We Desperately Need To Get Off Oil, But Batteries Are A Bad Idea For Fueling Vehicles! - Rev. J.T. Smith

I am in no way supporting Big Oil with what I'm about to say as petrol as a fuel is an environmental disaster.  There is no denying that at all.

That said, batteries are not the right way to go either for several reasons.

One of which is that batteries all wear out eventually.  Just look to your mobile phone and you'll realize this.  Then again, far too many feel a desperate need to always have the latest and greatest product and update their mobile phone every year or so.  A fact that manufacturers don't only realize but actively count on and encourage this behaviour.  Consumerism at all costs.  Great for the bottom lines of corporations around the world but utter shit for the environment.

Car companies, including Tesla, are counting on this short-sighted behaviour too.  Though of course they won't admit it as that would be bad for sales.

One of the more subtle ways of encouraging this is to place in the instructions that come with the device, including electric cars, the notion that batteries supposedly no longer develop a memory the way nickle-cadmium [Ni-Cad] batteries used to so you should recharge them once they drop to 15% rather than run them flat first before recharging.  They tell you this, not because they really want you to get the most life out of your battery (FYI, there's zero profit in it for corporations for you to not have to replace the batteries sooner!), but because they want to sell you more batteries and/or a new device sooner.

These days, the only thing that's kept around longer than the rechargeable batteries that run them are vibrators.  Then again, a dead vibrator is still a dildo. 

Now, I grant that lithium ion [Li-Ion] batteries don't develop a memory the way that Ni-Cad ones did, they do still develop that memory only over a longer period of time.  Longer enough, the manufacturers figure, that you'll be throwing out your old device and replacing it with a new one before the battery will no longer hold a charge.  But if you really want your rechargeable batteries to actually last as long as they can before they're permanently dead, then you should always run them until they're flat before you recharge them and you should recharge them until they're fully recharged before using them again.

In the meantime there's still the matter of the fact that it still takes hours to fully recharge a battery from flat (the more powerful the batteries, the longer it takes to recharge them); and as noted earlier, if you don't run the battery to flat prior to fully recharging completely you will shorten the total overall life of the battery.  (This is the end result of the aforementioned memory.)  I know this for a fact by taking two identical modern mobile phones (I inadvertently got two identical handsets, one from each of two people, due to my previous mobile phone dying completely after 4 years of service, and I kept the second as a backup) and ran the first one battery to flat every time prior to fully recharging.  That handset started getting a bit worn so I started using the second handset fresh from the box.  Only with the second handset I decided to go against my better judgement and started recharging every day or so regardless of how low the battery was.  The end result was that the battery of the second handset ended up needing to be recharged as often after one year as the first one did after two hours.  Now, neither handset will last 24 hours before going flat. And unlike Top Gear, who would fake things to get their end result, I didn't fake any of it.  That's because batteries typically lose approximately 80% of their capacity after a couple of years.

Regardless, if you do decide to keep your electric vehicle for long enough, you'll have to deal with the battery.  While some companies like Nissan are trying to make it that you would only have to replace a bad cell rather than the entire battery replace the entire battery, it's currently more common and more likely that your dealer won't be the ones to deal with individual cells; so you'll still end up having to replace the battery outright to keep that car going the way petrol fueled vehicles can currently.  At which point you have a piece of trash that still contains components that still can't be recycled; and that, in turn, continues to have a toxic environmental impact.  Yes, more of the components can be recycled, but the cost of lithium is low right now because the relative demand is low currently, but that'll change over time.  And all of this presumes you'll still be able to get a matching replacement battery when the time comes, anyway.

I fully acknowledge the fact that petrol fuel is an environmental disaster, but one of the advantages of a liquid fuel is that as long as the engine/motor still uses that fuel then it doesn't matter what shape the fuel tank takes as long as it fits into the hull of the vehicle.  And replacing a liquid fuel tank is a lot cheaper than replacing the battery on an electric vehicle.  And one of the beautiful things about classic cars is that we can still drive them now, decades after they were manufactured.  If the trend of throwing away battery operated devices, either as soon as or before the batteries will no longer hold a charge, then things like classic car shows will be a thing of the past.  Classic car shows aren't  singing the praises of Big Oil; they're showcases of lasting and durable engineering and works of art created from metals.

Even more troubling than the technical issues, there's still the slave labour and environmental problems inherent in the manufacture of batteries.

We would do far better with a hybrid car consisting of a hydrogen fuel cell backed up with solar panels.  But thanks to irrational fears due to a misunderstanding of just what downed the Hindenburg, it'll be a long time before this is more widely accepted.  And thanks to current economics, it'll be cheaper to replace an entire vehicle than only the battery when the battery can no longer hold a charge.  Batteries are a stopgap measure at best.

by  Rev. J.T. Smith

Major Problem With The Coronavirus Reporting - Rev. J.T. Smith

While there is no question that the COVID-19 coronavirus is a serious issue, the media have been exaggerating the problem.  Suspicion is not knowledge, and a presumptive case is not a confirmed case.

In Pennsylvania as of March 14, 2020, there are reported to be 41 cases of COVID-19, 35 presumptive positive cases and six confirmed. That is bad reporting as suspicion, regardless of the probability of accuracy, is still not knowledge.  Presumption is based on probability, and while something has a high probability of being the case it would be far better to stick with reporting only the confirmed cases.

Not only that, but pushing hand sanitizer, which while being antibacterial isn't effective against viral infections, is nothing more than a placebo that in the long run helps to create the superbugs that resist antibiotics due to overuse.

Obviously freedom of the press is important, and I am not suggesting otherwise; but, the government's reporting presumptive cases as actual cases is only serving to foment fear and panic.

What's more is the fact that the massive quarantine was never put in place to combat a frankly bigger threat to human health, even with the vaccine that's relatively readily available,  that has been well known for a long time now: Influenza.  Then again, humans panic so easily when confronted with a new unknown.

And while I am not prone to conspiracy theories in general, I have noticed that the quarantine measures now in place handily circumvent the First Amendment's protections ["Congress shall make no law respecting . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble"] and quash the myriad protests (e.g. protests against any/all of Trump's scandals, protests against the police, et al) that have been taking in America for the last three years and more.

The COVID-19 coronavirus issue has been blown vastly out of proportion in this country, allowing fear to take over from rational thought from the public and harming more people than merely those even potentially at risk from this virus.

Either way, it does help to show how much better Bernie Sanders' Medicare For All would be than what's currently available; but while Sanders' Medicare For All would help the medical system issues under the circumstances, it still leaves hourly workers, the unemployed, and small business owners high and dry if this situation lasts for too much longer.

- Rev. J.T. Smith

Vegans Really Need To Learn - Rev. J.T. Smith

The reality is that actual meat is NOT the problem.  Modern factory methods are the problem in terms of how farm animals are treated.  

It's important to remember than humans are biologically designed to consume and utilize animal protein, and thinking "protein is protein" is a mistake as there are significant differences between animal and plant proteins.  Humans need to stop trying to separate themselves from the rest of the natural flora and fauna of this planet!  Like bears, humans, are OMNIVOROUS!  For crying out loud, if we realize that the other fauna of Earth are also sentient, then we must accept and fully acknowledge that the bear knows the salmon is also sentient, yet the bear seems to have no issues eating the salmon when the opportunity arises.

And considering most of the alternatives to leather, etc, are in fact made of petroleum based products, you're trading one problem that you don't like to a bigger problem that you'd rather turn a blind eye to.

A much bigger and far more real problem is the massive overpopulation of humans on this tiny planet.

An aspect that so many people miss is that this planet is becoming ever more dangerously overpopulated with humans.  The REAL problem is the fact that this planet is not evolutionarily designed for the MASSIVE overpopulation of humans.  It took just 123 years for the human population to double from the first 1 billion in 1804 to 2 billion in 1927.  Then only 33 years to reach 3 billion.  In 47 years, the total population has more than doubled from 3+ Billion humans to 7+ Billion today.  The problem is NOT the people who eat meat but that humans breed nearly faster than unchecked rabbits.  Human breeding (not black, not Jewish, not Muslim, not [fill in the blank with ethnic group(s) of choice], but HUMAN breeding desperately needs to be slowed.  It is this overpopulation that ultimately causes all of the major fights over resources (e.g. fuel, potable water, etc), and is the root cause of climate change (that statement is in no way a defense of Big Oil or King Coal).  When the original texts of the Bible were written, particularly the bit about "be fruitful and multiply," human population worldwide on Earth only counted in the millions.  It was just over two centuries ago that humans crossed the 1 billion mark.  And the population has more than doubled in the last 50 YEARS.  Guess what: you've been very fruitful and multiplied like rabbits.  Now knock it off already!

And there's something else the high and mighty vegans constantly overlook in their deluded superiority - Veganism is in fact Not healthy for everyone. 

What about all of the plants every one of us murder every day?  What?  Just because they can't run, fly, or swim away and you can't hear their screams, it's alright to kill and mutilate them?  (Mowing the lawn and cutting shrubs into fanciful shapes is mutilation, even though they don't bleed!)  Thinking otherwise further proves you're faunacentric.


It wasn't long ago that it was generally accepted that non-human animals don't feel pain the way that humans do.  Now, it is becoming far more accepted that the inverse is true.  What's more, scientists are discovering that plants also form friendships and remember their experiences, that they really are asking asking for our help, and the evidence is growing that plants are also conscious.

Let's face it, Human "ethics" in terms of diet are an artificial construct born from humanity constantly trying to separate themselves from the rest of the flora and fauna of this planet.  If plants were able to fight back, humans would undoubtedly be at the top of their target list due to not only the ingestion of plants but also that humans are continuously cutting down living plants for everything from buildings and clothing all the way to topiary.

Just as there is a whole sexuality spectrum that we see and know clearly within the biological gender binary, there is also obviously a dietary spectrum to be found within the omnivorous binary that runs from herbivorous to carnivorous and everything in between; and trying to force people, even if only by social pressure, to become completely herbivorous is just as wrong as it is to put peer pressure on members of the LGBT community to be heterosexual.
 

- Rev. J.T. Smith

America Does Have A Drug Problem, Just Not What Politicians Would Have You Believe - Rev. J.T. Smith

[Full disclosure: On January 23, 2013, I survived a hemorrhagic stroke that initially left me completely paralyzed from the neck down on my dominant side, and reduced my hearing and peripheral vision on the same side.  While I am ambulatory once more and I've regained some use of my dominant hand and arm, I'm still trying to overcome that my stamina is still vastly diminished compared to my former normal, that my thermal-tactile sense is glitchy at best on my dominant side, and that the only time I'm not in constant pain is when I'm asleep.  More recently, I've learned that I have osteoarthritis in both hips, though initially only "presenting" on my non-stroke affected side which adds to the overall pain I experience on any given day.  And that 1-10 pain scale is relative to each person where a 9 for one person is a 4 for another.  (e.g. My accidentally nicking an exposed a nerve in one of my back teeth by biting an onion slice on my hoagie and driving it into my tooth hurt far more than when I broke my left elbow or when I broke my right wrist such that it now has a metal plate and screws installed.)  All of which should be kept in mind when reading my following article.]

- - -

America has a drug problem.  I’m not referring to the “war on drugs” which has resulted in the persecution and disproportionate incarceration of people of colour, I'm referring to a prevalent attitude in America.  And while what I'm talking about may seem like I'm merely conflating separate issues, it needs to be realized that what I'm describing is a multi-faceted series of different drug problems that in reality all together add up to a very large overall drug problem.

 

One facet of the overall problem is the recreational use of drugs.  Not only does this include the use of illicit drugs (in 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older—9.4 percent of the population—had used an illicit drug in the past month. This number is up from 8.3 percent in 2002) and drugs like marijuana (which is gaining in acceptance and transitioning from illicit to legal), it also includes the use of legal drugs like alcohol.  You had a bad day?  You don’t like your situation in life.  Then use your (preferably legal) drug of choice.  It’s almost like Americans are trying to prove Darwin was wrong.

 

But it doesn’t end there.  Another facet I’m referring to the pharmaceutical complex in America often referred to as “Big Pharma” and the ever expanding impact that they have.  While Big Pharma does serve a useful purpose in creating lifesaving vaccines and medications for genuine medical conditions, the reality is that they have absolutely no intention of creating any more actual cures.  Let's face it, they're still kicking themselves for curing polio.  The simple reality is that there’s no profit in curing anything when they can help you to “just live with it”.  If you're taking a medication for the rest of you're life then that's not a cure at all, it's merely living with it!  If you took you're car to the mechanic to fix a transmission, but you still had to constantly add transmission fluid to it, you wouldn't consider your transmission actually fixed now would you?

 To exacerbate this is still another facet: There’s the constant adverts for the latest drug aimed at the general public with the goal of the consumer asking for a certain drug rather than the far more logical approach where your doctor tells you what drugs you should use, if any.  While many countries allow over-the-counter drugs to be advertised, only the United States and New Zealand allows prescription drugs to be advertised on television.  Frankly, Big Pharma has abused this tolerance by pushing drugs that may not be effective or applicable to their conditions on viewers.  In the United States, TV adverts for pharmaceuticals must list the major side effects that were detected during the drug's safety trials; this disclosure can give the false impression that older drugs (i.e. the ones that came out before TV advertising was an option) are safer than all these “newfangled” drugs, when in fact the older drugs tend to have just as many side effects as the new ones do. (e.g. The litany of side effects for aspirin would fill several pages.)  Not only that, but in 2015 there were more than 1 million reports of drug side effects were file, an increase of five-fold since 2004.  These are drugs used to treat diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and diabetes are among those with the greatest number of reports.  What’s more, as demonstrated by the myriad lawsuits resulting from consequent injuries from the use of so many of these “latest and greatest” drugs, pharmaceutical companies rush their latest chemical “miracle” before they’ve properly and extensively tested them.  Between modern knowledge of chemistry and the capability of creating complex computer models capable of creating predictive interaction models, the vast majority of side effects should already be either eliminated before they ever go to market or should keep the new drug in question from getting to market in the first place.

 

Still, that’s just a part of the overall problem.  Another facet is that it seems that for every minor problem there’s a drug.  Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted, Big Pharma’s credo has been: “When the medication is ready, the disease (and patients) will appear.”  Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs?  And they’re effectively creating new “diseases” all the time or blowing conditions like ADHD way out of proportion.  There wouldn't be such an issue if we stopped trying to schedule every nanosecond of a child's life and let them learn naturally through this crazy thing called playing.  I don't mean sports or any other structuralized format but just let them have fun, make it up as they go, and free-form explore the world around them without panicking because of scrapes and bruises. 

 

Furthermore, yet another aspect is that far too many psychiatrists and other doctors are more readily inclined to prescribe drugs for nearly every malady, whether it be physical or mental illness, rather than turning to other means and methods like actually getting people to accept that the universe is an inherently unfair place and to find ways of changing the aspects of your life that you can change and dealing with those aspects you cannot change.  While it’s not easy, doing that without the use of drugs can be done successfully.

 

This particular issue of the push for drugs to solve all of the woes was brought into clear focus for me while I was going through a psychological evaluation at the Penn Foundation regarding the Depression I've been dealing with for decades and was exacerbated by the stroke I survived.  The psychiatrist started not just recommending but effectively pushing "antidepressant" drugs as an answer to the point where I was seriously wondering just how deep into the pockets of their pharmaceutical rep he was.  It took me several times of stating "No drugs!" before he finally got the hint that "No" means "No" even when I say it.  

 

Do people suffer from chemical imbalances in their brain leading to problems like Depression, et al?  Yes.  But throwing drugs at it forever rather than finding and actually fixing the problem isn't the right answer (see aforementioned transmission analogy) unless you think that profits regardless of how those profits are achieved are always the right answer, that is.

 

In this case, I certainly believe that if anyone there has a drug problem it's due to the psychiatrist for so stubbornly refusing to consider other options.  One of the many issues I have with my ever starting any kind of antidepressant regimen is the fact that there's still so much trial-and-error (with far too many errors) and hit-or-miss (again, too much miss) in prescribing the drugs in the first place.  I know this from the various friends who are currently on various antidepressants and who have been for years, a couple of whom I've personally known for a decade and more.  I will not be a guinea pig for something that they should be able to accurately prescribe if medicine once again mattered more than profits.

 

Drugs are nothing more than chemical crutches and like physical crutches should be used only when absolutely necessary.  Crutches are meant to be temporary, not permanent “solutions”.  The big problem I'm describing is a multifaceted reliance on drugs to solve every problem rather than trying to actually repair or cure the medical ailments, and getting active in the political ones. 

 

by Rev. J.T. Smith

Conundrum (RE: Zoos, Etc.) - Rev. J.T. Smith

It’s almost spring time, when the weather starts to warm up and school field trips and families, especially those with children, travel to zoos, aquariums, and related parks; and I'm experiencing a conundrum in regards to those destinations.

I think most all of us have been to a zoo or game preserve (e.g. the Trexler Nature Preserve, formerly the Trexler-Lehigh County Game Preserve, in Schnecksville, PA) at one time or another in our lives, particularly when we were children.  We love seeing, hearing, and smelling the animals there.  It brings to reality the animals we've seen pictures of and heard about via various media.  For anyone who's become a veterinarian, biologist, zoologist, or has specialized further in regards to any animal life, visits to the zoo will have played a large role in triggering those interests.  Likewise, going to the aquarium (e.g. Baltimore Aquarium, Camden Aquarium, et al) would have similar effects when it comes to sea life.  Even circuses and theme parks like SeaWorld also allow us to be closer to animals we would otherwise never likely have the opportunity to experience.  Zoos and aquariums have also played a role in helping some species avoid extinction through captive mating programs and protecting them from poachers.


The dark side of zoos, aquariums, etc., is that in order to populate them we're taking living, sentient beings from their natural habitats, separating them from their families (quite often at exceptionally young ages and pretty much violently regardless of their age), and imprisoning them in artificial enclosures.  And in the best of circumstances, the staffs do everything in their power, barring releasing the animals, to make certain that they're well cared for and treated with dignity.  Unfortunately quite often the animals are held in enclosures that are far too small and otherwise overcrowded considering how spread apart individuals in a population typically live; and in the case of circuses like Ringling Brothers and theme parks like SeaWorld, the animals are treated horrifically out of sight of the general public in order to get them to perform for us.  (For a better understanding, you can watch the movie "Blackfish", or read Beneath The Surface by John Hargrove or the recent articles in the news over the last couple of years.)  That's the dark side, the sad stark reality that we must face and accept.

I do my best to try to see both sides of things.  I realize that zoos, aquariums, et al., are far from perfect on oh so many levels.  And while we can learn about wildlife, whether aquatic, avian, or terrestrial, from books, or the internet, or by watching various documentaries, the other stark reality is that there is no substitute for being able to see an elephant in person and experience firsthand just how large, powerful, and magnificent they are.  Even through the bars of a zoo, we can experience the big cats in person (and in safety to us at least) through more of our senses than a book or a screen could ever allow.

The vast majority of us simply don't have the resources to be able to travel the world and experience the animals in their native habitats.  Monetary wealth shouldn't be the only deciding factor on who gets to experience wildlife in person when both finances and transportation can be limiting factors to the intelligent when intelligence itself isn't borne of money.  And while books, movies, and the internet can still inspire us, nothing can instill the awe and wonder of seeing these magnificent creatures live the way, even vastly imperfectly, that zoos and aquariums allow.

There needs to be a better way. My conundrum is that finding it currently eludes me.

by Rev. J.T. Smith

This Planet Is A Closed Environmental System, And The Capacity To Colonize Any Other World Is Still Too Far Off

Cree Proverb

Religion Vs Science - Rev. J.T. Smith

That title seems to imply that science and religion (any religion, I am not singling out any specific religion here) are at odds with each other.  And it seems that the majority of people (well, most Americans at least) share that sentiment: that science and religion are at odds with each other.  The reality, though, is that they're not.  I'm writing this as an ordained minister and a scientist.  Even Einstein said: “I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details.”

Scientists rely on methodology, testing, and evidence to come to their conclusions.  Scientists, for the most part it seems, concur that science has all the answers.   Science does not have all of the answers; science does, however, provide a way of getting the answers.   The catch is that there will always be questions, there will always be mysteries.

Religion was basically the earliest form of science, the earliest means available to explain world and the universe.  Science as we know it came about because Religion didn't seem sufficient to answering questions as there was evidence putting holes in many of the core statements of Religion.   Part of the problem is a difference in the mental approach.  Scientists have ideas that they test and either verify and/or adjust as needed, or reject the idea as determined by the testing and the resulting evidence.  Religion, on the other hand, tends to engender beliefs.  Beliefs are far more intransigent, much harder to adapt to new evidence.  What many people don't seem to grasp is that simply because new evidence may contradict one aspect of a given religion it doesn't mean that the religion itself is wrong, it simply means that our understanding needs to be adjusted.

The Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible (of which the first five books are in fact the Torah) contain an ancient understanding of how the world and the universe were created; but that's not necessarily the whole story.  Evolution still fits easily into it all.  Especially once you look at the Creation as described in Genesis as the highlights much the same way the sports section of the news (i.e. the evening news, the sports section of the newspaper/newsletter, etc., et al.) doesn't describe every moment of a game/match but instead just gives the highlights for the “big plays”, the big events.

Science will explain how people reproduce, how groups of people form cultures and how those cultures interacted physically, economically, socially, etc.   Science in and of itself does not set moral boundaries nor recommend any laws governing how people should treat each other.  In many societies, religion does set those moral boundaries and recommend those governing laws.  In fact, not only were the oldest documented legal codes based on religious doctrines, but many modern legal codes still spring at the base from religious-based ethical doctrines.  That does mot mean that atheists lack morals or that religion is required to create a working and just code of conduct.  In fact, the American legal system has roots not only in the 10 commandments of Jewish/Christian heritage/faith, but also numerous others including ancient Roman and Babylonian legal codes as well as civil and common law traditions of Europe.

Ultimately, what's mostly missed in all this back and forth is that both religion and science are really after the same thing: Both want to understand the universe.  The difference is simply the approach, the effective questions being asked.  Science seeks to explain and understand how it all happens, how it all works, the effective mechanics of it.  Religion seeks to explain and understand why it all happens, what's behind it all, a reason beyond “that's just the way it is.”  The easiest way to understand it is to think of science as the medical approach to the universe as a body, while religion could be thought of as the psychological approach to the universe.  Science will see the body, but for many they'll see that body as a machine rather than a living dynamic entity.  Religion tends to treat the body as a living entity and tries to work from there, but occasionally misses that the universe is dynamic rather than static, and has been since the Creation.

by Rev. J.T. Smith

Reality Check