Off-Planet Species, Part II of IV

This is Part II of an article.  Part I is here.

Because technology is such a key element in determining relative strength, and because the off-planet beings are visiting us, and not the other way around, it is likely that the off-planet culture which descends through our atmosphere will be more powerful than we are.  Thus, we must study examples from history, with an eye toward how the less powerful group handled the meeting.

Japan was closed to outsiders from around 1603 up until 1854.  Prior to the earlier date, Japan was well-disposed to foreign trade and Christian missionaries.  But one of the Shoguns began to fear native Christians would set up a fifth column for Spanish or Portuguese invaders.  So he expelled the foreigners and closed the borders.

While the American, Matthew Perry, was largely responsible for re-opening Japan, it was the Russians who inadvertently gave the Japanese the keys to modern technology.  "While continuing negotiations with the Japanese, Putiatin (a Russian) asked permission for his men to build a vessel to take (the ship-wrecked Japanese) home. Because [a Japanese leader] had lifted the restriction against building large ships, the Russian admiral’s request was granted. The Japanese watched intently and soon afterwards built an exact copy. The bold claim that the Japanese could quickly catch up technologically with the West was realized and demonstrated to devastating effect only fifty years later in the Straits of Tsushima, where virtually every ship of the Russian fleet was sunk or captured by Admiral Togo."

Source:  http://www.navyandmarine.org/ondeck/1800perryjapan.htm, Apr 28, 2011

In this example, Japan was well aware of both the advantages and risks of opening contacts with an alien culture.  Where they saw a power imbalance, they always worked to strengthen themselves.  Unfortunately, the friendly relationship with the West decayed into war on more than one occasion.

** End of Part II **

Pink Slime / Kiribati

Things that are on the tiny piece of The Mind which I call "my mind" today, Monday, March 12th, 2012.

1) Pink Slime

"Pink slime" is the term used for a mixture of bits of fatty meat scrap and connective tissue salvaged from slaughterhouse floors that is treated with ammonia hydroxide to remove pathogens like salmonella and E coli.

Formerly used only for pet food, pink slime is now used to feed ourselves and our children, often times mixed in with our ground beef.

How doth this offend me?  Let me count the ways...

70% of all ground beef consumed in the U.S. contains a portion of pink slime in it.  In my book, 70% is a darn large percentage.

I can't shake the image of a slaughterhouse -- cows getting killed, blood gushing everywhere, men in heavy black plastic aprons with sharp knives carving up the raw, red meat; workers putting aside the short-haired cowhides...

This image follows:  the day is done, and so begins the sweeping up (what kind of broom do they use?) of the bits of "meat and muscle" (no bone or hair mixed in?) and packing it into, what, Hefty bags?, and freezing it, and shipping it off to the Pink Slime Factory (which is actually called Beef Products, Inc.), where they mix it with an ammonia-based chemical (now the image of a Mr. Clean bottle fills my tiny part of The Mind, and I imagine opening it, and the pungent, searing smell of straight ammonia hits my nasal cavity, and I think, "we are eating this stuff??!?") -- and they squeeze the mixture out of big tubes (not imagination -- see photo above) and pack it and ship it off to the hamburger-makers.  Ugh!

Due to public outcry, fast food giants like McDonald's and Taco Bell have stopped using pink slime in their food.  But the federal government continues to allow its use in school food and has just authorized the purchase of ground beef which collectively contains an additional seven million pounds of pink slime for consumption by our nation's children.
If that isn't enough, how about the fact that our food producers have been using pink slime for ground beef and as a leavener in bread and cake products (In cakes?  Seriously?) since the 1990s, and this is the first I've heard about it...

I wonder what else I've missed, as a result of my immersion in re-runs of Cheers.  It's my own fault -- I don't blame anyone but myself.  I choose to take the easy way out.  To ignore the plethora of information available to me.  To refrain from writing letters to the USDA, FDA, NSA and dozens of other alphabet soup agencies.  To stay indoors, comfy and cozy and slowly being poisoned, rather than chain myself to a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse.

If we are getting slimed, we have no one to blame but ourselves...

2) President Anote Tong of Kiribati

So it turns out, there is a tiny archipelago nation in the Pacific Ocean named Kiribati.  And because its islands rise mere feet above sea level, it is in danger of becoming the first major victim of rising tides which may result from climate change.

The president of this nation of 103,000 people, Anote Tong, is preparing for the worst.  He is looking into buying a big chuck of Fiji.  6,000 acres to be exact.   Once he owns the land, if things get bad for Kiribati, he'll just move all 103,000 citizens to the new digs.

No joke.  This is for real.

I really liked the tone of the CBSNews.com article.  My feeling was that Tong is a good guy:  kind, rational, and caring about his people.  He is reviewing the facts, and calmly making plans to deal with whatever situation arises.

Here is a picture of him.  He even looks decent.

**********************

That's all I got right now.  Until the next blah blah tirade, make it a great day!

Citations (current as of March 12, 2012):

[1]  http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/08/10611274-pink-slime-panic-grows-online-are-we-overreacting

[2]  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57394296/island-nation-kiribati-considers-moving-populace/

[3] http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-usda-to-stop-using-pink-slime-in-school-food?utm_medium=email&utm_source=action_alert

49 Things I Love About America

49 Things I Love About America

(A few of the items below are supported by the international community.)

1. The Grand Canyon

2. Freedom of religion;

3. The fact that almost anyone can write a song, record it, and post it online;

4. Supermarkets;

5. Our public education system, warts and all;

6. The way the New York Philharmonic plays behind the beat of the conductor.  (How can such a large group of people be so connectedly, fiercely independent?);

7. Wrangler blue jeans;

8. The phone companies, past and present, who at this point have enabled pretty much every U.S. citizen to have some method of reaching every other person in the developed world.  (While cost may be a barrier with some technology, with a little research, even a very poor person can phone Germany for pennies per minute -- Skype at the public library, anyone?);

9. The Mises Report, consistently and intelligently arguing for libertarian, "Austrian" economics;

10. The fact that on some forest trails, the Forest Service has installed a bench, roughly a quarter of a mile in;

11. The fact that after a half mile or so, the Forest Service leaves the trail untouched;

12. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show;

13. The fact that Americans have access to more health care modalities (Western, Eastern, and most everything in between) than any other citizens of the world;

14. Digital cameras, and all that goes with them;

15. The fact that I can open the Yellow Pages, look under "religion," and find ads for a Catholic church, a Jewish temple, a Protestant church, an Episcopalian church, a Muslim mosque, and on and on and on...and for the most part, we all let each other happen;

16. Off-Broadway;

17. Off-Off Broadway;

18. Big pharma, those much vilified companies which, in addition to their various evils, bring us Advil, aspirin, and hundreds of other drugs which improve our lives through the creative application of bio-chemistry;

19. Our organic farmers;

20. The enormous amount of food our non-organic farmers produce;

21. TV and movie content -- a portion of it -- in moderation;

22. The debate over whether or not violent video games are bad for us humans (I sense they are -- there are more healthy ways to express the violence inside of us);

23. Freedom of speech and of the press.  "I hate Obama."  See -- I'm still typing.  It works.  (I don't actually hate President Obama -- I was making a point about freedom of speech...);

24. The slow but steady progress toward green energy and green vehicles;

25. The network of roads, trucks and trucking companies which currently keeps our economy functioning (food in the stores, gas at the pumps, etc);

26. The wisdom and restraint our political and military leaders exercise, day after day, even as they possess the most awesome, potentially cataclysmic, apocalypse-making set of weapons systems ever devised by humankind;

27. The California redwoods;

28. NASA, for bringing humankind to the moon, and sending back all those cool pictures.  Hubble rules!

29. Amazon.com, for making almost every book ever published available in a searchable database.  The library at Alexandria:  eat your heart out;

30. Print-on-demand, free blogs and web sites, YouTube and the like -- providing access to world-wide expression to anyone, and I mean *anyone.*  Info-glut is a problem.  Finding content worth ingesting is a problem.  But was an incredibly narrow distribution channel choked by editors and advertisers a preferable system?  Search on a keyword, and find text, images, and videos created by hundreds / thousands of people:  famous, infamous, and unknown.  Wow.  Brought to you by:

31. Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the tens of thousands of geniuses who design and build the technologies that allow YouTube et al to exist;

32. The 1,716 microbreweries we support (2010 figure);

33. Our political process.  In the paraphrased words of Winston Churchill, "democracy is the worst form of government...except for all of the other ones."

34. The forty five cent stamp;

35. A gallon of reverse osmosis water for a quarter (although the fact that I need to buy drinking water because the ground water is polluted is a bummer);

36. Farmers' markets selling locally-grown produce;

37. The fact that we have 3,617,764 businesses with four employees or less (2008 figure);

38. Our public libraries;

39. The plethora of centers offering many different spiritual practices:  tai chi, yoga, meditation of all stripes, and so on...

40. Graphic design, as it beautifies and makes more legible our visual environment;

41. The Tesla Electric Car Company;

42. The American Humane Society, taking care of our unwanted doggies and kitties;

43. My alma mater, an American university which gave me an unparalleled liberal arts education;

44. My school of meditation, located in the Southwest of the United States, guided by an (east) Indian master, which taught me how to go in;

45. Mike Rowe and "Dirty Jobs," a TV Show on the Discovery Channel;

46. The 304 locations of the Whole Foods Market (2011 figure);

47. The hundreds of charities and NGOs working to make our society a more caring place;

48. 101 different kinds of salsas, many made by Mom-'n-Pop businesses;

49. The fact that, if an individual has the moxy, s/he can reside in America and penetrate the veil of data-fluff,  becoming conscious of what is.