Spinal Fire Scientia Est Potentia

How a Liberal decided that Big Government Couldn’t Work

[b]The Religious Impulse and Extinction[/b]
By John Kedrowski

Much has been made lately about the importance of religion in our lives. We see the religious impulse growing and growing in the world around us and many of us reasoning folk are left to wonder and worry about it. I am convinced that religion is a maladaptive trait in humanity and will lead to further conflict and possibly our extinction. Thusly, it should be discarded. Others argue that it is part of the human essence and cannot be dispended.

There is no human essence.

The Joys of Real ID
By John Kedrowski

This "Real ID" stuff could really be a great thing...

Yeah, having all of our personal data accessible on a single nationalized database makes it easier for people to steal your identity, but that is because we are using an out-dated technology!

So, lets get with the times!!!!

Enter, the chip...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

This wonderful piece of technology could do so many things!

First, our social security number and our government information could directly be implanted into our bodies so that it will never be lost and NEVER stolen.

Peak Oil and WWIV
By John Kedrowski

In the 1950s a famous geophysicist, M. King Hubbert, made a startling prediction. Based on the amassed drilling data compiled from oil industry sources from the biggest oil in the nation and based on the geologic behavior of oil wells, Hubbert predicted that a peak in US oil production would occur sometime in the early 70s. After the peak, production of US oil would fall no matter what kind of technology was developed and no matter how much we searched.

The reasoning behind this is simple. An oil field is not an empty space under the earth filled with oil. An oil field is made of porous rock where oil is trapped between the granular spaces. Thus, when one drills into these traps, the amassed oil is not totally recoverable. In fact, only 50% of the oil comes out easily. The rest takes more and more work, becoming more and more expensive.

[b]Northern Fire[/b]
By John Kedrowski

A few years ago I was paddling slowly on a rather large lake at the end of the Fernberg trail. Snowbank lake looked like as if a god-sized ice cream scooper had served up some solid rock. It was big deep and round with none of the typical islands that usually dot BWCA lakes. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area is strung like necklaces of blue green pearls all over the top of Minnesota and through the entire Canadian Shield. It was the fifth day of a seven day trip and we were paddling fast to get out of the woods.

It was an unseasonably hot day in June. In the shade the temperatures was a hundred degrees. The water near the surface of the lake was a tepid green bath. The rocks near the shore were striped with layers of displaced algae as the water in which it lived evaporated. Whitish gray, rocky outcroppings stuck above the green canopy of the layered forest like a crowd of balding pates. They baked in the sun becoming uncomfortable for bare feet.