Welcome To Nutmegger Daily
This site is a new venture started by Jamil Ragland and Gene Glotzer. We both enjoy writing as well as a free exchange of ideas. Our goal is to do those things in a public forum that will engage readers. We hope that people will visit our site to enjoy those things, too. We are friends, so we have things in common like an enduring love of Star Trek, especially Deep Space Nine, and a general feeling that we don’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum. But, we are also very different people and we hope that those differences encourage a diversity of ideas.
A Note On Our Name*
Many people will recognize nutmegger as a nickname for people from Connecticut, which is known as the Nutmeg State. We are both from Connecticut, so this fact did spark the idea. However, nutmeg has many other associations. For example, many people associate it with happy memories of holidays. It is a tropical spice and one of the spices that Christopher Columbus most wanted to find on his voyage. Also, without nutmeg, New York might still be called New Amsterdam. So, nutmegger is something that both connects us to our roots and shows the diversity or our interests. As for the daily part of our name, please don’t take that as contractually binding. We hope to be able to deliver at least one piece per day between the two of us. But, we both have jobs and families so we can’t make any guarantees.
*Let’s just pretend that our first choice name was available and this is what we picked.
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About Our Contributors
Gene Glotzer – I have a difficult time describing myself. The whole exercise makes me decidedly uncomfortable. When I had to write short bios in high school for concerts and school plays, I just opted out by completely making stuff up. I would rather people think I’m a (hopefully funny) liar than actually divulge any personal information. It seems that while I’ve gotten older and more mature, this aspect of me has not changed much. I feel strange even saying this much. So, let me just say that the consistent thing that runs through all of my writing is philosophy. The final product may be fiction, commentary, criticism or an essay, but for me it is all about the ideas. You can support me here.
Jamil Ragland- I’ve been writing since I was a kid. My first memories of writing for fun are book-length Star Trek fanfictions where I was the captain. My writing has become (somewhat) more sophisticated since those summers I spent banging away on my school issued laptop, but I try to write with the same sense of joy. I’m not a trained historian, but I love history, and that appreciation tends to inform my writing. I can get a little heavy at times, but I always enjoy putting my thoughts into the written word, and I hope you enjoy reading it. You can support me here.
“we don’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum.” Pick a side, young ones. We need partisans and comrades, and good writers who can analyze and inspire.
(p.s. The Nutmeg also refers to a colonial scam where a load of carved wood nuggets would be sold as the expensive spice)
Jamil! I’ve been looking for you! It’s Jay from Illinois. Number and email has not changed. I hope you are well and I look forward to chatting again
Jamil,
After reading some of your musings on the failure of our Constitution, and your convession to Anarchism, I have a constructive suggestion for you.
Read The Federalist Papers.
Perhaps you will learn that our founders absolutely understood that those in power would be more concerned with their self-interest than anything else, and that the Constitution was drafted to combat the Tyranny of the Majority by dispersing power, and creating a series of checks and balances.
I suggest that before you make up your mind to scrap our governing documents, read The Federalist to learn what it really means.
Sincerely,
Kevin McCann
Let me provide a lesson in climate Jamil. You are being led to believe that all-powerful mankind controls the climate & that you simply dial it up to what you desire. Wildfires are part of the norm in climate; they are not a change. Many are started by lightning esp at elevation, poor cable maintenance, human errors. Clouds of smoke have 2 opposite effects. In the vicinity of the plume the ground layer & the air is hot. Fires can move effectively depending on slopes, dryness, & the sheer clump of fuel. The other effect is smoke can block out sunlight much like volcanic emissions do. This deters the heating of the surface & it will constrain the surface temp. to whatever it was when the fire began. I think you are under the impression that somehow mankind cures fires. That is like saying we have cured cancer—I wish. Man is not in control of lightning & could do a better job in silviculture to make more corridors in dense forests. The rest of the stuff–solar energy, the jetstreams, air masses, wind & ocean currents, ocean circulation are the stuff that makes the weather go around. You have foolishly fallen for the man makes the weather myth. Mankind can influence pollution amounts no doubt but do you propose we go back to the stone age. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is an emittant & its presence is small in the weather-producing roles. CO2 has no odor & no color. It exists. Lots of nonsense spouting lately on eliminating livestock. No livestock–means protein sources dry up. Populations starve to death. But then maybe that is the goal. Now certainly we have some cool technology coming on board in the way of filtration that will deter future stuff from going up in the air out the flue vent & we get some neat secondary products. However, ordering the public to give up things would result in the old adage that some people will be more equal than others. Mr. Kerry & Mr. Dicaprio will still fly around in their jets for instance. Softer approaches around the edges work better. BTW if you check out EPA/DoE/IEA you can find all the databases & the USA does lead the world in bringing down these emissions. That’s the real facts. Now I can give you a basic explanation to what is going on in our dynamic atmosphere. The polar jetstream is badly disrupted & exiling in the Arctic so its effect of not getting down to lower latitudes is evidence. What shifts such large wind belts? These are rotational forces from the planet as the central part of the planet spins different from the poles. Any friction can perturb a change in the rotational speeds. The troposphere is currently in a warm state (we are not frigid or overcome by glaciers) & the stratosphere is in a cool state–in fact too cool. The stratosphere has a property of which when entering it cools, & then it warms up, before cooling again upon exit. What went missing in the last 3 decades? The ozone. Ozone absorbs energetic UV rays from the top & IR rays from the bottom. This creates an energetic layer of molecules. The ozone is the reason for the normal warming of the mid-stratospheric layer. Why is this important? Plancks Law. Plancks Law states that warmer mediums radiate EM radiation farther & more effectively than if it were cooler. The strato right now is deficient because it is too cool. It needs to be warmer in order to radiate the IR radiation away to space. But how does this layer warm? Well the layer is regenerating but not consistently yet? It certainly has improved since I left grad school. CFCs are no longer produced but the remaining compounds have a certain residence time in the atmosphere. They are expecting that later in this century the layer will return to normal.