Bos'n Higgs

Satyendra Nath Bose, for whom the boson is named.

The Higgs boson has been found...or has it?
The link goes to a Boston Globe story from the AP. 
There is a lot of hedging here.
These scientists are under pressure to produce results with their not so new expensive toy,
the Hadron Collider.
It looks like they have found another subatomic particle to go along with fermions, quarks, leptons, bosons (of which this is said to be another of at least six), and many many hypothetical ones.
Ho Hum.
It is all so reminiscent of the United States government
periodically announcing that Al Qaida Number Two has been killed.
By the way, the latest snuffed  Al-Qaeda  No. 2 leader,  was Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was blasted in "Pakistan's lawless frontier region" according to the Washington Post of June 5, 2012, by a CIA drone.
Watch out Al Qaeda Number 3; you are now Number 2.

There is always another Al Qaida Number Two to be tracked down. 
One can find anything one desires in this vasty universe,
From Higgs Boson particles 
to another Al Qaeda Number Two 
to Pink Unicorns.  
We do not even notice anymore. 

"This Book Is A Weapon" a painting by John Bonanno,
although it just might as well been named, "Appeal to Authority"

"As a layman, I think we did it...As a layman, I think we have it. But as a scientist, I have to say, `"What do we have?' ""- Rolf Heuer, CERN director

"Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got Him!" - Paul Bremer, USA Iraq director on the capture of former CIA asset Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda

Here is a rather extensive list of Al Qaeda leaders killed since 2004. 

This and That

Salafi Muslims are warning us that tomatoes can turn you Christian.
I hope that isn't true.
Their "reasoning" is that when tomatoes are sliced a certain way they reveal a cross.
I suspect if Muslim homes are dismantled a certain way, wooden studs and beams that form crosses would also be revealed. 
I love tomatoes and have over 60 plants of various varieties in my garden.
I am not concerned that they will convert me to any particular religion.
Muslims must be weak in their faith if a wonderful and healthy component of the diet can force them to stray.
Since the delicious fruits originate in  Peru I suspect tomatoes are more likely to turn one into a follower of Viracocha instead of Christ.

Perez Hilton noted that several Maine communities are preparing and training for a zombie apocalypse. Perez noted that it is better to be safe than sorry.
It looks like Perez was going for tongue in cheek funny.
I, for one, am hoping that Maine becomes the zombie fighting and training center of the world. ... unless I become a zombie.

Paraguay has impeached their president for little more than being a Leftist. Is that a surprise in a nation that welcomed so many Nazis who arrived via the Roman Catholic ratlines after World War II?
Is it a coincidence that the Bush Family possesses 100,000 acres of land in Paraguay?

The Lone Star Tick is working its way up the East Coast. It is reported that a bite of this tick can cause one to develop an allergic reaction on eating meat. God protect me.

Glen Beck has declared war on Glee, the television program. 
Why is the right so fascinated by this show? I watched it once and it was singin' and dancin' kind of like an old Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney movie. It's not exactly to my taste but I can see why so many like this kind upbeat and optimistic entertainment in a gloomy hopeless world. 
But Glen can't stop watching and it makes him want to go to war. Why? 
Because it is a "horror show."  
Maybe it gives him a little gay tingle. 
All this stimulates me to ask: why do so many of these right wing pundits love to make war, yet when they had the chance to kill for their countries, declined to bring their talents to the Defense Department?

Artist at Scituate Light, June 24, 2012, John Bonanno Photograph

Peony planted 2009, growing by the pond, perhaps Krinkled White, P. lactiflora cultivar, introduced by A. M. Brand, 1928, John Bonanno photograph, June 12, 2012

Darwin's notion of Fitness in human societies is a murky thing.
Nature is barely involved. 
Some humans make rules and the rules favor those who make them.
Humans are the only known animals who adapt to Nature's Environment using Culture.
So humans are forced to adapt to an amorphous somewhat invisible Culture rather than a more consistent  Nature.
Human Fitness is measured by one's ability to read and use other humans in the Cultural context.
Darwin told us a story of life's physical adaptation to Nature.
For humans, this has been a misdirection all along.
We are forced to adapt to Culture.
Nature has been damned by Man who is blinded by the Cultural Artifice.

The Light and The Dark

Now that I am retired, I have returned to home brewing after a few years away from it.
What a rewarding endeavor it is in so many ways.
I am so happy I kept my brewing gear. 
Chin Chin!

John T. Scopes

Are We Still Arguing This?

Some Facts About the Famous Confrontation Between 

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

Evolution versus the Bible....not on the same playing field. Or, how to follow a truckload of red herring.

The Scopes trial indeed was different from what was portrayed in the movie, Inherit The Wind, which did not use the real names of the participants. Hollywood is not very friendly to nuanced complicated stories which test our definitions of morality and truth. Here are a few facts about that trial and its background.

Scopes agreed to be prosecuted as a test of the law. 

Scopes was hired primarily as a football coach and math teacher and was substituting in the biology class. 

Scopes was under no personal threat of fine or imprisonment at any time. 

Scopes left the Presbyterian Church in Paducah, Kentucky when church members drove prostitutes out of town instead of helping them find honest livings. 

Scopes doubted the gospels and the beauties of religion ever after but it wasn't that big a deal to him. 

Bryan spoke at Scopes' High School graduation in 1919 and took a moment to stare down Scopes and his friends for giggling during the speech. 

 Darrow made a first amendment argument that the Bible is not a book of science and should not be so taught against their better judgements by those who know better and Bryan stood for the right of the taxpayers to determine what will be taught in school.

As so often happens in difficult questions, each side was arguing different points, either one or both of which could be "right," depending on context. 

 Bryan's initial argument rested on the people's right to determine what is taught as science in the schools, presumably even if they know nothing about science or are wrong. (He never addressed what happens if the people decide they want Hindu or Muslim or Satanist scripture taught as science in the schools.) 

Then he argued (contradicting, or at least turning,  his main argument) that evolution was only a hypothesis and there was no evidence for it, which forever after became the template and article of faith for the religious argument against evolution. 

Bryan mocked the text used by Scopes, George William Hunter's (a teacher at De Witt Clinton High School, located in Hell's Kitchen at the time), "A Civic Biology" for its diminishing of man by lumping him in with animals, but he never addressed Hunter's long discussion and glowing endorsement of eugenics in the text and its implied social Darwinist love of capitalism and rather conservative social sentiments. 

Hunter describes two mentally deficient families as "immoral" and "feeble minded." He says people like these are "true parasites...if such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading."  

And this  disgusting passage follows:

Parasitism and its Cost to Society. — Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites. 
The Remedy. — If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country. 
 Blood Tells. — Eugenics show us, on the other hand, in a study of the families in which are brilliant men and women, the fact that the descendants have received the good inheritance from their ancestors. The following, taken from Davenport's Heredity in Relation to Eugenics^ illustrates how one family has been famous in American Historv. 

We can observe that if believers' critical senses were dulled by Faith in relation to the Bible, this champion of Darwin had dirty genocidal hands on full display in A Civic Biology.

You can read or download this book in various formats here:

 http://archive.org/details/acivicbiologypr01huntgoog 

An exhausted Bryan at the Scopes Trial

Bryan ignored these passages that some thought would have been the best way to discredit the text and further his point that evolution is an atheistic evil dogma.

Dudley F. Malone

Some say the best speech in the trial did not come from Darrow or Bryan but from Dudley Field Malone, a former assistant secretary of state under Bryan, but now an attorney for the defense on Scopes' team paid for by the four year old ACLU..

 There is never a duel with the truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid of it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the force of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is imperishable, eternal and immortal and needs no human agency to support it. We are ready to tell the truth as we understand it and we do not fear all the truth that they can present as facts. We are ready. We are ready. We feel we stand with progress. We feel we stand with science. We feel we stand with intelligence. We feel we stand with fundamental freedom in America. We are not afraid. Where is the fear? We meet it, where is the fear? We defy it, we ask your honor to admit the evidence as a matter of correct law, as a matter of sound procedure and as a matter of justice to the defense in this case. (Profound and continued applause).

 He imitated the style used in Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech which can be heard here:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williamjenningsbryan1896dnc.htm

After the applause in the courtroom died down Bryan told Malone, "Although we differ, I have never heard a better speech."  

The judge threw out Darrow's main argument, that religion is not science. 

Bryan failed to convince a Jew, Samuel Untermeyer, and a Catholic, Senator Thomas Walsch, to join the prosecution. 

Bryan did not seek the presence of any of the many black preachers who rallied in support of his cause.

Fearing for his health, Bryan's wife did not want him to participate in this trial. She was very critical of the bumpkins cheering for him...and just about everyone else. Of the defense team, she wrote this about Arthur Hays: he "is as forward and self-asserting as the New York Jews can be." and "his eyes are full of shrewdness."

The last two days of the trial were moved outside so all could hear the closing arguments. 

On the seventh day of the trial Darrow put Bryan on the stand. Bryan eagerly accepted the challenge. Darrow's goal was to make Bryan defend scripture as science. He got him to testify after some evasion that he interpreted some of the Bible other than literally. (such as the length of a day in Genesis) And got the famous response to Darrow's question about the date of the flood: "I do not think about things I don't think about." 

The weather was brutally hot and Bryan was old and sick. 

The Scopes Trial Moves Outdoors

Bryan believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Scripture could transform man into a just and peaceful race. 

This trial may have disproved that thesis.

Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Trial

Darrow then asked the jury to find the defendant guilty, reading the writing on the wall and probably to prevent Bryan from delivering what was expected to be a strong closing argument. 

The judge the next day ordered Bryan's unfortunate testimony removed from the record.

July 21, 1925 Scopes was found guilty and trial correspondant H.L. Mencken's paper, The Baltimore Sun, offered to pay his $100 fine, something that Bryan had done at the beginning of the trial.

Less than a week later, Sunday July 26, 1925 Bryan died. 

This post was mostly based on material in Michael Kazin's excellent biography of Bryan,   "A Godly Hero"  Get it from Amazon here.

William Jennings Bryan, was a Christian liberal (for his day), and a hero to me, yet he was doomed by his naïveté his whole career. He thought that it was obvious to the people that the gold standard was the source of depression and poverty, neglecting to understand the power of wealth to influence elections.  He thought Prohibition was a good idea which would elevate the morals and behavior of the people. He thought he had some influence with President Wilson as Secretary of State but his opposition to World War I lost him his job.

A good link on the Scopes trial:  http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm 

A link on Clarence Darrow:   http://darrow.law.umn.edu/index.php
John Thomas Scopes on the trial, written in 1965.  http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopesreflections.html

Young William Jennings Bryan

The Garden

New hop vine area of the garden. Let us hope that deer hate Hops!

On the Birthers and their Fruitless Efforts to Get Rid of Obama on a Technicality
Or, Wasting my Time trying to convince the Birthers that they are Wasting their Time.....Or, How to Piss Everyone Off

The day President Obama was voted president by the electors, and again when Chief Justice Roberts swore him in, he became legally the president no matter where he was born, which became a moot point if it ever was a point at all. Obama is President and That is the "supreme Law of the Land" because of the actions of the Electors of the Electoral College and Chief Justice Roberts, whether anyone thinks it is Constitutional or Not.

The Constitution, in Article VI, states: 

 This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.

This convoluted sentence which is Article VI in its entirety, dictates that just about anything the government does is the "supreme Law of the Land" "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Which means that some congressman's pork spending bill when passed has equal gravity as the Constitution itself! Every Executive Order is the Supreme Law of the Land. Every rule and regulation written by bureaucrats as the result of any law becomes the Supreme Law of the Land. And all of that legal verbiage is automatically Constitutional.

Aside:  [I know there are those who will say that the above quote refers to the "Constitution" of "any State" and not the glorious and holy federal Constitution. That argument is a red herring because it misses the point. All laws are automatically considered Constitutional.  This Section is ambiguous for a reason. The men who wrote this document were intelligent and skilled with language to a degree beyond most of us who are the products of what passes for education in our era.  They knew laws would be passed in Congress that would fail to be in compliance of the Constitution. That is exactly what they wanted or they would have not been ambiguous about "Constitution" and simply would have written "Constitutions or Laws of any States to the contrary notwithstanding". Furthermore, laws are to be merely "in Pursuance" of the Constitution.   Something which pursues something is not required to catch it.  And the fact remains that it has been long accepted that any cockamamie law passed or executive order or federal rule or act of the federal corporation  becomes indeed "the supreme Law of the Land." until ruled otherwise by the Supreme Court should their Holynesses in Black deign to review it.  Our Constitution, in effect, is thousands of volumes long.   No human being can begin to understand it. It is a playground for lawyers bent on mischief.

The Constitution is a fraud with several technical outs that make the Bill of Rights a joke. The technicalities favor the government. This sacred document says a lot of pretty things in the Bill of Rights but it allows the government to go its sleazy way "notwithstanding." 

Not only that, Dear Birthers,  the Constitution never defines "natural born Citizen" and there are many who define that holy state as falling on the child of a citizen of the United States notwithstanding (to use a constitutional term)  that child's place of birth. The argument against Obama essentially rests on English common law that reckons "natural born Citizen" on the father's status (not American, in Obama's case) rather than either parent or both parents or the mother's status (undeniably American). This is why Birthers never so much as gave a thought to the fact that John McCain was born in the Canal Zone, which was not and is not part of the United States, since his father was a Citizen of the good old USA, and an Admiral too, as opposed to an African leftist. So all this energy spent on proving that Obama isn't a natural born Citizen is a royal waste of time based on a misunderstanding of the Constitution (perhaps thinking it is some kind of an unerring holy document that represents a kind of higher morality) and an archaic sexist interpretation of "natural born Citizen." 

It is an amusing spectacle every time some Birthers go to court trying to get Obama off state ballots, but it is also getting boring. They have no standing and no legal grounds to do this. 

The Constitution, in effect, allows anything to the government! This is why the Supreme Court can rule any damn nonsense they want (Bush v. Gore, corporations are people too) and see any damn thing in the Constitution that comes into their heads. Also, you may not know that the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass laws that are exceptions to review by the court, simply by indicating so on the law. That means Congress could pass a law doing anything in the world (like make ID chips mandatory, make dogs citizens, declare themselves royalty, anything!), tag it an exception to review by the Supreme Court  and it would be legal. (Read this from our noble US Constitution, Article III, Section 2, paragraph 2 very closely if you don't believe me: "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.") Isn't that wonderful? The Court can see anything in the Constitution it pleases and the Congress can hoist a finger to the Court whenever they want. So now you know that the problem is not with the Congress, the President, or the Court. The problem is inherent in the Constitution itself. How do you like this sacred silly putty document now?

Anyone with an interest in the fraudulent nature of our Constitution should get a copy of Ferdinand Lundberg's great book, "Cracks in the Constitution."  This book is out of print but can be found used at Amazon  for reasonable money. I bought a copy last year for a couple of bucks but I see it is now selling for $8.76.Word must be getting out. Perhaps my discussion with Vyz had something to do with that.
Listen to my discussion with Vyzygoth on these matters while you can.

The Deepwater spill from space. NASA photograph.

Where The Hell Does All That Oil Come From Anyway?


[This is a piece which has been slightly edited to removed some awkward phrasing. It originally appeared in Vyzygoth's ezine ITGN Summer 2010.]

by John Bonanno

“The last century has been one of those periods of extraordinary change, the most amazing in human history. If, then, you ask me to put into one sentence the cause of that recent rapid and enormous change, I should reply, it is found in the discovery and utilization of the means by which heat energy can be made to do man's work for him.”
 – Robert A. Millikan, speech, “Science and the World Tomorrow” delivered at the opening of the New York World’s Fair, April 12, 1939

“Competition is a sin.”
– John D. Rockefeller

The Mystery of Oil

Petroleum can be refined into an easily portable, deliverable, and potent fuel. It arguably is the defining ingredient of our civilization, such as we can boast of civilization. Yet, the origin of oil is mysterious. Although we are constantly inculcated with the term “fossil fuels” there is no unanimous agreement that petroleum (literally “rock oil”) was formed from dead animal and plant life, primarily in sediments at the bottom of the ocean. Some scientists believe that oil was produced from the common elements carbon and hydrogen under heat and pressure within the planet at the time of the formation of Earth; some believe petroleum existed in the solar system in the primordial stuff that would be used to form the planets before the Earth was made. (The atmospheres of the gas giant planets contain large amounts of the basic hydrocarbon, methane.) The idea that oil was formed without stacked dead plants transforming for eons in sediments is known as the abiotic or abiogenic theory of the origin of petroleum. Abiogenic theory has been around for hundreds of years in various guises. In 1877 Dmitri Mendeleev, who designed the first practical periodic table of the elements, was an early proponent of an abiotic origin of oil. Today the Russians, primarily, continue to seek oil without the assumption of fossil origin and are drilling deep wells and finding oil far below the levels that fossil fuel theory proposes that oil is formed or can be found. The Deepwater Horizon well is just such a deep hole drilled by a huge multinational corporation. It has gushed at high pressures vast quantities of petroleum that, I believe, fossil theory has difficulty explaining. Some argue that the absence of oil plumes in areas of the Earth associated with access to the deep interior of the planet argues against abiotic oil. But it can be retorted that those usually volcanic areas long ago spewed out and burned any associated oil and that remaining deep Earth oil is safely trapped by relatively stable sections of the crust of the Earth. We must also remember that the most easily accessible oil deposits are found in areas of major tectonic activity and fault zones. Abiotic theory does not necessarily propose ubiquitous oil evenly spread within the interior of the planet or close to the surface.


Accepted Doctrine

Let us look a little closer at the theory that oil was formed from the remains of dead organic materials. The Encylopedia Brittanica, owned by Rockefeller interests, and edited by persons at the University of Chicago, [a creature of John D. Rockefeller] may have a vested interest in promulgating the fossil fuel idea. In the 1961 edition this, and only this, is said about the origin of oil in the article “Petroleum”:

“Most scientists believe oil was formed from the bodies of tiny plants that lived in the sea hundreds of millions of years ago when the sea covered large areas of what are now land masses. These animals and plants lived and died by the billions then sank to the bottom and mixed with mud and sand in layers called marine sediment.”
“Later these sedimentary layers were covered by more mud and sand, which finally turned into rock. As ages passed, the sea withdrew, the earth’s crust heaved and buckled and the heat and pressure caused by the overlaying rocks, together with decomposition of the organic life, is thought to have formed oil from the animals and plants in the deep buried layers. Because of their mutual derivation from organic material, petroleum, natural gas, and coal are known as fossil fuels.”

The Brittanica gives us a longish 12 1/4 pages of text on “Petroleum” with only the quarter page quoted above explaining the origins of the stuff. We note two hedges in the argument (I have put this pure speculation in bold type), which is not exactly a ringing or detailed explanation of the biological origins of oil. This passage leads to an important question: Where did the carbon that life uses to form its structure come from? Other theories of life postulate that a soup of organic chemicals in water spontaneously gathered together to make life. Where did those chemicals come from? Where did the vast amounts of carbon needed to make those vast deposits of dead creatures that made all the oil originate? One wonders how many “tiny plants” and animals had to die and for how long they collected and then one wonders how long it took to compress these “tiny plants” into petroleum under the assumptions of fossil fuel theory for the Deepwater well to ejaculate such huge amounts of oil under such high pressure for so many months. Then we must consider how all those dead “tiny plants” got to a depth of 30,000 feet under the earth’s crust.


A Theoretical Comparison

The first modern oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. It yielded 35 barrels a day after striking oil at 69.5 feet in bedrock. Oil struck at such shallow levels is assumed to have migrated from much deeper levels under the rules of both fossil fuel theory and abiogenic theory alike, although abiogenic theory proposes much deeper levels of formation or primordial collection than fossil theory. Proponents of fossil theory lean heavily on the presence of fossil content in oil for proof. But abiogenic theory counters with the fact that this migration of oil would have contaminated it after bringing it into contact with both fossils and bacteria, including bacteria that feed on petroleum.
Some cynics note that it would be in the interest of 19th Century oil men, like John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil monopoly to popularize the notion that oil came from dead plants and animals and therefore was a commodity as scarce and difficult to find as a hen’s tooth. If the world believed that oil deposits were as plentiful as they have proved to be, then the world would have been reluctant to pay through the nose for oil, or to fight wars for it. Today, Big Oil and OPEC nations can be expected to find it in their interests to maintain this belief.


Peak Oil

Geologist Marion Hubbert first predicted that the world would reach “Peak Oil”, that is, a maximum production point from which a steady decline would occur, by the early 1970’s. Yet world oil production has risen, with slight fluctuations in a few years (likely caused by geo-political issues or recession) since the 1960’s to this day. The Deepwater well operated by BP and Transocean was said to have gushed about 60,000 (estimates range from 35,000 to 100,000) barrels of oil a day for about 85 days from a depth of 35,055 feet, more than six miles down.

“The well, located in Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 250 miles (400 kilometres) south east of Houston, is in 4,132 feet (1,259 metres) of water. The Tiber well was drilled to a total depth of approximately 35,055 feet (10,685 metres) making it one of the deepest wells ever drilled by the oil and gas industry. The well found oil in multiple Lower Tertiary reservoirs. Appraisal will be required to determine the size and commerciality of the discovery.” –BP press release, September, 2009

Transocean bragged in their own press releases at the time of their prowess in extremely deep water drilling and ultra deep drilling in other wells in the Gulf of Mexican and off Qatar. Deep drilling is an expensive process but, as we have seen from the estimated gush rate of BP’s Deepwater well, it is “well” worth it, if done right. I ask again. How did all those dead “tiny plants” get down that far?
The total amount of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico can therefore be conservatively estimated at about 5,000,000 barrels by this one well. Yes, shallow, known oil reserves may have reached a “peak” yet oil appears to be quite plentiful at astounding depths, far below the known depths of stacked fossil and plant residues. This may be the mysterious source that sometimes refills drained oil fields at easily workable depths.
Before I continue, I must admit I will be disappointed if the abiogenic oil theory is correct. I would prefer that circumstances force us to kick the petroleum habit. I am neither a fan of our centralized, globalized petroleum based civilization, nor of the catastrophic environmental and social effects resulting from the collection and massive use of oil. I also believe that many environmentalists are very reluctant to face the possibility that abundant abiogenic oil lies deep below and romantically hope for and expect a near future when the world runs out of petroleum. By the way, Hubbert was known for the idea that thin plates in thrust faults could not move on the surface of the Earth without fracturing unless the plates floated on high pressure fluids. It seems to be reasonable that continental plates may also move across the Earth floating on the same basic lubricating fluid we pour into that old Buick 6.

The Elements of Oil

Let me emphasize that I am no scientist; I am by nature an artist and my undergraduate degree is in Anthropology, a vague and vast topic, notably resistant to experimentation. But humor me as I continue this little Gedankenversuch (thought experiment). Let us look at the most common elements in the universe, or, at least our solar system, in very approximate percentages by mass.

Hydrogen 70.57%, Helium 27.52%, Oxygen 5.9%, Carbon 3%

Now let us examine the percentages of the elements in petroleum by weight.

 Carbon 84-87%, Hydrogen 11-14%, Sulfer .1-.8%, Nitrogen .1-1.8%, Oxygen .1-1.8%

In our solar system, carbon, the prime ingredient of petroleum, is the fourth most common element. I suspect much of the hydrogen and most of the helium (inert in most situations) in the solar system is locked up in the Sun. That makes carbon very common indeed, as is hydrogen, the prime ingredients of petroleum. It is reasonable to state that petroleum must be a very common substance if these two basic common elements are placed together under the right conditions in our solar system. What evidence exists to indicate that petroleum exists in the solar system, far from known deposits of dead “tiny plants”?

Carbonaceous Meteorites

There is a rare class of meteorites known as carbonaceous chondrites which include carbon in their composition up to six percent of their mass. Investigations of these interesting meteorites indicate that they have remained at very low temperatures for 3 to 4.5 billion years. They are the pristine primordial stuff of which the solar system and the Earth was formed. Their history proves beyond much doubt that they have remained free of carbon based life; yet much of the carbon on these meteorites are in the form of hydrocarbons, including specific hydrocarbons cited by fossil fuel theorists as evidence of the fossil origin of petroleum.

Biomarkers

Traditional petroleum geologists have claimed a plethora of chemicals as biomarkers in petroleum. These include porphyrins, isoprenoids, pristane, cholestane, terpines, and clarins. All have been found in abiotic meteorite samples. Many of these chemicals are also byproducts of the Fischer-Tropsch process famously used by the Germans during World War II to synthesize gasoline from carbon monoxide and hydrogen (no plants required). This process involves a rapid cooling that is impossible in sediments where dead plants supposedly formed petroleum, but may be possible in space. Porphyrins are especially cited by fossil fuel theorists as a biomarker, yet the porphyrins found in living creatures are linked to chains containing magnesium (in chlorophyll) or iron (in heme). Petroleum porphyrins always are linked to vanadium or nickel, which are not found in biotic species.
The optical activity of petroleum in polarized light has been cited as a proof of biotic origin, yet this same optical activity has been observed in fluids obtained from carbonaceous meteorites. Optical activity in petroleum specific to organic life can be explained as contamination. Fossilized spores and pollen found in petroleum are often cited as biomarkers, and they are biomarkers of the sediments passed by and leached into the petroleum on its way from deep interior sources reflecting many ages.

Final Thoughts

This essay is intended to stimulate thought and to open minds. I was taught in school that oil came from dead plants and animals and that was it. There was no alternative. I remember some kind of a picture of dead dinosaurs falling into tar pits as an example of how oil was made. Well, those tar pits were already there before the dinosaurs. As I studied this issue I came to wonder more and more if the carbon of life didn’t come from pools of petrochemicals breaking down on the surface of the earth to make soils or breaking down under the oceans to form the carbon in solution used by early plants. I saw the fossil fuel theory turned on its head. Dead plants and animals did not form petroleum. Rotted and oxidized deposits of petroleum may have provided the raw materials for plants and animals.

Bibliography

Those who seek a much more technical discussion of these issues can peruse most of the original source documents used in writing this article. The following can be found searching on http://www.scribd.com/ an invaluable resource for finding documents of all kinds.

Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons: An Historical Overview
Geoffrey P. Glasby
The Non-Organic Theory of the Genesis of Petroleum
Samar Abbas
The evolution of multicomponent systems at high pressures: VI. The thermodynamic stability of the hydrogen–carbon system: The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum
J. F. Kenney, Vladimir A. Kutcherov, Nikolai A. Bendeliani, and Vladimir A. Alekseev
Abiogenic Or Biogenic Petroleum
S.S. Penner
Dismissal of the Claims of a Biological Connection for Natural Petroleum.
J. F. KENNEY
Joint Institute of The Physics of the Earth - Russian Academy of Sciences Gas Resources Corporation, 11811 North Freeway, Houston, TX 77060, U.S.A.
Ac. Ye. F. SHNYUKOV
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Vladimirskaya Street 56, 252.601 Kiev, UKRAINE
V. A. KRAYUSHKIN
Institute of Geological Sciences
O. Gonchara Street 55-B, 01054 Kiev, UKRAINE
I. K. KARPOV
Institute of Geochemistry - Russian Academy of Sciences
Favorskii Street 1a, 664.033 Irkutsk, RUSSIA
V. G. KUTCHEROV
Russian State University of Oil and Gas
Leninskii Prospect 65, 117.917 Moscow, RUSSIA
I. N. PLOTNIKOVA
National Petroleum Company of Tatarstan (TatNeft S.A.)
Butlerov Street 45-54, 423.020 Kazan, Tatarstan, RUSSIA
Petroleum Formation and Occurrence, B.P. Tissot, D.H. Welte
Thomas Gold, Professional Papers

Links 

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Abiotic_Oil
http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Theory/SustainableOil/

Popular Books about Abiotic Oil and the Oil Industry

Do the reading; decide for yourself.  I do not necessarily agree with all the information in the following books, especially Corsi's, but the discerning reader can put together the puzzle from disparate elements.

The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels by Thomas Gold 
The Great Oil Conspiracy: How the Government Hid the Nazi Discovery of Abiotic Oil From the American People by Jerome Corsi
Oil and Finance: The Epic Corruption Continues 2010-2012 by Raymond J. Learsy

Fukushima Update!

It still is bad and is getting worse. 
Radiation traced to the disaster has been found in California kelp. In fact there is 250 times the amount of radioactive iodine in the kelp than there was before the accident.
Japanese power companies are chomping at the bit to re-start their idle reactors.
USA Today reports that Japan's nuclear safety standards will now have "new guidelines" that probably are designed more to placate an angry anti-nuke populace than to actually ensure safety. There is only one nuke online at this time in Japan and it is scheduled to be shut down soon. Economy and Trade Minister Yukio Edano called the guidelines "easy to understand."
I am sure all will rest easy that the new manual is called "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Nuclear Safety."
Nuclear energy previously provided about a third of Japan's power. Japan's managers are warning that there could be blackouts this summer if nuclear plants are kept offline.
Last week four tons of radioactive water leaked into the Pacific from the Fukushima Daiichi  complex.
Oh, and in case you missed it, TEPCO sought a 12 BILLION dollar bailout from the Japanese people.
I thought (in this beautiful world capitalist system we all enjoy) bad, criminal,  unsuccessful, dangerous, and unreliable companies were supposed to go belly up, not get saved by the very same people they have harmed.

Well, it was discovered a little over a week ago that the water level was way too low and the radiation was way too high at the Fukushima plant complex.  Watch the video posted by AP on March 28.

World Bank Update

President Obama has selected his nominee to be front man for the World Bank. On the one hand, Jim Yong Kim has no banking experience. That might be good. On the other hand he is President of Dartmouth College and he would never have gotten that job if he were in any way the kind of fellow who would rock the boat. That might be bad. On the third hand he is an anthropologist. That might be good. On the fourth hand his lack of banking experience means that he will have no idea what the World Bank is up to even if he really wanted to know. That would be bad. It is difficult to reform a thing that is totally unfamiliar.
But the Wall Street Journal is less than thrilled. That could be good.
I am sure Kims all over the world are wishing him the best. 

 They Make Prescription Drugs Look Like Candy!

STATINS! THEY SUCK.

Cognitive Malfunction
"Statins Prompt Safety Alerts"
"Cholesterol-reducing medications, which include some of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, have been linked by federal health officials to rare cases of memory loss, diabetes and muscle pain."
"Statins such as Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor and Vytorin are already known to produce cognitive problems like forgetfulness and confusion in patients, but the Food and Drug Administration added new safety alerts to prescribing information on Feb. 28, according to the New York Times." -Newsreview.com

Diabetes!
Forbes informs us: "Eric Topol, a well-known cardiologist and professor of genomics at Scripps Research Institute, has broken ranks with many other heart doctors tonight with a New York Times Op-Ed in which he says many patients might want to reconsider their use of statins such as Lipitor, Crestor, and Zocor in light of the risk that these drugs might cause diabetes."
New York Times Link Here

My Translation of the Above: These cholesterol lowering drugs are really fucking people up. We can't hide it any longer.......

Imagine a drug that is supposed to prevent heart attacks but its number one side effect is myopathy (muscle damage). Hey! The heart is a muscle.
Statins make you senile. They shrink your muscle mass, thereby making you weak and that includes your heart.
They increase the risk of diabetes.

My doctor suggested statins to me many years ago because he said my cholesterol was a "little high". But I pointed out to him it was mostly "good" cholesterol, my BP was great, I was feeling fine and I didn't like the side effect list of statins. I basically told him to shove it (in nice words) and asked him how much the statin drug industry comped him. He dropped the subject indicating to me that he didn't feel very strongly that I really needed those wonderful statin drugs.

I don't blame my doctor that much. He was just programmed to do what he is told. We know what happens to MDs who wander off the reservation.

God's Medicine

Uncle Stanley's Magical Act

Nyctimene mutationem in statu

from Ovid, Book II, Nyctimene Transformed Into an Owl, the Crow's story

But what is this to me if Nyctimene,
Changed to an owl for her dark sins, has taken
My place of honor at Minerva's court?
You heard what things were said of her at Lesbos--
That Nyctimene shared her father's bed?
And though she is all owl she still remembers
Her guilt, her lust, and in her darkness flies
From sight of men and from the light of day,
Exiled by all who rule the brilliant sky."

Horace Gregory tr.

Nyctimene is a genus of bats found mostly in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Ovid's Nyctimene is the daughter of Epopeus, King of Lesbos.
The Crow, Cornix, bewails that her place at the side of Minerva has been replaced by such a one.

This following quote by Bourbon Democrat (very conservative) President Grover Cleveland is often truncated by right wingers:

"Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government;

Right here is where they stop. The thought from Grover's 1888 message to Congress continues.


but the Communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is no less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of misrule."

Halloween 2011 Murders from here and there. 

"Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue." - Seneca

I have limited myself to selected murders that occurred on Halloween itself. If I include mayhem that happened at Halloween parties from the past week I would have to write a book.

Taylor Van Diest

Eighteen year old Taylor Van Diest of Pleasant Valley Secondary in British Columbia was found murdered near a railroad track according to The Province. "She loved horror movies. Halloween was her favourite holiday," said her cousin Erica.

Dawson

In Manteca, California a 26 year old man, Dawson McGehee, was arrested for allegedly murdering his Mommy Monday night. After the murder he was quoted by a neighbor, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

Violence documented by nola.com

One of my favorite places, The City of New Orleans celebrated the holiday in style. At least 16 people were shot and two were killed during the festivities on Halloween in this colorful town. The highlight was a gunfight on tourist-packed Bourbon street. Spectators were both horrified (the seven wounded) and entertained (the rest). Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the violence was "unnatural" but I would disagree. Angola State Prison up the road hosts over 5000 convicted murderers, of which a good portion hail from the Crescent City. The traditional and mandatory hand-wringing resumes. But I say, "Laissez les bontemps rouler!" because New Orleans is back to normal after Katrina. 

Curtis and Kasey

In Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, Curtis Wayne Edwards, 43, and Kasey O'Neal Tanner, 23 decided to 

"trick"  Joshua Luke Green, 23, at a Halloween costume party at the local VFW post. They stabbed him and he died on the way to the hospital. Both Curtis and Kasey have felony convictions on their curriculum vitae.

Ardavaz and Dorothy Delir with a photograph of their son. 

Down Under in Sydney, Australia, Eden Delir, 17 was bashed to death by two lads, 16, at a Halloween party after they were asked to leave by the deceased. The murder weapons were a bottle and a metal pole. 

I am bending the rules because there was no murder in this case but a little extra Halloween violence and attempted murder might be of interest. According to the Wilke's Journal Patriot, John Wayne Martin, 59, was spending a quiet Halloween evening in his mobile home in the Austin community of Wilke's county North Carolina when he answered a knock on the door. Two masked men cried "Trick or Treat!" then knocked him down, knocked him out, ransacked his trailer and poured accelerant everywhere.When John woke up his home was on fire and he was too. Martin is in the burn unit of Baptist Hospital. The unknown assailants got to both trick and be treated. 

"He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule the Earth." - George Bernard Shaw

Isle Of Shoals Steamship Company's Thomas Laighton
John Bonanno photo 2003

Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, The Garden of Pan
John Bonanno Photo 2003

Is this Pan? Or, has St. Gaudens has given us a dour and flinty New Englander dressed up to model Pan?
I believe with all my heart it is the latter, for no Greek God Pan could appear so unhappily serious playing the reeds of transformed Syrinx. Is he piping a march to war or a seductive song?


"He lived in Arcadia, where he guarded flocks, herds, and beehives, took part in the revels of the mountain-nymphs, and helped hunters to find their quarry. He was, on the whole, easy-going and lazy, loving nothing better than his afternoon sleep, and revenged himself on those who disturbed him with a sudden loud shout from a grove, or grotto, which made the hair bristle on their heads. Yet the Arcadians paid him so little respect that, if ever they returned empty-handed after a long day’s hunting, they dared scourge him with squills."


"The Olympian gods, while despising Pan for his simplicity and love of riot, exploited his powers. Apollo wheedled die art of prophecy from him, and Hermes copied a pipe which he had let fall, claimed it as his own invention, and sold it to Apollo."



"Pan, whose name is usually derived from paein, ‘to pasture’, stands for the ‘devil’, or ‘upright man’, of the Arcadian fertility cult, which closely resembled the witch cult of North-western Europe. This man, dressed in a goat-skin, was the chosen lover of the Maenads during their drunken orgies on the high mountains, and sooner or later paid for his privilege with death."

Robert Graves The Greek Myths

Books I Have Enjoyed
A Walk Down Memory Lane


Finding a few spare moments yesterday I decided to pour through some boxes of books down in the basement. It is always enjoyable to visit old friends. These were some of them.

Art by Gino D'Achille

 ERB's Mars and Venus books are especially enjoyable reads for boys (and girls too, my ex-wife was very fond of them) who would just love to get away from our humdrum world; but grown up kids love them too. I didn't care for the Tarzan books as much but I must admit I didn't read so many of them.  Disney is making a new John Carter movie. I can't wait. A John Carter movie (Princess of Mars starring Antonio Sabato Jr. and Tracy Lords, available on Netflix streaming now) was released a couple of years ago and it was execrable, but I liked it anyway.

Art by Frank Frazetta

 Conan the Barbarian was my favorite fictional character for years. He was the wish fulfillment of the skinny introverted kid that I was. The Conan original movie was OK with a few brilliant moments, but Arnold was the barbarian's perfect embodiment. I haven't seen the new movie yet. Conan The Conqueror is the only novel length Conan story written by Howard. I recommend all of Howard's work but the Conan stories are the best. Amazon has a fine Kindle Collection, The Robert E. Howard Omnibus: 99 Collected Stories for $1.99, and well worth the price.

Was Carlos Castaneda writing ethnology or fiction or an admixture of both? It doesn't matter. They are wonderful books full of truth.

Art by John Schoenherr

Frank Herbert was a spook. Therefore there is much to be learned from his work. Dune is a classic. If you just saw the movie you may think the book is a mess. It is not. The film is a beautiful pastiche of scenes from the book. Read the book and the movie will become comprehensible. The two television miniseries are very good.

 Anderson's book is what a critic might call a fun romp. Arthurian knights take over an alien space ship and wreak havoc in the galaxy. I read this book fifty years ago at least. I should re-read because I hardly remember it except for the fact that it was a gas.

Art by Ed Emshwiller

Dick Dick Dick. You can't get enough. My first was The Man In The High Castle in '62 when I was 12. I collected PKD until he expired and stopped writing. It's all good. Talk about subversion of reality.

This is probably Silverberg's best. Another evocative book worthy of a re-read.

 I loved Ray Bradbury when I was very young. His short stories could be very poetic in an obvious way. I never was much of a fan of Fahrenheit 451. Orwell did dystopia much better. Mr. Bradbury has become conservative in his old age and I wonder why. But the answer is probably the same old story: success and prosperity.

Art by Richard Powers

Judith Merril's annual collections were mandatory reading for me. This is the second annual. She was criticized for stretching the definition of what was science fiction and sometimes I thought better stories could have been selected than some of the out of genre pieces by non science fiction writers that she published. But that is a quibble. 

Two Cancer Studies Find Bacterial Clue in Colon --The New York Times

Go to the  link in the headline to read the story. Whether this bug causes cancer or not, it is sobering to contemplate the means by which Fusobacterium, which is normally a denizen of the mouth, finds its way into the colon.

A Child Frolics in a Cancerous Colon. Found at the Kelly Laferty blog. 

Ferdinand Lundberg, April 30, 1905 - March 1, 1995

The Rich Are Different

I've been rereading parts of Ferdinand Lundberg's fantastic look at the real rulers of America, The Rich And The Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today, published by Lyle Stuart in 1968. You can read my short review of this book at the Amazon link above. The book is out of print but reasonably priced used copies are available there.

Mr. Lundberg's insights on America were acute and prescient. The culture of the wealthy he describes in TRATSR has gotten more extreme. The rich are richer. They have more power. They are more bold and less cautious. But they are still primarily the same old families that have been there from the beginning. And that is the point of the book. A small number of families retain wealth and power using their wealth and power to undermine our democratic republic. Mr. Lundberg graduated from Columbia University and was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal during the stock market crash of 1929 heralding the Great Depression. His books include Imperial Hearst (1936), America's Sixty Families (1940), and The Rockefeller Syndrome (1968). Lyle Stuart also published Cracks In The Constitution in 1982 which makes the argument that our founding document is a fraud. The first sentence "We the people.." is the first lie in it since it was actually written by wealthy propertied gentlemen who never intended that the people in general would have much to do with their great enterprise.

Tonight at 8PM on Adam Gorightly's Untamed Dimensions Vyzigoth, Gordon Comstock and myself will discuss this great book.

Some Lundberg quotes from (just the beginning of) the book:

Most Americans—citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful and most ideal-swathed country in the world—by a very wide margin own nothing more than their household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on the installment plan, many at second hand) and the clothes on their backs.


Their agents deafen a baffled world with a never ceasing chant about the occult merits of private-property ownership (good for everything that ails man and thoroughly familiar to the rest of the world, not invented in the United States), and the vaulting puissance of the American owners. It would be difficult in the 1960’s for a large majority of Americans to show fewer significant possessions if the country had long labored under a grasping dictatorship. How has this process been contrived of stripping threadbare most of the populace, which once at least owned small patches of virgin land? To this fascinating if off-color question we shall give some attention later. Statements such as the foregoing on the rare occasions when they are ventured (although strictly true and by no means new)1 are bound to be challenged by the alert propaganda watchdogs of the established order. These propagandists, when hard pressed, offer an incantation about a mythical high American standard of living which on inspection turns out to be no more than a standard of gross consumption. The statements must, therefore—particularly in this age of burgeoning one-sided affluence-be monumentally and precisely documented and re-documented. Not that this will deter the watchdogs, who have limitless resources of casuistry and dialectic to fall back upon as well as an endless supply of white paper from denuded forests.

Compared with the political power and influence of the American military today, Hohenzollern Germany (at one time designated by horrified American publicists as the acme of cold militarism in modern times) was only a one-cylinder, comic-opera affair. The Pentagon of today—its agents busy in Congress and the Executive Branch, with the politicians obviously standing in awe of the be-medaled generals, with the defense-industry corporations loaded with retired officers—could flatten an entity like Hohenzollern or Hitler Germany with a few well placed blows.

The United States is a great deal more like Brazil and Argentina, for example, than it is like France or England (two countries upon which most Americans are inclined to look with patronizing reservation). Even in such a distinctive United States feature as the separation of church and state there is now a strong movement, led by politicians with their eyes on the least instructed voters, for a direct supportive involvement of the state in the affairs of the church, an involvement that would presumably gain these politicians the support of the church. In this feature, then, there is a movement to make the United States even more like Latin America and less like Europe, where church and state are tending to become more and more separate in most jurisdictions. It might almost be said that there is a growing tendency to model the United States, apart from its industrial features, upon the “banana republics,” thus making it the Banana Republic par excellence

Down through history poverty has always referred to lack of property. The man who had no property was defined as poor; the more property a man owned the less poor he was. Most people in the United States own little more property than do Russian peasants, and by that standard they are poor.


For my part, I would say that anyone who does not own a fairly substantial amount of income-producing property or does not receive an earned income sufficiently large to make substantial regular savings or does not hold a well-paid securely tenured job is poor. He may be healthy, handsome and a delight to his friends—but he is poor.

But this panorama of contemporary private wealth and power throws some doubt on the doctrines of earlier apologists for the big fortunes. It was once widely preached from pulpits as well as editorial pages that great wealth was either the reward for social service (such as graciously building a vast industry to cater to an undeserving public) or it represented the inevitable, natural and wholly acceptable outcome of an evolutionary struggle in which the fittest survived and the unfit landed in the gutter. On the basis of this doctrine the present top wealthholders are the offspring of public benefactors and the fittest of a past generation. Fortunately, they are not themselves facing the same tests of fitness.


What has developed, then, under the operation of inheritance laws handed down from days when property ownership was far more modest to a day when vast properties have been created mainly by technology, is a huge, solid fortress of interlaced wealth against which even clever new wealthseekers, try as they will, cannot make a tiny dent. About the only way one can get in (and that way isn’t always rewarding) is by marriage. If a potential new Henry Ford produces an invention and sets out with friends to market it he generally finds (as did Professor Edwin H. Armstrong, inventor of wide-swing radio frequency modulation, the regenerative circuit for vacuum tubes, ultra short-wave super-regeneration and the superheterodyne circuit) that it is boldly infringed by established companies. After he spends the better part of a lifetime in court straining to protect his rights he may win (usually he does not); but if he wins he collects only a percentage royalty. What the infringers can show they have earned through their promotional efforts they may keep, with the blessings of the courts, who are sticklers for equity: All effort must be rewarded. And then the overwrought inventor, as Professor Armstrong did in 1954, can commit suicide. Henry Ford came up when there were only small competing companies in the field. When established companies are  in the field, inventors must sell out, or suffer a fate similar to Professor Armstrong’s.



The wealthy, like everyone else, dislike to pay taxes and, unlike most other people, they know how to minimize them through the exercise of political influence. This is one of the nice differences between being wealthy and being poor. The Constitution of the United States bars the bestowal of titles of nobility. But in many ways it would clear up much that is now obscure if titles were allowed. Not only would they show, automatically, to whom deference was due as a right but they would publicly distinguish those who held continuing hereditary power from people who are merely temporarily voted in or appointed for limited terms.



In order to participate in politics in the Soviet Union one must be a member of the Communist Party. This is a formal condition. Similarly, in order to participate meanirtgfully in politics in the United States one must be a property owner. This is not a formal requirement; formally anyone may participate. But, informally, participation beyond voting for alternate preselected candidates is so difficult for the nonpropertied as to be, in effect, impossible. The nonpropertied person in the United States who wishes to attain and hold a position of leverage in politics must quickly become a property owner. And this is one reason why unendowed budding American politicians, not being property owners, must find or create opportunities (legal or illegal) for themselves to acquire property. Without it they are naked to the first wind of partisan adversity and gratuitous public spitefulness.




A Few More Pertinent Quotes:

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. 
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
 James 5, 1-5



Thus shelter'd, free from care and strife,
May I enjoy a calm through life ;
See faction, safe in low degree.
As men at land see storms at sea.
And laugh at miserable elves.
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Curs'd With such souls of base alloy. 

As can possess, but not enjoy;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By av'rice, sphincter of the heart;
- Matthew Green 1696-1737 English poet, from "The Spleen"

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. 
Francis Bacon from the essay Of Seditions and Troubles

The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God's ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things. 
-Norman O. Brown, September 25, 1913– October 2, 2002,
US philosopher, from Life Against Death, ch. 15

Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness, although not enumerated among diseases.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics