If the modern age were written in biblical style, what would the serpent whisper to women, gays, minorities and most of all, our children.

How about “This paradise isn’t as good as it should be?”

I woke up late, mostly because it was a busy weekend and I went to bed late (and no writing or covers done, which means I need to do double today.  Ah well.) And while I was stumbling around the kitchen in a state of lack of caffeine (it’s sad) Dan was in the family room, exercising and (as one does — even me — while exercising) watching some random movie.  Where a kid was prattling on and on about how we need to change the world, because the world needs changing.

This is one of those aphorisms that those of us who grew up in the shadow of the boomers heard our entire life.  “You’re going to grow up to change the world.”  “We all should change the world” “the world needs to change.”  Or in the language of teenagers at all times and everywhere, throwing fits at their parents, “Why did you bring me into this messed up world?”

Perhaps it’s a sign I’m getting older — and people should most surely get off my lawn — or perhaps it was the utter lack of caffeine, but I stopped in the middle of the kitchen thinking “Why?” “Why is the world so bad?” “And in what way should we change it?” “Or does it matter? Should we just generically change it, like one can change ones haircolor to candyfloss pink, because it’s not our natural color?”

Look, the way the left — supposedly the children of materialistic Marxism — rage at the world, (and more and more the flesh, and the creatively interpreted devil) you’d think they’re an heresy not of main stream Christianity but of gnosticism.  (Oh, wait, I’ve watched (accidentally) some of their supernatural stylings.  Um.) This world is an evil evil place and salvation comes from changing it.  Which in practicality, on purpose or not translates to “we have to destroy the world in order to save it.”

Yeah, I can hear the read till offended contingent now “You only think the world is perfect, because you’re racissss sexisssss homophobic, and you have privilege and–”  Can it.  Also stay quiet while the adults talk.

No one is saying the world is perfect. Of course the world isn’t.  It is a material place, inhabited by material beings.  Your body isn’t perfect, either. It is a commonplace to say we’re all dying. It’s not exactly true. Some of us are still growing.  But yeah, the minute you stop growing, your body starts breaking down.  Does that sound like perfect to you?  Also we’re built on the frame of great apes, who come with their own impulses, ideas and issues which often interfere with what our rational selves want to do.  For instance take this weekend (and last.)  I was going to finish editing a short novel and write three short stories.  Instead there were issues with household and real life things. Net words produced, zero.  And no, my rational self is not happy about it.  The ape isn’t either.  She’s not had a nice walk in two days and she didn’t do anything fun, and she’s cranky.

So? Multiply that by however many of us you think there are.  I’m pegging it at 6 billion and likely less, but the UN has been adding up imaginary people based on the imaginary counts of countries that can’t be trusted to tell you where their borders are, so who knows?

Whichever way, there’s a lot of us.  And we all have issues with ourselves, which leads to issues with each other, which leads…

The world isn’t perfect.  No one said it was.

That said 90% of the people who want to “change the world” want to do so by telling everyone else what to do. Ignoring that they themselves are also not perfect, and more likely than not are appallingly ignorant of the real world out there.

When people — rightly — said the spectacle of Greta Thunberg apostrophizing adult in public was ridiculous, the older left rose up to say at least she was fighting for change.

So she was.  Well, she was scolding for change.  But one must ask: Why is the change she was championing a good thing?

Don’t warble back about “we’re going extinct.” or “Great extinction” or “we only have twelve years.”  Not only is that complete nonsense, even according to the UN who are masters of raising fear in order to gain power (in fact it is their only talent.) but it is patent nonsense.  If this were undisputed and provable truth, if the data weren’t stupidly massaged, if the Earth hadn’t been way warmer (without our interference) in the past, if we could agree on what is causing (was causing. We’re in a pause or maybe heading down. Like the population numbers it’s hard to tell because some people LIKE fear. It gives them power) warming, and it were obvious (and no lefties, it’s not because we don’t get big words. Some of us were raised on big words.) there would have been a scientist explaining to the UN what needed to be done and why, instead of a middle school girl with cognitive issues pointing her finger and asking how they dared.

Instead pause and think about what Greta really was advocating — which I’m sure the older boomers saying “quite right” have never done — to stop this runaway global warming and extinction she’s been told is coming.

I’m sure the benign elderly boomers saying “She is bringing change” in tones like “What beautiful cheeks this child has” think it’s all about the west living a vegan lifestyle (let’s talk about how bad for the environment that would be, since real veganism will kill real humans. Growing what’s needed and processing it for a healthy diet is far worse than meat. Never mind.) wearing “natural” clothing, recycling, not driving more than you have to, and “living in harmony with nature.”

Somewhere in the back of their minds when they hear Greta Thunberg what is playing is “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.”

While if in fact what Greta Thunberg was demanding to stop the catastrophe she imagines is bearing down on us was the death of maybe 5 1/2 of those billions. Why? Well, because you can’t stop carbon emissions and travel (do you have any idea how interconnected our world is?) without stopping food production, distribution, processing.  What you get is the four horsemen: War, famine, pestilence and assuredly Death in the end.

More importantly, the west getting “low water” washers (we’re going to talk about it in the future. Their next eruption of crazy is about water.  I’ve started to see articles about “living in a post water US”.   As someone who had to teach the water cycle to teachers before, I’m here to tell you these arrant idiots think the water is used once and disappears. Also, apparently it’s going to stop raining. Also if there were a real crisis, they apparently miss we have very advanced filtration tech, for ocean water if needed. Argh.) or stopping using straws, or stopping having children (which most of the west is doing anyway) is not going to cause the change Greta demands.  To do that India and China would have to stop their industrialization cold, and most of them would have to die.  In fact, the remnants of humanity would have to go back to living in the stone age.

To stop the fears of a kid who was told the world is a terrible place and about to end.

Or, you know, we could tell her the truth. The truth is that we live in a world that — however many — supports the most people it’s ever supported, in the most comfort these uppity great apes have ever enjoyed.  Even in the third world, life is markedly better than it was fifty or a hundred years ago.

This doesn’t mean that the world is perfect. It doesn’t mean no child goes to be hungry (Venezuela. I’m sure lots of children go to bed hungry in Venezuela.  In the US?  Oh, there might be a couple hundred in a country of three hundred million.  No, the childhood hunger survey is not indicative of anything except insanity. But even in a country as rich as comfortable as the US there are horrible parents, abused children, etc. You can’t stop that. Great Apes.)

In the first world, where little Greta grew up,we are ridiculously, amazingly wealthy.  Kings of the past would look at us in envy. We eat well… more than we need. Most of us have closets stuffed with warm and comfortable clothes.  Those in true need are spoiled for choice of charities distributing winter clothing right now.  Those tight on money — some writers don’t get paid regularly, you know? Free lancer and all. (because I’m still uncaffeinated it occurs to me that free-lancer’s meaning is not far from the denotation if not the connotation of ronin. I now want a headband to wear while writing that says ronin writer.)  — can shop thrift stores (and trust me, half the stuff I buy is new, because stores dump last year’s unsold stock for a deduction. Heck, since I lost some weight (need to lose more, yes) I can buy expensive brand closing either new or perhaps worn once.)

Actually we’re a pretty good case study because though we’ve made pretty good money most of our lives (with some truly disgustingly low points) we have weird priorities.  So we tend to buy our clothes, furniture and often tech (unless needed for work) and always cars downstream at second, third or fourth (one of those cars!) hand, while blowing our money on books, courses education and yes often houses (but that’s an investment which usually — couple of exceptions — pays off.)  And living downstream of the cutting edge of society, we’ve, except for those disgusting exceptions of a couple years here and there, not lived badly at all.  Way better than anyone around me while I was growing up, in fact. So far up, in fact, that my grandmother would be speechless.  She was often overcome by houses with running hot and water and said “what luxury” at things that we find downmarket now. And that ladies and gentlemen is living mostly on second hand stuff.

Our time can afford people who aren’t particularly outstanding in their careers (though I like to think both of us are good) a life that would make kings in the 19th century cry and stomp in envy.

But we’ve ruined Greta’s dreams and her childhood and apparently those of a lot of their cohort, by not killing the more populous areas of the third world that are just now industrializing.

It never seems to occur to these world changers that if someone had changed the world to their ideal before they were born, they’d likely never have been born.  Or they’d have died of something (hospitals require energy. And transport. And innovation. All of which require modern tech) when they were infants. Or if they were lucky enough to be born and alive now, they’d likely be handicapped by issues borne of those diseases and malnutrition.

The Green New Deal (I automatically type it in Green Nude Heel and then have to wonder what is wrong with the words. I need caffeine) is a ticket to exactly that kind of medieval horror-show world.

Already we’re letting the “world changers” aka rebels without a clue play havoc with our infrastructure and energy supply to the point that they’re trying to drive us there on the installment plan.

And all why?

King of the past looking at the lives of commoners now would say “Surely that’s paradise.”

Ah, but is the paradise paradisical enough? Was Greta Thunberg’s childhood exactly as cossetted and pampered as she can imagine? Are we living in harmony with nature and is everyone perfectly happy in the perfectly amazing Earth which hands us everything we need with Rousseaunian promptness?  Is love free? Is food organic? Does our hair flow in the breeze?

Eat this apple, and it will be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  Which like a hippie commune will be dirty, verminous and an ecological disaster.  But hey, at least you’ll have changed the world, right?

Changing the world is easy. In fact, you can’t stop from doing it.  However you live, the world is going to be changed by your being here.  Yes, even if you go to a mountain fastness and become a hermit. You’ll either require helicopter rescue and cost us millions, or some idiot will write books about your life to inspire other idiots to do the same to “save the Earth.”

So, instead of thinking of changing the world by telling others how to live, think on how to change the world by how YOU live, and what you dedicate your (yes, all too short) life to.

The world didn’t get where it is by people doing nothing. If that were the case, yes, we’d still be living in Greta’s paradise and being chased around by tigers, whenever we fell from our tree. (But not saber tooth tigers. Their extinction has nothing to do with us, and it would have happened anyway.)

Does childhood poverty appall you? Well, you’re spoiled for choice.  Get out there and work at easier to grow, better and more abundant crops (yes, GMO. Suck it. We’ve been genetically modifying plants and animals since there’s been agriculture, and maybe before.) Invent industrial processes that are easier and less polluting.  Work at computer apps that make it easier to shop with less waste. Heck, create more efficient engines. Oh, and work at coming up with cures for diseases, since a lot of poverty, childhood and not, comes from disease.

Is your talent more people than science? Work at removing the boot from people’s necks, both the governmental boot and that of culture.  Countries where the individual can’t benefit from his/her toil are mired in perpetual poverty.  It doesn’t matter if the stuff you create goes to your ne’er do well politicians or your ne’er do well relatives.  And it doesn’t matter how good it would be if everyone shared.  In practicality, common property is distributed poverty.  It also kills innovation and the ability to save.  That “capital” that Marx hated? That’s the surplus you save/invest for the bad years.  Marx didn’t know that because he was, in point of fact, a useless grifter.

And if like me your talent is just the ability to entertain people and (as a stretch goal) make them think?  Well, that helps too.  Or at least it’s an honorable way of making a living.

Heck, even those who clean houses for a living (and if you think that’s low-skilled you’ve never done it well) are changing the world for the better. Clean houses are healthier.  And it frees other people to do things who might free other people to do things which in the end might lead to someone having the leisure and resources to create… something really big.  An interstellar drive. A virtually free form of energy that even the greens can’t object to.  Wheat that grows on practically nothing.  Who knows?  Such miracles have happened in the past.

Want to change the world? You will. But make sure you’re changing it by building, creating, doing.  Not by sitting around stomping your feet and demanding everyone do as you say.

Because on the other side of that vision that makes Extinction Rebellion stop commuters on their way to work lies the wilderness, and no way back to paradise.

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Sorcery and Kings.

Tales of wonder and magic.

A fire master must find a magical starter of fires.

A mysterious queen holds a ball in a city filled with magic.

Magic of roses and gold are needed to fight a dreadful war.

An oath keeps a ghost captive.

FROM KARL K. GALLAGHER:  The Lost War.

It was supposed to be a weekend of costumed fun. Instead these medieval historical reenactors are flung into a wilderness by magic they don’t understand. They must struggle to survive and deal with monsters who consider them prey . . . or worse.
***
“Karl Gallagher’s first production, the Torchship Trilogy, was good enough so that I read and reread it. He has now turned his hand from science fiction to fantasy.”
– Professor David D. Friedman, Professor, Santa Clara University, author of The Machinery of Freedom and Salamander
– Also known as Duke Cariadoc of the Bow, KSCA, OL, OP, founder of the Pennsic War.

ON SALE FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY:  Sleeping Duty (Waking Late Book 1).

Gilead Tan and Andrea Fielding survived their stint in the military, got married, signed up to emigrate to a terraformed colony world, and went into cold sleep for the journey from Earth. While they slept, the starship went through the wrong fold in space and settled for a different world, a wild world.

Three centuries after the founding of a colony on the uncharted planet, Gilead awakens to find humanity slipped back to medieval tech and a feudal structure.

Worse, the king who wants Gilead awake won’t let Gilead awaken his wife.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:   Fountains of Mercy: Book 8 of the Colplatschki Chronicle.

Fires dance in the sky, and the great machines fail.

Colonial Plantation LTD can’t decide what to do with Solana, also called ColPlat XI. Should it be a nature preserve, a living museum of pre-industrial techniques, or a standard colony? As the bureaucrats wrangle, a solar storm disrupts technology and reveals deep rifts between the colonists and their administrators.

Susanna “Basil” Peilov clawed her way out of the slums and wants nothing to do with the Company. Peter Babenburg just wants to build his water system and stay out of trouble. When the sky-fires come, Basil, Peter, and their families and friends stand between the colony and chaos. Company administrators assure everyone that replacement parts and assistance is coming, will come. Without those supply ships from the stars, everything falls apart and the colony will die. All that people can do is wait and hope for rescue.

The administrators never planned on facing a group of engineers, a crazy farmer and his wives, and colonists determined to protect their home. Hope comes from some unlikely places, and courage takes eccentric shapes.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: melodic

It’s a cold, clear fall morning in Goldport Colorado, when Orvan Ox parks his delivery truck — Minos Delivers, aka “What can Moo do for you?” — and walks out carrying a mysterious box.
What is in that ornate box? Who is he delivering to? How will it be received?
(yes, this does mean I don’t feel like writing a post today.  Not even food post.  Have fun.)

The Crystal Ball of Hong Kong by Bill Reader

While I don’t think that we should invade Hong Kong—not being a fan of land-wars in Asia, especially ones involving nuclear powers—I can certainly understand wanting to. Hong Kongers initially rose up in response to an “extradition” bill which would have given China legal cover for the political oppression it has always badly wanted to enforce on the city.

And they have had plenty of reasons to stay exercised, given that China has essentially instituted martial law, overseen by one of their handpicked anointed, no less, in violation of the—let’s call it what it is—doomed-from-day-one “One-Country-Two-Systems” agreement. Predictable as a sunset though this was, their position is quintessentially Western—that the will of the people ought to be able to restrain the excesses of government, and laws apply even to the most powerful.

China, meanwhile, takes the traditional communist view that “the people” are to be listened to in direct proportion to their usefulness to Marxist utopia-building, and pair it with the wholly compatible egomaniacal tyrant view that laws exist mainly to let powerful people herd the proles more effectively.

Review the situation dispassionately and each of China’s responses—some would say blunders— in handling it belies their imprisonment within this mindset, to such a degree that they can’t even practice deceit effectively. I’m otherwise at a loss to explain their silly play at “suspending”—but not removing—the “extradition” bill, unless alternatively, they assumed the collective IQ in the entire city of Hong Kong was about that of a block of lukewarm cheddar.
And, one is minded to ask, my, isn’t all of this very— familiar?

The Democrat leadership in the US is currently waxing totalitarian.

Almost worse than their proposals is their attitude, however. First they demand trillions of dollars of spending, the dissolution of various constitutional rights they find inconvenient to their goals, and the fundamental restructuring of society such that government touches and controls everything and everyone. That’s a polite summary, mind you.

They will then call you vicious names, and use mob tactics to attack you if you oppose them—be it doxxing, be it physical attacks like those just recently witnessed by antifa on people leaving a Trump rally, etc.

Democrats in government think nothing of orchestrating coup attempt after coup attempt, always with a familiar cast of characters— government drones whose names never came within 50 miles of a ballot, usually with hyper-partisan Democratic credentials, collaborating with hundreds of Millennial journalists whose entire life can be summarized as an upbringing steeping in propaganda, followed by a job writing propaganda.

And in case being bullied on the internet and the street, and usurped in the halls of government were for some reason not enough, tech companies take it upon themselves to try to socially engineer and censor conservatives independently. All this, and then their thought-leaders have the unmitigated gall to try to demoralize us with an “exhaustion” narrative. (Why, yes, as a matter of fact, it is wearying to the bone to have many of America’s major institutions reveal themselves as dens of partisanship run by people whose moral compasses point due South at all times. I can’t think of a worse reason to capitulate, but it’s noted.)

If you think that it’s mere hypocrisy driving all this— the fact that Biden’s (or for that matter Hillary’s) corruption gets a pass; that most members of Antifa get to commit felony assault without repercussions; that government drones commit unpardonable crimes and their maximum punishment is retirement to a life of being a paid guest or even a host at a Democrat-lead network; and that any norm can broken, any law, written or socially understood, can be violated, and provided it’s a Democrat doing it, the collective media and justice response will be a shrug— if you have been taking this as a mere partisan double-standard, allow me to humbly disagree.

What China reminds us is that totalitarians, full-fledged and embryonic, use one elegantly consistent standard—whatever advances their cause, that thing is legal and just. All other things are bad. It is only a “double standard” from the perspective of people who view laws as mattering, or institutions and norms as anything other than a tool of whatever group they individually favor, which may change moment-to-moment. I put it to you that everything about the modern Democrats indicates they are on the same single-standard as a China. Arguably, a double standard would be an improvement.

In the circumstances, Hong Kong is hard for a Western freedom-lover to view dispassionately.

China is standing as living proof that totalitarian super-states are not just things that Democrats eulogize in chorus on their debate stages, but real and monstrous creatures dominating more people than we can possibly imagine.

Hong Kong is standing as living proof that free people can, despite overwhelming odds, despite the certainty of consequences and the paucity of hope, stand against these monsters. Moreover they represent the idea that moments come where taking such a stand is necessary. Eric “nuke ’em” Swalwell and Robert Francis “Buybacks” O’Rourke, and the rest of their compatriots would strongly prefer you not associate their policies with any of the places they’ve actually been implemented, prefer you believe the march of “progressive” policies unto the death of the host (as has been seen in all of those places) is inevitable, and prefer you agree that there is never any line that can be crossed that necessitates rolling back said policies by methods not explicitly sanctioned by the people making those policies.

We look to Hong Kong because we fear we could become Hong Kong—formerly and nominally free people bearing the full brunt of attack from slaves and pawns of an out-of-control totalitarian empire, whose benefits are always just around the corner but whose abuses, infringements of real human rights, expansive corruption and dead-eyed-inhumanity are always right here and now. We look to Hong Kong as an example of when and why free people can and must say “enough”, regardless of consequences and regardless of outcome.

Yes, regardless of outcome. Because freedom is either a philosophy you are willing to fight for when all other meaningful options except fighting are gone, or it is a very temporary gift given to you by people who better understood it. It encapsulates the idea that simply being someone else’s slave is not a sufficiently worthwhile existence to merit enduring it simply because it is easier. For if that were not the case, why bother?

I say this each and every post, and I say it in earnest—we aren’t there yet. It’s not a fig-leaf. The rough music hasn’t started. Everything I’ve read suggests, you’ll know it if it does. But I really hope it doesn’t. However, don’t confuse our long continuity of inherited freedoms with the idea that it can’t. Increasingly, the DNC’s leadership wakes up every morning looking to take our unique and working system, and supplant it with a much more common and dysfunctional one. Watch the Democratic debates and take them at their word. If you think that China can’t happen here, think again.

But if it does, I pray that Hong Kong can happen here, too.

Incoming: The Chicxulub Impactor, Part 1 ― The History By Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

As per usual, I gave a new science talk at LibertyCon this year. I get asked a lot about asteroid impacts, and for years I had a hobby of studying such things, given my background in astronomy/astrophysics. (I was even on an asteroid impact mitigation working group for a time.) So I figured it was about time to do something with this one. And of course, THE asteroid impact is the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T, or as it’s called now, the K-Pg ― the geologists changed the name of the Tertiary period to the Paleogene, for reasons unknown to me) Impactor.

There was, without doubt, an impact at the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic (modern) Eras, and that’s it ― the K-T boundary impactor. The question isn’t whether it happened, but whether it’s the cause of the extinction event that apparently occurred at the same time.

But…how do we know?

The history of the discovery is a bit drawn out, but fairly recent.

As paleontologists studied the geological record, often by cutting down through strata and determining what fossils were in each layer, they discovered that there was a major die-off between strata at the boundary between what were then called the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods. In many cases this die-off was severe, with plentiful fossils of a given species found immediately below the boundary, and none at all just above it.

In every occurrence of the boundary, however, there was always an odd layer of clay. This clay always occurred right AT the boundary. Pay attention to that fact; it’s important.

The Players

Dr. Luis Alvarez

According to Wikipedia, “Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911―September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968. The American Journal of Physics commented, ‘Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century.’”

He got sucked into the Manhattan Project, and continued work in particle physics and the cosmological microwave background radiation after the war. He became known as a “scientific detective.”

And most importantly for our discussion, he and his wife had a son named Walter.

Dr. Walter Alvarez

Walter grew up to become, not a physicist, but a geologist. And HE got interested in that clay layer at the K-T boundary. See, it turns out that there are blue bazillions of species that had fossils BENEATH the clay layer ― that is to say, they lived before the event that laid down the clay ― but almost a completely different set ABOVE the clay layer; there were few that were found both above and below. And of those few, none were large; they were mostly niche animals or deep-marine dwellers.

So the geologists in the 1960s knew there had been an extinction event, but had no idea why. By the 1970s, Walter had his curiosity up. He found the clay layer at several digs, and wound up taking samples, then discussing the matter with his father Luis. HE, in turn, contacted colleagues at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, who analyzed the samples of clay, and discovered…

Iridium.

The important thing to understand about the element iridium is that on Earth’s surface, it’s next to nonexistent, in any isotope. It’s in the platinum group of metals, and is considered one of the rarest elements on Earth, though it’s very useful in our high-tech world. To give you an idea of how rare, it’s estimated that only three metric tons per year are produced worldwide.

It is, however, rather abundant in meteors and asteroids.
And in that little clay layer.

The boundary layer is the narrow greenish-brown

band above the pale tan layer.

The logical conclusion was that there had been an impact someplace. They didn’t know WHERE, but they published a paper in 1980…and opened up a can of worms that went on for years, and considerable argument, not all of the pleasant debate variety. In fact Luis died (1988) before the matter could be resolved.

PEMEX

PEMEX is the Petroleos Mexicanos, a Mexican petroleum company, and they’d been doing geological surveys of their country since at least the 1950s. And it was in the 1950s that their prospectors noticed an odd, nearly-perfect semicircular feature in several forms of data, all centered along the shoreline of the Yucatan Peninsula. More, in the various gravitational- and magnetic-anomaly data, there was a matching semicircle offshore, extending from the Bay of Campeche into the Gulf of Mexico. It was too symmetric to be a volcano, and matched no known volcanic structures.

Enter two PEMEX petrogeologists conducting a survey of the Yucatan in 1978: Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo-Zanoguera. They, and contractor Robert Baltosser, began to suspect it was an impact crater, but PEMEX forbade discussion with the community at large, lest company-proprietary information should leak as a result.

But when the Alvarez’ paper came out in 1980, only two years later, they realized they might hold the smoking gun. Penrose attempted to contact them, but got no response. Penfield and Camargo-Zanoguera reported their findings to the Society of Exploration Geophysicists in 1981, proposing that it might be the same crater for which the Alvarezes were searching. But the meeting was poorly attended, and apparently most of the impact experts were off attending a different meeting.

At the same time, graduate student Alan R. Hildebrand published a paper on the impact theory, and began to try to localize the impact, searching for candidate sites. He knew the Gulf of Mexico was the likely site, but had no luck trying to narrow it down.

Nine years later, in 1990, a reporter told Hildebrand about Penrose’s paper, and Hildebrand contacted Penrose. Location of some of Pemex’s drill-core samples was made, and the samples were tested…and found precisely what Hildebrand expected to see in an impact site sample.

Nearly forty years after the first discovery of the gravitational and magnetic anomalies, and fully ten years after the Alvarezes proposed the notion, the asteroid-impact extinction hypothesis was complete. Unfortunately it was not well-received by geologists, and there is still contention, even today.

However, most of the naysayers were silenced when the full volume of the data began to emerge.

We’ll look at that next time.

~~~

For more details, check out INCOMING! The Chicxulub Impactor by Stephanie Osborn on Kindle and Nook.

INCOMING! The Chicxulub Impactor

About 66 million years ago, some 80% of ALL SPECIES ON EARTH became extinct — at the boundary between the Mesozoic and modern eras. In every occurrence of the boundary, all over the world, there was always an odd layer of clay. When the thin clay layer was found to have high levels of iridium — an element rare on Earth’s surface — things got interesting.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YHK3T4N

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/incoming-the-chicxulub-impactor-stephanie-osborn/1133840127?ean=2940160786032

Stephanie Osborn’s latest fiction novel:  CAMPBELL: The Sigurdsen Incident (Childers Universe Book 6.

IS SOMEONE TRYING TO KILL MARY RAO?

Captain Mary Rao, Jablonka’s planetary tactical officer, seems to be under the gun from all angles, but neither the Sigurdsen Base military police nor the counter-intelligence investigations personnel believes that it’s anything more than a confluence of accidents.

Lieutenant William Campbell of the CSF Intelligence Division believes differently. What he doesn’t know is who or why.

And if he can’t figure it out soon, he could die with her.

At one time I developed a really bad ear infection.  This must have been 7 years or so back.  I felt miserable.  But it wasn’t until one of the kids came in from school, looked at me and said “mom, why are you tilting sideways?” that I realized my sense of the vertical was off.  Apparently something to do with the inner ear.

In the same way, it’s possible for our thought to slowly TILT out of all semblance to normalcy until it is in some place very far from normal, but we don’t realize it.  This is not uncommon (at least brought in as a defense) for crimes committed by tightly-wound groups.

It’s entirely possible if a woman fell in with her church choir she would be saintly, but when her only source of support and love is ye little orgy next door, it will be otherwise.

Now, normally — in most cases — it is easier to do this to teens.  To do it to adult humans you need a really powerful narrative, usually a simplistic one that explains “Everything.”  It doesn’t of course, but so long as no one brings in the things it doesn’t explain, or you can keep them away with vigorous excoriating of outsiders, you’re fine.  Or not.

There was discussion here of the never sufficiently to be reviled Zimbardo who is sort of like Rousseau’s evil twin.  Rousseau thought that raising a total savage would make a noble and wonderful creature.  Zimbardo thinks raising any civilized man is BARELY keeping monsters out of the Nazi indoctrination factories at bay.

It’s not either.  Of course it’s not either.

Mostly raising children with no discipline and no instruction creates really dysfunctional eternal toddlers.  But toddlers, while throwing epic tantrums (particularly when the toddlers are over 100 lbs and in adult bodies) aren’t refined enough to think of making lampshades with humans’ skin and/or feeding humans on cardboard.  No, those are refined and civilized monstrosity. It’s the difference between your cat eating you when you die, and your SPOUSE eating you when you die.  One is just the natural beast, the other is repulsive evil.

And no, not every human is just waiting for a little bit of power to become a monster.  Some are.  And some have been socialized to be.  Taught to be.

Which is not the same as being savages.

Rousseau and Zimbardo, the mirror twins, are in fact partners in taking apart human civilization.  There is this horribly dichotomy going on, a similar one to “every culture is equally good, except Western culture, which is evil.”  In the same way “noble savages are just perfect and wonderful, and evil comes into the world through the west/white people/males/people who are minimally competent, all of whom are nazi prison guards waiting to happen.”

The goal is to stop from instilling in kids the necessary training to keep them from descending into mere feral behavior, while at the same time convincing those that have the propensity — and some will or will have acquired it — with the belief that “everyone does it, so as long as you hide it behind virtue signaling, you can. Everyone who says they don’t do it — no matter how heinous the it — is only lying. Or is too coward to do it.”  Which is how you end up with things like… well… high-placed men flying on the Lolita Express.  The president of the united states violating the trust (etc) of his intern, someone at his beck and call.  And the press turning a blind eye to it, because “everybody does it.” And the feminists turning blind eyes to it because “At least he advances the right of women to have abortions. And all men do this.”

It’s also how you get fiction in which the highest, perhaps the only true crime, is “hypocrisy” i.e. claiming you shouldn’t do these things, while, of course, doing them, because everyone does.

Except that of course not everyone does it.  But the entire society has been subjected to gaslighting on the subject since Zimbardo’s crazy was accepted as science, so now everyone is walking a little tilted.  And they think they’re vertical.  Which is why both of those gaslighters need to be debunked wherever possible.

Which brings us to how this happens to groups: look, we’re social apes. We’re designed to pick up narratives, particularly tribal narratives.

It probably saved the lives of many an orphan or lostling to be able to integrate with the tribe and start doing the things the tribe did, even if he came from some place they didn’t.  That’s humans for you.

But cultures can go… weird.

It normally doesn’t happen all at once (and no, it’s not just some kids stranded on an island. Geesh.)  It takes either generations of bad raising (coff. Not that we’re not facing that) or a culture under severe stress for a long, long time.  And people being afraid.  And suddenly you start seeing people doing and saying things that you’d never have imagined a year or two ago.

Yes, to some extent we’re seeing this happen to the left, and it’s clear to us, because we’re not of the left.  And while a lot of them were always this crazy, a lot aren’t.  In fact we’re seeing a lot of it infect the left-fringes of the right who are suddenly saying things like “Better Red than Trump.”

Do I understand? To an extent I did. I was a never Trumper almost up to election 16.  Until I realized the sort of suicide pact was going to land us with Hillary.  It took effort to step away from the group think, to go “Wait, what am I doing?”

Richard Fernandez sometime back did something about “infective memes” that act like demon possession.  Oh, I’m not saying any of the people affected by them go overnight into monsters.  It’s more that you have friends you’ve known for years and suddenly they’re telling you that it’s okay if we elect a socialist because–  and then you get word salad.  And something about how rude or ignorant Trump is (Which I guess after the gentle Obama who gave people the middle finger and talked of the Austrian language… is completely insane, yes.)

This is terrifying.

I’ve been talking for years about how we’re tap dancing on a powder keg.  Well.  Someone decided to add some nitroglycerin to their soles.

And I’m starting to see a response on the right.  We’d be more than human if I didn’t.

Look, I understand preparing.  Hell. I’ve been stockpiling necessities for over a year.  I call it “the apocalypse closet”.  I don’t think bad things will happen in my neighborhood, but you never know.  And I’ve told you guys — all of you — that it will get very bad in spots.  It’s already bad in spots. And it will get worse.  And you’ll have to think twice about where you go and what you do in your lawful pursuits.

BUT–

But I’ve been seeing things like “Kill them before they kill us.”  And no, not just in comments on this blog.

I’m as guilty as the next guy (and the next guy is Bob the Registered) of demanding heads on pikes, or of posting helicopters with “Go be a commie somewhere else.”

And that’s okay.  It’s  probably horrifying for the left, but so is everything we say and do.  So much triggering becomes silly.  Boy who cried wolf and all that.

But the thing is, we too are in our groups, and it’s easier to start tilting. And not notice. We’ve been under stress for a long time. All of us. And we’re looking at the left and seeing their flaunting of the laws and established procedure.  And yes, yes, I do believe them when they say they want to kill us.  I believe them even more when they say they wish we’d all die, because frankly most of their threats to kill us are like the crazy guy who followed me around downtown yelling he was going to kill me with his snake (yes, he had one. No, not poisonous or large enough to squeeze to death.)  Until I got tired and told him I was going to do something anatomically improbable to him with my knife.  And then he backed away from me so fast he almost fell.

Most of the left has a lot of aggression and given complete safety to express it will in the manner of undisciplined toddlers (and a few psychopaths.)  But yes, there are the few psychopaths who are legitimate threats (a lot of them in politics.)  I’m not discounting that.

Or that in certain times, in certain places, you might have to defend yourself/ves.

At this point I will not attend anything that’s likely to attract antifa without being armed.  And since firearms are a problem at most rallies, I’ll have to take knifes or maces.  But frankly I can’t understand people who don’t.  (Yes, metal detectors, but there are ways.)

And yeah, I’m not going to tell anyone it’s evil if one of the antifa kiddies ends up looking for his kidneys on the floor because he messed with the wrong old guy or girl.  Mostly because, though many of them are misguided or mentally ill, they did put themselves in arms way and you can’t give a sanity test to every attacker.  (Nor should you.)

Yes, there will need to be a lot of self-defense to stop them thinking they’re immune.

But right now, where you stand, where I stand, to go after, say journalists or lawmakers with physical force would be — if not unwarranted — unwise.  To the outsider, who hasn’t been watching politics closely, you’d look like the aggressor.

The way to fight a war of laws (or ignoring them) and of lies is to fight them with speech and demands for legal action.

Proportion.

And as for attacking the loudmouths, the every day meme posters, the nonsense talkers of the left, the everyday agents provocateurs on blog and social media?  That’s where you’re tilting so far you don’t realize how far.

Memes should be fought with memes — we will fight them with photo shop, we will fight them with Leonidas memes, we will fight them with gifs, we will never ever ever surrender — and words with words. Even when it seems like you’re throwing pearls before swine. You are. But it’s the spectators, the maleducated, the gaslit, who go “Wait… maybe there is a reason…”

And when and if the time comes to fight? Yeah, there will be crimes.  Our side has its psychopaths, too. We’re not angels. And some people have been under tension a long time (in a way we all have. All my friends’ groups have weird stuff going on in them.) Will there be what we call “War crimes?” of course there will. Look, there are “War crimes’ in every war. That’s why war is hell.

But will there be systematic, organized war crimes? Will we be rounding up people that the left insists are in their “preserve” and just killing them because of skin color, or — yeah, I do have an interest in this one, think on — accent, or how they dress, or their profession? Because we’ve stopped seeing them as people or even thinking about who they might be, and just see them as widgets and “enemy markers.”

I’ve told you before that — in my neighborhood next to Colorado College — I went to vote early morning, 2004.  And the precinct was full of what my mind catalogued as “hippies” and “Lefties.”  Women in lose skirts, with long hair. Men with long hair, in modish clothing.  And then I realized I was assuming their politics.  After all, I was wearing my Indian cotton skirt, had my long hair in a pony tail, and was carrying an art bag slung on my back.

As it turned out, my precinct went Republican that election.

But that instinctive target acquisition is group-think.  Yes, we do it too. And when we juxtapose that and the idea that all them sumsobitches should be killed… evil results.  Monstrous evil.  And then society turns against the people they see as evil and their ideas and — as often happens — throws away the baby with the bathwater.  And we careen into socialism, which kills even more people.

I think right now the left prays every day for some inadvisable violence from the right.  No. Make that “I know”.  I know, because every time there’s a shooter they wish-cast it onto our side.

Let’s not fall into a trap so obvious that it’s like an arrow on the path, saying fud, and leading to a red-painted noose, okay?

No one is telling you that you can’t defend yourself. But step back and think about what you’re trying to do and what the actual immediate provocation is.

The left is acting so crazy, that it’s making everyone crazy.  But are they like pre-historic man trying to stampede the bison over the cliff?  Or are they an actual clear and immediate threat?  And should we throw ourselves over the cliff to certain death, or think how to defend ourselves, rationally?

Step outside the group and think.  We are unfortunately social apes. It does influence us.

We are also, in this blog at least, goats.  We shouldn’t stampede easily.  Think.

If and when the time comes you need to defend yourself, be prepared. No one says otherwise.

But even if it seems impossible, try to avoid a conflagration that destroys the civilization we’re trying to preserve. Think of the mal-educated, indoctrinated, gaslighted generations who would, of necessity, do the rebuilding.  Don’t rush.

I pray every day that a conflagration won’t come. For the first time in my life I have A prayer life.  It might not help.  But who knows, it might.

Be ready for the worst, but do try to avoid it.

Be not afraid, but neither jump, arms wide into the void.

Be of the group, but not so wholly immersed you don’t see how things look from the outside.  (Given the lively arguments here, there’s not much danger, at least on this blog.)

Watch for tilting.

I realized I was getting better in the middle of yesterday afternoon, as a great depression settled upon me for no reason at all.

Weirdly, and for no reason I can figure out, that’s one of the symptoms — for me — that I’m starting to “turn the corner” on a viral infection. All of a sudden I’m weepy and feel like the world is coming to an end.  It’s entirely possible this is because until then I’m just trying to stay awake/drag myself around to do the absolutely necessary. Suddenly I have a little more energy, and my body uses that to worry and be really sad.  Fortunately I’ve learned to identify it for what it is.

It is, what my dad used to refer to as “that which burns, heals.”  In the same way, while I hate the weepy and depressive part of the recovery, I also know it means I’m getting better. Not well. Nowhere near well, but better and on the way to being well.

This is not just my health update. I think this is where we are, nationally.

Look, part of my being where I am, emotionally, just now, is that I can’t see a way out of the mess we’re in: from things getting ugly with China — and they need to be, or China will take over the world — or the the people retaining vestigial control of the media and various parts of our bureaucracy and trying to override the voters while they careen us towards socialism.

Right now everything looks horrific.

But a friend told me yesterday what the president is engaging in is economic war, and maybe it will save us from real, shooting war.  Maybe.

The one thing I’ve noticed… Take the Trump “gaffe” yesterday about how people can’t go to the grocery store without ID.  Look, it’s hyperbole, obviously. If you walk to the store and you pay in cash, you don’t need ID. How many people in the US go to the grocery store on foot or public transport and pay in cash? Because if you drive there, even if you pay in cash, you need ID. And if you pay in any way but cash, they’re supposed to look at the ID anyway.

But all of a sudden he has everyone talking about ID for voting, one way or another.  And it allows the left to expose their monstrous ignorance.  And it allows us to engage them.  Yes, okay, I did get in the middle of it on Facebook, but come on, I was apparently arguing with someone who thought that Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty was the law of the land, or perhaps that the Constitution was engraved on the statue of liberty.  I’m not sure which, my mind kept bending away from the stupid, like a finger from the fire.

It is part of it, though. Almost everyone complaining was exposing their own — often very strange — ignorance of either how you buy groceries or of what the law of the land is.

I’d like to think Trump is doing it on purpose, but perhaps he’s not. I don’t know. And frankly I don’t care.

When I called this the second year of the masks coming down, (almost the third year, counting from election night 2016) it is this effect I was talking about.

Think about it.  Three years ago even Hillary Clinton was pretending she wasn’t a socialist.  Now the comedy skit known as the Democrat primaries is openly socialist and frankly, openly against you, yes, you who love America and want it to remain America.

Three years ago, although they’d been playing gatekeepers on opinions for years, the New York Times would never have published an editorial anti free speech.

And if people were marching in the streets screaming “No America at all” (seriously, people, let’s buy these children tickets to Cuba and China already!) there were no echoing voices in the Senate agreeing with them.

Oh, and the house of representatives would never try to impeach a president on collusion, when it is obvious they’re the ones colluding.

Now?

The masks are coming off.

Here’s the thing about masks, though: they prettify.  While they stay up, you can pretend that the faces behind them are normal, that everything is fine.

When the masks come down, you see the decay and the horror.

Here’s what to remember: be it China or the extent to which our own country has been subverted by the dying contortions of the Soviet snake, or the hatching of the Chinese one: those things were there.  They’re not worse now.  It’s just now we can see them.

And though the things we can see are unsettling, frankly if I had to navigate my way out of a hall filled with spinning knives, it would be better if I could see to avoid them.

It’s the same for the country, I think.  Our chances have actually gone up.  We just don’t feel like it, because look at all those horrors surrounding us.

They were there before.  They’re just visible now.

That which burns, heals.  Or at least it can.  And sometimes the depression means we’re getting better.

It just doesn’t feel like it.

Be Not Afraid!  This is no time to go wobbly.

*I am better and for the people who think it’s more serious, psychosomatic, etc.  No, this is a virus that has been hitting my entire family.  The amazing thing is that I was the third, not the second to get it.  Husband is now in the beginnings of it. I should be able to actually work today and with a little bit of luck be back on the blog tomorrow- SAH*

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months. One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM SAM SCHALL:  Betrayal from Ashes (Honor and Duty Book 5).

War is never clean. Honor doesn’t always win out. Betrayal becomes the shadow currency that can tip the balance of power.

Colonel Ashlyn Shaw learned those lessons the hard way. Five years ago, she lost her command and her freedom because of the machinations of those willing to betray Fuercon, the homeworld they’d sworn to protect. Supposed allies conspired with enemies. Now Fuercon and its allied systems face a war on multiple fronts.

A war where the enemy doesn’t want a diplomatic solution. One where the enemy claims victory based on the number of civilian deaths.

This is not a war of attrition. It is a war of survival.

It is also a war Ashlyn and her allies have every intention of winning. But to do so, they must first unravel the layers of a conspiracy that goes much deeper than any of them suspect.

Honor and duty. Death before dishonor.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: friendly

I thought I was being unusually lazy yesterday.  Today, even though the body aches are gone, I feel like sleeping and am having freezing/burning up spells.Fairly sure it’s just a cold son has been so kind as to share with me.  But I don’t feel up to a publicity post.  Do it tomorrow?
I’m going to go back to bed.

We’ve eaten low carb for five or six years now, mostly faithfully because if I break from low carb I immediately experience an eczema outbreak.  When it started, I had eczema all over my body and wasn’t sleeping.  Most of the time the trigger for eczema is dairy. My mother had assumed mine was, so I was raised without dairy products or anything that might contain traces of dairy.  I found out long before I left the house that she was wrong, because I’d have milk and yogurt at friends’ houses with no bad effects.

But I had no clue what the trigger was, except stress.  It is still that.  In the run up to my son’s wedding, with all the travel arrangements, I was in the middle of a major outbreak. By the afternoon after the wedding, it was almost completely clear.

So a search on line said that for some people the trigger was sugar or really carbs of any sort.  I went low carb cold turkey.  (Despite which I’m now trifling at the border with diabetes, but that might have to do with thyroid regulation — I’m overdue for a test — and with the fact that I spent three years (the house buying/publisher issues years) going on prednisone every three months.)

A year or so later husband was diagnosed as diabetic (though most of the time he too stays at the border, at least if we’re being good on carbs) and the whole family went low carb.

While bread is much missed by my husband, it doesn’t normally disturb me not to have it.  My major “I miss this” is potatoes.  You can fake mashed potatoes decently with mashed cauliflower.  But nothing can fake baked potatoes or fries.  My secondary miss is corn. ANYTHING with corn.  Popcorn, corn chips, corn.

Speaking of cauliflower, younger son discovered riced cauliflower which is extremely useful as fake rice.  In fact, since I’m feeling under the weather I’m considering making Chinese Fried Not Rice tonight.  (It’s one of my “I feel ill” things.)  And I recently found out you can make passable if not extraordinary fake refried beans from cauliflower.

Anyway, I don’t normally miss bread much.  The exception is in fall.  When it starts getting colder I want bread, crackers, bagels, etc.

Some of these are “easy” to make to regular recipes.  There is a low carb flour called Carb Quick available from Amazon.  As long as it’s not a yeast raised dough, you can make it from this.  I often use it for muffins and scones. Also the rare batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Some are more difficult. Something you learn early is that carb quick (or almond flour) recipes lack sponginess and also structural integrity.

For bread that friends who aren’t low carb can’t tell from the real thing, I make Soul Bread.

For pizza dough (and as a basis to a lot of other things) I use the Fathead recipe.  Since pizza also isn’t one of my things, (I know, I know, HERESY!) I do it maybe twice a year, when we have the guys over and we are watching a movie of something.

But this last week as the weather turned ugly in Colorado, I found myself hankering for pretzels with dip and, strangely, for crackers.

So I turned to the internet…

Okay, believe it or not this makes a very decent pretzel recipe.

As for crackers… remember the fathead dough?  Well, you can make these which are your basic cracker:  https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/fathead-crackers/

However for something a little more savory, these were quite good:  https://simplysohealthy.com/low-carb-rosemary-parmesan-crackers/

And for those who can’t have cheese/dairy, there is this:  https://lowcarbyum.com/keto-low-carb-crackers/

Because I don’t do low carb baking every day, I didn’t have any sunflower seeds, but I did have ground hemp seeds (yes, Colorado. Ardeearar. Actually it was left over from before I found cauliflower “rice.”  It was one of the experiments.  Anyway, I used that and the result was a crunchy “Whole grain” artisanal cracker that I wouldn’t be amazed to see served at a high class restaurant as an appetizer.  It tastes very nutty, too.  Good for spreading stuff on or dipping.

I have other recipes to try, because these searches always yield “oooh.”  This includes bagels roti (I can serve it when I make vindaloo) and what I’m assured is a good immitation pita (which since, with a few exceptions, our diet trends “Mediterranean” will be very good.

And now I have stuff to edit, a half dozen (not exaggerating) short stories to write, and two covers to fix.

Fortunately I cleaned house yesterday!