Late Autumn

 

Straggled branches claw the air,

hope for purchase on warm fur.

But the animals have vacated,

dug into burrows or fled hunters.

Old year’s Sun sinks lower on the horizon,

Southern breezes warm lit-up riverbanks

for the time being…

We all know what is coming soon,

so people take their last walks on the beach,

one last enjoyment of rural river scenery.

Time to snap a few last pictures.

A sand whorl here, a branch with berries there,

light and shadow playing across the forest floor.

Some views of that flowing water, changing color

from gray to blue to green and back again;

always in motion, bloodstream of the planet.

It always feels good to escape our artificial constructs,

and subsume the self back into a natural scene.

Tonic for one’s consciousness,

hope for the future,

to propel us through three months of snow and ice hell,

to the spring we so rightly deserve and will certainly have earned.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Screwball ideas - take em or leave em

 

If someone hasn’t already, set up a time-bet exchange:

Paralleling the regular stock exchange.

Buyers and sellers bet on How Long it Takes a particular stock to go up and down.

Say if F takes 1 second to go up 1/8, your bet increments by .01 cent. Bet on times taken to move up or down a certain amount – eaither way. ¼ then your bet increments .02 and so on. People will place a bet on whether it will take 1, 2, 5 or 10 seconds to go up a point in increments of 8, or 10. If you bet 1.00 that F will go up 1 point in 10 seconds, you get 10 cents added to your stake. If it takes half that, you get half payment, or maybe lose .01 or some-such. It may be difficult to work out amounts and time-slices bet, but some exchange could match bettors predicting less or more time for a stock to move, either way. A time exchange. Just another derivative to give regulators headaches.

Here’s another one: There is a company trying to launch objects up into space using a centrifugal device, that spins something around and around, then releases it, “flings” it upwards. Well, why not use a magnetized object, with the positive or negative poles facing outward (a grouping of ring magnets in a circle or somesuch). Perhaps, just perhaps, the Earth’s magnetic field might push against an opposing pole, and help the thing get up into orbit. Farfetched perhaps. So is the idea of using centrifugal force to begin with, but someone is doing it.  (Why not use a rail-gun perched high up on a mountain somewhere instead?)

My last screwball idea of the day: Take a scramjet-type missile, and insert vents near the tip. When the missile is launched, and reaches very high speeds, the air around the tip will be superheated by friction. Vent some of that air to help vaporize a secondary fuel source, like a super-hard metal. This could add thrust out the back of the missile and speed it up even more.

OK, enough silly ideas. Way past time to go to bed – LOL.

A thousand small bites can move a mountain

 

The backlog at US ports almost seems like a huge mountain,

impossible to dislodge, dispel or whittle down.

Giant ships full of cargo wait out in the ocean,

and even more are on the way.

But you don’t wave your hand at a mountain,

and make it disappear by supernatural means.

Ants know the possible answer to this problem.

You move a mountain by thousands of small bites,

hundreds of thousands even,

a river of workers all carrying one small parcel.

Likewise, the shipping container backlog could be

ameliorated at least by thousands of small bites.

Try some self-driving trucks, just in one location -

desperate times require desperate measures.

They might just help, and the tech could be perfected.

Build a few smaller-scale emergency ports.

In a war, ports might have to be constructed,

to move supplies and materiel inland.

Build a few onesies and two-sies one or two-crane ports, near existing ones.

Construct more holding areas for containers.

Manufacture more trailers.

Zero in on each port and demand more production.

Federalize some ports, not all, but some.

The use the national guard to help clear out the mess.

A lot of little steps,

a lot of smaller bites.

Could containers be emptied into smaller sized box trucks,

and cleared out that way?

More time consuming on the front end,

but clearing out the backlog on the back end,

ultimately helping the situation.

This is the USA,

we put people on the Moon.

Surely we can come up with some unconventional,

creative solutions to this backlog,

even if it takes more hands-on hard work to do it.

Just in case, I’m buying gift cards this Christmas ;-)

Creative Process Continuance

 

Scientist have stated that our universe is still expanding.

So on a personal level, that means space is being created.

Since “nature abhors a vacuum” things rush in to fill it.

So the creative artists and workers out there can just keep

on producing their works and putting them out there -

no need to fret about over-saturation.

After all, galaxies are flying apart,

new stars are forming up in gaseous clouds,

even black holes can’t seem to spoil the party.

Why should we not all just keep creating away?

Something has to fill those trillions of miles of

nearly-empty space.

Even all of the old TV shows and corny commercials

won’t make a dent in the ever-expanding universe.

So why should we inhibit real, original works of art?

Keep on cranking, baby -

there is plenty of room out there.