MOUNTING PYTHONS...

How can one possibly be assured that Global Warming is not a myth?

It's really more simple than one could imagine: visit any 'chat room' that pits an American RepublicanT against, dare we say it: those of us living in the rational, real world, and 'watch' the insults fly out of the mouths of these RepublicanT demagogues...

“Dumb–ass libs”

“Knee–jerk libs”

“Stupid libs”

What one can note from such displays of personal insecurity, of entranced and entrenched adhesion to the failures of a Bush era gone to hell, in the complicity of the worse–than–ever American Media (MSM: mainstream media), is their swift ability to attack the very people that, assuredly, will extend to them a hand in the coming turbulent times.

It will be liberals, in the American sense, that restore some dignity to the national palate, after again an eight year period that perpetuated the Republican's third WAR FOREVER opus (After the War on Communism, and the War on Drugs, we 'won' the right to endure the Republicans' War on Terrorism).

And if by some miracle, the Democratic Party does not win seventy per cent of the House and Senate, Americans will continue to wonder how illegal voting machines are used in every State, how illegal disenfranchisement 'computer screens' are implemented in States like Florida, and how the MSM works night and day, to twist every covered story (remember the ZENmud Law on Journalism: often what IS NOT covered, is more important than what IS...) to give it the lustre of 'Reps GOOOOOD, Dems BAAAAD'.

So, in the European press this weekend, it was announced that the rising global temperature ranges, have rendered the south–eastern band of the United States into the proper climate for expansion of the Giant Python's territory.

Read an article on the Florida Python craze, here.

And as the existence of blind Republican trolls isn't a stranger to the ZEN family (biological or social), those who live in the Rockies are amazed that 'global warming means more snow! Bring it on!', while those closer to ZEN Central (throughout the Swiss–French–Netherlands–Italian ranges), often in the high echelons of banking management, are content to bitch about high oil prices, while fueling up their SUVs or Maseratis or whatever.

Do pythons, capable of attaining five meters' length, suddenly infesting the Everglades and other Floridian swamps, bode well for your little FIDO in the Louisiana bayous? Put it this way... Fido has already survived smaller snakes, alligators and who knows what... but will curiosity better then native defenses of your small furry ball of happiness? The slithering snaky sounds amplified into an Indiana–Jonesian mythic dimension, could find Toto tampering with destiny.

And, in the spirit of ZENmud, since this photo in the EVERGLADES is from 2005, are we sure that these beasts, capable of swimming over sixty kilometers in several hours, are not here to stay? Or that this old-news is surfacing without other mitigating motivations?

So when evidence of 'side benefits', such as Colorado (or Alpine) snows in May make one laugh, while cities swelter already and the typhoon season has destroyed Myanmar's coastal territories and, in the Alpen valleys of the Swiss Ticino (Italian linguistic and border region of CH), one town registered 137 liters of water per square meter, during twelve hours, last Saturday: remember your math?

One square meter = 10.76391 sq. ft.

One liter = 61.023744 cubic inches

So 137 L / 12 hours = 11.42 L/hr = (+/-) four inches per hour?

Of such numbers (and here at ZENmud, we certainly enjoy being corrected mathematically: a discipline that was given up between High School and University, for several reasons...), 'Biblical Proportions' becomes an understatement. No news of flooding, such as we remember from the Big Thompson Flood, that hit Colorado in the late 1970s...

What ends this piece is the observation that, to avoid communal catastrophes, one has to have a heart and ability to: a) want to hand a better planet to those who follow us; b) have the mental moral strength to self–impose the limitations of lifestyle that allow for –a– to happen; c) not get lost in the greed of 'keeping up with the Jones', that permits the free–rider mentality to impose egotism as if it was not one factor of the biggest (if not in nearly every) crime(s) against humanity...

Just as the grandmothers of today's Conservatives, were given (in the USA) the right to vote by the Liberal voters of that era, so to are the Conservatives of today (and many gas-guzzling liberal automobile owners) going to be, of necessity, brought along, screaming and whining and bitching about 'Damn Liberals' messing with the Universe 'as they wanted and knew it'...

But the sound bite and slander cannot stand in the way of the Truth OR the Reality... very much longer.

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© 2008

2008: The YEAR of the GIRO... Italian style

The cycling world would do well to realize that this year is the Year of the Giro, and allow the Tour de France a secondary role that it is certainly not willing to accept.

But if the Tour de France has taught cyclists anything, that would be how someone that only owns and organizes an event of global stature, that nearly the entire world notices in July, is capable of stupidity, avarice and ... unZEN karma.

We are not aware of what conversation, or event, transaction, or promise (and we are NOT insinuating bad things) created a change of mind with RCS the organizers of the Giro d'Italia. But we applaud the alignment of the stars, that gives only this, the first of the three Grand Tours, a claim to 'world championship' status.

If the management of the Tour de France, whose 'Tolérance Zéro' only begins on the Tenth Anniversary of the Worst Tour, is paying any attention, they would be biting their nails now, wondering if they've made the wrong 'last stand' at denying the team Astana of Kazakhstan an opportunity to race, with its 2008 winner (via the withdrawal of the leading Michael Rasmussen of RABOBANK, for a 'whereabouts' conflict that erupted in the middle of the race).

Remember: the 1998 FESTINA-stained event, with its drug busts and embarrassing sequels... was ten years ago; it then opened the door to a US Postal >> Discovery Channel sequel. That shift was monumental: it presented to the world, the fabulous, money-making, sport-redefining reign of Lance Armstrong, without whose miraculous, post-cancer "rebirth", the sport of cycling may very well have faded into total obscurity.

We at ZEN Central do wish the riders at the Giro the race of their lives!

And this report will suffice, because, hey! The Giro is on live, now, and we don't want to miss another slippery turn

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© 2008

Lucid in the SKY with Diamonds...

The year was 1974, and a younger ZENmud was exploring life through the lifestyle of his second oldest brother, in Denver, Colorado.

[photo credit from Art Knowledge News website]

At 17 years old, transplanted into the 'bosom' of his brothers' lives already established in CO, hopes ran across the whole range of our four brothers, that the 'war' between parents would soon end, as did WW II, or at least issue some kind of 'Armistice' as did WW I.

In those Denver high-school years, learning the thrills of fast cycling, through the receipt by a dear friend of a fine Motobecane 'Grand Record' 10-spd racing bicycle, the first bike ZENmud road, that contained Campagnolo components.

A wacky friend, a long-haired bad-boy, son of a decent man, who was a widow then, with only two of his three sons... I'll call my friend 'Blane'. I'd met Blane in the park where we road together: he was the first and only friend that bought an Eddy Merckx bicycle: which he immediately repainted in about the same colour as this text.

Blane was our 'crazy friend', because twas he that had entered deepest into the realm of hippiedom, he who had the most 'connections' and he, that introduced ZENmud to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).


And now that Albert Hofmann has passed into the next 'world', at age 102, here in Switzerland, it feels good to remember what happened when ZENmud 'dropped' the first time...

Into the wayback machine...

I remember the 'vastness' of the things I felt and saw, and was unfortunately conscious of the possibility of having a 'bad trip'. (I read a lot as a young boy, and Dad was a doctor by education: medical fascinations were morbidly part of the youthful ZENworld)

I realized that Blane, who was sitting across the room telling me every two minutes that I had to 'hear this song! It's the best when you're trippin', man...', meant that I didn't get to 'choose' anything, and didn't get to 'experience' what I could have, because Blane wanted to ram all the great moments from all his musically-enhanced 'trips' into my newly-widening sensations, within about 20 minutes! Blane had 'bad TRIP LEADER' written all over the future of my next three hours... so I said 'bye, dude!'...


Albert Hoffman first determined what LSD 'could be', because he spilled a small drop on his hand, and then launched inside himself the truest form of Human Exploration that one could possibly imagine: He truly went 'where no man had gone before'.

How interesting that Hafmann's major 'Discovery', actually occurred in 1938: he evidently found no 'miracles' that derived from the molecule he produced. It went on to the 'chemical dustbin', where a great many 'artisanal' chemical confections find burial. But, as is told by the Albert Hofmann Fountdation's web-pages:

Hofmann's discovery of the effect of LSD in Basel came 5 years after his original synthesis of the molecule in 1938. LSD-25, as it was called then, was synthesized and tried on animals. No interesting effects appeared, and the molecule was consigned to the "useless" heap. If it had stayed there, the state of today's world would be different.

[.....]

[The] chemist in the old Sandoz lab (since demolished - see photo) had what he called a "Vorgefühl." The usual English word for this is "presentiment," but the German word suggests something stronger than the laid-back "presentiment." Something was telling Hofmann to retrace his steps and perform a new synthesis of the discarded molecule, LSD-25. It had to be that molecule and not one of the others consigned to the "useless" pile.

As interesting as such a story could be, ZENmud had sent an SMS to a friend two nights ago, which said (trust me...):

“Did it ever occur to you, that LSD is to the Neuron, what the Hydrogen Bomb was to the atom?”

Read more of the Hofmann Institute page regarding the discovery of the effects of LSD, and its timing only four months after the first Chicago experiments with Nuclear Fission, while a certain ZEN Central prepares for a spring weekend.

And how did the first ever ZEN-acid trip end? With my 29 year-old brother walking into his house, while young ZEN was rolling naked with his two dogs, as well as the two dogs of our mother, all barking (and I), happy, laughing... we 'understood'... Then ZENers dressed for the evening....

Hola M-rita :-)

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© 2008