Chamblee54

Carl Hiassen takes timeout from writing novels about weirdos to produce a column for the Miami Herald. It comes out on Sunday, and lately has been every other week. He usually makes more sense than many can handle.
This week the subject is a proposed cigarette tax. Some grinches want a dollar a pack state tax added onto cigarettes. The tax would raise revenue, and hopefully some folks will quit the vile habit.
However, there is opposition. A legislator is looking out for the convenience store owners, who stand to lose a bundle if fewer people buy cancer sticks.
PG has smoked roughly two cigarettes in his life. That is, by his own choice. The second hand smoke adds up. There is also the “it’s legal” sense of entitlement that the tobacconists are well known for. PG has an answer to the matter of how much cigarette tax to assess.
Cigarettes should be taxed so that a pack of cigarettes costs as much as an ounce of marijuana.
Ciggies will still be legal. You will not have to buy them from criminals, who will turn you on to “hard drugs”. You will not lose your job if you fail a urine test. Your house cannot be confiscated for possession.The cancer sticks would still be legal, but with a reasonable tax.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The Georgia Lesterslature is currently debating whether, or not, to allow alcohol users access to their legal drug on Sunday.

It started as a rumor, and was quickly confirmed. Crazy Owl…a.k.a. Charles Emerson Hall…passed away April 4, 2011. He was my friend for many years. Many stories could be told, and here are a few. Here is the biography from his website, Crazy Owls Perch.
These few lines will introduce you to Crazy Owl, the author of this website. His life began August 5 1927 at 6:02 AM in Akron Ohio, USA. His mother named him Charles Emerson Hall.
In 1960 The University of Wisconsin awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, He pursued a career in mathematical statistics and research methodology until 1975 when he predicted that a cancer epidemic would engulf one-third of the population by 1985. Thereupon he “dropped out” and went into the community lifestyle and ate organic food. In summer of 1987 he took the name Crazy Owl and accepted the Barred Owl (the original “Crazy Owl”) as his totem.
Sometime during these years he became interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM for short). In 1980 he started studying acupressure at the Acupressure Institute in Berkley California. Since that time he has been a Healer with TCM as the core of his practice. From 1985 to 1997 Crazy Owl taught TCM in The School For Gentle Hands in Atlanta Georgia. He had a clientele in Healing and a business in herbalism as well as students.
The School for Gentle Hands was in an old horse farm on Flat Shoals Road, just off I20 and Gresham Road. There is a subdivision there now, and the K mart is a Walmart. This space is a mile away from East Atlanta Village, and is an up and coming neighborhood now. When Owl moved there in 1985, it was run down. He had a beat up barn, a dirt driveway, and a pipe bringing county water in. Some government agency made him get a porta potty, a bright green facility with a lot of nicknames.
The School For Gentle Hands was about nine miles due south from my attic apartment. One of the events was the friday night sweat lodge. You drove down, found a place to park in the weeds, and walked down a hill to the lodge. Owl would start the fire, put the rocks in, and hope that someone was there to join him. I sometimes served as the helper, balancing the glowing rocks, on a pitchfork, while Owl held open the door to the lodge.
One friday, the sweaters were talking about the things they were grateful for. The previous friday night, I had been in a tacky bar in Tucker GA. Everyone except me chain smoked, while the band played “Melancholy Baby”. Seven days later, I was naked in a makeshift hut. I was grateful for variety in my life.
In those days, AIDS was on a rampage, and there was little that industrial medicine could do. Crazy Owl helped quite a few people. Some did well with his treatment, and are thriving today. He taught that AIDS was not a disease, but a condition, and that it could be reversed.
Crazy Owl was a traveling companion of mine in those days. For a while, it seemed like every time we went anywhere, it would pour down rain the entire time. On a pre Thanksgiving Wednesday, this turned into ice when we arrived at the valley in North Carolina. We woke up the next day to find ourselves in an ice crystal wonderland.
He is not on this plane of existence any more. As for what he expected, I honestly don’t know. This may be a surprise to some, but not everyone is obsessed with life after death. I suspect that he is going to be all right.
Update: Here is the story of his final days. The story of the Memorial Service is here.

There was a hearing in congress about carbon pollution. One of the reputed effects of this “global warming”. Before getting into the results of this meeting, one thing should be noted. If the problem is hot air, the last thing you want is a hearing before a committee in Washington D.C.
One of the talkers at this hearing was Richard Muller, the chair of a study group called BEST, for Berkley Earth Surface Temperature. BEST recieves funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and was considered to be skeptical of claims regarding carbon pollution. To the surprise of many, Dr. Muller testified “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups”
Anthony Watts makes a few points about the testimony. It is said that “initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.”The people who don’t think carbon pollution is a problem are good at having things to say.
Yesterday, PG saw a movie about tornadoes. . This regards a scientific study, with the collection of lots of data. The idea here is to see what weather events are likely to result in tornadoes. There is a lot that is not known, and wading through mountains of data is an inexact science. The same could be said about the impact of carbon pollution.
The atmosphere of the earth is a marvel. It supports an amazing planet full of life. It has evolved into what it is over an estimated four billion years. The changes in the atmosphere have taken place primarily in the industrial age, roughly the last two hundred year. What took four billion years to build has been severely damaged in two hundred. If you crunch a few numbers , two hundred years compare to four billion years like one minute compares to thirty eight years.
Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

PG was minding his own business when the phone rang. Uzi wants to go see an IMAX movie about tornadoes. PG was underwhelmed, but wound up going anyway.
Getting to the facility at five minutes before showtime, the only seats left were on the second row. This means leaning your neck back to see the action at the top of the screen. There was a helpful announcement to the effect that, if you felt dizzy to close your eyes and look down.
The movie was about a team of scientists who chase tornadoes, so they can study them. There was an armored vehicle, that is designed to dig into the path of a tornado and take movies. The vehicle was parked outside, with the keys in the ignition. The sign said “Do not follow during adverse weather”.
Getting the device into the path of a tornado takes perseverance and *luck*. At about the point in the movie where you expect a climax, the tank does get to film a tornado. As fate would have it, it was in a field, and about all you saw was waving vegetation. There were no flying cows.
When the movie was over it was dinner time. PG drove towards Dickhater (spell check suggestion: Dishwater). There is a lively restaurant row behind the courthouse, but PG was not in an adventurous mood. Twenty five years ago, he ate at The King and I, and bit into one of those little peppers. The experience scarred him. They wound up at the Piccadilly cafeteria on Church Street.

Donors want data…Nonprofits measure impact…Experts watch and smile
Chekov in the bay…searching hard for some space fuel..Nuclear wessels
I bit a zombie…it was ironic but the…taste was terrible.
Learn from the Jedi…Discipline, control, respect…Dangerous muppet.
Packets of photons…Streaming by our planet’s sky…their address divine
Eat Theobromine…Drink methyltheobromine…Heliophobe, I.
Why kill Wash and Book?…Are they thinking what I am?..Firefly Zombies!
Pigeon overhead…fertilizer on the way…attorney beware
Don’t argue with a…Mobius strip because it…Will be one-sided
Take me to the black…I am a leaf on the wind…My Serenity
I am all around…Yet some can’t seem to find me…I am Internet.
Obsidian wings … The Library of Congress …attribute the source

The President gave a speech about Libya the other day. Overall, BHO is getting good marks for his sales pitch. There is one section of the transcript where you need to read between the lines.
“Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
The United States is conducting an air slaughter of people in Pakistan. Unmanned aircraft are flying over a neutral country, and sending expensive killing devices onto a defenseless population. We have not turned a blind eye to these killings. We are using state of the art images, to aim our weapons of mass destruction. We do not wait for pictures of the results before taking further action. Just as President I did not wait for a declaration of war from Congress.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.