ALL FIVE STANS AGAIN
This is my son Brandon at “The Door of Hell” – the Darvaz Gas Crater in Turkmenistan, one of the “Five Stans” of Central Asia, the ultimate in the remote, the exotic, the unknown full of wonders.
Here you will find the ancient cities of the Silk Road still in all their splendor, and one of the glitziest cities you’ll ever see built yesterday in the middle of nowhere. Here you will find the Mountains of Heaven, the Door of Hell, and the Seven Pearls of Shing.
We explored all five in 2018 and 2019, but then came the Covid Lunacy with the world going wacko over a flu bug. Finally we were able to explore four of the five last September (2022) but Turkmenistan remained closed.
Now we just received word that Turkmenistan is reopening at last – so our Heart of Central Asia 2023 this September will soon be revised – for crossing the Kara Kum Black Sand Desert to spend overnight in a yurt at the Door to Hell, and on to Turkmenistan’s marble capital Ashgabad.
It’s All Five Stans again! Hope you’ll be joining us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #259 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – LIFE MAGAZINE DECEMBER 12, 1960
Yes, believe it or not, this was a 4 page story in LIFE Magazine more than sixty years ago when I first swam the Hellespont. I repeated the swim twelve years later for my book, The Adventurer’s Guide. You can see the whole LIFE story here. Quite an adventure for a 16 year-old kid. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #121 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COVERED IN SIX FEET OF GLOBAL WARMING
ANAHEIM, CA, Babylon Bee reporting — The Southland was turned upside down this week as an unexpected weather pattern left the region blanketed by what experts were only able to call "massive amounts of Global Warming." Residents were told to remain indoors to avoid making direct contact with the Global Warming.
"Our world has officially ended," said California resident Luis Garcia. "We've been hearing about Global Warming for years now, but it has now fallen upon us and brought destruction with it." Fluffy, white hell soon began to descend onto areas of Southern California, covering pockets of the region with a dense blanket of even more Global Warming.
"The temperature of the earth has clearly risen far too high," said Professor Richard Davenport of the Save California Climate Institute. At publishing time, the entertainment industry was reportedly planning a star-studded telethon to raise awareness and money to save Californians from the horror of having to wear jackets during the day.
HALF-FULL REPORT 03/03/23
Things That Fail
"In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and lost everything: security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again."--Edward Gibbons, on the fate of Ancient Greece.
Things fail, and sometimes things fail bigly. Back in the days of Athens, civic virtue fell, and this is undoubtedly happening today.
This week's HFR looks at the failure of the things the left counts on to gain ultimate control. Take A.I., for instance; central planners hope that the computer algos will lead to total control of the world's emotions and thoughts.
Sure, A.I. can do many cool things, but it can't identify fitness for purpose. It produces answers to questions and artwork without the underlying meaning. Given the enormity of available data, it is surprising how clunkish and unnatural it becomes when asked to innovate. It cannot.
The power grid is in serious trouble as EGS, and federal mandates will begin to remove much of the base generating capacity within the next few years. In the end, people will not stand for it. But until then, you might think about a backup power source. Regulations are cutting deeply into the small generator supply, and shortages have emerged. They will get worse, with some jurisdictions requiring licenses and fees on generators. Be proactive.
Wokism is fumbling as Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert was banned almost everywhere. It's not what he said that caused the ban; he occupied a box to be checked before the 2024 election.
His response? Rather than grovel and promise to support Biden in 2024, he gave it up. He went off to Galt's Gulch. We will see more of this as people expect it to be canceled. Cancellation is now being factored into career planning.
Institutions failed the world badly, as shown during Covid. The Duning-Kruger Effect is essentially to blame. Moderately qualified people tend to have much more confidence in themselves and their roles than highly talented people. We learn through Congressional testimony that government policy was distilled down to whatever conservatives proposed, but the government did the opposite.
So poorly prepared were the leaders at the CDC and other institutions that these leaders could not envision that actual scientists stood for fundamental research. Somehow, no quality score was placed on research, so the work of the political hack was valued more than the deep research of actual scientists.
We live in a technological world, and this is no way to manage technical problems.
Finally, there is light emerging from the void. The voters fired Lori Lightfoot. Even Chicago natives are getting tired of violent crime. Lori's failure probably ruined the chances for the next unqualified black lesbian in Chicago.
Bye Bye, Lori; it's time to roll up our sleeves and save the country. It will help if you stay out of the way.
THE REMOTEST SWIMMING POOL
This is St. Paul’s Natural Pool on Pitcairn Island, where in 1790 Fletcher Christian and his mutineers of the Mutiny on the Bounty settled, and where their descendants live to this day. They were awed by the uninhabited island’s lush beauty, with huge banyan trees rising above them like giant cathedrals, and thought it a Garden of Eden where anything grew, coconuts, bananas, taro, breadfruit, mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, yams and sweet potatoes in the rich volcanic soil.
Pitcairn has no beaches, though, so this was their swimming hole – and still is for Pitcairners today. They are happy to take you here, and to the island’s colorfully named spots, like Where Dick Fall, Oh Dear, Break Im Hip, Down the Hole – and to Fletcher Christian’s Cave, his lookout for British warships hunting them (they failed for 25 years) .
It’s not easy to get here – fly to Tahiti, then remote Mangareva from where you sail for two days on a supply ship. But you’ll be so welcome upon arrival. You stay in one of their homes in Adamstown and be treated like family. It’s a travel experience like none other. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #63 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/02/23
Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday (3/01) in TTP, your read Betsy McCaughey’s Biden’s ‘America Last’ Health Treaty. And voilá, there it suddenly is in the New York Post this morning (3/02), retitled Biden’s WHO Pandemic Treaty Would Kill Americans In The Name Of ‘Equity’.
Enter “global health equity” in duckduckgo, and you’ll see dozens of entries advocating it without any criticism of it whatever, led by WHO and the CDC. It is the latest example of how pathologically blatant Woke Fascism has become.
This is likely to be very important! It looks like Elon Musk is going to create a non-woke AI company:
Elon Musk Allegedly Forming New AI Venture To Take On 'Woke' ChatGPT
There’s so much more and so much more fun. Jump right on in – let’s go!
LORI THE LOSER
You can see why Lori Lightfoot is nicknamed “Mayor Beetlejuice.” The resemblance is striking.
On Tuesday, the Chicago Mayor lost her reelection, and not by a little. Lightfoot limped into third with 17 percent of the vote.
Naturally, like any good radical leftist, Lightfoot took no personal responsibility for her loss, choosing to blame it instead on others. In this case, the entire city of Chicago is guilty of being sexist and racist as reported by the New York Post:
“I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly.
“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” Lightfoot, 60, told the New Yorker in a piece that ran Saturday. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”
Apparently, the city that elected her to the mayorship in the first place suddenly became racist and sexist during her time as that city’s mayor.
BIDEN’S ‘AMERICA LAST’ HEALTH TREATY
Joe Biden's diplomats are negotiating a treaty with the World Health Organization to promote so-called “global health equity”.
The premise is that in a pandemic or other worldwide disease emergency, Americans should not get better or faster health care than inhabitants of third-world countries. If Biden rams this through, Americans will suffer and die needlessly.
Under the draft treaty, presented in Geneva on Feb. 1, the U.S. will be obligated to hand over a whopping 20% of its medical supplies, including diagnostic tests, antiviral medications and vaccines, to WHO for global distribution. Article 10 of the treaty specifies this will be done in "real-time," not after American needs are met.
Read on… it gets treasonously worse.
THE POLYNESIA PARADISE YOU NEVER HEARD OF
Have you ever seen the ocean turn day-glo pink? It does here naturally during a sunset (this is not photoshopped). Between Samoa and Tonga in the South Pacific is a raised coral atoll, 100 square miles of old limestone between 60 and 200 feet high: the island of Niue (new-way), and it’s is uniquely fabulous.
With no silty river runoff, the water is incredibly clear – visibility can reach over 200 feet. There are a multitude of chasms through which you clamber to these out-of-a-movie tidal pools perfect for snorkeling surrounded by colorful reef fish. The limestone cliffs encircling the coast are riddled with caves with multi-colored stalactites and stalagmites.
You can snorkel or dive with spinner dolphins and humpback whales. The big game fishing is world class – within a few hundred yards off shore. The Niueans are unfailingly friendly and welcoming, the beautiful Matavai Resort is the best bargain in the Pacific, the food and beer is inexpensive, the weather is balmy. It’s a Polynesian paradise you never heard of. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #48 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE SOLUTION TO BALLOT FRAUD
The irresistible force:
Mail-in ballots, nonexistent signature verification, phantom voter rolls, a feckless Republican Party, Republican governors donating tax money to a George Soros–funded entity to clean voter rolls — election commissions changing ZIP codes so mail-in ballots stack up — courts refusing to remove dead people from voter rolls unless they miss two consecutive elections, and a Republican presidential candidate who thinks he can win with ballot-harvesting.
Years of Republican acquiescence and temerity brought us here — the end of free and fair elections. Election fraud is baked into every state's voter rolls — protected by government.
This week, we demonstrated a solution. Here it is.