The Importance of Potassium in the Daily Diet

We have a number of items in the news. This whole police thing in Mac Arthur Park here in Los Angeles started off as a minor blurb in the evening news. But it has since snow-balled into a major news event and scandal. Police Chief Braton says now, "You can't defend the indefencable". There were supposed to be "safe zones" for reporters, and they are saying they didn't give fair warning before police started swinging their batons at demonstrators. It was just a few outside agitators that spoiled the party for everybody. I'm not worried. I think the fact that the LAPD has recognized the problem shows their heart is in the right place and the problem is going to be solved. Some of you may wonder from the last file about my life. My life featured a downward slide from late 1965 in my sophamore years through early 1970 and by mid 1970 it could be said that "I had no ego at all". During this period I was taking three different psychoactive drugs and the only thing they had in comon was that none of them improved my life but arguably complicated the situation. When I look at the people in my life, parents, family members, school counselors, psychaiatrists, other counselors, it's a case of Defending the Indefencable. None of these sways on my life would pass the "Dr. Phill" test, or pass muster with James Dobson, either. Each and every one would get an "F -" in terms of performance. They didn't just fail. They wern't just "unsatisfactory" but they failed with impugnity. As Vincent Bugliosi said about the OJ jury trial, "They merit an F - ". If you get half the answers wrong on a final you get an F. If you only get ten percent of the answers right and the rest wrong, you don't just fail, you fail with impugnity. The decline in my life "steepened" in March of my senior year as my ego began collapsing in on itself. Some may say "Well, when you became a Christian you could ask for prayer and healing for that period of your life". In terms of percent of the time I spent talking about this stuff as a Christian let me give you a nice round figure- - Zero. There was a mutual conspiricy of silence. The unwritten code of Christianity is "pretend you don't have any problems". Trying to get a response to something that happened a half hour ago with them is like pulling teeth. When it comes to discussing something that happened in another decade- - forget it.

We also have that tornado in the news that all but wiped out a town in Kansas. It was one of the biggest tornadoes ever, a class five with over 200 mph winds. Soometimes when the overall wind currents nation wide don't move, if when you get the most violent storms. There is a metaphysical lesson to be learned here. Of course if you're going to live in the land of "Smallville" you can expect strange events like tornadoes and metior crashes. Of course there's that flook tornado that wiped out Amanda's parents on Star Trek that was artificially generated for just that purpose. You know Amanda. "I'd take one home with me" as Lennon would say. I goess one of the things we have to look foreward to is control over the weather as it's controled in Star Trek. Rush Limbaugh has said it's sheer human vanity to think that mankind can change the world's climate for either good or evil by his paultry actions when one eruption of a valcano can put the lie to the idea that man is a polluter.

Yesterday was the 70th. anniversary of the crash and burn of the Hindenburg, the world's highest capacity commercial zeppelin. Of course they used hydrogen because we wanted to keep helium out of the hands of the Nazis. Of course on a startrek episode once they needed hydrogen desperately to straighten out some warped dimension of the universe. Four hydrogen make one helium. And if you take a helium nuclias known as an alpha partical and use it in a cyclotron, you can transmute lighter elements into heavier elements. You could even make gold if you wanted to. I'm reminded of when I hear tales of alchemy of that old superman episode where professor Pepperwinkle had a machine to make gold. This criminal says "here's ten thousand dollars. Get all the materials you need". Then later the professor says "I'll only be able to give you five thousand dollars worth of gold in the first batch", and then the criminals discovered that part of the ingrediants in the gold process was a ten thousand dollar bar of platinum. "I love five thousand dollars on every batch", the professor said sheepishly.

Of course now on sixty minutes they had a terrorist who mended his ways and admitted he was led astray by Bin Laden. There must be some universal military code that states, "You don't make war on civilians". If all of the youth gangs followed this precept they might get better press. There may be something in Islam about not making war on civilians. You don't kill civilians for the hell of it. You don't hide behind civilians, and you don't take civilians as hostages. All these things are cowardly acts lacking in honor. This guy on Sixty Minutes might be called the "Malcolm X of Islan". In the same way that Malcolm X saw in his last year that our war was a war against recisum and prejudice, and not against the White Race, so it is that Islam had more an internal sense of "Honor" people would respect them.

They now say that most of the growth of the Beatles music came in pahse two of their carreer. Basically the period between February 1965 and February 1968 covers the era of their musical expansion and just happens to be the period covered by volume two of Anthology. They sought to shake things up by having Paul Mc Cartney play lead guitar on such songs as "Another Girl" "Ticket to Ride" "Drive My Car" "Taxman" and I just learned, "Good Morning". John in turn played lead guitar on the Ballod of John & Yoco, "Get Back" and "For You Blue". There was this whole painting contraversey on Sixty Minutes where the rap goes "Well, I just don't get the VIBE from this picture that it was painted by the artist you say. I guess with Anthology Vol. 2 you get a certain "Vibe" about the Beatles' music.

You know, sometimes you have to have the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time and try and reconsile them. F Scott Fitzgerald said this. I first took an interest in F Scott Fitzgerald when his name appeared in a Dylan song, "You've been through all of F Scott Fitzgerald's books". I guess as an author my slogan is "I'm not a Hemmingway; I'm just a Fitzgerald" (remember Ford?) You see I can relate to F Scott Fitzgerald. I can't relate to Earnest Hemmingway. Perhaps I'm not intelligent enough to grasp the points he's making. Here's a contradictory truth. If you believe in Creationisum and not Evolution it's all the more important that you believe in Ecology and care of the Planet. You must preserve the species because God isn't making any more of them. On a TV news show they had Edwards and then a far right Republican presidential candidate, and I found myself identifying more with the far right republican. That is on issues such as abortion an illigal immigration. I am not a racist. I believe our basis for sending Mexicans back is first, respect for the laws of the United States. And secondly I don't want to see our labor market flooded and drive the wage base down. I am also rather against the idea of having a permanent under-class. The Republican was a straight shooter and I respect that. John Edwards waffled all over the place, and undermined my former confidence in him. Of course the rap now is on the Chris Matthews show that many of the Republican candidates for President will turn against the Bush war policy after September, which is supposed to be a magic month. As I told Marcus on the patio, this is the month when we "decide" whether the surge in Iraq worked or not. Marcus' philosophy is if you heard it on the media be it Chris Matthews or whoever- - it's bullshit. President Bush will most likely be prosecuting the Iraq War to the last hour of the last day of the last month in office. Of course Marcus beat me decisively in chess our last game, and that earned him the right to philosophical credibility. Of course F Scott Fitzgerald also said something else and I'm not sure if it's in a novel or otherwise. He was standing on a pier in 1925 and the thought hit him, 'I shall never again be as happy as I am right now the rest of my life". I happened to think of my own life and one period I might back as a "happy period" is late 1990 but before Sunday December 9th. 1990 when a certain Church pastor came to town to deliver his first sermon. A Beatle song comes to mind,"Run for Your Life". I'm thinking of doing a movie of the jinx that pastor's presence had on my life and calling it "Howeling at a Concrete Moon", if I don't get sued for plagurisum. Saturday night Dec. 8th. 1990 was "The Night Before". Do I sense another Beatle song coming on or is it just the burbin talking? Actually I had a rather forboding dream a few days earlier with some symbolisum in it, which also featured an extrordenarily brilliant full moon. - - And now digg this:

[typed August 1st. 2005] What a conundrum. In the morning before breakfast I finished up this program. I then began another after eight. I started the Jump rope program. In this file I do the distance a swinging jump rope travels when it’s swung depending on its length and the number of degrees. I measure the distance as the crow flies, which is harder than doing circular sectors. In the afternoon I came up with another way to do it because I had to for degrees above ninety, involving the Pythagorean Theorem. I needed a way to get the length of the hypotenuse without having to do the Excel thing and compare degrees from a known tangent. The word “short” refers to approaching the far end of the circle. I also use sine and cosine features in the printout plus the all important hypotenuse. Soon I plan to do a graphics program involving a railroad track going vertically with fences on either side.

I was interrupted at ten after eight when the call to Green Harbor came. Eddy was trying to round up people. Neither Richard Powers nor Manfred went. Eddy seemed puzzled that I went today. I had a chance to talk to Valerie some. We picked up that guy in Long Beach over that hill with the cemetery. We took Sepulveda in. He had other transportation so we didn’t have to stop off on the way home but took the 91, which shortened our drive time. We left just after two. We arrived some time after nine and there was a lot of waiting around. I had coffee and an English muffin. My blood pressure was an ideal 120 over 80. My weight was the lowest in perhaps two years, which surprised me. There was a doctor there and I thought perhaps it was a shrink who wanted to interview people like me. That same guy who always talks as if he’s in a haze was across the table from me. Larry wasn’t there. They gave me a crossword puzzle but it was so hard none of the criss-cross words worked. We also colored a bird in a tree. We had fried chicken. The menu was changed at the last minute. They played a little music and we did exercises. I greeted Patricia. Teresa and I talked some outside. I ran out of cigarettes and the 2^nd. time borrowing from the desk me, Valerie and John got the last three. Valerie is not allowed to even use the phone. Someone gave her some Arby’s Roast Beef, which she was grateful for. “No chicken tonight!” (she’s sick of chicken) Valerie is astrology conscious and speaks of she and her mother “Locking horns”. Well, my sign has horns, too. I won four times in the first game under Roy at Bingo. Three Bingos and a black-out and two others were on tap. Two little boys were there. It may have been a son of Teresa and a son of Patricia. We arrived home about 2:40.

They have discovered a new planet beyond Pluto and slightly larger than Pluto but they say its orbit is inclined at 45 degrees, which no other planet is. This story has been “around” for several months. The Hubble telescope will examine it.

George Bush recess-appointed John Boulton to the United Nations. Someone said he worked for Reagan, too. Apparently the Constitution allows it but it won’t help him politically when even many Republicans don’t like him.

Senator Bill Friss has come out in favor of stem cell research. Friss is a physician and may just be returning to his humanitarian roots. All he wants is what I want. For embryos that would only get thrown away to be utilized. If anything it’s more of a property issue than a life issue. Jesus people like on KFI on say God no longer does healings. But when you bring up stem cells they’re against them, too. Rush Limbaugh is a major nay-sayer on the subject. But the President will veto any bills passed. This might be another issue that will cost the President in the long run.

Last night it was At the Movies. They have issued a Director’s cut of “Alexander”, who is Oliver Stone in this case. Eighteen boring minutes were cut and ten minutes of action scenes were added. It’s definitely a movie I’d like to see. We don’t know enough about historic figures and this is a good way to learn.

Sixty Minutes was all reruns. Vladimir Puton was on with his insane remarks about the US political system. He was actually hand-picked by Yeltson. Then the Jane Fonda thing replayed. I didn’t watch the Simpsons but was on computer.

They are saying that July was a record good month to be in the stock market. Only now, they say, have stock prices exceeded the days of pre “911”.