The alarm bells are ringing loudly in California about the diminishing supply of potable water in its reservoirs, underground aquifers and of course the miniscule snowpack in its mountains. Many communities are totally out of water and are depending on water trucks to deliver what they need on a daily basis. The water truck companies are doing a booming business loading up water from sources still within the state that haven’t been tapped dry for about five dollars (USD) per truckload and selling it for five hundred dollars.  This makes no sense to me and it can’t last long. But, folks there are desperate, and it’s only going to get worse over time.

While desalinization plants will take care of people living on the margins of the sea, it will do little for inlanders until pipes are laid and other required infrastructure is put in place at enormous cost. Because the California breadbasket feeds much of America, I’m pretty sure that everyone in the country will have to share the cost burden in the form of new taxes. This is all well and good for California, but what about the rest of the arid southwestern USA?  And, what about the rest of the world who are about to be in the same situation, as their snowpack from remote mountain sources and related rivers dry up?

As an old desert rat, I learned to carry a sheet of transparent plastic in my backpack to create an emergency solar still for harvesting water vapor from the air when my canteen was empty with no prospects for a quick refill. This method is tedious, and sometimes frustrating, particularly when the daytime temperature requires that you transpire at least a gallon of water per day. With this in mind, I did a quick search today to see if the air-to-water technology had been commercialized and improved upon. Indeed it has. A variety of companies are now making products that do this as long as you have the money to buy them (they are very expensive), and the electricity to run them.

I did, however, find a website that has the instructions for building an inexpensive, do-it-yourself device that is good for supplying any homestead that has access to electricity such as solar panels or wind turbines. Here is the URL for the detailed plans:

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Atmospheric-Water-Generator/

 Bottoms up!

Subject # 1: Russia and China are wasting their money building up their navies

Everyone seems to be worried about the Chinese and Russian efforts to build more aircraft carriers and submarines. I’m in favor of it, because it is a total waste of time, money, and effort that they would otherwise spend on ICBMs or more nuclear weapons.Why am I so sanguine? Because, the march of high technology in the USA is inexorable. While the shipboard combat laser system and the electromagnetic railgun which are now being fielded have had a lot of exposure in the news media, other amazing developments are occurring. As an example, take the Robotic Ghost Ship. It was designed to autonomously keep track of stealthy Russian, Chinese and Iranian submarines including very quiet diesel boats. Without a human in sight, it can follow them around, dive deeper, go faster, and sink them as required. Here’s an image: 

 Pretty nifty, huh? The program was dubbed Anti-submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV. But, you haven’t seen anything yet. This sub is actually obsolete; the latest and greatest advances are the ‘Duck’ and Wanda, the flying fish. Both are developments of the Flimmer program (for “flying swimmer”), Here are images of the prototypes being tested today: 

 The ‘Duck’; the final version will fly fast and far, and dive deep. It then attaches to the hull of any enemy sub or surface ship of interest, or simply trails behind discretely.

And here is an image of Wanda: 

 Both of these robots can either detonate or set off an internal pinger which is very loud. The Upward Falling Payloads program seeks to put robot pods on the ocean floor and then allow them to lie in wait for years until triggered by either an event or a command, then they wake from their deathly sleep and rise to the surface to release their payloads(as an example).

Subject #2 Freedom of the Press

Most people don’t realize that a free press is truly the best protector of any democracy. It compels both political and military entities within the democracy to ‘behave’ and conform to the rules established by popular votes of the people. Currently, the Internet is being abused as a delivery vehicle of the ‘true’ facts of any critical situation, and instead is being adapted as another weapon of warfare: that of providing so much misinformation that the population is confused and paralyzed from taking any action at the polls or otherwise to correct the situation. A prime example is the adulation of Vladimir Putin by the average Russian. He actively crushes dissent, and from the beginning of his reign, set out to destroy the truly free press in his country (the Communists and the Nazis also did this, and it gave them the freedom to proceed to kill millions without consequence). This scheme is an absolute requirement in his and his associates plan to reestablish Russia as a global power, when in fact, it is the world’s gas station, with little economic activity and free small enterprises similar to those that are the mainstay of other cooperative democracies.

 

Now, it is coming to light that both Russia and China have vast cyber warfare  operations, including legions of ‘Trolls’ that are paid to submit comments that are derogatory to any web-based article that casts them in a bad light. This keeps the citizens at home uninformed, dumbed down, and happy. It also stirs up the populations in the societies that they are attacking or trying to manipulate, resulting in social uprisings in formerly peaceful settings. It occurred to me the other day, that little is being said about those e-mails we all receive that blasts politicians, religious groups, social organizations, and bloggers that are honestly trying to grapple with presenting the ‘facts’ and developments in the  internecine warfare going on around the world. I am certain that this distortion of events, outcomes, and positions of the players, is also a massive state-sanctioned effort performed by low-paid employees. So, delete those emails; don’t pass them on, even if they state that the object of the discussion or images has been ‘confirmed’ by independent websites as the ‘truth’. 

Don’t help them tear our societies apart by becoming one of these unpaid Trolls:

 

 

As some of my readers are aware, one of the things I love to do is go deep sea fishing for big Marlin and Swordfish. I got this habit back in 1976, when I took my wife at the time to Mazatlan, Mexico for a seaside vacation, and on a whim, decided to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps and go after some really big fish. She went with me, and actually caught a small Sailfish.  I landed a good-sized Blue Marlin, and it was a very enjoyable adventure. I’ve been doing it ever since from Hawaii to Cabo San Lucas.

One time at Cabo, I landed a 130 lb. Striped Marlin in only 12 minutes. For those of you who do this, you know how difficult this is. I never got to try the sport in Hemingway’s ‘Islands in the Stream’ (the northern Caribbean), and I look forward to trying it from Cuba if the U.S. government will let me go there someday soon. The last time I went was with a close friend that I took to Mazatlan. There, we rented a 30 ft. boat & crew, and set out over huge swells, some over 15 feet high; a result of a hurricane that had passed through a few days earlier.

My friend spent most of the time throwing up over the side of the boat, but as a former Air Force guy, I was used to turbulence. As I have a twisted sense of humor, every time he came back from the railing and sat down to recover, I would get out the box lunch the hotel had prepared for us, take a big bite of a chicken sandwich, and sip a beer. Seeing this sent him over the edge literally, vomiting once again. It was almost as much fun as the fishing! With all of this as a prelude, I thought my readers might enjoy a short video clip of an unusual experience some fishermen had while doing this off of the coast of Cabo San Lucas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, I read an interesting article about Bigelow Aerospace Company and its inflatable space habitats. You can read it here:

http://news.yahoo.com/one-giant-leap-inflatable-space-162642019.html

In brief, a Bigelow inflatable module will be lofted up to the ISS space station later this year, attached as another compartment, and inflated to a substantial size. It will initially be used by visiting astronauts as a ‘quite place’ to just hang out inside the noisy space station. I can see it quickly evolving into a sort of recreational lounge, which will give all of the astronauts a little more space to, well, unwind.

Sooner or later, bored or merely curious astronauts of both sexes will test its functionality as an intimate getaway. Some orbital entrepreneur will ultimately scheme up to buy a ride for a crew to produce  the world’s first zero-G porn movie, and then things will really get out of hand. I mean, the movie’s director and a minimum of two Astroporn stars will stand to make millions of dollars in distribution proceeds after they land back on Earth. Think of the global interest in this movie, especially in the Middle East and with practitioners of certain medical specialties. As far as the actors are concerned, they will be instantly immortalized in Hollywood, especially if the movie is titled something like ‘The Kama Sutra of ISS’ or, perhaps, ‘Floating Love’.

Now, most government thinking sees the ISS space station being abandoned around the year 2025, but I don’t think so. I think a private takeover by one of the big hotel chains will take place, and suddenly, the station will be sprouting new Bigelow modules like warts on a horny toad, and millionaires, royalty, and lonely dictators will go there to be cool and hang out with ‘Astro-Naughties’ provided for an extra fee by hotel management.

Many years ago, when I was a child, a local fish and seafood distributor decided to open a restaurant as an adjunct to their fish market in Salt Lake City. It was called, “Bratton’s Seafood Grotto. Now, Salt Lake City is about as far as you can get from any ocean, as it is a part of the Great American Desert. It does, however, feature the Great Salt Lake, the largest inland body of water in the western United States. Not long after the Mormons colonized that part of the country in 1847, a story arose about a small whale being carted overland from the Pacific Ocean in the 1880s and released into the lake to swim freely about, entertaining the local residents.

I have never been able to verify that this actually took place, but stories abound about the poor critter spouting the extra-salty water from its blowhole as it swam hither and thither around this enormous shallow lake looking for a companion. Apparently, it endured the cruel winters in the region for some time and startled boaters that ventured out onto the lake. But, I digress. Now, desert dwellers long for the seashore and the tasty denizens of the deep, and so it came to pass that the Bratton’s Seafood Grotto became a city landmark, and people lined up at the doorway, waiting an hour or more to get inside and feast on fresh lobster, oysters, crabs, shrimp, halibut, and so forth, all at affordable prices.

My family was no different, and although we were not wealthy (my father was a game warden and conservationist), my mother always set aside a little money so that we could travel to Salt Lake City on occasion to sample the wares at Bratton’s. My personal favorite was the fried shrimp, a heaping plate of them served with French fries and Cole slaw. But, sometimes, mother had enough money to also purchase a bowl of clam chowder to go along with the shrimp. It was a meal to die for. Although Bratten’s closed their doors after 35 or 40 years of business, I still have a vivid memory of that wonderful chowder, and recently, the recipe was published in the Salt Lake City Tribune. So, I have decided to share this recipe with the readers of this blog so that they can enjoy this delicious world-class treat. If you can use fresh clams, all the better. Here it is:

Bratten’s Clam Chowder

2 (6½ ounce) cans minced clams

1 cup diced celery

1 cup diced onion

2 cups peeled and diced potatoes

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup flour

1 quart half and half (milk & cream)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt & Pepper to taste

Drain juice from the canned clams. Place diced celery, onions and potatoes in a pot. Pour clam liquid over the vegetables. Add more water, if necessary, so the vegetables are just covered with liquid. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook until vegetables are just tender, about 15 minutes.

In a separate pan, melt butter, sprinkle in flour, whisking until the mixture is smooth. Stirring constantly slowly add half and half to the roux. Cook and stir with a wire whisk until mixture is thick and smooth. Stir in vegetables, juice and clams. Heat through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Servings » 8

Great stuff, I guarantee!

Oh, by the way, the whale may have been recently spotted near Antelope Island