October 15, 16

Half past October--only two and a half months left of this year.

Found this story this morning. There are areas we don't get much news about. Tajikistan is one of the "Central Asian Republics" that split off the old Soviet Union. They used to get, perhaps, 3 sand/dust storms a year. This year they have had 35. Last Week In Collapse noted the Tajikistan dust storms as well as the drought in the Amazon area where several tributaries of the great river at lowest levels in memory or completely dry. Recent reports say the same for the Mississippi and that sea water is pushing up the river threatening drinking water and shipping.

Lyz at Men Yell At Me makes a good point: Apocalypse is always with us. The World AS WE KNOW IT is always ending. Which means, as long as the sun doesn't explode or planets don't collide, something will survive. If it is us we have to adapt.

16**********************************************************************

Cloudy today. We may get more rain. It has been a wet fall so far. Some of the plants that were showing the stress of our very warm summer are reviving but we should be getting frosts soon. It has come close but not quite yet.

The media is still holding what looks like a "death watch" waiting for whatever Israel will do and blowing as much hot air as they can in their various time slots. I am left wondering how many "Catch-22" situations are involved. Yes, Israel has a "right" to hit Hamas but they mustn't hurt "civilians." Question: how the hell do they do both? I haven't seen anyone with "Hamas" tattooed on their foreheads. I didn't see any uniforms on the men running through the gaps in the fence on their way to brutalize anyone (Israeli or otherwise) they crossed path with. I have read a good bit of history and I have yet to read any account of any military action that could avoid "civilian" casualties during assaults against soldiers. How many civilians were killed by Sherman's march through Georgia? How many German civilians were killed in the bombing of Dresden? And then when Israel warns Gaza civilians to leave threatened areas Hamas tells them to stay put. And where can civilians go when the northern border exit was destroyed in the early hours of the Hamas and the Southern exit is controlled by Egypt which hasn't been opened despite promises that it would be. Sherman, the same Sherman I mentioned above, said "War is hell" and he took the pain of the war to the civilians did not actively fight but did encourage the soldiers and supplied them.

That brings up another cluster of stray thoughts. Some time ago, listening to stories of the latest labor unrest, that when God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden cursing them with having to produce their bread by the sweat of their brows, we have tried to evade that curse. Only some humans have managed that by skimming off some of what others produce. And we forget that there were two trees the fruit of which were forbidden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Adam and Eve only got to the first and one reason for their exile was so they wouldn't get to the second and like God and his angles--immortal. We have been trying to evade that as well. Modern medicine has over the last two centuries doubled our life expectancy at birth but immortality is still out of reach. For the last century or a bit we have tried to "civilize" war. But that hasn't been a great success either.