Author: lenbilen

Retired engineer, graduated from Chalmers Technical University a long time ago with a degree in Technical Physics. Career in Aerospace, Analytical Chemistry, computer chip manufacturing and finally adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University, taught just one course in Computer Engineering, the Capstone Course.

The Pope, The boy with cerebral Palsy and Terri Schiavo. A Limerick

terri4Pope and boyGovernor Palin was speaking  April 5 2013 in Philadelphia for the wonderful Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.
• April 3 I saw on TV the Pope hugging a boy with cerebral palsy.
The eyes on the boy showed something that brought my thoughts back to Terri Schiavo.
She had the same look in her eyes when her loved ones touched her.
Her life was taken away by legal means, starving to death.
Let us protect the lives of the most vulnerable, or we cease to exist as a society.

A palsy, a hug from the Pope;
As long as there’s life, there is hope.
For Terri Schiavo
There was no such bravo.
We are at the end of our rope.

CO2 the solution to Climate change.

Some time ago I came across this video that puts everything we have heard so gar about CO2 and its influence on the climate on its head.article-2294560-18B8846F000005DC-184_634x427

We have been told about the dangers of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, how it is going to raise the temperature by 3 to 6 degree Celsius in the next century. If there is no gain in the system temperatures will rise only 0.9 degree Celsius if CO2 doubles. The truth is there is a dampening of the system instead. When there is more CO2 in the air, plants grow better. This changes the albedo and this helps to stabilize the temperature.
Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason’s studio in Los Angeles to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener!

After seeing the video I have the following recommendations to make to the administration:
Stop Biofuel subsidies!
Stop subsidizing electric cars! The energy equivalent of producing an electric car is equivalent to driving 80000 miles; the equivalent for a conventional car is about 30000 miles.
Continue battery research, but please do not subsidize battery manufacturing.
Stop subsidizing wind power, the generators are mostly made in China anyway.
Stop subsidizing solar power – the panels are made in China anyway, and China controls 97% of the rare earth metals needed to produce the solar cells.
Stop punishing coal plants!
Approve the Keystone pipeline!
Don’t even think of Cap and Trade!
Start a major push to Thorium based nuclear power. It produces 0.01% of the long term radioactive waste compared to a conventional Uranium based power plant. India and China are making major investments in Tritium technology. Done right, this will greatly lessen the burden on our electric grid.
The list could go on and on, but this will suffice for now.

Beef, what’s for climate; Is cattle herding the missing link in restoring the balance of nature?

Beef, what’s for climate; Is cattle herding the missing link in restoring the balance of nature?
We live in an increasingly complex world where it seems everything is going in the wrong direction leading to an inevitable cataclysmic catastrophe. Unless of course we give all power over to the politicians who will through regulation and targeted taxation lead us right. Carbon Dioxide levels are rising, and everybody knows by now that it is the second most important green-house gas, next only to water vapor. Theory has it, as CO2 increases, so will temperatures, and since air can hold 7% more water vapor for every 1 degree increase Celsius, there is a gain in the system of a factor of 3 or more according to IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). So if we double the amount of CO2 we could expect a warming of the earth of between 3 and 6 degrees, warm enough to make large parts of the earth uninhabitable.
IPCC-20071
This theory seemed to hold true between the years 1970 and 1997. Since then there has been no increase in global temperatures, but CO2 levels have increased a further 8% making the correlation between CO2 levels and temperature more and more implausible.
This does not mean we have no reason for worry. Large land areas are turning into unproductive wilderness, mostly in the 10-40 Corridor which is where the bulk of the world’s population lives. There simply is not enough water to make these areas productive again. When an area is opened up for agriculture from forestation, average temperature rises up to one degree Celsius. When an area is turned from grassland to wasteland, temperatures rise. These are the areas where all recent temperature increases have occurred. The ice is growing in the Antarctica; the snowpack is growing in the Northern hemisphere. The summer ice in the Arctic is diminishing, but that is due to air pollution, nearly all coming from China, which alone uses 45% of all coal mined in the world, most of it low grade Lignite. They do put scrubbers on the power plants, but they cost money to operate, so they are often down for “service” and it is cheaper to pay off the inspectors than to scrub.
Greenlandgisp-last-10000-new We learn from the ice core data of Greenland that we are at the last leg before a new glaciation. Enter CO2. Thanks to increased levels of CO2 we have now postponed the new ice age.
Some days ago I was alerted to a video from a TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory in Los Angeles.Please watch it in its entirety.

He draws some interesting conclusions, and claims the only chance we have to restore nature’s balance is to reintroduce the large herds of beasts that once roamed the savannas and steppes. But you cannot just have a bunch of cattle roam free, they have to be herded in an intelligent way to restore the productivity of the land. Let us again open up the Federal lands for cattle and sheep herding in a way that will restore their potential to host more animals, wild and tame and restore the balance of nature.

Judge Tingling strikes down N.Y. “big gulp” soda ban. A Limerick.

soft drink banSarah Palin tweeted this yesterday.

Sarah Palin @SarahPalinUSA
Victory in NYC for liberty-loving soda drinkers. To politicians with too much time on their hands we say: Govt, stay out of my refrigerator!
12:47 AM – 12 Mar 13

New York, NY – New York City’s ban on large sugary drinks from restaurants, movie theaters and other establishments was invalidated on Monday by a state judge as “arbitrary and capricious,” a day before it was to take effect.
The 11-hour decision was a blow to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose top lawyer quickly vowed to appeal.
In his ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling in Manhattan zeroed in on the loopholes, noting it would only have applied to businesses that are under the purview of the health department, like restaurants.
“It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city, it excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule … serve to gut the purpose of the rule,” he wrote.
Fast food restaurants and cafes had been scrambling on Monday to comply with the looming deadline. Many were confused over whether the rules applied to popular sweetened coffee drinks, underlining the ban’s uneven applications.
McDonald’s Corp said customers ordering a large coffee would be handed as many packets of sugar as they like on the side, to be poured into the drink at the customer’s leisure.
By contrast, Dunkin’ Donuts, which had been handing out leaflets to explain the law’s impact on its menu, decided its servers would hand over large drinks unsweetened and simply direct customers to a self-serve stand where sugar and flavored syrups are kept.
double gulp

Large drink containers would still be available at convenience stores and grocery stores — in other words, places that are not regulated by the city’s health department. Places that receive regular health inspections from the city, including street vendors, bowling alleys and restaurants, will all have to abide by the ban. The convenience store 7-Eleven will not, so the Big Gulp was not part of the ban.

This calls for a Limerick:
The food police lost in the town of N.Y.
And Bloomberg is cooked, into him stick a fork.
Sarah Palin is right;
This was well worth a fight.
But ban from the lawmakers all wasteful pork.

Obama wants taxes like Sweden. A Limerick.

We are now in the thick of sequestration, a two percent cut in the growth of government spending, and according to Obama one of the worst calamities possible unless we raise taxes. In the meantime the stock market is in record territory. Some must see the world through a thick smoke.
This is what “Riksskatteverket”, the Swedish equivalent of the IRS has produced to prod people into paying more taxes.

Before coming to the U.S. from Sweden, I experienced a rather steep rise in taxes to help pay for a rapidly expanding government services. I got very good raises, but all the raises were absorbed in higher taxes, so my take home pay stayed about the same. After I left things got much worse, so bad that the famous author of “Pippi Longstocking,” Astrid Lindgren penned this essay in the tabloid “Expressen” in 1976 : https://lenbilen.com/2012/01/24/pomperipossa-in-monismania/
This character Pomperipossa helped bring down the socialist Swedish government after a reign of 44 years.
Which brings me to today’s Limerick.
Obama wants taxing like Sweden;
The welfare state’s excesses Eden.
No more jobs is our lot
They have all gone to pot
In the pit they are smoking their weed in.

Sequestration, the end of the world? A Limerick.

Sequester_MitchellObama the spender: “Tax more!
We Must spend much more than before
on Solyndra and friends”.
for on such he depends.
Sequester: Cut waste to the core?

So, is cutting the growth in spending by 86 Billion in a Federal Continuing Resolution spending of over 3.6 Trillion dollars the end of the world? Congress (The Democrats in the Senate, that is Harry Reid) have prevented a vote on any budget for four years. Yhe only budget that have been voted on in the Senate is the Presidental budget proposal. It got defeated 97 to 0. Not one Democrat voted for the White House budget! They are much more comfortable spending on the Continuing resolution, continuing to spend on canceled programs, not funding changes except as “emergencies” thus multiplying the debt.
The President himself promised to veto any proposal that changed the seguester. Listen:

Agape love: A Limerick.

agape350A few weeks ago our Pastor mentioned God’s love – agape and claimed it was a word that was coined by the Apostle Paul, since the word didn’t exist in classical Greek. I let it ride, but then last week he said it again, so a red flag went up, and I decided to check the true origin of the word. My first reaction was: It can’t be so, all the Gospels, and all the letters of Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude and the book of Revelation contains the word agape. The only exception is the book of Acts. Now I was really curious.

Being a naturalized citizen of the U.S, even though I have been in this country 45 years, I still sometimes search for words in English that are better expressed in my native Swedish tongue. So I searched the internet to see if anyone else forwarded the theory that Paul was the one that popularized the term agape. Indeed there were, more than one, and they seemed scholarly enough.

How can that be, and what did then Jesus really say to Peter in John 21:15-17 if the term agape is new with Paul?

The Greek language have many words for love, English is poorer and is using one word for all kinds of love, be it of sunsets, McDonald’s cheeseburgers, my wife, friendship, my newborn grandson or God. Classical Greek has 4 basic words for love:

Mania – Love of McDonald’s cheeseburgers would fit well.

Eros – Love of sunsets and my wife. Besides sexual it has a connotation of intense longing.

Philia – Brotherly love, the mutual love you develop among friends, and also a sense of belonging.

Storge – Commonly translated A mother’s love, the sacrificial love of a mother for her children.

The New Testament contains one more word for love – Agape. It has the connotation of total allegiance, love no matter the consequences. All true love is costly, and agape is the love God has for us, even dying on the cross for our sins. But it is not always that positive. In 2 Timothy 4:10 Paul writes: Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me.

The so-called Koine Greek was the lingua franca in the Hellenistic empire after the conquests of Alexander the Great. It is also called Alexandrian Greek, and in around 280 BC the Old Testament was translated into Greek. So I checked what word it used for love in Deuteronomy 6:5

 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

The word used is agape.

It is quite clear. Paul may have introduced the concept to a more general audience via his letters that were circulated throughout all the churches, but he was in no way the author of the word agape.

Now John 21: 15-18 makes sense again:

15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love (agape) me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love (agape) me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love (phileo) me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love (phileo) me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love (phileo) you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

Peter felt hurt because he realized his commitment to Jesus up to that point had been of the friendship type, not unconditional. For the first time he grasped the full meaning of the difference between God’s love and human love.

Maybe we can trace back the decline of our understanding of agape in today’s society back to Sigmund Freud where he claimed the highest state of man is sexual man. Since he didn’t believe himself he couldn’t conceive there is one more development; spiritual man. This last development is a gift of God, and only then can we enter into God’s rest.

All this led to a limerick on Love.

Agape, a word that means love;

a precious and God – given love.

The Muslims deny it,

Progressives refuse it.

For Jesus is it, it’s His love.

A Cautionary tale from Washington Post backfires. A Limerick.

There are perils for today’s journalists. There is a special peril for journalists that suffer from PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome).

A few days ago the Daily Currant ran a “newsflash” with the title

”Sarah Palin to Join Al Jazeera as Host.”

The next few news flashes read:

Glenn Beck Calls 911 After Accidentally Eating Halal Pizza.

Vladimir Putin Kills Grizzly Bear With Bare Hands.

Catholic Church Considering Jerry Sandusky as Next Pope.

Obama to Declare America a ‘Socialist State’

This ought to have given anyone pause to think. Maybe these stories are satirical?

Nah, the Washington Post journalist Suzi Parker, famous for her book “Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt.”, because of her PDS swallowed the story, hook line and sinker, and published the whole article eight days later as a result of her own research.

 The editor, Melina Henneberger, also suffering from PDS didn’t bother to check the sources either, so it was published. in the on-line edition of the Washington Post.

The line that made them both fall for it was probably the quote “As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin said. “But I met with the folks at Al-JaJizzraa (sic) and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”

A few hours later somebody pointed out the error and got the following voice-mail reply from the Washington Post ombudsman:

 “Hi, this is Patrick Pexton. I’m the ombudsman for the Washington Post. You called about the Sarah Palin mistaken story, um, yes, you are correct, that was based on a satiric website, ‘The Daily Current(sic).’ She totally missed that. Uh, shame on us. It was corrected within an hour or two later, uh, and a corrected version is online. That was a terrible mistake, I agree with you. It got through one editor, obviously the writer made the mistake and it got through one Post editor. So, shame on us–anyway–thanks for calling. Bye.”

The corrected retraction read as follows:

Sarah Palin tries to stay relevant

Posted by Suzi Parker on February 12, 2013 at 8:52 am

CORRECTION:  An earlier version of this post and the post’s URL incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin had signed on as a contributor to the Al Jazeera America news network. The blogger cited a report on the Daily Currant Web site as the basis for that information without realizing that the piece was satirical. 

But the rest of the article derading Sarah Palin was left intact.

So, at that point Suzi Parker had already been given her two week notice and was no longer a journalist with Washington Post, but given her newfound role: Blogger.

PDS does funny things to people. I am still waiting for their official apology to Sarah Palin. In the mean-time:

Irrelevant people, unite!

The LSM Post gets our spite.

The Tea Party’s growing

A sentiment brewing:

Tell Washington Post, Fly a kite!