Borderless

I was watching a movie last night (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and one of the characters delivered a rather memorable line... which I promptly forgot. I was immediately struck with an idea for a new stand alone piece of fiction. I am tentatively calling it "Borderless". Here is what I put down on paper last night based off of this one characters ten second spiel...

Chapter 1

The head of the research institute approached the lectern. The muted conversations among the assembled press corps ceased. Red lights atop the video cameras went active and flashbulbs began popping.

“My name is Dr. Ian Blackburn. I am the lead researcher in the Infectious Diseases Division of this institute. For months we have been trying to determine the origin, and a cure,” he said with emphasis. “Together, with our peers here, and our colleagues at the CDC, along with other research labs around the world, we have been working tirelessly, in twenty four hour shifts, all in an effort to solve this latest riddle from Mother Nature. Here’s what we know.

“In the last two months, at least two million people have died from a variety of causes. At first, it presents as flu like symptoms with severe congestion and itchy watery eyes. Within twenty-four to thirty-six hours, it progresses into a very aggressive form of pneumonia. These ailments persist all the while forcing the body to overproduce fluid at a rate we’ve never seen before.”

Dr. Blackburn paused before continuing.

“The body will literally drown in its own fluids within seventy-two hours. We know it is a virus that is somehow immune to all known antivirals. In the last six weeks, we’ve confirmed at least two mutations. The virus is literally getting stronger. It can be spread via fluid exchange, but we now believe it is capable of surviving in an airborne state for a maximum of forty-five minutes to an hour.”

One of the reporters quickly interrupted. In a panicked tone, they asked, “What are you saying? What options do we have?”

“What I’m saying is simply… once contracted,” he continued. “It’s a death sentence. It doesn’t matter how physically imposing you are, or how mighty your intellect, no matter how strong and robust a barrier the stoutest of nations can erect, all nations the world over… are now effectively… borderless.”

Several of the gathered reporters began weeping. The stress of covering the pandemic coupled with a seeming death sentence sent many over the edge. More than a few whipped out their cell phones and called their loved ones.

“My advice to the people watching me on TV or listening to the sound of my voice is as follows. Stay where you are. Do not go outside or associate with anyone not in your residence for at least two weeks. Use plastic, sheets, blankets, tarps, trash bags anything you can find and seal all doors and windows. If anyone in your home begins showing any of the symptoms previously mentioned, evict them from your home immediately or everyone in that space will be dead within seventy-two hours. In two weeks’ time, the virus will burn itself out if it cannot find a viable host.”

A flurry of questions came fast.

“When will you have a cure?” a lady in the front row screamed at him.

“What can we expect after two weeks?”

“Is this a new black plague?” one shouted.

Ian held up his hands to signal that he was prepared to stay and answer questions.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please. One at a time… one at a time.”

The room quickly quieted down.

Knowing that the planet’s population would want answers, Dr. Blackburn had prepared himself for the barrage he was now facing.

“When will we have a cure?” he reiterated. “I can’t say. As I mentioned previously, we are working diligently to find one. No this is not related to black plague in any way shape or form. As for what to expect beyond two weeks… I’d say –,”

Suddenly, Ian was interrupted.

From the back of the room, a thick man with a head of thick red hair, and an even thicker horseshoe style mustache, blurted out, “Is this a global killer?”

Dr. Blackburn placed both his hand on the lectern and shuffled contemplatively on his feet. Bowing his head slightly before answering, he could barely look the room in the eye when he responded.

“If the people don’t do as I’ve instructed by barricading themselves in their homes, and they continue to move about freely and associate with one another, this virus will spread like a wild fire. The only people left will be those living in secluded and remote areas far from population centers. So to answer your question bluntly, yes, this has the potential to be a global killer.”

I'm Still Alive...

I'm still here... alive and well. No, I didn't have a near death experience. We've started a home renovation project and had to move in with the in-laws for a time while they are doing the bulk of the demo work. During this time, I've been writing more of Part IV and generally showing friends and acquaintances a great deal of restraint by not completely hammering them for the manner in which they are conducting themselves when attempting to intellectually present their arguments regarding their political views. 

My wife keeps telling me to smile and nod, let it go, 'you can't fix stupid'.

Number of Servings is a Myth

My Preparing to Prepare non-fiction work attempts to walk the 'uninitated' through the process of disaster/disruption/preparedness planning with an basic education and a simplified approach. (Don't worry, there's plenty of stuff in there for the 'intiated' as well.) To aid me in keeping all of the information as concise as possible, I've broken the book down into three parts based on the duration of the event.

In sticking with a 'basics' theme for the uninitiated, I expose the reader to some of the things they might prepare for and provide examples. For example, I grew up in the southeast US. This area is generally hit by 3-5 hurricanes per decade. This means our family, and just about everyone else's family, needed to be prepared in the event a hurricane was headed toward us. The duration for a hurricane related event was usually 7-14 days depending on how close it came to us. As a result, my parents kept enough food and water on hand for a family of 6 given their self imposed two-week duration. This inventory was added to the inventory of batteries, charcoal, firewood, dog food, kerosene, spare propane tanks, etc.

However, back in the late 70's and early 80's, we didn't have the glut of preparedness food suppliers and manufacturers to choose from like we do today. Everything was either in a can or was frozen. Freeze dried anything barely existed. Now, because most of it was canned, it also meant that the sheer weight of it all prohibited us from doing anything other than 'sheltering in place'.

As I continue to do my research and writing for the non-fiction work, I am coming across something I find to be a bit disconcerting. Namely, some of the food suppliers that are offering one-week, one-month, three-month, six-month, one-year supplies of emergency food are misrepresenting the number of servings that it will provide. And by that I mean, the supplier will state that their 6-month supply of food is "Over 500 servings!" Another will state something like, "That's 510 servings!" 

Sounds impressive... except when you apply some basic math.

1 person  X  3 servings a day  X  180 days (6 mos)  =  540 servings

Here's my warning/advise: Do your self a favor and make sure that the supplier you are considering is using the correct numbers for the duration you are planning for -OR- you adjust your purchase to account for the full number of servings desired. How much would it suck to have to be one that has to tell their family/group that they are going to run out of food a week, a week and half sooner than expected.

Hopefully, you are growing food at that point and it won't be that taxing, but people do strange things.

Anyway, to aid you in this endeavor, I've constructed these handy tables.

Each table breaks down the number of total servings needed by multiplying the three variables together ('Servings per Day per Person', 'Family Size', and 'Duration of Disturbance'). 

For example, you have a family of 5 that you want to feed 3x a day for 3 months. Go to the third image above, go to the 'Family Size' row of 5, slide your finger to the right to the '90 (3 months)' column. There you will discover that this fictional family of 5 would need a minimum of '1350' total servings in order to make it the full three months. 

Easy peezy!

Most of the suppliers do generally allocate for a 2000 calorie diet in their calculations, but not all of them. So keep an eye on the quoted calorie count too.

Seems That I Was Correct

Today (January 17, 2016) I learned... it seems that I was correct in my assertion that we are currently embroiled in a Second Civil War. Or at least, I had my thoughts validated by none other than Dennis Prager (syndicated national conservative talk show host). 

In July (2016), I posted a Note on my Facebook author page that laid out the premise for such an event. I took my time, contemplated, and deliberated this topic with myself for some time before posting the article (Note). In a nutshell, I tried to provide substance to the following question(s):

     What if we actually were already in the middle of a Second Civil War, but instead of cannons, the smell of gunpowder, and bullets whizzing by, this iteration is more akin to a Cold War... Would you be able to recognize it if we were?

While listening to Mr. Prager this afternoon, I was struck by his comment regarding a Second Civil War and how we were actually already in one. Consequently, according to him its between the 'leftists' and the conservatives... he has made a clear distinction between leftists and liberals where as leftists hate everything about America and liberals are patriots simply on the other side of the political spectrum from conservatives.

You can hear Mr. Prager's thoughts on the subject here: Dennis Prager Archive (search for Tuesday, January 17, 2016 and select the link for the first hour of his three hour show - you will need a membership, but I believe it's free).

During the course of his discussion, he referenced, on numerous occasions, an article he wrote for Townhall.com (and other right leaning resources as well as dennisprager.com). I've copied the contents down, formatted it, and pasted it below. I've also included a download button for my original Facebook author page Note.

Basically, Mr. Prager tried to provide a viewpoint by viewpoint breakdown regarding the differences between the left and right with regard to political, moral, ethical, and worldly views and ideologies.

UPDATE** (01/25/2017) Dennis Prager has also recently published an article at Townhall where he takes the image above and fleshes the concepts out into an article format. You can read the article here.

Now That Was A Sermon

The family and I have made it more of a priority to attend church more regularly. On Christmas Eve, the wife decided she wanted to try a church she'd heard many wonderful things about so we decided to go there for services instead of her cousins church on the other side of town. She has a big family that lives here in town and we tend to rotate through each others church for the holiday message.

During the Christmas Eve service, they, being a church that is trying to grow its congregation, had announcements and rattled through a calendar of events for their parishioners, but one of the announcements caught our collective attention. The associate pastor proceeded to tell the congregation that the next series the church would be addressing is the clashing of what culture and society at large says is acceptable compared to what the Bible deems acceptable.

The series, on its face, was of interested to the wife and I because we, like any other parent, seem to be in the never ending job of working with our teenage daughters to help them understand what is acceptable and what is not as a result of their truncated world view... and by 'truncated' I am referring merely to their ages. They simply haven't seen enough in their brief lives so we try and help them navigate those waters.

Today's sermon was just what the doctor ordered and I'm glad the girls were there with us to hear it for themselves. I've downloaded it so I can listen to it again... it was that good. Both parts of the series (I believe in the end it's supposed to be 4-5 parts), if you're interested in hearing it, are available here: Grace Fellowship.

The Electoral College - Working as Designed

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the 2016 Presidential Election cycle was the gift that kept on giving. Seriously. There was alleged hacking from a Cold War era foe, the world was fully introduced to WikiLeaks, there were private email servers, deleted emails, Bleach-Bit, things being wiped with a cloth, pay-to-play scandals, FBI investigations that potentially were, then weren’t, then were again, then weren’t again, despotic vitriol, groupie crotch grabbing comments, alleged mockery of disabled people, not to mention baskets of deplorables everywhere… but through all of that noise, the Electoral College worked to perfection.

If the Founding Fathers could be resurrected like Lazarus, or kidnapped like Abraham Lincoln in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, they’d agree that their design for elections worked correctly and with the intent with which it was created… therefore, to borrow some developer IT speak, it was “working as designed”. 

The intent of the College is noted on the National Archive and Records Administration website, which reads:

“The founding fathers established it [Electoral College] in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.”

So how can I make the statement that the Electoral College worked as designed?

Easy, it’s all in black and white right there in Article II of the United States Constitution. 

The first thing anyone living in this country has to understand is that we do not live in a democracy. No matter how many dangling chad’s there were in Florida, or how many million more votes a particular candidate received, or how many city blocks are burned to the ground in protest, the fact that the United States is not a true democracy hasn’t changed. This was done on purpose. 

By why aren’t we a truly populist, or literal, democracy? 

Having more than a few people in a literal democracy is impossible. Don’t believe me? Go ask ten co-workers where they want to go for lunch and only give them two choices. You see, a democracy is, at its core, a majority, or mob, rules state. No one is ever going to get 100% consensus… in the world of politics, 60% is considered a huge victory… 70% is near impossible. If the United States were a true democracy, Hillary Clinton would be President Elect of the United States as a result of a popular vote… but she’s not. The reason she’s not is because the United States functions, and was set up, as a Representative Democracy, or Representative Republic.

What is a Representative Democracy?

Basically, this is a form of government where “democracy” is founded on the principle of elected officials representing a group of people.

To give you a little bit of a history lesson, the Founding Fathers were basically the rock stars of the 18th century. They were the intelligentsia, the wise and learned men of the time who also happened to have studied just about everything ever written up until then. They’d traveled the world over, spoke multiple languages, lead men in battle, but more importantly, they were also students of history. They knew everything there was to know about every form of government invented by man… autocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, dictatorship, theocracy, totalitarian… it is worth noting that the governmental constructs of socialism and communism weren’t invented until the 1840’s.

From all of these hundreds of years of combined study and knowledge, they knew exactly what would never work and they knew what had potential.

A Representative Democracy is/was specifically designed to level the playing field in elections by sticking up for the little guy and preventing mob rule in the form of regional candidates. Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, as the maps below illustrate, she was a regional candidate.

Looking at the individual states won by each candidate will tell us a great deal about their collective national strategy. States that are blue hold the nations largest population centers. Whatever the cities can’t hold, in terms of population, tends to spread to the surrounding counties, as seen on the next map.

By looking at the 2016 Election results at the county level, it is clear that Mrs. Clinton was a regional candidate playing to the masses in counties with large urban centers, suburban sprawl, and, presumably, large college campuses and/or large migrant populations. By not being able to effectively translate her message to those outside of those areas she allowed Donald Trump to assume the Presidency.

 So the popular vote didn’t mean a thing?

 Nope. Mrs. Clinton could have won by three votes or a million and it wouldn’t have mattered. Many people in 2000, and again in 2016, called for the abolition of the Electoral College and the implementation of the popular vote. So let’s look at the popular vote.

 Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by over three-million votes in 2016, which is impressive. However, to put it another way, her three-million extra popular votes roughly equates to the number of more votes she received in New York City (NYC) alone. Now, NYC is comprised of 5 counties (boroughs) and 312 sq. miles. She won four of the five counties incidentally.

The United States, as a whole, is comprised of over 3.8M sq. miles and 324M people. Now, if we had a popular vote, every single one of the red counties noted in the map above would have had a President making national decisions for them based on the mood of New York City on Election Day. New York, LA, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Portland, Seattle… none of these cities should be the voice of America. Why? Because the things that are important to a single mom in Brooklyn aren’t necessary the same things that are important to the farmer with three kids and 1,000 head of beef cattle in Kearney, Nebraska, or Corydon, Iowa. To bridge the gap and get elected President, you have to appeal to both the single mom and the farmer.

 By focusing on large population centers, Mrs. Clinton was always going to win the popular vote. However, by focusing on states with widely understood large, democratically entrenched, population centers exclusively is what cost her the election. There are other factors at play, but this is the dominant reason.

 In contrast, by stringing together enough states with small Electoral College vote tallies (Alaska-3, Arkansas-6, Iowa-6, Kansas-6, etc.), and staying hyper-focused on a handful of states assumed to be voting for Mrs. Clinton (Ohio-18, Pennsylvania-20, Michigan-16, Wisconsin-10), Donald Trump was able to secure over 270 Electoral College votes and become the 45th President of the United States.

 Presumably, every candidate goes into a Presidential election with a firm and thorough understanding of the rules governing how Presidential elections work in the United States… and it’s not the popular vote.

 You don’t have to like how the election turned out, but you do need to know that the law of the land prevailed in terms of the Electoral College with regard to its intent, design, and function.

Is There Something I Should Know?

In the last month, give or take, I've noticed two unique vehicles in the parking lot. The first one I noticed was covered in a material that I can only assume was the spray on, no-scratch, type stuff they apply to bed liners. If you look closely, you can see a little bit of the bed liner-esque texture on the hood.

And the second vehicle I noticed just today appears to have been painted in flat gray battleship style color. The picture below makes it look almost black, but it's really a dark gray.

Those are two very distinctive, and very unusual paint schemes for an urban setting. I'm getting the feeling that maybe the lull we're feeling with the rioting and the objecting to the elections results might not truly be the end of it.

These vehicles and their paint schemes have me wondering... am I missing something? I mean, I think I stay on top of the news and political scene better than most.

Is there something I should know?

Website Construction Progress

So far I've managed to complete:

• My Works/Published Works
• My Work/Interviews
• Resources/Useful Resources - Books
• Contact

I've been throwing downloadable files in the Resources/Research Downloads page for two days and I'm still not done. I still have a handful left so that'll be done in the next day or so.

The Resources/Useful Resources - Website page will probably take the longest to complete simply because I've provided so many URL's between the books and the articles. I'll get them in there though. Not sure how I'm going to organize it though. Stay tuned for news on that front.

You'd think I'd be able to complete the About page fairly easily... but you'd be wrong. I'll get something in there.

The files that I make available for download on the Recipes/Homeopathic and Recipes/Gastronomy pages will basically be freebies as they will all be coming from the, as yet unpublished, Home Remedies, Poultices, Salves, & Tinctures non-fiction work and the previously published Just a Small Gathering, Volume I cooking and entertainment book.

Brand New Website

On the seasoned advice of others, I have started to move away from my Facebook author page and concentrate more on a website. Information will still be posted to Facebook, but the bulk the resourced material will now reside here! Yay me!