine, and are powered by natural gas from the pipeline. The combustion of the natural gas powers pistons on the outside of the engine, which serves to compress the natural gas.
“In addition to compressing natural gas, compressor stations also usually contain some type of liquid separator, much like the ones used to dehydrate natural gas during its processing. Usually, these separators consist of scrubbers and filters that capture any liquids or other unwanted particles from the natural gas in the pipeline. Although natural gas in pipelines is considered ‘dry’ gas, it is not uncommon for a certain amount of water and hydrocarbons to condense out of the gas stream while in transit. The liquid separators at compressor stations ensure that the natural gas in the pipeline is as pure as possible, and usually filter the gas prior to compression.”
and this:
Delivery of Natural Gas
“The delivery of natural gas to its point of end use by a distribution utility is much like the transportation of natural gas discussed in the transportation section. However, distribution involves moving smaller volumes of gas at much lower pressures over shorter distances to a great number of individual users. Smaller-diameter pipe also is used to transport natural gas from the citygate to individual consumers.
“The natural gas is periodically compressed to ensure pipeline flow, although local compressor stations are typically smaller than those used for interstate transportation. Because of the smaller volumes of natural gas to be moved, as well as the small-diameter pipe that is used, the pressure required to move natural gas through the distribution network is much lower than that found in the transmission pipelines. While natural gas traveling through interstate pipelines may be compressed to as much as 1,500 pounds per square inch (psi), natural gas traveling through the distribution network requires as little as 3 psi of pressurization and is as low as ¼ psi at the customer’s meter. The natural gas to be distributed is typically depressurized at or near the citygate, as well as scrubbed and filtered (even though it has already been processed prior to distribution through interstate pipelines) to ensure low moisture and particulate content. In addition, mercaptan – the source of the familiar rotten egg smell in natural gas – is added by the utility prior to distribution. This is added because natural gas is odorless and colorless, and the familiar odor of mercaptan makes the detection of leaks much easier.
“Traditionally, rigid steel pipe was used to construct distribution networks. However, new technology is allowing the use of flexible plastic and corrugated stainless steel tubing in place of rigid steel pipe. These new types of tubing allow cost reduction, installation flexibility and easier repairs for both local distribution companies and natural gas consumers.”
I have no idea myself, but it may be that they also have supply chain issues regarding down stream compressors and so forth?
MIchael Reid:
I can tell that you and the canine have a deep understanding. It’s tough to be an animal in a human world. Dog is lucky to have a human like you, I’m sure.
As for the pile: man, you roll your spliffs BIG. 😉
I really like the flavor of Viet Nam’s prose today. Oh, I’m saure I mostly agree with its meaning also, but I’m a sucker for clean evocative prose. This, for example:
“History does more than rhyme. The past puts us in the place where we are today with the things, people and society around us. “The past is not even past.” Old, unhinged, autocratic, ideologies that grab others’ wealth are still very much with us. An Empire creates its own reality that the minions must believe if they are to be Insiders.”… pleases me very much.
You’ll probably have to use a hosting site. I use this dumb old blog I’ve had forever. For example:
This might interest some:
“In the last article we looked at some results from Grant Petty.
In essence they demonstrate the huge variation in the transmittance of CO2 through the atmosphere with the wavelength of radiation.
I decided it might be interesting to try and reproduce these results using the HITRAN database. This allows a closer examination of which mechanisms cause which results.
Line Shapes and Pressure Broadening
The energy in a photon is given by a very simple equation:E = hν
where h = Planck’s constant = 6.63 x 10-34 J.s, and ν = frequency (ν=c/λ where c=speed of light and λ = wavelength)
So, for example, a 15μm photon has an energy of 1.3 x 10-20 J.
A photon can be absorbed by a molecule if the energy of the photon matches the exact energy required to change the state of that molecule.
Now, if a photon was only absorbed at one exact wavelength then atmospheric radiation would be irrelevant.
An easy concept for people who have done a lot of maths or physics, but not so obvious to many others.
Let’s take a different example. If you start your car up and accelerate steadily up to 60 miles per hour over 1 minute, how long do you spend at the speed of 34.5698895549034592345123 miles per hour? Not much. And the more precise I make this speed, the less time you will have spent at it.
If we consider how much energy is transferred in terrestrial radiation from the surface at 14.995698895549034592345123 μm, the answer is “not much”. The same goes for any other vanishingly small interval of wavelengths.
So if each absorption line was exactly one wavelength then the amount of energy absorbed by a finite number of lines would be zero.
However, each absorption line has a finite width. Part of this is due to the uncertainty principle described by quantum mechanics – the small time a higher energy state is occupied produces an uncertainty in the energy of that state.
This is called natural broadening and is a very small effect.
The easiest broadening mechanism to understand is Doppler broadening. Molecules in the atmosphere are zipping around in all directions at speeds of around 500 m/s. Compared with the speed of light this is small, but the difference in the relative speed between a photon and a molecule is slightly changed, leading to a change in the absorption frequency (see note 1 for more details). This is “relatively easy” to understand from first principles and the mathematical treatment is straightforward.
The dominant line broadening mechanism in the lower atmosphere is pressure, or collisional, broadening. This is more challenging from a theoretical point of view but is certainly a measurable value.
The main effect of pressure broadening is to “spread out” the absorption line. Here is a typical example, where 1000mb is at the earth’s surface, and 200mb is at the “tropopause”, or top of the lower atmosphere:”
And so forth. (see: Understanding Atmospheric Radiation and the “Greenhouse” Effect – Part Nine
This does not mean that Bish’s main conclusion is wrong. Other factors may apply. But it does mean that his reasoning is incomplete, to say the least, and wrong insomuch as incomplete is not conclusive.
Not that it matters in the real world. As Bish recently noted, with or without ACT, we’re headed for ridiculously rough times. Discussing climate change at this point is mostly a rhetorical exercise, typically driven more by the immediate comfort needs of our egos than out long-term concerns for our and others’ survival.
” “The increasing cost of hurricane damage can be explained entirely by more people and more property in harm’s way.” ”
Just as anthropogenic climate theory(ACT) is based on the concept of more humans burning more fuel, the allegedly catastrophic nature of ACT is based on more people living in more places and doing so in more exposed and fragile lifestyles.
It’s relative.
“Most Americans don’t plan to get a flu shot this season — lots of them say they’ll mask to avoid germs instead Published Tue, Oct 4 20222:24 PM EDT”
