MY BEST SPAGHETTI MEAL

Day 59 of the Lower Puna Eruption and the flow continues.  The Star Advertiser now mostly reports on human interest woes.

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My 10 holes of Friday golf at Ala Wai begun as usual, mediocre.   However, in the back nine my drive on the tenth hole with a fierce cross wind, flew 241 yards, extraordinary for me.  On the eleventh, my shot to the par-3 slowly rolled by and, I'd swear, touched (I was 205 yards away) the cup.  That would have been my first hole-in-one.  The distance against the wind was itself incredible.  Then, on the 13th, I shot three perfect shots on a par-5, and putted in a five footer for a birdie.

On a high after that sequence, I came home to enhance a 15 Craigside take-out lunch from Wednesday, and also ordered a take-out salad.  I found a Stanford University, Collector's Reserve, Vinum Cellars 2005 Cardinal Cuvee, 14.9% alcohol (42% Syrah, 37% Mourvedre and 22% Grenache).  Last one in my wine refrigerator to celebrate this propitious day.

For those who stick to the old fashioned way, to the left of the bottle is an electronic wine bottle opener.  On the left is the beginning of my salad, with black truffle oil and two kinds of balsamic vinegar:

How do you enhance a simple ole spaghetti?  Start with these ingredients:  onion, shiitake mushrooms, a dozen cloves of garlic and...the star of the meal...a quarter pound of Japanese Wagyu Beef Fat from Miyazaki, which you can find at Marukai every so often:

The lanai setting.

I needed the beer to quench my thirst from the 18 holes of walking.  That is a Reidel Sommelier Burgandy (or Pinot Noir) Grand Cru Wine Glass.  First you fry the fat crisp with the sliced garlic:

Then add the rest of the ingredients (including broccoli and tomato from the salad):

Blend in the spaghetti and top with American cheese and Parmesan:

The spaghetti was not exactly al dente, but the taste was fabulous.  I should add that I used the basil from my herb garden:

All things concerned, my best spaghetti meal ever.  

By the way, speaking of plants, six weeks ago 15 Craigside went to the Lyon Arboretum, where I purchased lavender, plumeria and black taro plants.

I replanted them into one rectangular pot, but out came a bunch of skinny weeds and this leafy plant that grew like a weed:

Nothing to 18 inches in six weeks.  Anyone know what this is?  I pulled and threw away the weeds, but should I also do the same to this miracle plant?

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Tropical Storm Prapiroon has appeared, seems headed for Naha, then will strengthen and move in the direction of Cheju Island and South Korea:

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DONALD TRUMP WINNING WAR ON GLOBAL WARMING

Day 58 of the Lower Puna Eruption and the flow continues, 10 million cubic meters/day.  The future of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which has been closed since May 11, is a huge unknown.  USGS scientist Tina Neal has become a voice of the federal government.

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Part two of global warming, the USA and the Middle East most doubt the seriousness of this potential monumental disaster:

President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the global climate change agreement.  How does he get away with such an irrational decision?

Well, his supporters mostly cheered this move.  But why?  First, many are Republicans, and scroll down to the next article to read details.  But what about those diehards who are not particularly rich, nor own a lot of fossil fuel stocks?  The struggling town of Cameron, Louisiana, which has recently been decimated by Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008, voted 90% for Trump.  Clearly warming will increase the incidence of hurricanes and sea level rise will further inundate the area.  Cameron might be one of the first locations to be submerged.  Current maps show that there could well be a 15-foot rise in 50 years:

Yet, even a science teacher here doubts the science and ridicules Al Gore.  Shrimp fisherman think Trump will protect them from imports.  They hate current laws and policies, rules and regulations.  They haven't yet SEEN sea level rise.  A new liquified gas plant is being built, and they believe the company knows more than those computer-modeling scientists.  Plus, someone in their family likely works in this field blamed for the Greenhouse Effect.  They say they are not Confederate flag-waving drunk idiot racist slaveholders, as media tends to treat the South.

You can go around portions of the country and experience similar views.  Add immigration and international trade, and in Trump they have their champion.  Trump supporters do want to restore the old American way of life, meaning, leave white people alone, and don't favor minorities.  They feel threatened, frustrated and marginalized--not on an economic, but on an existential level.  They don't agree with every idiotic stand he makes, but he does enough to maintain their support.

Donald Trump tweeted climate skepticism 115 times...and that was from an article published on 1 June 2017.  This one is typical:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Newly released emails prove that scientists have manipulated data on global warming. The data is unreliable. http://on.wsj.com/ukYkyM 

8:25 AM - Nov 30, 2011

Here are 30 of his wildest.

More and more of Trump's supporters read Skeptical Science.  Just his tweeting on this subject seems to be working.

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PUNA CONTINUES IN HIGH HEAT--PLANET EARTH, TOO

Day 57 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the latest headline has to do with looting.  Apparently, thieves are landing by boat and taking items like solar panels and water heaters, for areas are closed off to residents, and there is no enforcement.  Otherwise, the usual earthquakes and, this morning, a plume up to 15,000 feet.

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Global warming has regularly been deprecated by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.  From a Gallup poll:

In general, Democrats view global warming seriously, while Republicans view it skeptically:

• Ninety-one percent of Democrats and 33% of Republicans say they worry a great deal or fair amount about global warming, but 67% of Republicans worry only a little or not at all.

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  While 82% of Democrats think global warming has already begun to happen, only 34% of Republicans agree. Rather, 57% of Republicans think it will not happen in their lifetime (25%) or will "never happen" (32%).

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  About seven in 10 Republicans (69%) think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news, 15% think it is generally correct and 15% say it is generally underestimated. Democrats, however, are much more likely to think the seriousness of global warming is underestimated (64%) or correct (32%), and just 4% say it is exaggerated.

But here us the reality:

• NASA says that THE PLANET JUST HAD ITS HOTTEST 4 YEARS IN RECORDED HISTORY.  TRUMP IS DISMANTLING EFFORTS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE.
• NOAA merely lists 2017 as the third highest ever:

Here is a running list of how Trump is changing the environment.  Surely enough, the FY2019 budget proposed by the White House further reduces the NOAA budget by 20%, primarily aimed at climate change research.

Head cheerleader for global warming is James Hansen, someone I've been communicating with for a very long time.  He today sent me an opinion piece he wrote for the Boston Globe, entitled Thirty years later, what needs to change in our approach to climate change.  Of course what he's saying makes sense, but does this make a difference to Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump?  No.  

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HOW TO ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

Day 56 of the Lower Puna Eruption, where there was the usual summit 5+ earthquake.

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The day before I left for my Seattle/Anchorage book development trip, I got a call from the 15 Craigside administration, which, frankly, irritated me.  So much so that this led me to think about what I should be doing with the rest of my life.  Do I want to exist in this environment, where the next step is the dreaded second floor to die?

I can't say it was a mistake to move into this senior's community because I have made a lot of good friends and truly enjoy my existence here.  But it's taken me four years to realize that this place is designed for people who eat 90 meals/month in our dining room and worry about the long-term cost of dying, where  some actually joined to give their children a full life without a responsibility to care for them.  It now turns out that I only come down to eat 25 times/month, wasting at least $3750/month, if the cost used is what they charge visitors eating here.  

More importantly, it turns out that I truly don't wish to subsist in pain and boredom for any length of time, in a state of dementia or not.  Thus, the promise of 15 Craigside to care for me forever, even if I run out of money, is irrelevant for someone like me.  There could be solutions to potential incoming and existing residents where lifetime care is not all that important.  A written end of life policy for some could maximize interest and minimize financial risk...for some.  Chances are, though, that a church-run entity might not want to even discuss these prospects.

For the record, there are a dozen countries where assisted dying is legal.  Most locations only allow euthanasia for the terminally ill.  However, Switzerland, for one, does not have this requirement, and the patients arriving from other countries with no obvious fatal prognosis is growing.

Over the next week or so I'll post on various facets of this issue.  The overwhelming sense of death with any dignity is that most cultures, religions and governments want to keep the patient alive at all costs.  Morality is a controlling factor, which determines existing laws.  When my wife was in intensive care, I appreciated this maximization of care policy, even though I thought the costs were exorbitant. 

I'm presently of reasonably sound mind, and would like to plan my end, while enjoying life to the fullest.  I'm not clear what this means at this point, and I'm not sure if I have any options for change, but, who knows, this could well become my next book.  I should nevertheless thank the individual who called me, for she stimulated me to, for the first time, truly think about the rest of my life.   Stay tuned.

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FIVE HOURS TO LOS ANGELES?

Day 55 of the Lower Puna Eruption and another 5+ summit quake:

Just saw in the local paper that Puna (500 square miles) is almost as large as Oahu (600 square miles):

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So what did I learn from this journey from Hawaii to Seattle and Anchorage, what were the two most likely targets of my novel entitled Six Hours to ?:

• Both Seattle and Anchorage are mostly surrounded by protective lands, plus both cities are at elevations from 60 to more than 100 feet.

• I'll need to look for another city.
• Tokyo is eight hours by tsunami and plane away from the Big Island, but not in the right direction of likely major landslides from Hawaii.
• Santiago, Chile is 13 hours by tsunami, but there is no direct flight.
• San Francisco, too, is somewhat protected.

• Five Hours to Los Angeles was my original title, and looks like I might just return there.  Painting by Paul Jackson.
• However, Seattle and Anchorage will provide some characters I met, for, once the mega-tsunami is initiated, there will be scientific uncertainty as to what will really happen.  The anxiety will be at peak for at least 4 or those 5 hours, even in those two cities.

• Triggering of a mega-earthquake at the Cascadia Subduction Zone remains a highly likely storyboard inclusion, which could then activate the San Andreas fault, further sending a mega-tsunanami to Tokyo.  That would be the ultimate story, book and film.  Totally far-fetched, but a beginning point to write a novel.
• Is there any historical precedent for a mega tsunami?
• Watch this clip of the Nuuanu Landslide, which probably generated a tsunami exceeding 300 feet over California.
• Or this one, which wipes out Honolulu.
• Yet another, collapse of the Kilauea Volcano, generating a 100 foot tsunami over California.

• The most likely mega landslide will be the Hilina Slump, 5000 cubic kilometers of earth into the Pacific Ocean.  Interesting that the Nuuanu Landslide was also 5000 cubic kilometers, from Waking the Giant, by Bill McGuire, who I interviewed when I wrote my chapter on Six Hours to Seattle.
• The Hawaiian Islands have been around long enough that mega landslides have occurred 15 times (or maybe even 70, depending on what you consider as major).
• These landslides tend to occur when the environment is moist, such as during times of sea level rise.

I watched more World Cup soccer matches than I could have imagined, mostly because there was nothing else to do.  A few thoughts came to mind.  They truly need to eliminate the offside penalty.  Scores could go up to 25-23, but 1-0 matches are not exciting enough for me.  Helmets should be mandatory.

One of my dream (meaning I know this won't happen, but you can dream) bucket list items would be to be a referee at a World Cup game.  He is king, police force and Supreme Court, and in great physical condition, for he typically runs 12 miles/game.

No females yet in the World Cup, although it was reported that Fernanda Colombo (right) was to be named.  She was an assistant referee in 2014.  However, the story turned out to be erroneous.

I'll wear my Lionel Messi shirt today.  He is from Argentina, which will play France in the next round on Saturday.  The professional Barcelona team, led by Messi, is sponsored by the Qatar Foundation.

I was given this shirt by their government when I went to advise them on energy in 2010.  Read my HuffPo on this subject.  Note in the right column that one of my postings on Qatar was the most popular.  The next world cup will be held there, unless the payoff scandal becomes too, too embarrassing.  Then the cup moves to England.

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