Bee's, Pigs, Pop, Books, and a big storm

The Bees Fight Back
Millions of bees have died as a result of toxic pollen from Monsanto's genetically modified crops. These crops are making some people very rich and little effort has been put forth to protect the bees. I'd like to think that the bees are fighting back.

Bees attack Scottsdale neighborhood, large hive discovered

Endangered bees prepare to attack the rich

Katrina Wessman, reports;

Two men were apparently stung by a swarm of bees that came out of a large bee hive in Scottsdale late Tuesday afternoon.

The hive was located in a pine tree on private property near Granite Reef Road and Bonnie Rose after the two stung men called 9-1-1.
According to officials, civilians and firefighters were stung, but no patients were transported to the hospital at this time.


This is funny.
This is from an Obama speech in Lebanon, Virginia;

“John McCain says he’s about change, too, and so I guess his whole angle is, ‘Watch out George Bush.’ Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics … That’s not change. That’s just calling something the same thing, something different,” Obama said.

“But you know … you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You know, you can … wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

"Have I got a $500,000,000 pork pipeline?"

The republicans react like they are stung!

McCain supporter Jane Swift, former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said the line was clearly directed at the Alaska governor. That’s because Palin frequently jokes that “lipstick” is the difference between a hockey mom like herself and a pitbull.
“It’s clear to me … that Senator Obama owes Governor Palin an apology,” Swift said, calling Obama’s comments “disgraceful.”
It gets better
The Obama campaign swiftly circulated a 2007 article that quoted McCain using the term “lipstick on a pig” to refer to a health care proposal from Hillary Clinton.

On the subject of religious republicans;

Dr. Raymond B. Seymour (My Dad)

My dad raised us catholic. I often wondered why, beyond the fact that he was raised catholic, would a highly intelligent scientist raise his kids in the mother of all dogmas?
I think I figured it out tonight...
I was reading a novel set during WWII, and the Nazi characters reminded me of the German nuns in Pennsylvania. In their zeal to prepare me for my first communion, they gave me a list of 100 sins to memorize. They were stern, unsmiling, unhappy women, married to Jesus. If I were Jesus, I would have asked for a divorce!

I never was any good at memorizing because I could naturally remember, or intuitively know the answer to just about anything from the time I was 4 years old. I thought the, "sin thing", was a strange requirement and I asked one of my grade school teachers to quiz me about them according to category. There were some that were venial sins and a few that were mortal sins. If you committed a mortal sin you went straight to hell. The venial sins were negotiable. My teacher was flabbergasted that a child of 7 should be exposed to such wicked possibilities as were written on the list, and always treated me a little differently after that incident. I found out she was a protestant.

I dutifully went through the process of confession and communion without any miracles or booming voice of God welcoming me into the world of sanctified souls, but that could be because I left masturbation out of my compilation of sins confessed. Even, at 7 years old, I knew that was none of the priests' business.

My dad did not permit statues, crucifixes, rosaries, pictures of Jesus, or any religious objects in our home, car, or on our person. We were instructed not to pray to Jesus, Mary, Saints or statues, but to pray to God only. I now think it had a lot to do with the first and second commandment. You see, I have the feeling that he very much believed in God, but not so much, religion. He figured that the catholic church was the least insulting of the lot. One kept the sabbath holy by showing up for mass, (In Latin), every Sunday. 45 minutes later you were on your way home for breakfast.

My mom was Lutheran so she got to stay home and cook breakfast while we went to church. She would join us in church, on Easter, and we would go out for breakfast. She didn't attend the Lutheran church as far as I know, but we had her old Danish family bible on a table in the house. It was mostly for decoration since none of us could read Danish.

I can see now, how my dad limited the catholic experience to where it wouldn't conflict with the ten commandments. In one of my earlier blog posts, I explored how the original 10 commandments were changed so they would accommodate the religions where you pray to Jesus and a host of other entities. While the original forbids such things, most people would never take the time or effort to research what they have been told to believe, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Whenever I asked my father about God, he would tell me;
"God is everywhere, and in all things."
I believed him then, and I believe him now. He dealt with life at the molecular structure level. It is there that he found the place where all things are made of the same stuff, and with abstract mathematical formulas, could be made into an elephant or an ear of corn, or bullet proof plastic windshields to protect our pilots in WWII. He knew God at the atomic level, where it all began and will be for eternity.

My dad kept the sabbath holy his entire life. He never missed mass on Sunday, and he was pretty good about following the commandments, except maybe that neighbors wife and adultery thing. He was a scientist, inventor, author and professor, and the best father I've ever had. I hope he made it to that great laboratory in the sky. Biography from Plastics Hall of Fame

Speaking of Books;
Thomas L. Friedman, author of, The World is Flat, was on Charlie Rose tonight promoting his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded.
It sounded very interesting and contains his solution to the future of America, through the promotion and development of Energy Technology.

Another Book;
In 1969 I visited my oldest brother, David, in Berkeley. I was living in San Francisco, studying metaphysics, and he gave me a book that he said would help and save me a lot of wasted trips to the library.
David gave me this book...

A good primer for metaphysical studies

I consider my brother David to be something like an idiot-savant. The twins, my other brother and sister, just called him stupid. He prospered through hard work and had to overcome many setbacks, caused by his lack of complete understanding.

I could talk with him about the structure and spirit of music, and he managed to become a professor of economic geography before he worked as an economist for the timber industry. He wrote a published work on the 21st century with Frank Herbert, one of my favorite sci-fi writers. David, now lives in Washington state with alzheimer's disease.

Speaking of my sister, Sue;
I asked her about her beach house and the hurricanes.

Sue's beach house in Crystal Beach, Texas
She said that so far, it had escaped the worst of the weather and that they were keeping an eye on Ike.

3 Day Forecast for hurricane Ike

Her place is between Galveston and Louisiana. It looks like this hurricane won't blow her beach house away, but this satellite image shows a very big storm.
Batten down the hatches.

Hurricane Ike 4PM 9/10/08

From molecules to monsoons,
God gave us an amazing place to live.