Saturday, September 3, 2011

3 September 2011 Fire and Rain no James Taylor



          Texas is baking in the grip of a drought that is thoroughly resistant to prayer.  If one actually believes that this drought  is somehow divinely initiated and/or continued; then we can state that the failure or the three-day Perry-initiated prayer spree to Jesus   indicates that the supposed “war upon Christians” has been declared and is being waged at a level higher than the run of the mill liberals, leftists, progressives, and atheists who help populate this nation and who are most commonly blamed for the “war on Christians.”
          Not only is Texas baking, large portions of Texas are actually burning.  Delving into mythology yet again, we can wonder if these fires are somehow signposts toward the “gates of Hell” that have often been postulated as being in Texas.  Certainly, the time I spent in Texas during my assignment to Fort Sam Houston for AIT was memorably hot for a location above the Tropic of Cancer. 
          I’m willing to listen to the theory that Texas harbors Hell, but only for my personal amusement.

          Louisiana is once more threatened with inundation by tropical storm-carried rain.  The predicted possible 15-20 inches (37.5 – 50 cm), if delivered over a slow week’s worth of rainfall would do quite a lot to ease the drought conditions in Texas.  If delivered over the predicted time on target for Louisiana, it would still aid greatly in extinguishing the wildfires currently burning in Texas, and cool the mythical gates of Hell.
          Louisiana does not need to receive 37.5 – 50 cm of rainfall.  The levees rebuilt after the Hurricane Katrina flooding have not been tested by such a deluge.  While they are supposedly designed to meet such a challenge; dumping that much storm water into a below-sea-level basin, and expecting only minor street flooding to take place is foolish at best, and akin to Perry’s prayer spree for the most part. 
          There is not going to be any divine intervention to keep New Orleans dry and above water.  The time to evacuate people from the flood plains is last year. 
          The storms of 2005, Katrina in particular, did immense damage to Louisiana and surrounding regions of Mississippi.  Locating cities on coastlines with no high ground for protection is unwise; locating them in a sub-sea-level basin is just plain stupid.  Expecting divine intervention to prevent harm to people and property exceeds “stupid.”
          Nonetheless, Tropical Storm Lee is threatening our Gulf Coastline, bringing rain where not needed and not bringing rain where needed.  The sounds of lamentations can be heard widely.  The sounds of Demagogue preachers taking up collections from the people who can least afford it are also widely heard. 
          The weather-related joke has been playing all year with a La Nina driving uncharacteristically large snow falls leading to spring floods, devastating tornado outbreaks, prolonged droughts, and  rain-heavy, slower than normal hurricanes.  How much of this is cyclic weather, how much climactic, and how much human amplified climactic is at the heart of today’s conditions. 
          With respect to the knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering, we’ve progressed greatly from the days when every event and reaction was laid at the feet of some divine, invisible, super-powerful, and uncaring deity living in a magic land up the beanstalk.  With respect to actually understanding the physical world and the laws of physics that drive it around the galaxy and then around the universe, most of us are still buying a handful of magic beans while others are busily engaged in dominating everyone and everything within reach.  If they can figure out a means to control weather we can count on it being used to force everyone within reach join in the futility Perry, Palin, and Bachmann will all too happily unload upon rational Americans. 
          In the words of Sheldon Harnick:
They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain…

the Whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like Anybody very much.
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away
They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow Man

-- Sheldon Harnick @1958

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