Jerry's home page

9/11 Ten Years Later A photo essay. (mouse-over to see news service credits)

Tall Buildings
The Pile, The Streets
Taking Charge - Suicide on 911. All but 3 recorded jumps were in the North Tower. Doing this private, terrible thing in public saved thousands of lives in the South Tower. Southies saw the horror, took charge of their destiny, and got the heck out of there even while supervisors told them to stay. May I never stand at that window. They saved lives, they have my respect, and I will not criticize the action they chose in a situation incomprehensible to me. I wrote this section to honor them. I forced myself to face it. I put in big stretches of white screen with the reminder that you can quit and try to handle the rest of it another time.
The Pentagon, the Pennsylvania crash, and the Freedom Tower.

Postage Chart -- here's a simple one, only 23 pages. Robin takes me out to dinner if I ever get one million hits.
Hurricane Katrina 2005 Lots of photos (mouse-over to see news service credits).

The Significance of IG Farben for Chemistry, Literature, and Jews.

We took Dad to work at the CIA Station in Frankfurt. He was a spook, but the building where he worked spooked him, because he thought the IG Farben headquarters was where Zyklon B was invented and made for gassing European Jews to death. Yes, the IG Farben industrial cartel drove the twentieth century to its dominant forms of corporate organization, scientific achievement, and collective horror -- death camps, cremation ovens. Jews who survived the company's slave labor camps created literature that defined the age. So yes, the IG Farben cartel changed the course of chemistry, literature, and what it means to be a Jew. But no, Dad. IG Farben just collected money on the poison pellet sales. Zyklon B was invented by a famous Jewish chemist.

"Thank you - very readable and informative in an interesting, personal way!"
JR, Oregon

politics

Guns! Guns! Guns! -- THREE ESSAYS

                1. Shoving more guns into schools is abusive, and here is my anger.
                2. Signs and the new Anti-Patriarchy Sentiment at the March for Our Lives, WashingtonDC 24Mar2018
                3. Class Structure and Economic Injustice in the United States - Why Are so Many Adults so Selfish?
                            Dear Kids Everywhere, after I take you through the banking crisis of 2008, your sense of humor will be restored,
                            and nothing the adults can throw at you against gun control will surprise you.
Grownups should ask themselves, "Why does this explain Donald Trump?"

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick "Vietnam" Sept 2017 -- key people in Burns' and Novick's documentary.
I hope these mugshots and bios for the main characters in "The Vietnam War" will help keep everything straight for you.
Without this cheat sheet, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary rolled over us like a freight train.
The March for Science, 22 April 2017 -- lots of photos. 240 organizations sponsored the march in Washington, DC. 500 cities participated world-wide. My grandmother had no telephone, radio, TV. She watched them all grow ubiquitous, along with aluminum airplanes and even aluminum cookware -- once Niagara Falls hydropower made bauxite refining possible, and New York stores filled up with them. Small-minded men who grasp at only what they can see and cannot imagine all that Man has created should get out of public life.

The Climate March, 29 April 2017 -- lots of photos. 500 political groups, wonderful signs.

Russian Operations During Our Election -- Facebook finally admits the Russians walked all over them, but the intel agencies saw much more.
Destroying the Internet Destroys our Future -- John Perry Barlow tried to save the Internet for the century that needs it most
The NSA's Warrantless Wiretapping Scandal

How the NSA Warrantless Wiretap System Works

Wrong Technology -- Why the nuclear power reactor fleet must go. (Tough article, love to have editorial criticisms.)

70 years ago, before the first reactor was built, we chose a reactor design optimized to produce radioactive waste because, in the hot isotopes that poured out of the atomic "piles" were new isotopes of plutonium, needed for the Nagasaki A-bomb and the 60,000 warheads which followed. Now civic society wants to get electric power from these reactors, not plutonium and all its radioactive relatives that make the spent fuel unusable ever again, and impossible to store.

It is time for this industry to turn the page. The entire nuclear reactor fleet must go. Scrap them all. Start over. It is the wrong technology.

NOTE: This is a tough article. It reviews a lot of biology, physics and nuclear power technology. If it gives you a headache, take 2 aspirin, go to sleep and try again in the morning. Why should you learn this? Because they will lie to you now, they will lie to you tomorrow, and, after the meltdown, they will tell you everything is safe. This is the best I could do to help you protect yourself. You know the author. Just write him, jerry_web@nelsonic.org, with your own ideas for simpler conclusions that the text should make.

REVIEW -- AMAZING ESSAY ON NUCLEAR POWER
Jerry Nelson holds a doctorate in psychology, so he's not an "expert" on any of these, but he clearly is smart and has studied them deeply, and he writes with flare. He acknowledges at the beginning that the essay is hard going and recommends keeping an aspirin nearby. My antidote was to stretch out the reading over many days; there is just so much of this I can stomach at once. His whimsical style helps - greatly.
His concluding sentiments are why you might consider reading this provocative, very informative essay. "We are - you, me, all of us - members of the most technologically advanced civilization in history. We must either understand the technology or lose the civilization."
--Pat Kenschaft, 29July2011
Montclair State University Dept. Mathematics (retired)

Southridge McMansions - peak autumn colors in a Mid-Atlantic, middle-class suburb (well, OK, this county's median income is over $100k)

Suggestions for Getting old people online.

Boeing scandal 2006 -- the airplane parts don't fit, the FAA says it doesn't matter.

simple table of Hebrew alphabet

F2C -- Freedom to Connect - the Internet idealists at this annual WashDC meeting are living in dreamland until they can face the force of government surveillance.

"Why We Fight", Eugene Jarecki's documentary film, 2006. With so many talking heads, I had to make this crib sheet of mug shots and little "who the heck is that" bio sketches. Good flick.

Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony, or Survival?" -- the best quotes and quips on Amazon from people who actually read the book.

SLAMMER worm 2003 -- Cars are recalled, but software companies have no liability for damaging their customers and undermining our national security. SLAMMER was a warning, but the world saw we lacked the political will to change. In late 2009, China attacked. It will get worse.

eBay fraud -- "community" on eBay? Stifled. No way to warn others of danger. Customers are sheep, easy to herd.

eBay fraud -- I can take this fake USB thumb drive from China apart, but a multi-billion-dollar giant can't be bothered. Keep selling!!

The Financial Crisis 2008 -- From mortgages to credit swaps, you can understand this.

The Financial Crisis 2010 -- Trillions in printed money, nothing fixed. Why?

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McLean HS '60 Reunion

Jim Tierney

Geoff

SWATSPAC

MoveOn.org House parties are fun (2006). Demonstrations can also get things done (2009).

The TSA Watch List A list of names is too much for the guys at Homeland Security to manage.

Impeach whom?

Farm insurance & disaster relief (USA maps, 2006) -- rural Americans are double-dipping

Telecom 2007- Vermont the 1st E-state wants 100% connectivity - let's all move up!

photographic services -- restorations, panoramas

How to deal with the family photo collection. You're older, your parents are getting older,. and look at all those photos. Will you be the one to put your parent's life into the Dumpster?

The Madeira School of McLean