The legends and myths of Hawaii The fables and folk-lore of a strange people By David Kalakaua, Rollin Mallory Daggett

The legends and myths of Hawaii The fables and folk-lore of a strange people By David Kalakaua, Rollin Mallory Daggett: ""

Merry Christmas

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

Again, Another Public Service

I know it's been awhile but I've been busy (writers block!!) and considering I'm not a writer you can see how perplexing this is. Well I was doing some research for the problem we're having with the idiots opposing the Super ferry here in the islands. I found a great article that pretty much covers what I wanted to say.... Oh BTW California , thanks for sending your problems to our island.

Unperplexing Opposition to the Hawaii Superferry
Special from Hawaii Free Press
By Andrew Walden, 3/27/2007 2:37:44 PM

First it is lawsuits blocking the U.S. Navy’s use of sonar during RimPac. Then it is an attempt to prevent the Army from training its new Stryker Brigade on the Big Island. More recently it is efforts to demand that the Hawaii Superferry complete an environmental impact statement prior to launching inter-island ferry operations.

As Pacific Business News editorialized January 12, the Superferry opposition and obstruction, “continues to perplex us as yet another group of politicians, this time senators from Neighbor Islands, make noise….”

One might seek an explanation in the specifics of each dispute. Anti-military efforts use environmental law as thinly disguised leverage to advance an anti-American agenda aimed at militarily weakening the United States.

Stryker Brigades are among the most effective terrorist killing units in Iraq—hence the opposition from those who wish to see America defeated. October 26, while William Alia and David Henkin, the second place 2006 Democrat primary finishers for governor and Lt. Governor, litigated against Navy use of advanced sonar, an ultra-quiet Chinese ‘Song Class’ submarine—the exact type of sub for which the sonar is designed--surfaced undetected five miles from the carrier Kitty Hawk in the middle of RimPac maneuvers. Reasons for opposition to the Superferry are less obvious.

Senator Gary Hooser (D-Kauai) encapsulates the key anti-Superferry in the March 8 Maui News: “It’s possible that the Superferry could launch in service and strike a whale, bring in an invasive species and jam up traffic all in one day. We need stronger measures to ensure things like that won’t happen.”

It is arguments such as this which leave PBN editors “perplexed” and rightly so. Even if Hooser’s speculation became reality, Superferry would still have a better environmental record than those opposing it.

Whale-watching tours, often led by environmentalists, cause as many as 14.2% of all whale strikes according to one NOAA report—yet there is no call to ban whale watching. The barges of Superferry opponent Young Brothers’ are towed 100 yards or so feet behind a tug boat.

This separation of noise from vessel could cause whales to blunder into the barge’s path. Such strikes would almost always go unreported because the barge carries no crew. Yet the same activists who claim that sonar is making whales beach themselves somehow want the public to believe that a silent unmanned barge with a wide bow is less dangerous than a noisy ferry with two narrow catamaran bows, two crewmembers tasked to watch for whales, and a route designed to avoid known whale calving areas.

Young Brothers seemingly has no fear of creating a legal precedent which could be used against it. This makes no sense unless one treats the law as merely a means to an end and gives no importance to legal precedent. Logically precedent would be of no concern to Hooser, a politician who votes to raise taxes even as though his own business failed to pay its state General Excise Tax for 11 years.

Hooser’s second argument is that Superferry would bring in invasive species. Actually both the airlines and barges are far more likely to do so. The Superferry offers a 3- or 4-hour opportunity for onboard inspection and observation during which invasive species could be caught and quarantined or killed.

The fact is that any traffic diverted to the Superferry from planes or barges is less likely to bring invasive species, not more likely. For instance on January 31, a checkered keelback snake was found swimming at the port of Hilo. Missed by the hordes of paper-shufflers who pontificate endlessly about the importance of keeping out invasive species, the snake was killed by an alert port worker armed with a shovel. This isn’t the first time a snake came to Hilo on an unmanned barge or lightly crewed cargo vessel. It is certainly less likely that a snake, a coqui frog, or a mongoose would go undetected by the hundreds of passengers, crew and inspectors on the Superferry.

Hooser’s third argument is that Superferry would cause traffic jams. This should be simple to rectify. If the maiden voyage of the Superferry is from the sister island to Oahu, the Superferry will be reducing the number of cars on the sister island. Traffic congestion is caused by legislators raiding state transportation funds needed to build roads. A secondary cause of traffic congestion is environmentalist opposition to every road-building proposal. The third cause is large numbers of mainland environmentalists moving to “paradise” and bringing their political views with them. It is this third cause of traffic congestion which leads us to Maui Tomorrow, one of the leading anti-Superferry groups.

Unlike other groups who pretend to have local roots, Maui Tomorrow unabashedly seeks support from rich outsiders for whom Maui is just a pretty tropical escape from the stresses of Hollywood or Silicon Valley. Maui Tomorrow leader Roger Sussman, writing in a March 2, 2005 Haleakala Times article, featured on the Maui Tomorrow website, describes his effort to contact and solicit funds from the Beatles’ George Harrison who “had picked gorgeous Maui's North Shore, out of all the attractive places in the world, to have his tropical retreat.”

Sussman then explains: “Alas, I never did find George, but there remains a need for potent, admirable, Maui-loving philanthropists to step forward and contribute in a big way to MT's operating funds. The challenges of keeping things sane, fresh, and beautiful around here continue, and those challenges aren't going to go away as our population increases.

“There are forces at work in the islands which are motivated by greed and undue power. Stopping the forward movement of these forces requires education and litigation, both of which cost money - often fairly large amounts of it - to make them effective.

“There's a great opportunity for public service here with your money, Oprah, or whoever else cares about Maui enough to call this island home, or who visits us here fondly from time to time.”

The real “forces at work in the islands which are motivated by greed and undue power” are rich outsiders for whom Hawaii is just a pretty backdrop for their multi-million dollar tropical retreats.

In 2003, funding in the amount of $200,000 came to the “Blue Water Network” for the “Clean Vessels Initiative, to reduce the environmental impacts of large commercial vessels, cruise ships and fast ferries on the West Coast”. The donors? California-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.

The Goldmans were the trust-fund-babies of the Levi-Strauss blue jean fortune. Unlike other wealthy foundations taken over by leftist infiltration of the boards-of-directors, the Goldmans’ nearly $400 million foundation was created to fund radical causes and is operated by a board now made up of the Goldman trust-fund grand-babies. Besides the environment, another focus of the Goldman Fund is population control. For months, Hawaii Sierra Club activists danced to the Goldmans’ tune, howling about the alleged pollution dangers of cruise ships. Even as massive municipal sewage spills were made the news in Waikiki, Hilo, Maui and Kaneohe, the activists were offering a $250,000 reward to anybody reporting only a cruise ship spill. The award money was never used, they could find no violations.

Why the focus on squeaky-clean cruise ships while so much municipal filth spewed forth? Opposing any and all economic growth is the true goal. A spill from a cruise ship is an argument to reduce or eliminate them. A spill from a sewage treatment plant is an argument to expand or upgrade it. How much of that unspent $250,000 reward went to fund the fight against “fast ferries”?

Most if not all so-called environmental campaigns in Hawaii are not grassroots efforts but are initiated and directed by the funding decisions of rich outside foundations directed by multi-millionaires such as the Goldmans’.

The wealthy foundations are joined by hordes of New-Age Northern California millionaires who, after ruining San Francisco, are hell-bent on bending Hawaii to serve as a “sacred” backdrop for tantric retreats where stressed-out New-Agers can stroke their seventh chakra in front of a half-dozen or so other couples for $1,000 a night.

These are the people who write letters to the editor complaining about smoke from burning cane fields. They are the whiners who infest so-called community meetings intoning the meaningless magic words: ‘organic’, ‘holistic’, and ‘sustainable’. They are pleasure-seekers willing to use political power and money to stop any and all other economic activity which may undermine the ‘sacred’ faux-pristine patina necessary to their psychological and economic well-being.

All economic activity is a threat to their tropical navel-gazing. Their game plan is to assert the primacy of “environmental law” over all other considerations. For them Hawaiian cultural issues are just a useful tool complementing environmental law. If lack of economic opportunity means ice addiction in the subdivisions and locals moving to Las Vegas, so be it.

Anti-Americans form the third group in this unholy alliance. They don’t bathe as regularly as their partners in crime but are always ready to jump in with anything which obstructs national defense or hinders capitalism. They are the servants of the pleasure-seeking millionaires who fund them.

Ironically, efforts to shape the Hawaiian landscape into some kind of New Age utopia are destined to have the opposite effect. Hawaii is the unique creation of its own people. Obstructionism is guaranteed to transform Hawaii into a weather-perfect version of what all the New-Agers are fleeing—California. Activist opposition created the jumbled, crowded development of Waikiki and Kailua-Kona.

One sure way to ensure Hawaii continues to be unique is to promote economic development such as the Superferry and cruise ships, which have less environmental impact than the planes, barges and shoreline resorts they displace. For the claimed goals of the so-called environmentalists to be achieved, they must reduce environmental and zoning restrictions on the small businesses and cease the capricious application of law to suit political agendas.

Only the individual unplanned contributions of entrepreneurs can make up the unique backdrop which the environmentalists are destroying in their alleged effort to save it.

Pacific Business News editors are “perplexed” because the environmentalists’ actions lead in the opposite direction from their stated values.

Just another public service

In a number of carefully controled trials,
scientists have demonstrated that if
we drink 1 liter (There's that French thing again) of
water a day, at the end of the year we would have
absorbed more then 1 kilo (French) of Escherichia coli
(E. coli) bacteria found in feces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of Poop.

However, we do not run that risk when drinking
wine (or rum,whiskey, beer, or other liquor) because
alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling,
filtering and /or fermenting.
Remember:
Water = Poop
Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, then
to drink water and be full of shit.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable information;

I'm doing it as a public service.

Aloha...kaha

The Metric System

The Good, Bad and the Ugly

France (1786)

(France wants to be the center of the universe, as usual)

When the French Revolution came around, a bunch of French intellectuals (oxymoron) were sitting around “DOING” measurements. These intellectual types aren’t sitting in labs or making things, they’re just drinking wine and looking at measurements.

At the time it was decided that the metre (French spelling) should be one Ten Millionth the measure of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along the Paris meridian. Baa! Baa! Baa!

In order to reinforce their theory on where the center of the universe is located, they made a metal pole called the “Official Meter Rod” (The pole was made with platinum-iridium alloy with two hairline markings indicating the length of the official meter, when the pole is at 0 deg. Celsius) (A lot of wine went into the creation of this pole)

About the time the French adopted the Metric System, sentiment in the US was pro-French and anti Great Britain. (That’s that whole King/Religion/Church of England thing)

It was about this time that Noah Webster wrote his Dictionary which changed American spellings away from British standards (“Colour” became “color”, “Theatre” became “Theater”, etc…) (just a little filler)

The US had the opportunity to adopt the Metric system in the early 1800’s, but failed to do so. (God Bless our Founding Fathers)

The official use of the Metric measures alongside traditional English measures was actually authorized by Congress in 1866, and the US was an original signatory party to the 1875 “Treaty of the Meter”
(Go figure…and WAKE UP!!! If I had to write this you need to stay awake to read it)

In 1959, the US set its own standards based on the Metric system. A yard is officially 0.9144 meters exactly, and an inch is 2.54 centimeters exactly (It’s the American way of life to be different). Congress also passed a law in 1975 to work toward making the metric system the standard system in America. This was amended in 1988 when it was decided that the Government itself must be metric before it can start asking the private sector (us) to follow suit.

Ok, if you are still with me (and I can’t see why) we come to what I like to call the:

“THE METRIC KILLER” (The Decimal Inch)(Snore….)

Manufacturing and some engineering disciplines have abandoned traditional measures as well, but not in favor of metrics. (yeah!)

The better system is called the “Decimal Inch” (If you aren’t already confused!!)

It has been discovered that the smallest distance of separation visible to the unaided eye is 0.01 inches, or 0.26mm (Must be the girls, because the guys see 6 inches as a whole different measuring system)

What this means is that being accurate to within a hundredth of an inch is better than being within a millimeter. Four times better as a matter of fact (mmmmmmmm!!!! More beer on this one)

The only way metrics can be better is if rulers used half and quarter millimeters, but adding fractions defeats the whole purpose of decimal measurements. So now manufacturing and engineering have embraced the decimal inch, a standard inch divided into tenths and hundredths. This has set off a chain reaction, if manufacturing does not have to convert to metrics, why should we?

(Hey Frenchy Frenchman…)

Some reasons to convert to Metrics:

Gas will seem cheaper at .50 a liter.

Being 22 kilos overweight does not sound as bad as 50lbs.

Arizona summers will not seem as hot when it’s only 40c outside.

Imagine all the exciting math you will do converting your favorite recipes to milliliters.

Less fractions to deal with like, “Do I need a five eights socket or nine sixteenths to loosen this nut?

Half a liter is more then a pint, which means “MORE BEER FOR EVERYONE”

People will finally understand about driving “Attoparsecs per Nanocenturies”. (mmmmmmm!!!!...Need more beer on this on)

And lastly it was the French that invented the Metric System and all of this confusion. So the next time you need 1/5 of a liter know that the French made this wonderful system, and if you see a French guy walking around with a very cold rod in his pocket …Slap Him!!!

Aloha…kaha

Another Public service announcement

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.

I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil.

These companies import Middle Eastern oil :
Shell............................ 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco......... 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil............... 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway... 117,740,000 barrels
Amoco............................62,231,000 barrels


Citgo........................from South America , from a Dictator who hates Americans
If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION! (oil is now $55-$60 a barrel)

Here are some large companies that
do not import Middle Eastern oil:

Sunoco...................0 barrels
Conoco..................0 barrels
Sinclair.................0 barrels
BP/Phillips............0 barrels
Hess.......................0 barrels
ARC0....................0 barrels

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy
and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much
they are importing.


Aloha...kaha

Here are some rules to think about:

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, learn from your mistakes.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to Nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Aloha…kaha