Remember the Pueblo. And the Benghazi consulate.

On this day, 23 January, 1968, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea, well outside the 12 mile limit off the North Korean coast. 

Alone and overpowered, the ship was forced west.  When Pueblo stopped outside the 12 mile limit, the ship was fired upon and Navy seaman Fireman Duane Hodges was killed.  Pueblo was boarded, its crew mistreated; ship and crew were taken to Wonsan harbor. 

President Lyndon Johnson was asleep at the time.

The White House response from Johnson and his crew of smart guys was to minimize confrontation with the communists at all costs.  Negotiations at Panmunjom at last produced the release of the crew (and Hodges' remains) across the DMZ into South Korea on 23 December 1968 -- following a formal written apology by the USA to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  Pueblo is still in North Korean possession. 

By the apology, Johnson set a precedent for bowing to foreign dictators. 

After 1968, one could see a few "Remember the Pueblo" bumper stickers.  But memories are short.  The official response had set a precedent of "what difference, at this point, does it make?"

By the way, today is exactly one year since Hillary blew off Senator Ron Johnson's question about why she lied about events leading up to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the murder of ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. 

I'll only be here a few minutes...

I am sure that's what Mr. Stretch-Cab Pickup-With-Trailer said to himself when he blocked -- BLOCKED! -- the municipal parking lot here in my town on Tuesday 7 January 2014. 

Hey, Jerk:  I realize the downtown area is not very friendly toward long trucks with long trailers.  But you know what?  You're just going to have to find a spot someplace, away from the metered parking spaces, and you may have to walk a few blocks.  Life is hard.  Man up. 

But no!  You decided that YOUR convenience trumped EVERYBODY else.  I'm willing to bet that is a kind of a habit with you. 

Your time is important to you.  And it's just for a few minutes.  You deserve special treatment.  You're an entrepre-freakin-neur, after all. 

Asshole. 

What I am reading . . .

War and Peace. 

Because I want to.  Because I am now old enough to meet some of the characters (Pierre) with less sympathy than when I was a student. 

The translation I am using is Project Gutenberg EBook #2600 (posting date January 10, 2009).  The text version says the translators are Louise and Aylmer Maude.  So far it seems much easier to read than the Rosemary Edmonds translation in the Penguin Classics version I first used in college in the Great Books program back in the 1970s.  The Maude translation for the Kindle has some of the trickier French phrases asterisked and translated in a slightly different font at the end of the current paragraph, rather than having to click a footnote.  The Maudes' English seems more free of affectations of haute couture than Edmonds'.

I love my Kindle.  Kindle Keyboard 3G.  I can embiggenate the text.  The effect is much easier for my eyes to focus on.  Plus the Kindle text is black on white, not grey on beige (in 6-point Badly Kerned Olde Booksquiggle).

At well over half a million words, War and Peace is a big book.  But the title (and the content?) must be more intimidating than the size.  It's shorter than Atlas Shrugged, and there are plenty of people who are happy to buttonhole you and tell you all about Atlas Shrugged. 

Anyway, I'm having fun with it. 

Mormon Island Ruins under Folsom Lake (aerial video)

"Published on Nov 30, 2013 [by Jayzaerial]

This town has been under water for 50 year. It has been partially exposed only twice that I know of. first time about 1977 the second time a couple of years ago. However I didn't have a quadcopter a couple of years to film it. So now it is exposed once again and I was able to get some footage of one particular site. I think it might have been a cattle ranch or dairy farm. You can also see the old palm tree stumps planted in a row to outline some landscaping. Their used to be 2500 people, hotels and saloons but im not sure if any of these rocks are those buildings. Maybe those are still under water. The town was mostly concentrated down further were the river naturally flows. But as you can see, parts of the town stretched toward the banks. quadcopter aerial footage with gorpro 3 black @1080p 30frames. I couldn't believe how calm the lake was for this shoot. Airshotz"

Ta-Pocketa-Pocketa-Pocketa...

"I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" 

She looked at him. 

"I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

From The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber, 1939.

Earlier sunrise

Where I live at approximately 38° North Latitude, I mark today ( 8 January ) as the genuine beginning of the short half of the year when the days are getting longer.  Yes techinically the time between sunrise and sunset has been increasing since winter solstice ( 21 December ).  But when sunrise comes a bit earlier, it feels like the days are getting longer.   

Back on 7 December we experienced the earliest sunset of this dark corner of the year.  Not until today did the time of sunrise begin to get earlier.  By only a few seconds per day at first, soon the days will be noticably longer.  That makes me happy.  Hopeful. 

The science of how this is so can be explained by the analemma.  

Dolphin Hallucinations

John Cunningham Lilly was born on this day, 6 January 1915. 

He started out as a scientist.  He ended up as a brain-damaged nutcase with a legacy.

Having graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1938, Lilly was at first a productive member of society.  Apparently during World War II he researched the physiology of high-altitude flight, and helped development of gas pressure measurement instruments. 

After the war, something must have happened.  He focused on theory of consciousness and moved from medicine to psychiatry and psychoanalysis.  Before long he was dropping acid and once the LSD made him believe he had something BIG to offer the world... Well, the rest is history, as they say.

Lilly is the guy who developed the sensory deprivation tank.

Lilly dropped acid and spent time in a water tank with dolphins.  You read that right.  He formed a strong belief that cetaceans were sentient, even hyper-intelligent.  Yes, that belief is based not on science but on the crazed hallucinations of a drug abuser. 

"In the early 1960s, Lilly was introduced to psychedelic drugs such as LSD and (later) ketamine and began a series of experiments in which he ingested a psychedelic drug either in an isolation tank or in the company of dolphins."

That is one of the weirdest sentences I have ever read in all of Wikipedia.  

The dolphin thing was the strangest of a lot of strange things this guy got mixed up with.  That's saying something -- he hung out with people like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. 

As a "philosopher" he promoted absolute relativism.  What's true for you is true for you. 

He was into things like the SETI project and theory of Artificial Intelligence.  And perpetual motion, for all I know. 

Anyway, Lilly left a widespread legacy of crap that gets repeated so many times people accept it as true.  So in the consciousness of the herd, if not of individual man, perhaps his relativistic philosophy is "true" in that it has become true (accepted) by the uninquisitive.  

Lilly died 30 September 2001.

[The picture above is from what appears to be either an official Lilly site or a fan site.  Information in this article is from there or from Wikipedia.  I am glad to have the writing of this article off my to-do list.  This has been one of the creepiest things I have ever read up on.  I will now go find some holy water to sprinkle on myself and my laptop.]