Many Americans are ok with sending their neighbors’ sons and daughters to the Middle East for five years to become paraplegics for oil. But when it starts costing twice as much for us to gas up the half-ton F-150 pickups (35.7 gallons, 15 mpg) we use to pick up caramel macchiatos with whipped cream (440 calories) on the way to our jobs at local cube farms, we’ve had enough; we’re finally ready to embrace renewable energy.

Judging by recent Main Stream Media coverage, the renewable energy of choice is panning out to be…Wind Power!

But, alas, all free folks between the shining seas are not happy. For, in the home of the brave, every silver lining has it’s dark cloud. Without further ado, I give you…the Top 10 Reasons Wind Power Sucks:

10. All those towering turbines spoil the rich people’s view.

Just ask the Whitleys of Erath County, Texas:

Johnny and Tesa Whitley bought 350 acres in rural Erath County to raise horses and enjoy the breathtaking sunsets, but their view is now marred by something they never expected: two dozen wind turbines. The 400-foot-tall turbines tower over trees atop ridges, some just a mile away. At night the structures’ bright red lights blink intermittently, even reflecting in their lake, Tesa Whitley said. “We had a beautiful horizon, and now all we see is turbines,” she said.

When President Kennedy suggested asking not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country, I’m sure he didn’t intend things to go so far as having the views of rich people defiled by towers emitting green power. I’m sure what Kennedy meant was for the already no-good view of poor Americans to suffer the dark asthma-producing clouds puffed aloft by another coal power plant, or the giant steam clouds from nuclear cooling towers, or a new six-level parking garage that had to be built downtown to hold all the commuting half-ton F-150 pickups.

At least the Whitley’s only have to see a few dozen windmills poking above the treeline of their 350-acre paradise, and don’t have to wake up to this Parisian eyesore everyday.

And at least they don’t have to suffer the wooden skyscraper that befouls the skyline of Arkhangelsk, Russia.

9. The constant whooshing noise is unbearable.

Ok, maybe the whooshing noise is not as loud as the new expressway the city built on private land that the owner was forced to sell by right of eminent domain so the rich people could drive more F-150s to work. And maybe the whooshing is nothing compared to the airport, or the train that blares down the tracks at 3 AM, or the neighbor’s dogs, and that rooster in the morning, and the birds going haywire chirping at sunrise, and the fugue of seven-year cicadas in the trees, or the disquieting noise of water slapping the damn pebbles in the creek…heck, those wind turbines aren’t even as loud as the crickets chirping that keep me awake all night. Still, I just…can’t…take…the noise.

Hear it for yourself: Windmill Farm Noise

8. Wind farms may kill a few bats in Indiana.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it’s not clear what effect wind turbines have on bats; developers must be prepared for at least a few bat collision deaths. The government suggests halting construction on the proposed 62-turbine wind farm in Clayton, as well as the proposed 65-turbine St. Lawrence and 140-turbine Cape Vincent wind farms in Cape Vincent until further studies can be made.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also suggested halting traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike until the relationship between mosquitoes and windshields can be studied (the study is going to take years, and cost millions of your dollars, and yes, I AM kidding…but not about the bat study.)

7. New wind turbines don’t look as cool as the old ones.

Sure, the old style windmills could only pump water, and the new ones can run several thousand water heaters, stoves, washing machines, and Xbox game consoles. Still, it’d be nice of they’d make the new ones look like the old ones. If the engineers can’t do that, I’d rather invade another country and stick with oil.

6. Did I mention bats might be at risk?

Bats. Yes, bats. If global warming doesn’t get them, giant wind turbines might. (See number 8…)

5. Wind power probably won’t kick start Armageddon

Unless it involves attacking Iran for Israel, wind power will probably never get any real support from the evangelical right:

The Evangelicals have also been jockeying for broadening the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran. Hagee’s CUFI has been zealously pushing the message of “support-Israel-bomb-Iran”, urging Congress to follow suit and has told his followers that a US strike on Tehran may initiate the sequence of apocalyptic events related in Ezekiel 38 and 39. In Jerusalem Countdown he goes so far as to argue that “The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty”.

Yep…wind power is completely off these people’s radar.

4. Dead bats.

You know…the minority of bats with screwed up sonar systems. Wind power, perhaps, might be dangerous to them. (See number 6…)

3. Wind power might replace weapons manufacturing.

The demand for wind turbines has increased so dramatically that manufacturers like General Electric have up to a $12 billion backlog of ordered wind turbines they have yet to construct and deliver.

Still, the profit margin on wind turbines is only 15% — not nearly the profits from working with an Israeli air force general to cheat the Pentagon out of $30 million dollars while supplying F-16 fighter engines.

2. Wind power makes sense.

Wind power makes a lot of sense. America stopped making sense a long time ago. We don’t do that anymore. We want to sell even bigger pickups, with lower gas mileage. It doesn’t make sense. That’s us. We’re not afraid of the cliff.

Brave? Yes.

Free? You better believe we certainly think we are.

Smart? Uhhh…we’re not even in the top ten anymore.

1. America doesn’t have to invade another country for wind.

This reason alone is going to leave the Military Industrial Complex scratching their fascist heads to come up with other reasons for Americans to part with $400 million per day.

Oh, well…I guess life’s just tough that way ;-).

Read More: wind power, renewable energy, wind turbines, wind farms, Military Industrial Complex

Oil sure causes a lot of problems, and the United States hardly has any left, and when we invade another country to secure their oil for ourselves, we only end up blowing $132 million dollars per day to import 3 million gallons of petro fuel for our occupying army.

Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s stop using oil and switch to alternative energy sources like biofuels and solar energy and wind farms! Then we can stop having to negotiate with OPEC and the troops can come home and we can build Disney Worlds on every corner with all the extra clean energy!

It seems like I’ve overheard the above paragraph, or a paraphrase, a hundred times around the watercooler. I’ve also heard it’s a pipe dream. And I’ve heard it’s a dream that will come true. So, I ask myself, what’s the truth? Can we really replace oil or not?

Oil: Some Really Good, Good Stuff

Even Alan Greenspan admitted that the Iraq War is about oil, and everybody knows it.

Everybody also knows that over 4100 soldiers have died for Iraq’s oil.

Fewer people realize — or will be honest enough to admit — that a human life has a finite value. When broken down into bodily systems and organs, you might be worth as much as $45 million. And when broken down into your basic elements, you’re only worth about $4.50. Somewhere between the two numbers lies the truth…and just for kicks, I’m going to use the average U.S. wage for 2008, and round it up: Yes, an average human life is worth $20 an hour.

Even fewer people realize what a really really really good deal oil is. Very good approximations have been calculated, and it’s very much in the ballpark to say that one barrel of oil supplies the energy/work of 10,000 hours of human labor (if this sounds somewhat fantastic, go outside, try to push a loaded 18 wheeler up a mountain, and come back; it won’t seem so far-fetched anymore).

Now, let’s bridge those two numbers: 10,000 human hours, at $20 an hour = $200,000.

So, get this…a barrel of oil is worth $200,000 worth of human labor, and right now it’s only going for $140.

And there’s 115 billion barrels underneath Iraq. And there’s 136 billion barrels of the stuff beneath Iran, too!

So, an average human life is worth 45 years * 40 hours per week * $20 per hour = almost $2 million.

Now it should no longer be a surprise what goes on during secret meetings between politicians and oil executives. When the number crunching is done, even a hundred thousand human lives (100,000 * $2 million = $200 billion) in exchange for 115 billion barrels of oil (115 billion * $140 = $16.1 Trillion) is a super fantastic deal! Cheney didn’t even have to think about it, really.

Nuclear Power Plants

Enough war talk…let’s assume we throw out the corporations and lobbyists and Cheney is tarred and feathered. Now, we’re finally going to convert from oil to all that other good clean green stuff. What’s it looking like?

The United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day, or 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year, or about 1.34 TeraWatts (Trillion Watts).

The largest nuclear power plants output just over 1,000 MegaWatts (Million watts), so we could totally replace our oil dependency if we built over 1000 new nuclear power plants. We’ll just split it even and put twenty in each state. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this isn’t going to sit well, especially when sites for waste storage are bandied about. And Nuclear energy does produce waste. No, if we’re going to replace oil, lets choose a CLEAN energy this time…

Wind Power

America has plenty of land. And we have wind. What about some wind farms?

The Horse Hollow Wind Farm consists of 421 giant turbines spread over 47,000 acres in Texas. It’s the biggest wind farm on the planet. And it generates 735.5 Megawatts. With only another 1,821 wind farms as big as Hollow Wind, we can kiss oil goodbye.

Hmmm…ok, what I’m starting to realize is that replacing our daily oil habit isn’t going to be easy. But it IS doable. It’s just on the scale of another Apollo space program. Yes, 1,821 wind farms sounds insane. But really, we only need about 728,400 more giant turbines…

Modern wind turbine generators cost about $2000 per kilowatt, so to totally replace oil, we’re looking at chunking out $2.6 trillion dollars, which is only about 4 times what we’ve spent in Iraq. These wind turbines will last over 25 years and pay for themselves in the first 3 months. Sure wish we’d started building those turbines before going on a snipe hunt for WMD and sinking our economy.

Solar Energy

And then, there’s solar energy.

When it’s operational, the 4,500 acre solar generating station coming to Southern California will have 20,000 dishes producing 500 MegaWatts of power. With just 2,380 more farms like that one…we can kiss oil goodbye.

The thing is, if we only built half the wind farms and half the solar generating stations, made solar rooftops standard, and converted all the shit coming out of Congress and the White House into natural gas and biomass fertilizer, we’d be energy independent. Instead, we’re pouring more oil into corn fields, and burning oil to harvest the corn to make ethanol…ethanol, which uses up more energy to produce than it provides, while providing the middlemen with more of our pocket change, and robbing the poor of affordable food.

If Americans can build the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the St. Louis Arch, the Hoover Dam, the Erie Canal, the Empire State Building, and the Saturn V, I have no doubt we can manage a few hundred thousand windmills in our corn patches. What I seriously doubt anymore is that we Americans can overcome the immense greed of corporations and their lobbyists long enough to make our leaders put their country above their self interest.

Read More: Oil, oil habit, replacing oil, clean energy, alternative energy sources, nuclear power, wind power, wind farms, solar energy, solar power

The biggest colossal squid ever caught weighs over 1000 pounds and measures almost 30 feet long.

In February, 2007, a Sanford seafood company fishing vessel, the San Aspiring, caught a toothfish on a long line while fishing in the freezing Ross Sea of the Antarctic. When the crew brought the toothfish to the surface, they realized they’d also caught a colossal squid. The squid wouldn’t let go of the toothfish, so they decided to catch the squid, too.

After hauling the squid aboard, the crew froze it in a cubic meter of water and brought it to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Currently, Marine biologists at the museum are in the process of thawing the creature in order to learn more about the species.

Besides measuring the largest eyeballs ever seen (about the size of a beach ball), the team has measured the colossal squid’s lower beak at 40 centimeters across.

Since a 49 centimeter squid’s beak was previously found in the stomach of a sperm whale — and since the total squid size to beak size ratio is incremental, not linear — scientists believe there are still colossal squid in the ocean that are a great deal bigger.

The colossal squid may hold another record, too: first colossal squid to have its own blog. To keep up with the thawing process and read the latest findings, visit: Colossal Squid Te Papa’s Blog.

Read more Amazing, Orgasmic, and Fantastic Facts: Amasnic Fact Off Archive.

Read More: giant squid, New Zealand

As mentioned in the previous post, brain experts are beginning to realize the right side of most normal people’s brains harbors genius, savant-like abilities. But, you were born with two very impressive brain hemispheres, and your left side is important too.

Let’s use George W. Bush as an example. To the right we see Bush, with both sides of his brain intact.

In this picture, Bush’s left side brain is controlling the right side of his face, and his right side brain controls the left side of his face. Your brain hemispheres control the opposite side of your face and body, too.

So, what would Bush be like if he only had a wonderful savant-like super talented right side brain, and vice versa?

The Godlike Right Brain

Meet Bush with two right side brains (actually, the right-brain controlled left side of his face and its mirror image.)

The right side brain is like God. When freed from the left hemisphere, it has almost miraculous savant-like abilities. It’s exceptional at imagining and creating (In the beginning…), processing spatial information (separating light from dark, water from land…), and seeing the big picture when faced with many shapes and sizes and complex interrelationships (all the little children of the world…)

And like God (I AM), the right side brain is always living in the present.

The down side is that Mr. Right Side Brain is pretty scatterbrained ( it might show up as a burning bush one day, a cloud the next, or just disappear and leave a crowd wandering in the desert for 40 years…) It stinks at organization, and it’s horrible at explaining itself verbally (Abraham, kill your son Isaac…but wait! No, not really…)

Frankly, the right side brain would rather keep dreaming big dreams and leave the details up to others (I gave you ten big ones on tablets; somebody else can write the New Testament…)

The Egocentric Left Brain

Now, meet Bush with two left side brains (the right side of his face, doubled.)

I’m not the first to suggest the left side brain is home of the ego. It’s even jealous of the right side brain, and proud of its own talent for language and verbal expression. If the right side brain paints a picture, the left side brain immediately slaps a name on it.

The left side brain is orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. It tends to see everything in a linear way, past or future, black and white, good and evil, with no gray areas in between.

The down side? The egocentric left side brain doesn’t understand emotions. Emotions don’t make sense. Your puppy died? So, get another one. Problem solved. Now, back to balancing the checkbook…

The Perfect Human Brain

A lot of people say the dissident teacher Jesus was as close to a perfect human as anybody has ever come. Jesus supposedly attained Christ Consciousness. Jesus said he was the son of God, and the son of man. Maybe he was trying to tell us that he used both the godlike right and the egocentric left sides of his brain. Equally.

Perhaps to thrive in the world, we need to strike a balance between our godlike and egocentric brain halves.

Balancing Your Left and Right Side Brain

Most everybody has a dominant side of the brain. (Take this quiz to find out which side of your brain is dominant.)

Over 90% of Americans have the same dominant side of the brain. Care to guess which side it is? Here’s a clue: The left side of the brain is used for reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.

Add to this the fact that programs like No Child Left Behind require schools to spend even more time teaching Reading and Math — at the expense of already little-taught right-brain subjects like Art and Music — and the future culture of this country is looking even more egocentric brain imbalanced. If you think everybody is either with us or against us now, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

But there is something you can do about it; you can help restore balance, and you can start with your own brain.

Your left and right brain hemispheres are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Like a muscle, it can be exercised and strengthened until it is physically larger, which will allow better communication and cooperation between your egocentric left brain and your godlike right brain. (If it’s any encouragement, Albert Einstein’s brain had a huge corpus callosum.)

Try this exercise on for size: visual brain-balancing exercise.

Look at the circles above. Cross your eyes until you see the third circle between the blue and red one. When your left brain is dominant, you’ll see the blue circle/verticle line. When your right brain is dominant, you’ll see the red circle/horizontal line.

Try to focus your eyes so that you see a cross, which means you’re seeing both circles equally, which means you’re using both sides of your brain at the same time, which not only induces a very pleasant meditative state, but also grows your corpus callosum by leaps and bounds.

Alternating Left and Right Brain Dominance

Another interesting tidbit is that your left and right side brains switch dominance all the time, every 90 minutes or so on average, but at times as often as every few seconds.

Yogis say you can tell which side of your brain is currently dominant: if you’re breathing more through your left nostril, it’s the right side, and vice versa. Because they tend to feel more peaceful and connected with the world when their right side brain is dominant, yogis practice breathing through their left nostril to help turn on their right side brain.

Nose Peace. Who’d a thunk it? ;-)

Read More: left side brain, right side brain, hemispheric dominance, corpus callosum, George W. Bush

Savant syndrome occurs when a person with below normal intelligence displays an incredible ability in a specific area — like, for instance, if George W. Bush had extraordinary musical, mathematical, or artistic talent. ;-)

One thing to note about the super abilities of savants: they are gifts usually associated with the right side of the brain.

The Divine Right Side Brain

People with savant syndrome seem to have right-side brain abilities on steroids.

Savants may be able to mentally double 8,388,628 up to 24 times within a few seconds, paint amazingly accurate cityscapes from photographic memory, or sit down at a piano and play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 after only one listen.

Until recently, savant syndrome was thought to occur due to some sort of injury to the left side brain — occurring either inside the womb, or shortly after birth — which caused the right side brain to overcompensate.

But more recently, scientists have pondered whether we all have unconscious right side brain super abilities.

Allan Snyder, award-winning physicist and director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney, says everybody has the innate capacity for savantlike skills:

Even something as simple as seeing requires phenomenally complex information processing.

When a person looks at an object, for example, the brain immediately estimates an object’s distance by calculating the subtle differences between the two images on each retina (computers programmed to do this require extreme memory and speed). During the process of face recognition, the brain analyzes countless details, such as the texture of skin and the shape of the eyes, jawbone, and lips. Most people are not aware of these calculations.

In savants the top layer of mental processing — conceptual thinking, making conclusions — is somehow stripped away. Without it, savants can access a startling capacity for recalling endless detail or for performing lightning-quick calculations.

This theory has been bolstered by a growing number of cases in which normal people suddenly acquire savant-like super talents after a head injury, after the onset of frontotemporal dementia in old age, and also, sometimes during deep hypnosis.

The Right Side Brain Experience of Jill Bolte Taylor

Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor got the opportunity to experience the full power of the right side brain firsthand. One morning, when a stroke disabled her left side brain, she experienced the world according to her right side brain.

After years of rehabilitation, Taylor was able to tell the world about her experience:

TEDTalks Video: Jill Bolte Taylor describes what it’s like to lose your left side brain.

Daniel Tammet: The Rosetta Stone of Brain Research

Daniel Tammet is a savant gifted with super mathematical and natural language abilities. He’s most famous for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits, and for learning Icelandic in a week. He’s also fluent in English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Welsh and Esperanto.

There are fewer than 50 prodigious savants in the world, and unlike the rest of them, Tammet has no obvious mental disability. Because his language skills are functioning to a high degree, he can describe his own savant thought processes, which makes him a scientific Rosetta Stone for brain researchers.

Tammet explains that he “experiences” numbers, each with its own unique shape, color, and texture, and emotion. When solving math problems, he doesn’t consciously work out the answers, but sees the answers appear, emerging from mutating, multiple-sensory landscapes.

In 2005, Tammet was the subject of an engrossing UK documentary, well worth the watch:

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (1/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (2/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (3/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (4/5)

Daniel Tammet: The Boy With The Incredible Brain (5/5)

Update: Don’t miss the next post on Achieving Left and Right Brain Balance.

Read More: autistic, savant, savant syndrome, left side brain, right side brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, Daniel Tammet