Batten Down the Hatches!

Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 2:11 pm  //  Tip Johnson

Warning: Major Storms Threaten the Pacific Northwest.

Nuff said.

The Royal Bank of Scotland: Gone A-Viking

Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:00 am  //  David Camp

Among the clans of Scotland are few that did not bump up against the Norsemen over the centuries. Indeed some clans are descended from Viking raiders and traders of flesh who settled in and took local wives. So Viking traditions survive in some interesting ways - consider the MacNeills of Barra, as Irish a clan as you could find in Scotland, who well into the 17th century would "go a-viking" - setting false lights and claiming salvage on the resulting shipwrecks.

And consider also the Royal Bank of Scotland, which even in this modern day carries on the Viking tradition! How, you may ask? Do brawny oarsmen in pinstripes drunk on schnapps and brandishing golf clubs raid the airport lounge bar? No, even better- they pushed bank clients into liquidation, and passed information to the bank's real estate arm which snapped up properties at bargain prices based on this inside information. I mean, the bank's real estate arm and the client arm both reported to the same person, the appropriately-named Mr. Sach (as in pillage, in the Viking tradition).

Here is a link to a very comprehensive article with some excellent video links.

Cup of Coffee?

Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 5:00 am  //  Deb Gaber

We know it’s coming: that seemingly endless run of short drizzly days, repeated over and over again for months. Days where it never seems to get fully light, just an oppressive gray that, before you know it, is fading. You go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. How do we carry on? How do we get through the Pacific Northwest winters? Coffee.

Seems like you can’t walk a block without passing a coffee-buying opportunity, but what do you really know about your companionable, aromatic addiction? For starters, according to the Mayo Clinic, 400 mg. of caffeine is considered “safe” for most healthy adults. That translates into about four 12 oz. cups from McDonald’s. Or better yet, 18 oz. of Starbuck’s brewed coffee. Surprisingly, the darker the roast, the less caffeine, as it’s burned off in the roasting. A tall (12 oz.) blonde roast will average 270 mg. of caffeine as opposed to 195 mg. from a dark roast.

If you’re trying to cut back, order espresso over brewed. While an ounce of brewed coffee has 20 mg. and an ounce of espresso has 75 mg, a 12 oz. cup of brewed coffee will have 240 mg. of caffeine whereas a single shot Americano will have 150 mg.

Worried about dehydration from coffee? Don’t, it’s a myth. While there’s a slight diuretic effect, regular coffee-drinkers build up a tolerance and, overall, the amount of water in each cup easily offsets any risk of dehydration.

And just so you can cover most of your bases, here are the stats on some other favorites. Black tea? It takes six 12 oz. cups to get to 400 mg. of caffeine. Coca-Cola? You can drink up to twelve 12 oz. cans. Red Bull? Five 8 oz. cans.

Old Glory at Half-staff on Sunday

Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 3:35 am  //  John Servais

Today, Sunday, Oct 9, the stars and stripes will be lowered to half-staff across the United States. This is in honor of the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service, which is held each year on the first Sunday in October. For many government agencies, the flag was lowered Friday at sunset and will be raised back Monday morning. All private flag pole owners normally follow these same procedures. The governor sends out email instructions to state agencies, and often he receives insructions from the president.  

When you see the flag at half-staff and wonder why, you can quickly find out from a new link being added tonight to NWCitizen. It is a link to the flag page on Fairhaven.com. In Fairhaven - south Bellingham - is one of the tallest flag poles in the state at 100 feet. It was originally installed in 1987 by several Vietnam era Veterans. Today it is managed by the Historic Fairhaven Association in an agreement with the city.  

On the website, the flag committee posts the reasons for the half-mast of the flag each time if is lowered during the year. The Fairhaven flag committee subscribes to the governors emails and posts the reason for the half-staff flag on the page. 

Also on that flag page is a link where you can contribute to help buy the new flags needed each year.  Right now there is a need to buy a sturdy winter flag. The light nylon one there now will get shredded if left up. The association funds the flag purchases, but would welcome donations to help. Disclaimer: I am the chair of the association flag committee.

Accessory Dwelling Units - Their Time is Here

Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 4:29 am  //  John Servais

Accessory Dwelling Unit - ADU - is an awful name for a wonderful and charming little home.  A tiny house.  A backyard shack setup for one person to live in.   What is so wonderful is it can provide a home for a young person going to school, or a retired old person who needs very little space.  What is also so wonderful is it can provide income to the home owner of the normal house on the property - income that may be vital to normal living or just very appreciated for augmenting a bare living salary. 

Now here is an article from last week where President Obama is encouraging cities across the country to enable ADUs.  Here in Bellingham there is hope we may have a decent law enabling them while still being considerate of how they will impact neighborhoods.  I'll not go into any of the issues, nor of how city hall has handled this so far, as this is not an article readers can comment on.  

What is interesting is this is a national movement and even the president is behind it.  It can provide low cost shelter for those who need or prefer that while providing income for single family home owners - instead of large apartments invading neighborhoods with revenue going to the millionaire owners of the apartments.  A nice prospect.  

Maybe we can call them Backyard Sheds.  

Dumbing Down

Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:00 am  //  Tip Johnson

Apparently, we have irrevocably exceeded 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  It could be burning fossil fuels, increased volcanic activity or something unicorns are doing down in middle earth - I don’t care.  It's being measured and CO2 is not something humans are designed to breathe. In fact, "The Last Time CO2 Was This High, Humans Didn’t Exist".

There are implications for climate and the planet, some keenly relevant to the Pacific Northwest, like "intense El Niño cycles—a climatic oscillation that today delivers heavy rainfall to the western U.S."

But it seems "the planet is poised to reach the 1,000 ppm level in only 100 years if emissions trajectories remain at their present level."

We may be forced to make some adjustments since "it is estimated that the collapse of the West Antarctica and Greenland ice-sheets would lead to getting on for fourteen metres of sea-level rise."  That's much more than the Port is planning for on the Central Waterfront.

Will we make good decisions? According to the National Institute of Health (NIH) in one study "At 1,000 ppm CO2, compared with 600 ppm, performance was significantly diminished on six of nine metrics of decision-making performance."

A recent highly touted analysis suggests most industry would not be profitable without externalities that essentially steal our land, air and water quality.  Now it seems they are stealing our cognitive capacities, too - dumbing us down.

Maybe before we get too dumb, we will heed the advice of another NIH study showing "workers had significantly improved cognitive function scores when working in Green and Green+ environments".

A respiratory toolkit may ultimately be more important than the infill toolkits we are currently exploring for our urban environment.

The Stage Is Set For The Meltdown

Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:20 am  //  Dick Conoboy

This is a follow-on to my blog entry of September 28th entitled "World Economy on Crutches" in which I said, "The world's economic situation is dire and the disease-ridden Goliath is about to collapse as the crutches of the last decade will no longer hold the weight of total global debt.  The central banks of various nations and the so-called European Union have had the money presses working around the clock while whistling in the dark and hoping against hope that the collapse will not happen soon, or at least not on their watch."

For background, on October 1st economist Michael Hudson wrote about James Galbraith's "Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice" This is a suggested read for all those who want to understand what has taken place in Europe as the EU/Euro took hold and began to strangle economies while funnelling billions to the banks through countries like Greece whose citizen have to pay the debt. Use the article as a kind of McGuffey's reader on the topic. Excerpt: "The essays in this book present Greece’s experience as an object lesson for other countries seeking to free themselves from right-wing financial control. The IMF and ECB do not even consider their destruction of Greece’s economy to be a failure. They continue to impose an austerity doctrine that was shown to be fallacious already in the 1920s."

Hudson goes on to explain: "The euro’s creation can best be viewed as a legalistic coup d’état to replace national parliaments with a coterie of financial managers acting on behalf of creditors, drawn largely from the ranks of investment bankers. Tax policy, regulatory and pension policies are assigned to these unelected central planners. Empowered to override sovereign self-determination and national referendums on economic and social policy, their policy prescription is to impose austerity and force privatization selloffs that are basically foreclosures on indebted economies. Galbraith rightly calls this financial colonialism."

Just reading this article will make you want to tear your hair out.  But as Hudson says, "Debts that cannot be paid, will not be paid".  That is when the fun begins.

And as Greece serves as a poster child for the monumentally failed policy called austerity, Germany's Deutsche Bank is winning the race to be the poster child for this round of bank failures since all those smarty pants bankers have not got the end game figured out.  Deutsche Bank is in grave trouble again, having been massively bailed out during the last crisis, and may be the Lehman Brothers of the Euro Zone, precipitating the collapse of the European economy with its inevitable, worldwide domino effect. 

Pam and Russ Martens wrote on October 3rd in Wall Street On Parade, "Just how speculative is Deutsche Bank after the U.S. helped to prop it up during the 2008 financial crash? Prior to the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, the bank is showing a stock market capitalization of $18.05 billion with the following exposure to derivatives according to its 2015 annual report: 'At December 31, 2015, the notional related to the positive and negative replacement values of derivatives and off balance sheet commitments were € 255 billion, € 606 billion and € 31 billion respectively.' That gives a whole new meaning to speculation, even by the wild west standards of U.S. banking." 

That's $1 trillion folks.  How much longer do you think this will hold up?  It is now 5 a.m.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.  T. S. Eliot

Hitler Was a Tweaker

Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 2:11 am  //  David Camp

A long time ago in a faraway locale I worked for a warehousing company with a 24-hour operation. Part of my job was making sure inventory was properly recorded and so I spent a fair bit of time out in the warehouse, more frequently at year-end when the auditors came in for their "sober second look". One thing I made sure to tell the audit staff was to take great care out in the warehouse - the forklift drivers were super efficient but drove very fast. One fine day the morning shift foreman discovered the night shift had left their paperwork under his forklift's seat - along with several small packets of white powder. The powder turned out to be methamphetamine - which the entire night shift crew had been using. Big scandal, entire crew replaced - but - with the new crew, efficiency went way down. The HR guy pointed out the irony that the meth use that had gotten the crew fired had made them more alert and speedy workers, and effectively, more profitable employees.

Which is why the US Airforce to this day gives methamphetamine to pilots on long missions to maintain alertness.

It has always appeared to me that Adolf Hitler, particularly in his latter day speeches, seemd almost dementedly jerky and speeded up and obsessive - typical signs of methamphetamine use. Just take a gander at his behavior in some of these speeches.

Here's a review of an amazing new book on the subject.

This article confirms that not only Hitler, but the entire Nazi military, was habitually jacked up on speed and tweaking out. The Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes that bypassed the Maginot line and conquered France was fueled by methamphetamine - the entire army was active for over 72 hours non-stop thanks to speed.

Now Hitler's private doctor (and the military) had access to the best pharmaceutical-grade methamphetamine, which means some of the tweaker ills you can see any day on the streets of Bellingham due to impure criminal-grade meth were avoided. But long-term chronic use of methamphetamine "is neurotoxic to human midbrain dopaminergic neurons. It has also been shown to damage serotonin neurons in the CNS.This damage includes adverse changes in brain structure and function, such as reductions in grey matter volume in several brain regions and adverse changes in markers of metabolic integrity." (from Wikipedia) If Hitler was a habitual methamphetamine user for fifteen years, this pretty much explains his erratic and increasingly demented behavior over the course of WW2. And his cognitive decline and obsessive refusal to surrender.