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Tighten Those Chin Straps Folks Because Here Comes a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD)
Tighten Those Chin Straps Folks Because Here Comes a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD)
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Please stick with this piece all the way through because it does not end on the same path from which it starts.
Being a child of the 50’s and 60’s, it comes as no surprise to anyone from that era that I’m a bit of a space buff. From the moment I saw my first televised rocket launch I was hooked and have never fully recovered from my childhood obsession. Beginning with Project Mercury and the suborbital flight of Alan Shepard in 1961, followed shortly by the three orbits of John Glenn, then progressing through Project Gemini where America practiced the space skills needed to eventually land on the moon and culminating with the Apollo Program and (supposedly) several trips to the moon, one thing they all had in common was the seriousness of everyone involved. Going to space was serious business performed by serious people. There was no joking around because failure wasn’t an option.
Who can forget the early years watching stern (mostly baby faced) engineers hunched over their monitors at the Launch Control Center in Cape Canaveral (Kennedy) and Mission Control in Houston, nearly all wearing the standard dress uniform of white short-sleeve shirt with tie along with the mandatory plastic pocket protector, headsets firmly affixed to one ear while the other was left open to hear those around them.
There were always several huge loose leaf binders at their side, dog-eared and well thumbed, complete with handwritten notations and addendums. And of course, endlessly pacing the back of the room or moving from one monitoring station to another, there was the Mission Director riding herd over his minions. There was no doubt by anyone in that room who the man in charge was and where the buck stopped.
For the Apollo flights a new Houston Mission Control was constructed, complete with a huge front wall covered with screens to display various flight parameters and video, along with a special VIP viewing area in the back sealed behind glass. At that point in the space race NASA had firmly grasped the use and abuse of public relations and propaganda to mold (and hold) public opinion. NASA understood all too well its huge budget depended upon public support, so the launches had become spectator sport and the best ticket in the house was to be seated behind the rocket scientists as they lit off another Roman candle.
Yes sir, this was cutting edge rocket science where nearly everything they did had never been done before. The entire US space program was infused with a can-do attitude where anything can be done if enough brains, brawn and money were thrown at the problem. Failures, while initially expected during testing and development, were not taken lightly and most certainly not joked about. While I feasted on the machines and technology (and still do to this day) it never ceased to amaze me what type of person would willingly strap themselves atop a glorified firecracker and wait for someone else to light it for the ride of their lives.
With this in mind it was extremely refreshing to hear (read actually) Elon Musk’s quip (tweet actually) that his recent attempt to safely land an expended first stage booster (something no one has ever done before) from his SpaceX Falcon 9 International Space Station re-supply rocket ran into difficulty just before touchdown on a drone barge out in the ocean and suffered a RUD, short for a ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’. In other words, it crashed and burned before sinking beneath the waves. Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark, though apparently not much of a mark on the barge itself.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Say or believe what you want about Elon Musk (and there seems to be a huge audience out there who hate Elon Musk for various reasons) but the man is a true innovator and pioneer, someone who radically changes everything about anything he puts his mind to. What he tried, and almost succeeded in doing for the first time the other day, was to launch a rocket and then bring back to Earth (safely and completely intact) the spent first stage.
This is no small task since we are talking about a fragile empty tube (the full fuel tanks add structural rigidity which is no longer there) essentially shaped like a cigarette over 160 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter, and land it intact on its business end on a ship the size of a football field out in the middle of the ocean. And he very nearly did it on his first try. If nothing else the man has balls.
There is a shared understanding in engineering that speaks to the relationship between potential disaster and the complexity of the engineering attempted to solve a complex problem. Essentially a low tech solution has a lower propensity for disaster than high tech when applied to the same problem. While this is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation, you get the idea. Keep it simple stupid (KISS) is a perfect example of this principal.
If you examine some of the methods Elon Musk uses to solve complex problems, clearly he and his engineers understand this principal and practice it in all their endeavors. Outside the box thinking, combined with the hiring of non mainstream consensus thinking indoctrinated talent, consistently puts Elon out in front of the pack. Plus an obvious willingness, and even an affinity, to laugh at his ‘self’ in public when most other professionals would be hiding under their desk or pointing fingers in order to shed any blame for failure. There is no doubt who is in charge here and where the buck stops.
Elon clearly recognizes he is in a high risk business. Rather than fear failure or avoid it like the plague, Musk embraces it for what it truly is, inevitable and survivable if approached in the proper manner and with the correct mindset. What makes a true and consistent winner is honesty first, beginning with the self and radiating outward from there to all s/he touches.
Staying with the space theme for now, let’s briefly look at three examples of RUD within the NASA space program and see if we can find a common theme other than it being serious business. In 1967 three Apollo 1 astronauts died in a fire inside the capsule they occupied during training. While you are welcome to read the entire ‘official’ investigation, which cited all kinds of contributory factors, bottom line the capsule was pumped full of pure oxygen which tends to make nearly everything extremely flammable. While technically not a RUD, that fire was not an accident but rather a certainty just waiting to happen.
The second example; on a cold Florida morning in late January of 1986 the shuttle Challenger suffered an extremely violent and very public RUD shortly after liftoff. While nearly 30 years have done wonders to sanitize the explanation for this disaster, when the decision was being made on whether to launch or not the next morning (there had already been several delays) it was understood it was going to be very cold and the people in that meeting who were responsible for the solid fuel booster rockets (Morton-Thiokol if memory serves correct) clearly stated in the presence of the NASA decision makers there might be problems with seals because of the cold and they urged extreme caution.
They, meaning those who worked for the booster company, were overruled via conference call by those higher up in the company. The pressure to keep the schedule (and the government contracts) was a higher priority than any ‘potential’ problem. The results of that decision, and more importantly everything leading up to that point, are now very well known. The interesting thing about collective decisions and group failure is no one wants to point incriminating fingers since everyone had their fingers in the pie. Such was the case here and the investigation exposed all this in glaring detail.
It was entirely avoidable....and yet it wasn't.
Finally, space shuttle Columbia suffered a RUD upon re-entry from Earth orbit in 2003. While this was a somewhat less public spectacle than Challenger, the root (human) cause was quite similar in nature. While the official explanation was a large chunk of foam insulation detached from the main external fuel tank during the early stage of the climb to Earth orbit, with the foam punching a hole through the thermal shielding on the leading edge of the shuttle wing thereby exposing it to devastating heat during re-entry, the fact is beginning with the very first test shuttle mission chunks large and small had been coming off the external fuel tank and smashing into the orbiter.
This was a very well known and obviously not well understood problem with the space shuttle system. While there were all kinds of issues with this problem, beginning with the original design of both the external fuel tank and the fragile ceramic thermal tiles on the shuttle itself, if you read the actual report (and I did shortly after it came out) in my opinion it all came down to a passage I remember reading. One engineer interviewed by the investigating committee basically said since there had not been significant damage from foam before (Columbia was the 113th flight of the shuttle system) no one considered the real possibility there would be one in the future. It was an ‘acceptable’ risk. Besides, we’re talking about foam insulation here. How bad could it be?
Obviously very bad.
While some might call this a failure of imagination, particularly by those who wish to sanitize their own involvement or that of the institution they are/were involved with, just as it is nearly impossible to get someone to do ‘A’ if they are paid to do ‘B’, so too is it nearly impossible to get someone to critically think about adverse consequences when they are conflicted, subverted or consumed by their own dependency or greed. Which brings us full circle to the coming national, and more likely global, RUD.
Plenty has already been written about the insanity of attempting to rectify a global debt problem with even more debt. Or the stranglehold the wolves have upon the construction of the dinner menu featuring sheep as appetizer, entrée and dessert. So there is no need to repeat it all here. The global economic system is in deep trouble and getting progressively worse.
Of course this doesn’t mean the global economy is doomed to suffer a RUD simply because it is in terrible shape. There is still time to avert complete and utter disaster, though there is no denying we are headed for significant pain and suffering even if ‘they’ somehow manage to avoid the iceberg dead ahead. But of course ‘they’ aren’t trying to avoid the iceberg, just delay the collision in order for the elite to prepare for, and prosper from, the consequences.
And here is where we recognize the true commonality in all the RUD’s described above. While the immediate cause of each disaster is unique in each situation, and the circumstances of each incident are also entirely different, the commonality lay within the organizational cause of each ‘accident’. And by organizational I do not ‘just’ mean the fact NASA was involved in all the above mentioned RUDs.
Step away from the NASA examples and look at any RUD, for instance the breeching of the dikes around New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, and you will find while the trigger for each is unique, the organizational cause for the incident all follow the same basic blueprint. Greed, self interest, broad assumptions, indifference, turf battles, CYA and so on all play a role in creating the organizational circumstances that enable, and even promote, disaster rather than prevent it.
In other words with regard to organizations, particularly public organizations, the cure becomes the disease.
So obviously transparent, and yet so hard to see if you ain't looking.
Wolves Hidden in Sheep’s Clothing
Our socioeconomic system, while purported to have been created in order to benefit all (though not necessarily equally) is in fact used to subvert, exploit and enslave the general population for the benefit of those few at the top of the heap. While the vast majority of us ‘know’ this statement to be true, our conditioning as a slave to the system informs us there is (or at least was) a real chance we can buck the system and ‘prosper’, even if never reaching the highest level of the elite.
The dream of potential ‘freedom’ (ultimately meaning financial freedom for the vast majority, not self rule and determination) motivates us slaves to endure our drudgery. We work and are paid ‘money’, thereby enabling us to eat, sleep and play with a reasonable degree of comfort. The puppet masters make sure just enough crumbs are left on the floor so full scale revolt doesn’t enter the equation. Can anyone say ‘social safety net’ or ‘minimum wage’, both of which support subsistence slave existence?
As I discussed in detail in my “Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme” four part series, the money meme distorts our reality and corrupts the mind and soul to such an extent that for all intents and purposes we become addicted to the pursuit, generation, accumulation, growth and consumption of ‘money’ in all its forms and functions. For those who wish to control the population, the lever effectively used is to control ‘money’ and let the pursuit of the addiction enslave the population. While certainly this is another broad statement which fails to accurately describe anyone in particular, thus enabling all of us to claim ‘I’ am not one of the addicted, the sad fact is much (I would say nearly all in one form or another) of our everyday lives revolve around ‘money’.
None of these concepts are new to those who are most likely reading this and really not the point of this article other than to reiterate the basis for my thinking. While an entirely competent, and most certainly compelling, argument can be made supporting the notion those who administer the socioeconomic system are promoting, or simply enabling, a future RUD as a means to the end of consolidating power and further enslaving those they no longer wish to bestow crumbs upon, a complimentary point of view might be organizational rot and degradation is simply an additional spark to propel the approaching RUD. Houston, we have a problem……and it might just be us.
Those in power set up and/or modify political, economic and social systems to enable the elite, and those who support them, to remain in power. While the narrative we are taught, thus the stories we tell each other, are about truth, justice and the American Way, the ‘truth’ is the American Way is just another experiment in plantation farming following a long line of experiments going back thousands of years. Only ‘ours’ was brilliantly designed to leverage, while simultaneously reinforcing, the master/slave relationship. But of course that doesn’t fit the conditioning, and comforting, narrative we tell ourselves now does it?
While there is no doubt present day living conditions, along with the accompanying bread and circuses, are significantly better than found on 1st Century Roman slave labor farming villas, the Feudal social order of the Medieval Manors or the 18th Century cotton plantations, our productivity, and thereby our profitability to the elite, are also orders of magnitude greater today than the old school plantation slave. A happy self deluded slave is a massively more productive slave. “Sign me up,” begs both master and slave.
The social order never changes, only the narrative and living conditions.
This glaringly obvious ‘fact’ doesn’t alter the reality today’s ‘free’ mind is just as constrained, if not more so, as the mind of the beaten, bloodied and broken plantation slave. Just because we do not acknowledge the binds that tie us to our servitude does not invalidate their existence, but rather significantly strengthens them.
The same can be said about Socialism, Communism, dictatorships, monarchies, the police state and every other modern day plantation hierarchy. The soothing labels we choose to appease our feigned ignorance, if not outright denial, do not shield us from the effects. Rather they wonderfully illustrate our thoroughly broken minds and spirit, with our rapidly decaying bodies the last roadside sign warning of the looming bridge abutment and total systemic collapse.
The present day belief held by many in the alternative community (and increasingly in the mainstream) is ‘Capitalism’, that bastion of free market economic growth and prosperity, has been distorted and hijacked over the last several dozen years or so. This belief implies there was a period of time when ‘Capitalism’ was pure, or at least more pure than it is today.
Believing this forces us to ignore our own history (altered and distorted as it is to help support the narrative we are taught) which shows us corruption, abuse of power, self dealing, manipulation and so on are as much a staple of the American Way as apple pie and Chevrolet……and always has been. While these abuses, along with their duration and intensity, rise and fall over the decades as social awareness and outrage ebbs and flows, the wheel eventually completes its turn and we find ourselves back where we started. While ‘history’ does not repeat it most certainly does rhyme. This is not by accident.
The dog eat dog, or more accurately slave eat slave, adversarial system we are indoctrinated into, and enslaved by, all but assures its eventual organizational RUD. While common sense appears to indicate this makes no sense from the Powers That Be (PTB) point of view, after all stability would seem to be their goal, ‘they’ more than anyone else understand the flaws, intended or otherwise, which are built into this type of socioeconomic system, including its eventual RUD, and assume they will be able to handle just about any eventuality. Besides, it is always better to keep the slave population on edge and fighting among themselves over crumbs and distractions then firmly focused on their true tormentors.
While this might appear to be a huge leap of faith by the elite 1%, a long history of minority rule by generation after generation of elites informs us otherwise. While there are dozens of contributing factors to the elite’s success, their primary strength is their willingness to do ANYTHING required to maintain control, including eating their own by offering up a few sacrificial elite lambs to be burned at the stake.
This effectively serves to sate, even if only on a temporary basis, the angry hoards’ blood lust for someone (else) to be held responsible for their own willing participation in economic and social slavery, thereby enabling the vast majority of the rebellious slaves to return to the more comfortable emotional state of conditioned slavery.
Stated simply we do not cast off our deeply embodied conditioning in a few short days, weeks or even months, thereby freeing our ‘self’ from ourselves. In the ultimate expression of psychological self destruction “We the People” will do whatever it takes to dispel any lingering cognitive dissonance. Above all else, we fear the pain of knowing ourselves. We are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets and those can only be found, and confronted, deep within.
Photo Credit - Inner Demons by Christian Hopkins
This is one of the primary reasons revolutions rarely succeed. Or if they initially do, the revolution itself quickly becomes worse than what it superseded under the guise of carrying out social and political ‘reforms’. If the elite have not already co-opted the leadership of the ‘revolution’ they will soon do so while the revolution struggles to convert to civilian rule. Those who are effective revolutionaries are not necessarily well suited to confront and reform social inequality and strife or create a functioning bureaucracy from scratch.
Knowing this, let me count the number of ways the elite can (re)establish control over the ideologically blind (the revolutionaries) and the emotionally stunted (the recently ‘freed’ slaves) who have now returned to their cages trailing a revised narrative to sooth them back to sleep. It’s like red meat to a starving hyena and the elite are always ready to pounce.
If anything the elite welcome the occasional revolution because it acts as a psychological re-boot for the affected slave nation, encouraging the conditioned to return to their slave quarters while the promised change is never delivered, all while enabling a frenzy of looting by the elite and the revolutionaries while the social and financial order is being restructured. Essentially the conditioned are encouraged to endure even more suffering in the name of change, and many will willingly do so in their desperate pursuit to dispel their recently enflamed cognitive dissonance. The con game changes, but the players remain essentially the same.
While we slaves are preoccupied with local, regional or ‘national’ concerns, the elite see no substantial borders and almost always think and act globally. This is how the 0.1% rules the 1% who rules the 20% who rules the remainder. I do not fear the King as much as I fear all the King’s men, ultimately the better kept and more powerful house slaves who dole out the actual punishment you and I receive.
I am not as concerned with the approaching RUD and the devastation it will bring, for this is inevitable and beyond my ability to control. What concerns me deeply is what will follow. The most powerful opiates and sedatives in human experience do not spring from the labs of Pfizer, Merck or Johnson & Johnson, but rather are produced within the deeply conditioned and pacified minds of the Slave Nation.
The controlling narrative, combined with the need for the conditioned mind to rid itself of all outstanding cognitive dissonance, virtually assures the elite the upper hand regardless of the appearance of revolution, mindless anarchy and mob rule. Rest assured there will be blood, and plenty of it, before the re-boot is complete and the new patsies storm the stage proclaiming ‘our’ victory.
A new set of political patsies, same as the old set of political patsies.
An animal caged all its life rarely ventures outside for long regardless of the ease of egress or the pleasures that beckon beyond. The emotional discord that erupts when the familiar confines are removed is simply too powerful for the vast majority of captive minds to push through, thus the urgent need for control to be reasserted, corralled if you will, if only by a new set of accommodating elites. Power, and a recently ‘freed’ mind, abhors a vacuum.
Therefore, for the elites at least, a RUD, inevitable as it may be, is entirely useful as a reset mechanism and herding mechanism. Put a can of familiar Spam in the back of the cage and the hungry and emotionally distraught will quickly return to the familiar confines of their mental and emotional cages.
This is why time after time I always return to the same beat of the drum. The only way real change will ever be effected is if “We the Slaves” first change our selves. And this can only be accomplished by way of a fearless and thorough examination of our inner fears, triggers and conditioning. To paraphrase Bill W., half measures avail us nothing. To scratch the surface of the ‘self’ and then pull back, either out of fear or shock, only sets us up for more of the same servitude. One must dive in and go deep, returning to the surface often for air and perspective before once again submerging for another scouring of the deepest darkest reaches of the mind and soul.
The next RUD, intentionally planned or organizationally birthed, is just around the corner. Of this I am quite certain if for no other reason than history shows us the well beaten path to the next bridge abutment. Rather than scream my loudest while beating my chest in frustration at my impotence and my fellow slaves’ willingly ignorant servile prostration, I must ready myself and those who wish to join me for the coming winter.
I cannot stress enough the fear and panic which will permeate the global community when the next RUD commences. The herd’s instinct to riot, run and then retreat will be incredibly powerful and will overwhelm all of us even from a distance if we enter the next disaster unprepared mentally, emotionally and physically. And by prepare I do not just mean stacking PM’s, stocking food and strengthening the fences.
The only way to weather the coming storm is to first look deeply within, clean house, become settled with the things we cannot change and busy ourselves with those we can. It all begins with the demons within.
Cognitive Dissonance
01-27-2015
Seconds before disaster.
- advertisements -
The clock stopped at 1:17....a long shear of light.....and a series of low concussions.....
Anywho, here's a stale interview with Elon Musk, stale Charlie Rose and stale old Bob Lutz about humanity continuing the carbon emitting experiment:
"The way I look at the CO2 thing is that we're running an experiment which is to see what the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere is before the Earth gets cooked. I don't think that is a wise experiment. Let's say that experiment is 99% likely to show that CO2 is no problem but 1% likely to show that it is going to cook the planet. I don't think we're gonna take that 1% chance. It's just not smart.... mmm I think it's more than 1%"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422411861&x-yt-cl=84924572&v=NO0D...
----------------
Anywho, here's a stale picture from 1979 of the band RUSH touring Kennedy Space Center with Deputy Director Gerry Griffin and a recounting of how RUSH found themselves at KSC in "Red Sector A" for the launch of STS-1 Columbia 12APR81.
http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/tours/810410-12story.htm
They wrote a song about it:
Countdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW-8yCKwhBE
"And we enjoyed the music Bob, thank ya. Crippen says "we enjoyed it, just wanted to share something with ya"
Crippen got busted for possesion... of a sandwich, aboard an Apollo mission
Countdown was the wake up song for STS-109, 11MAR02 (3/11/2002) and STS-134, 25MAY11
NASA wakeup calls pdf
RUSH tours North America in 2015 to celebrate their 40th anniversary. Serious business ; )
"Elon clearly recognizes he is in a high risk business. Rather than fear failure or avoid it like the plague, Musk embraces it for what it truly is, inevitable and survivable if approached in the proper manner and with the correct mindset. "
the difference between an entrepreneur and a manager
the first seeks risks for their returns, the second seeks their returns while trying to mitigate or fully avoid risks
nice article, Cog
Thank you. High praise from a tough, but fair, commenter.
Cog, you are way too kind. but I presume you have found out that kindness, when paired with manly virtues, is the kind of sticky honey-like thing that entraps others (hi, Mrs. Cog!)
you used examples of slavery/serfdom, including the 1st Century Roman Villas and the 8th Century Manorial Serfdom
have you ever wondered about the differences between the slavery of the first and the serfdom of the second? if yes, I have a reading suggestion for you:
"Debt: the first 5'000 years" by David Graeber. ok, he is a socialist if not a communist, and his very last chapter is imho a bit rubbish (though I suspect you might like it more then me)
but he makes very sound anthropological and historical attacks to the "common narrative". I think it would help you in your goals/studies
I'll make an example: we are used to see "free markets" and "capitalism" as nearly sinonymous. but they aren't. and the way he sees it (from the perspective of socialism) it's then very easy to see that the "classic liberal" stride to free markets is often in conflict with the "classic conservative" "order & law" and "pay your debts" worldview
meanwhile he shows very well where the conflict between "the state" and "the free markets" originated, as well as the whole "Adam Smith worldview"
and he has astonishing insights in the bourgeousie, the "middle class", or how debt can fuel aggressions
the only thing I have to warn you is that he uses the word "communism" with fondness. this might be a cultural gap for which you might have to build your own bridge
but the way he uses it is the "communism" that you, as a family man, should recognize: what is the price of a firstborn? can such thing be even contemplated? and yet we humans have had such times, and we risk getting them back, so a proper understanding on how different the ways can be of humans to "organize themselves" can be very helpful
my kindest regards to your Missus (I hope I'm using the last term in the proper way)
Either you or someone else recommended that book in the comment section of another of my articles. I promised back then I would put it on my reading list. I just purchased it and will have it in time to start reading it this weekend.
And I don't think I am being too kind to you. You speak your mind when you think I am off base, but you are fair enough to also encourage and praise me when you think I am on the right track. Most people are not capable of doing this in a sincere manner. You are.
Most people are so consumed by their ego they simply cannot publicly agree with someone they have previously disagreed with. You give and take credit when due or needed. I appreciate that and wished to publicly acknowledge it in you.
I also give the book my highest recommendation.
there is the importance of both "suspending belief"
and "suspending disbelief", depending on what it
is that one is confronted with or attempting to
accomplish or appreciate. to not be able to differentiate the
correct application is to be upset, confused, isolated and
perhaps, doomed. but, there is always grace ....
.
you get the picture.
.
very inspired thread, thanks.
.
i imagine the picture of the sheep and the wolf
where all the sheep have wolves faces except one,
the true sheep. i think people would relate to that
image even more so, interesting.
suspending belief is the first step, leading to thinking.
suspending disbelief is the first step, leading to acting.
no? and no single thing, act or position is sustainable
of itself. there is that, and that's all rud.
.
Nick Lowe performs "Peace, Love and Understanding" in Studio Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ywceG6onqg
CD, you've helped me to finally clarify the choices of a human regarding participation in society.
There will always be wolves amongst the flock. One must leave the flock to avoid the wolves. It is human nature both to flock, and for there to be sociopathic wolves within the flock. "Do whatever to stay in power" indeed.
But what does it mean to leave the flock? It means to abandon the lust for money. What will that mean, situationally? Perhaps it will amount to poverty and hunger and less access to health care. In fact, a more free but shorter and less comfortable life.
One can imagine that there might somehow be achieved a critical mass of freed men which would comprise an alternate functioning society, but as you say, and as human nature dictates, there will always be some wolves, at least by the time that the critical mass is achieved.
So I will now go back to the flock, knowingly and pretending to be without revelation. Perhaps that is the common condition for those other sheep, and are you really inside of their heads and able to deny that?
Hopefully the wolves will continue to just take small bites, as perhaps it is the presence of wolves that makes the flock possible.
As an afterthough, there are sometimes sheepdogs, who keep the wolves away. But who do the sheepdogs report to? Just a different version of the wolf.
"Perhaps it will amount to poverty and hunger and less access to health
care. In fact, a more free but shorter and less comfortable life."
None of this needs to be true. I don't think it is black and white, but rather gray all over. And even if life is shorter, will the shorter life not be more rewarding? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I like cupcakes just baked and frosted. I don't think cupcakes are for everybody just some so long as I am one of the some I will be fine but if I can't vet my cupcake then someone is going to be in trouble. Just keep giving me cupcakes OK. Then there will be no trouble.
Moar cupcakes over here....stat. :-)
<And call SWAT while you're at it. What? They're not available right now because they're serving a court summons on a 89 year old grandmother?>
When you're a hammer SWAT team everything looks like a nail dangerous.
i come from the same time frame as u. always loved the early days of cape canaveral and the excitement. the question facing us today simply is do i want to live free. that has a different meaning for each of us but i think we can all agree we need to regain our personal sovereignity. right now we are not part of the decision making process. so i welcome massive change . and im not running and im not scared. i want a world for my grandkids where the welfare of the human race and the planet comes first not some corporation. so i welcome whatever is coming so long as it shakes this whole planet to its core and we see some real true change
Curious fact about NASA: all 3 fatal accidents happend the last week of January. BTW: this is the last week of January.
The winter doldrums. :-)
I noticed that 'fact' when Challenger was destroyed and kept it in the back of my mind. When Columbia also came down during the same calender time period my antenna went up. Two is a coincidence, three is the beginning of a trend and worthy of a serious look.
The thought still rattles around in the back of my head seeking substance and form. Some day I will pull it out and examine it closely.
I wish I were as intellectual as you CD.
I don't. I'd be forced to actually consider the state of the world, and would either become a raging psycho or suicidal.
Being dumb has it's benefits.
" I'm not dumb, I think I'm just happy" Kurt Cobain(?)
"......and would either become a raging psycho or suicidal."
They have medications for that.:-)
Seriously though, I spent many years riding the emotional roller coaster before making my first serious attempt to find some sanity. I still tend to drift now and then. The key is not to go with it nor fight it, but to understand what is going on within and recognize it does not need to be that way.
There is no spoon depression unless I want the depression. I can either be a victim to myself or a victor to my self. It is my choice.
Cognitive Dissonance.
An amazing article and a wonderful story with great comments. Thanks to all of you.
The upcoming global RUD event has the potential to upend even the elites. Neither they nor we will like how this movie ends.
Thank you for the high praise. I wrote about a slow crumble being possible back in 2011. Four years later I am amazed how much further the elastic band has been stretched. At some point in the unwind even the most protected will be affected. There will be blood enough for all.
Good job, CD, well done. You put a lot of work into this, and when you get riffing, it's pretty fun to read. How long till my ATM is spitting out SDRs, do you suppose?
Depends. Are you American?
We Americans are arrogant bastards and might refuse to use the new coconuts (aka legal tender) for a while.
Dear CD,
An enjoyable rant,and evidence that you have thought long and hard about man's fate.I saw the reference to AA,and if it means you've been through the steps,you understand the concept of a higher power(though 12 stepping has been growing in cultural exposure as more rehab programs include it,so it may simply be a cultural icon to conjure with in your case-surely I know not),yet you don't formally invoke such in your essay..For those of us who believe in the God of Abraham,Isaac,and Jacob we have a dogma which would fit perfectly with your understanding of the human experience.For Christians,there is the book of Revelation,which details all the vagaries of human life,and their repetitive,cyclic nature,and offers hope ultimately in the one who died,and lives again and is coming again.For the Jew there is Ecclesiastes and the major prophets who point to messiah's coming.
For the rest,it is '...a tale told by an idiot,full of sound and fury,signifying nothing..."
And I'm not quoting William Faulkner
That's weird, ds73, a westerner who believes in one of the Jesus religions. What an unlikely happenstance. Yawn.
Cog, I am sitting here at my desk thinking about what you have written and taking it to heart. Your thoughts: Deflation or hyper inflation first?
Both, its happening now if you are astute in your observations. Just my 2c.
If history is a guide, and there really isn't a true history of a global un-backed fiat meltdown to consult, there will be a significant deflationary impulse first as credit money is defaulted upon and destroyed, then a last man standing desperate fiat pump into the system to try and 'save' it. This might even include checks being mailed/sent to everyone to get the pump primed.
I'm not sure if it will even require 'hyper' inflation to take the system down. Not even sure at what point inflation crosses over into hyper drive.
You wrote very well. However, Mr Cog, you need an editor.
'Principal' is basically an adjective. Even when used as a noun, it implies an adjective: Principal (amount of money lent); principal (teacher). 'Principle' is the noun you need to use here. This is a matter of presentation.
I also want to know what you are referring to as "inner demons". The term has become a cliche. I will be grateful if you can define what such a demon is.
Thanks in advance.
I agree about the editor, but it is basically a one man band here so we ( Mrs Cog and I) do the best we can.
I often say we are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets and those things we will not discuss, either collectively or individually. Those are the inner demons I speak of.
Please take a nice pill. Few here could write at such length and with such imagery and eloquence.
Thank you Cog Dis and the Mrs. You are right, the 'wheels within wheels' are coming off everything.
It is an unpopular view in these parts but there is an answer, and a timeline, and I will post it in my profile, so when it happens, and it is happening now, you can find it for easy ref.
(I'll put it here too) thanks again.
http://www.locutions.org/read-the-locutions/
I studied the whole Morton-Thiokol conversations in college for two semesters as part of a M.E. degree. What stuck me was that euphemisms can get people killed. I remember watching a vid of one of the MT Engineers being grilled by Gov employee regarding the O rings. The strongest terms he was "allowed" to use in his deposition was that by launching the vehicle in such low ambient temps would be "away from goodness".
What
The
Fuck?
You can bet a fucking lawyer came up with that little gem.
I guess there is no such thing as an earthly Utopia, eh. It seems that as mankind becomes more dependent on techology and less and less self-sufficient the worse these resets will be. It is going to be ugly this time around, but survivable for many hopefully.
Not to derail your excellent piece, because both you and Ghandi are correct; Be the change you want to see...
Anyway, I worked on the shuttle program in the 80's, specifically on the External Tank, and even more specifically TPS, Thermal Protective Systems. I was a machinist, and then a supervisor of the final shaping of the protective coatings applied to the tank.
In the fall of '85, a fellow we called "Hank" (his real name was Heinrich) burst into my office. "Hank" was not just anybody, he was the chief thermal engineer on the ET project. He was visibly upset- He said that the higher-ups had demanded that he re-formulate the recipe for SOFI (Spray On Foam Insulation) because it contained a small amount of cyanide.
Now, I was only indirectly involved in SOFI, my primary duties were in SLA (Super Light Ablator), which was the layer underneath the SOFI.
However, Hank was responsible for the whole thermal protection layer- both SOFI and SLA.
The failure in the winter of '86 was not due to Hank's worries- rather, the dipshit in charge of launch control was more concerned that Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher, be in orbit for Reagan's SOTU. He ignored Morton-Thiokol's warnings that the o-rings just might not seal at temps below freezing. I can't remember that assholes name just now, but he actually challenged M-T's engineers to prove that he shouldn't launch. Their chief replied (paraphrasing) It's your bird, you bought and paid for it. But, if it were mine, I wouldn't launch it today.
Anyway, back to Hank- He said that the already tenuous bond between SLA and SOFI would be seriously compromised if the formulation were changed.
Fast forward to exactly 10 years to the day of the Challenger incident, Columbia disintegrated on re-entry from an incident that occurred on liftoff- it appears Hank was right.
Oh yeah, a couple days after our conversation, I learned that Hank had resigned.
Interesting insights on the shuttle launch disaster. Shortly after that 1986 event, I was working at a company an dheard the story of NASA calling our temperature experts. It seems that theey used an infrared pyrometer and saw extremely low temperature readings on the space craft tank. It was so bad they figured the device was wrong. So, they ignored the cold readings and ran with it. Bad choice.
Your Morton narrative jives with my memory. But Morton did defer to NASA on Challenger and whatever was behind NASA motivating them to push the bird off the pad. Morton could have shut it down if they wanted to by saying the boosters were not ready based upon the cold. It was a political decision, not one based on safety.
Sounds like Hank had some backbone and integrity.
Thiokol was a polysulfide rubber sealant used to form a rubber seal bonded to two separate surfaces. Thiokol was useable at lower temperatures, but had not formed bonds to the applied surfaces at lower temperatures without long additional times. Thiokol absorbs atmospheric water to expand and bond to surfaces.
The engineering flaw was to assume the Thiokol had bonded to both surfaces at the lower applied temperatures, without checking. The same engineering/materials usage flaw happened with steel ships developing cracks in the cold North Atlantic Ocean. "During World War II, there were nearly 1,500 instances of significant brittle fractures. Twelve ships, including three of the 2,710 Liberties built, broke in half without warning, including the SS John P. Gaines," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship
Presume nothing, confirm or learn from failure.
In truth, just about the only way we learn is from failure, Reaper. This is accepted as fact in engineering, ain't it?
Ya' try everything ya' can think of, and mentally shitcan the stuff that didn't work.
Economists will ignore this method as a matter of course. To be fair, their science (which isn't actually science) isn't as readily measurable as my own.
Economists rarely learn from failure, though- because it's not science, it's sociology.
It's a moving target that they can't acknowledge, because it would expose the fallacy of economics as a discipline.
What you desire is that the failures occur in prior experimental testing. In my example of ships breaking in two, the steel alloys used had not been tested for strength and ductility at the temperatures of the North Atlantic encountered in the colder waters the ships went to avoid German submarines. With the NASA disaster, I can only conjecture from the information provided by the NASA and my own knowledge of Thiokol.
Unscientific and un-engineered disasters come in economics because they use wishful thinking, instead of experimentation. A stupidity in engineering and in economics is that final decisions are made by incompetents chosen as leaders.
Cog, whatever control Morton-Thiokol had over launch authorization was not at all apparent to we who were amassed around our monitors that morning. It was different back then- only the people who were involved in the project got to see it as it happened.
IIRC, you were a financial advisor at the time.
I love you, man, but I'm telling you how it actually was.
Hank was awesome, actually, thanks for noticing.
My 'knowledge' of the event comes mostly from extensive reading on the subject and little else. So I value your on-the-ground input greatly.
Well you pretty much summed it up. About the only thing that is different today from other times of collapse is that we are a lot higher up the entropy hill -- and much more numerous -- than we ever have been as a species. Consequently we are no longer operating in the arena of "human scale". What happens now is going to be really interesting to watch, "really interesting" being a term which here means just about everyone is going to completely and collectively lose their shit. I'm counting on 100M Americans alone -- across the continent -- just coming completely unhinged, for about 100 different reasons they will all point to.
We are currently 7 billions globally. I can't shake the feeling we are going to become .5 billions over a period of about 30 years, that process starting in earnest about 10 years from now and proceeding rapidly therefore.
Honestly I don't think the parasite class is going to survive. At all. Not any of them. And not any of their devices either. Without the prop of the accumulated political, financial and religious crap of the prior 300 years of manipulations and deceits, those guys got nothing. The rug is just going to vanish out from under them one day, taking the floor with it and all the floors all the way to street level 40 floors down. That's a lot of air, pal. That's a lot of acceleration into the abyss of history, right there. Down and right through the foundation of the human world, and a cultural crater that will endure for 100 generations.
We've got that much to forget. But forget we will. 100 generations of eating nothing but nightmare and we'll forget God damned everything.
Cougar,
And while I hope you are wrong I`m 99.9% sure you are right....this wont be pretty...the ONLY way out of whats coming is if they release a virus. Folks cant be out raping, pillaging and blundering if they are busy dying. A global loss of 60% of the population would allow a re-set if you will....AND leave the .01% in charge
editied to nil
Have you been eating people again cougar_w? It appears so based upon your disposition. You promised you would stay a vegetarian until the socioeconomic collapse exponentially increased the food supply and a few missing humans a week wouldn't be noticed.
Bad kitty.
:-)
It is true that I have chosen my role models poorly. But I'm managing to lay low at the moment.
Ahead of my time, is what it turns out.
The hell -- Diamond just asked me what I wrote that was so serious so I told her and now she's laughing her ass off. Something about tofu consumption and bowel gas being my biggest problems. The woman has no class at all ... never once thinks about her carbon footprint or anything else.
Oh -- and now she reminds me to tell you to continue to go fuck yourself. As soon as I finish this I'm going to toss the silly bitch through a window. You are entirely welcome.
LOL. I always enjoy reading about the sister's adventures but am posting from my phone now and don't have that link. Could you post it again?
Somehow I think this has more ramafications than is in this disscussion. Does Couger know Bill?