MODERN-DAY WEATHER VANITY

TIME TO BE COOL ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING.

THINGS 2 HEAT UP IN THE COMING ICE AGE.

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS.

 

By John McCarthy

The Moderate Voice
 

Now that the authorities involved have irretrievably solved the mystery of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (without even a scrap of evidence) …

Let’s move to another ephemeral topic of conversation as Winter transitions into Spring during this Global Warming in the year of our Zombie Apocalypse 2014 …

The Weather.

Now if Bob Dylan is right and “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” then this shouldn’t be hard at all.

Unless you are trying to divine the future of the Ukraine, the mental health of Vladimir Putin or the body language of President Obama as he told the height-challenged Russian leader: don’t take another step.

Human beings as mammals are subtropical animals that are ideally suited to be at 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.555 degrees Celsius).

Another columnist seen regularly @ The Moderate Voice wrote a piece this year saying basically that Americans are whiners and need to buck up and get with the program: i.e., more shoveling and less sniveling. We tamed the Wild West – running a snow blower should be a breeze.

But what I am about to write next is very uncool – and also just coincidentally carries an NC-17 warning: Still, you get what you pay for when it comes to your weather: and wherever you live, you chose it bucko.

Where I’m from in Detroit, the folks got 78 inches of snow and experienced one of the coldest winters in 20 years. My family spoke to me only once – on my birthday this month – I think they blame me. Today’s forecast for March 26 – a time when normally the crocuses should be sprouting – calls for 18 degrees (-7.777 degrees Celsius) and “fair.”

Especially when the U.S. Census Bureau says more Americans are staying put where they live for decades longer than at any other time in our history – unless you have a trip planned to Bora Bora every Winter – you should be in a cold sweat if you are subjecting your body to weather conditions that it was not designed to endure.

You eat superfoods like broccoli, drink herbal teas and mineral waters and jog for your health; but, when it comes to putting your body into weather conditions that are most ideal for it – most people generally go where the jobs are … Got a great new executive position in Buffalo? Great! But get a stress test before shoveling your driveway every morning.

One of my college roommates at the University of Michigan was Architect Eng Liang Ong of Singapore. About once a month I would ask him what the temperature was in that city nation they call a “Mini Tiger” – didn’t matter what month of the year I asked him – the answer was always the same: 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius).

It got me to thinking: maybe I didn’t need to live in a cold climate nine months of the year? My first move after college was a step up weather-wise – New York City. The winters of the Big Apple seemed balmy compared to Ann Arbor – and the snow rarely stuck to the ground – a sign that the temperature was above freezing.

While I was at Michigan I took a course in meteorology – on the path to one-day being an on-air television reporter – one of the things the professor stressed in the lectures was that the weather records only go back to the 1880’s – not enough time/data to accurately predict anything in terms of future climatic conditions.

When I was growing up, Time Magazine did a cover story about “The Coming Ice Age” complete with wooly mastodons, white saber-toothed tigers and oversized polar bears. Still, I assumed that the future was bright. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for my hometown of Livonia – there is a picture of a futuristic-looking City Hall building in the middle of an empty, snow-filled parking lot.

It made me wonder if anyone would look at that picture and want to visit there – I surely wouldn’t. My high school art teacher, who had red hair and a moustache, Mr. Nesbitt used to always say that you didn’t have to stay where you were born – you are free to roam about the planet as you wish – “The World Is Yours.”

Now there was a new tsunami alarm testing warning signal this morning as I was writing this column. And the territory did have its posterior handed to itself after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 – but the building codes were improved – the infrastructure was improved – to the point that when Hurricane Marilyn devastated the islands in 1995 – the electricity was back on sooner.

I’ve had clients in Port Charlotte, FL; Binghamton, NY and Morristown, NJ warn me that I should leave St. Croix because it is likely that I’ll be slammed again by another hurricane in the fall. Soon after, those very same areas were smacked down by cyclones.

As Iggy Pop says: “You pays your money and you takes your chances.”

The average mean temperature for the U.S. Virgin Islands is 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Today’s forecast calls for a low of 71 and a high of 86.

But it’s not all good – the service is a bit slow today delivering me my Crucian Rum mojito at poolside – and then there’s the mosquitoes and the sand flies – still, I can’t complain (sometimes I still do).

Wherever you are on the mainland – be cool – it shouldn’t be hard to do this winter.

 

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 

John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com

 

NOW IS THE TIME 4 ALL GOOD MEN 2 JUMP 2 CONCLUSIONS

http://themoderatevoice.com/192612/now-is-the-time-4-all-good-men-to-jump-2-conclusions/

 

LOST IN THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE – RATHER THAN BERMUDA.

THE CASE IS MADE FOR PROFILING PILOTS OVERSEAS.

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS.

 

By John McCarthy

Moderate Voice Columnist

 

     It’s surreal enough to be the plot of a major TV series.

     In fact it already was – “Lost” on ABC – except even scarier than giant polar bears and smoke monsters – are pilots with extreme views bent on total destruction.

     The flight in the TV series was scheduled for 17 hours – Sydney to LA; the flying time of Malaysian Airlines’ Flight 370 was scheduled for about half that – going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

     What happened along the way of that aborted flight path has been the subject of much speculation about terrorism and suicide since the ill-fated Asia-based flight went missing nine days ago.

     CBS News and The India Times call “pilot suicide” a taboo subject – but it is one that is likely to be more talked about in the coming days, weeks and months as the vanished Boeing 777 continues to dominate the 24-hour news cycle.

     “You cannot quite yet rule out everything because we don’t have the physical evidence we need to come to that conclusion,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) on CBS’ Face The Nation, meaning that he felt no indication means it is “at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.”

     If a “preponderance of evidence” could lead to criminal charges filed against a sitting American president – it only makes sense that a complete lack of evidence could also lead someone to reach a foregone conclusion in a case such as this.

     However, I feel quite the opposite. If Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is right and “the plane was last seen heading towards Pakistan.” And if we grant that the doomed flight was commandeered with the intentions of terrorism, then what is the worst possible scenario?

     That the plane – with 239 hostages aboard needing food and drink for nine days – has safely landed in an obscure South Pacific outpost – to be used “later” as a “flying bomb” just as the two planes that knocked out the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers were used.

     No one is writing about it online yet, but the Petronas Twin Towers – featured in the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones – is an obvious target for someone looking to make their bones via terrorism. Its 88 floors are the centerpiece of Malaysia’s futuristic Kuala Lumpur skyline – at 1,483 feet, it used to be one of the tallest structures in the world.

     As Slate Magazine reported, there are 634 such landing sites within the flying range of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 – including some in the middle of the Indian Ocean such as: The Cocos Islands (runway length 8,009 feet); Diego Garcia Naval Support Facility (runway length 12,003 feet); Gan International Airport (runway length 8,694 feet) and the appropriately named “Mal” (meaning “bad” in French) International Airport (runway length 10,499 feet).

     If Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was heading west, it could have stopped off at any one of these remote atolls to refuel for use at a later time while hiding at a remote island airstrip that would have to be at least 5,000 feet long – but wouldn’t necessarily have to be paved (it could be hard-packed dirt) – experts say it could have even landed on a freeway. If it was heading northwest towards Pakistan, as Rep. King stated then it would have had to have cleared heavily monitored airspace near U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

     And if Rep. Rogers is correct, and Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was on a suicide mission with 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid as the masters of disaster – then there is a corollary with the crashes of Egypt Air Flight 990 (LA to Cairo) on October 31, 1999 and SilkAir Flight 185 (Jakarta to Singapore) on December 19, 1997.

    The common denominator on all of these doomed flights – if Captain Shah (who is seen on Facebook wearing a “Democracy Is Dead” t-shirt and has links to the Malaysian terrorist group that bombed a Bali bar popular with Australians in 2002) – is likely to add fuel to the fire for Islamophobes everywhere – and lead to talk about mandatory psychological profiling of pilots.

    The Co-Pilot Hamid was known as a “Cockpit Romeo” for allegedly inviting two ladies in the past to join him in that restricted area for the duration of an entire flight – all of which begs the question: if the pilots do not own the airplanes – how is it that they can manually turn off transponders and other safety technology – when the reasons not to give them such leeway are obvious now?

     The good news is that the number of mechanically-caused commercial airline disasters have virtually been eliminated in recent times.

     Now the commercial airline industry has to devise a way to make the friendly skies freer of pilot errors – to include suicide.

 

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 

John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com

 

 

With A Little Help From Our Friends

THE GRASS IS A LITTLE BROWNER ON THE OTHER SIDE.

‘CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG’ ISN’T A BAD PHILOSOPHY.

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By John McCarthy

TMV Columnist

 

     The more things change, the more they stay the same.
     Sometimes a truism just isn't true – so says a non-“truther”.
     Instant Karma was popular during John Lennon’s time (if only just to talk about) – “bed- ins” never really caught on – maybe it had something to do with bed head hair?
     Instant Rage is all the rage now – it plays out on the news every night and is spun the way you like it depending on which network you watch – but how did we get here?
     First, let’s look at how we’re all acting. You see the template at your local day care center every day.
     Males and females behaving badly – but it’s not really just badly – it’s exponentially BAD.
     Just take a look at the shenanigans in the Congress, where government shutdowns, filibusters and hair-trigger rage dominate.
     In the last five years (2009-2013), Republicans have conducted 82 filibusters of presidential nominees. Since that delaying tactic was first allowed in 1806 – it had been used 86 times UNDER ALL PRESIDENTS COMBINED – before President Obama.
     I am not a psychiatrist – or even a psychologist (although I have been recommended to some) but if you ask me, people are behaving markedly worse due to a push back from the 9-1-1 attacks.
     Osama Bin Laden set the low water mark for behaving badly on that fateful day in 2001.
     At first, immediately after the tragedy – people treated each other better – need to merge your car into traffic? No problem. Only two items and need to cut in line at the supermarket? No problem. Lost your wallet and need $100 bus fare to Podunk, Iowa? Well, OK, no problem, mon. Those were the bad ‘ol days after September 11th.
     Over time, the elastic band that holds good and evil together in this world got stretched beyond its breaking point by Saudi Arabia’s most famous Jihadi former son – like defective Spandex.
     Even a child knows that it is wrong to steal. But most children have stolen something of little value – like a piece of Bazooka bubble gum from the neighborhood store.
     No child would think to put a gun to the head of the owner of the store and steal all the money in the cash register. Yet that is exactly what Osama Bin Laden’s actions taught us was possible.
     The late World's Most Wanted man did the unthinkable – and by doing so made us all think again –he brought a New World Order to values by crashing four jumbo passenger jets into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
     Of course, 9-1-1 cost the U.S. stock market $1.4 trillion and the most recent shutdown of the government by Congressional Republicans “only” cost $24 billion (according to Standard & Poors).
     When the last shutdown engineered by the G.O.P. occurred in 1995-1996, the American economy in the dot com boom was just starting to rev its engines of prosperity. Times were good.
     There is a word for people who would sabotage what was already being called “The Great Recession” by throwing a monkey wrench into a fragile economy at a time of great vulnerability – it is: “terrorist.”
     Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News warned that the government’s failure to pay its debts during the shutdown would halt $5 trillion in lending to people and businesses and raise the specter of “throw[ing] the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression.”
     And there’s still talk that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his band of merry Tea Partiers are planning to do it all over again. Why would anyone do that? The solution is not to govern by any means necessary – but to lead with diplomacy, finesse and fellowship – leave the Iron Fist to Putin.
     The easy answer is: Osama Bin Laden taught us all how to be as “bad as we wanna be.” It is for us as adults in the day care center they call “The Congress” to disregard that kind of information – no matter how powerful its black hole of suction is.
     When you think about it, after the attacks of 9-1-1, there was an outpouring of sympathy for New York and the good people who live in New York City – but it was an attack on America – the whole nation was under siege after those coordinated Al Qaeda attacks.
     People say the nation came together as one during that trying time – and that the strong, reassuring words of President “W.” Bush – made us all think that things couldn’t help but get better - after all, they couldn't get any worse.
     But starting in October 2007, with the anti-Free Market banking and insurance bailouts, the economic order of things charted southwards. It was a race to the bottom.
     The people who aren’t rooting for America to succeed have always liked to draw a parallel between the United States and the Roman Empire – implicit in that analogy is that one not so fine day this land of spacious skies, purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain – will fall. Scholars say the fall of the Roman Empire took about 10 years.
     It’s tough to say what might motivate someone to purposely set a pressure cooker up in the path of a marathon race of human beings set to explode as they run by.
     You just have to look to the longest-lasting feud in history – the Arabs and Jews in the Middle East – to see what happens when "terrorism" is answered with uneven-handedness. It becomes a war that literally NEVER ENDS.
     No solution in sight. And that’s not the way I see it all coming down for America. We are too good and resourceful of a people to ever let that happen.
     John Lennon was trying to teach the world a song to sing in the 1970's - it was called PEACE - maybe if I hum a few bars you'll remember. Peace, like charity, begins at home.
     Washingtonians would probably laugh you out of the room if you tried to suggest there might be a Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr.-type solution to our collective problems.
     Sounds old-fashioned, but sitting down and hashing it out face-to-face has been known to work. Skype, Face-Time, texting and email won't do it this time. What do we have to lose by trying?

     If Motor City Madman Ted Nugent had to look President Obama straight in the eye and call him what he called him – mano e mano – could he do it? I don’t think he has the cojones.
     But what do I know? I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I’m living in a grass hut with no electricity in the Virgin Islands.
     Does anyone know if it costs more to lie down on the couch than to sit in the chair?

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House

 

John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photographer living in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send comments to johnfmccarthy807@msn.com