Golmer's Blog

@mindymayhem wrote “His scenario* was that an illegal immigrant who reports a crime should be deported. So if you cared so much about these people being “exploited” (by willingly coming here), how could you possibly condone them living in terror of reporting crime? The results would be not unlike this, if you ask me: http://bit.ly/obxJcJ *And I have to say (esp after you said having sex with a child is the worst thing a person can do), I can not BELIEVE your “tough. He shouldn’t have come here” response to an illegal immigrant having to choose to be deported to tell the cops that his daughter was raped!”

For me, this scenario is an appeal to emotion on one narrow symptom of the problem. In my opinion, the problem of an illegal immigrant being afraid of reporting a crime is a symptom of the greater harm caused by an inculcated system of servitude that is responsible for the symptom in the first place. The greater harm in this case is america’s seeming need, from the very day of it’s formation until now, to exploit cheap labor for the gain of the majority - whether that cheap labor be in the form of slaves, indentures servants, or illegal immigrants. The current system of fostering and perpetuating a 12 million strong and growing multiple-generational pool of cheap labor that does not have the benefits of citizenship is the greater harm than the one person potentially harmed in dan’s scenario.

My point is, if you follow the law and fix the problem causing the greater harm, you fix the problem outlined in the scenario, not just for one, but for millions.

It isn’t an easy fix. But fostering the status quo is the greater harm. The scenario is an appeal to emotion that serves no purpose other than to perpetuate, not fix, the problem.

I know I have posted ob this subject before, but I kind of feel like making my point again, given that the gay marriage issue isn’t really about marriage at all, but rather it is about the separation of church and state and also about protections provided under the 1st and 14th amendments of the US Constitution.

It also boils down to a lack of definition in the terms used - I.e. “marriage,” “wedding,” and “civil unions.” I argue that at least one of the terms needs to go away.

There are really two things that need to be defined. One is a religious ceremony that varies from religion to religion, denomination to denomination, and culture to culture. That ceremony is rightly called a “wedding.” it is a religious or quasi-religious ceremony. The state has no constitutional right whatsoever to either prescribe or proscribe such a religious ceremony. It cannot grant or deny the right or privilege for a couple to have such a ceremony, nor does it have the right to tell any religious institution that it must or must not allow such a ceremony. Such matters are solely in the purview of whatever religious institution the couple in question chooses to have such a ceremony in.

Conversely there is a civil, contractual matter that state grants, and must grant on an equal basis per the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. Contract law has almost always been held to mean two or more parties of sound mind and of the age of majority can enter into a mutually agreed contract with each other, and the 14th means such contracts must be equally protected under the law. There is no secular reason for denying such a contract based on sex, race, creed, color, etc. There are only religious reasons, and those are nullified by the first amendment. It doesn’t matter if that contract is called a “civil union” or a “marriage” - the contract mechanism itself is protected by the 14th. There is no constitutional method by which a church could to proscribe such a contract by the government. The civil contract is completely outside the purview of any religious institution.

Realistically, what we currently call #marriage is already an unconstitutional mixing of church and state. It is a misconstruing and mixing of the terms “wedding” and “marriage” (or civil union), and are wrongfully used interchangeably in the argument about gay marriage. They are unconstitutionally intermingled because one is expected to get a license in a government institution, have a religious institution perform a wedding ceremony, and then petition a court for dissolution.

Gays cannot petition the government to force any religious institution perform wedding ceremony. Churches cannot petition the government to deny gays the right to enter into a civil contract. The government cannot make constitutional amendments or laws defining marriage to exclude gays without repealing or revising (at the very least) the first and 14th amendments.

What gays need to do (IMHO) is to petition the government to extricate itself completely from any and all aspects of the process, other than ensuring the 1st and 14th are applied correctly with respect to contract law. Well, and perhaps clarifying the definitions used in the matter.

Does anyone else think it is really stupid to pack six reactors close enough together to prevent individual mitigation of incidents?

Does anyone else think it is stupid to have your spent fuel rod pond on a top deck of a building, way above ground?

Does anyone else think it is stupid for the bulk of a reactor facility to be above ground in the first place?

Does anyone else think it is stupid to rely on purely active emergency cooling systems for nuclear reactors and spent fuel ponds?

I’ve made it a hobby over the last 30 or so years to learn everything I could about everything nuclear. Some collect stamps, some candles. I read and study about nuclear reactors, weapons, accidents, storage, containment, and just about every other aspect of radioactivity. As a kid, my dad was an electrician at an Oklahoma Gas & Electric PWR reactor near Ada - I’m not sure if it was ever actually brought online. As a kid, my dad had pretty much the entire set of design plans for the plant electrical control systems. I poured over them like other kids pour over dinosaurs. He would bring his work home, and my sister and I were often pressed into service helping build the things, as kids relegated to cutting and stripping wire, getting the proper connectors, zip tying wire bundles, heat shrinking splices, etc. My stint in the military was almost one as a nuclear machinist mate - I decided to pick a rate at the last minute instead that had a larger amount of shore based rather than ship based time.

Suffice to say, given my hobby and recent events, I find nuclear reactor designs and plant layouts highly lacking. They are all a compromise on safety in deference to cost savings - the GE Mark I plant design in particular has been criticized from the beginning as flawed, and was estimated in 1995 to have a 90% containment failure rate in a loc/blackout event such as in Fukushima. That estimate, so far, is holding true. The primary problem, in my estimation, is in plant layout vice core design (although a few improvements in that area would be a plus too) layout - and reliance on active vs passive coolant in dire emergencies.

I have come up with a set of no-brainer design rules to mitigate even the worst case scenarios, the implementation of which will probably never be considered because the companies that make the damned plants would consider them too costly. I don’t think they are, but I digress. So here goes:

Thou shalt never colocate individual reactor plants in such a way or in such close proximity that damage at one reactor plant causes damage to or prohibits accident control at another plant.

Thy control facilities shall be physically located at a sufficient distance and with sufficient thermal and radiation shielding such that it is not rendered uninhabitable by any nuclear accident.

The emergency heat sink for thy plant shall be of sufficient volume to cool thy reactor indefinitely. Acceptable heat sinks include lakes, rivers, reservoirs, seas, and oceans.

Thy entire containment, both for the reactor and for spent fuel assemblies, shall be physically located below the lowest point of thy heat sink reservoir.

Thou shalt connect emergency cooling for thy reactor and spent fuel assemblies in such a way that gravity feeds the emergency coolant from thy heat sink passively, and sets up natural convection or flow within or through thy containment.

Thou shalt never design a nuclear power plant in such a way that emergency cooling relies on active pumping of any kind.

Thou shalt design thy reactor core in a modular manner, such that in a complete blackout and scram condition, the modular components physically separate so that a maximum volume of emergency coolant can passively reach the hottest portion of the inner core.

Thou shalt design all of thy containment layers to detect and mitigate hydrogen buildup and pressure conditions that exceed tolerable limits. Thou shalt not allow any explosive condition within any containment structure. If man can get a pressure cooker right, thou can get a relief valve or inert gas hydrogen displacement system in place.

Thou shalt keep, on site, sufficient material and earth moving equipment such that, even if the worst possible loss of coolant/core meltdown scenario were to occur, the on-site radiological material could be entombed well enough to prevent aerosol dispersal of contaminates.

Thou shalt estimate the worst possible set of geological, weather, and other natural disasters, and then engineer thy plant to withstand thrice the damage.

Whereas KrazyJoe @JoeCienkowski defies all classification as a “normal” idiot, and;

Whereas KrazyJoe demonstrates a decided lack of knowledge on almost every single subject he has ever spoken, blogged, tweeted, and/or communicated to anyone using any method, and;

Whereas there really is no classification for the obvious shitty education Joe Cienkowski has obtained from wherever he obtained it;

Given the power vested in me by having an actual working mind, I do hereby designate, bequeath, and bestow the title of “Doctor of Lackademia” to Joseph Cienkowski forthwith. 

Along with the obvious honor bestowed by that title, Doctor Cienkowski’s body of work can now be known as and described from here on with suitable #lackademic terminology called “lackademia.” Lackademic work need not be factual, backed by evidence, verifiable, or otherwise make any sense whatsoever. It can be made up on the fly from various “kinds” of things, thoughts, musings, indigestion, gas, burps, ancient bronze age ignorant ideas, or anything else that comes to the lackademic mind.

He is free to write or otherwise compile completely lackademic pamphlets, books and other materials that are free from peer review, basic grammar, reasonable attempts at spelling, adequate sources, suitable bibliographies for plagiarize material or any other normal sense of control found with actual works of academia. 

Given this day, 90 somethingoranother of the Fargin War on Atheism.

Everyone knows that if you ask your average fundamentalist Christian about self or assisted termination (AKA euthanasia, right to die, doctor assisted suicide, etc.) they will tell you it is a sin, blah blah blah.

It seems that for some reason, a person’s highly subjective and personal reasons to want to terminate their own life of their own volition - usually due to suffering such as cancer, chronic pain, or some other personal reason - ought not be their own decision (or that of their family and/or doctor) to make. It seems that THEY want to be the ones to make that decision - the result of which is invariably that they should live NO MATTER WHAT until “nature takes its course.”

Of course their reasons are plentiful - one need only remember eugenics, or that Christians belief suicide damns the immortal soul, or that doctor/family assisted suicide is MURDER, etc. Even in the recent health care debate they went nuts over the thought that a terminally ill person might actually be asked about ending it all rather than spending their family’s entire savings to prolong their suffering to the bitter end.

They also try to conflate the actions of an individual making a personal decision with the help of their friends and doctors with the actions of a government trying to unburden itself of the expense of dealing with the terminal and chronically ill.

To all of those out there who would stick their nose in this highly personal and individual decision, I tell you it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If an individual person makes an informed decision to end their own life without directly harming any other person and/or needs medical help in doing so, IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. It is not your right to take that individual RIGHT away from a person; nor is it your right to use the weight of government to do so on a massive scale. IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

Worry about your own life - let those others with their own motivations worry about theirs.

I sent the following email to the editorial department of Merriam-Webster:

Your definition of “Atheist” is “One who believes there is no deity.” However, the actual meaning is “One who lacks a belief in any deity.” It is an important distinction because Atheism isn’t a belief, it is the lack thereof.

Merriam-Webster responded with the following:

“Dear Golmer:

Thank you for your message.  A handful of other readers have also written us about this, and we’ve been making careful note of all such comments for review by our editors during the preparation of future editions.

Cordially,
Lee Goodrich, Editorial Department,
Merriam-Webster, Inc.”

Please write them as well to let your voice be heard. 

Heidi, the problem with the position of theists such as yourself and non-believers that to engage with is the vast gulf between the two paradigms in which we live.

In our estimation (and any Atheists out there who don’t agree feel free to bash me at will), belief in your God of Abraham (or any other gods for that matter) is completely irrational, and is based on a combination of human nature and tens of thousands of years of cultural reenforcement. Your god is seen as just one more in a long line of gods created by man - and created to explain away those things that humanity as a whole could not understand - i.e. ignorance of the natural phenomena in which we live. 

Man’s self-awareness and intelligence (ironically) is the source of the problem with respect to our creation of gods to explain phenomena. Humans knew (or thought we knew) that we are the smartest creatures on the planet (a planet on which isolated enclaves of humanity developed believing that their little portion of the world WAS their entire universe, and therefore believed they were the most intelligent things in that universe by example).

It was logical to early peoples and civilizations, therefore, that if we were the smartest things that there were in our domain, and we could control certain things in our domain (other lesser creatures, fire, damming water, growing crops, hunting, etc.) that it would logically follow that those things we could NOT understand must be caused by an even greater civilization or human-like force that we could not see but nonetheless treated us humans much as we treat creatures lesser than ourselves.

Logically, therefore, that force or forces (lets call them gods) could be petty, malevolent, benevolent, childish, churlish, playful, harsh, kind, friendly, etc., just as people are. They could demand fealty, loyalty, sacrifice, exclusivity, etc. The early gods were “elemental” because man was exposed to the elements primarily - they were affected by sun, earth, moon, wind, earthquakes, storms, water, fire, etc. It is no stretch of the imagination to realize that if the weather was nice and crops were plentiful and you had just sacrificed a goat or something to one of those gods, that they were pleased and gave you boon. It is also no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to realize that they believed if there was a huge storm or a drought that destroyed the crops or made the hunt bad, that they had somehow displeased their benefactors and were (as we would punish our lesser creatures and human peons) punishing them for misbehaving. 

This developed over thousands of years and was incorporated into the human psyche for thousands of years. And, just as human culture developed and stopped being as affected by elemental forces (we built better shelters, gained better control of fire, built boats to tame the oceans, learned about tides, years, moon cycles, seasons, etc.), the elemental gods eventually evolved and/or went by the wayside just as human culture (and intelligence) advanced. Elemental gods gave way to more human-like gods that could certainly control the elements, but behaved and were given the attributes OF people, even though they be petty and squabbling just like us. 

Thus was born gods such as you see in the pantheons - designed basically on the aristocracy of whatever civilization thought them up (to varying degrees) - including a leader and lesser elite gods that controlled various aspects of human life from on-high like love, the hunt, fire, the sun, jealousy, etc. They behaved like an aristocracy too - competing with each other, pitting their demigod, human, animal, fantastic imaginative creatures, etc. against each other, demanding sacrifices and meting out punishments and rewards to their subjects as they saw fit.

In essence, gods mirrored people because people created gods to mirror their growing cultures and civilizations. This played out over different cultures and in different ways (Indians had their own, as did the Norse, American Indians, Africans, etc.), but is relatively consistent because of the way people think.

This is no different than the concept that eventually became the God of Abraham. The culture that created the God of Abraham and the model of Jesus the Messiah (and the 250 or so messianic figures that preceded him in history) for it (and even the terminology used to describe the adherents thereof) directly models that culture. God is a father figure (culled most likely from the pantheon by doing away with the squabbling family and going straight to the father figure Zeus). This god still demands exclusivity, still is petty and demanding, benevolent when served correctly, etc., but is nonetheless a construct of the peoples that created him - sheep-herder-hunter-gatherers. The book that describes the religion is a reflection of the creators of the work - bronze-age relatively ignorant sheep herders. The ignorance of the natural world isn’t their fault - they simply didn’t have the will or the knowledge or the capacity to think about that which they were writing - they simply continued the tradition of ascribing human-like qualities to natural phenomena and equating all of that to Gods. 

The members aren’t supposed to really think - they are supposed to adore, to flock, to gather and belong, to swear fealty to their father figure and his shepherd. They are to be treated as subjects of this man-made construct - a construct that grew out of countless millennia of ascribing the unknown and the unknowable to an anthropomorphic being instead of just ascribing it (correctly) to as-yet untested natural phenomena. The god created by these sheep herders is truly a father figure, but if you read closely enough he is also a supreme commander of an army of angels - a militaristic structure modeled on the Roman culture also of the time - and he is a jealous, petty, loving, etc. god whom demands nothing less than total dedication and loyalty as any commander-father figure would.

Thus we come to the difference in paradigms, and why you will never, it seems, get to where we are unless you are willing to actually question yours. We have questioned ours and yours, and we find yours to be completely illogical, irrational, and unreasonable.

Our paradigm is simple. We see YOUR god as just one more aspect of a long multi-millenial line of god-evolution that came before it. We see absolutely zero more credibility or reason to believe YOUR god exists than to believe any of the other gods that mankind came up with before him exist either. We see zero reason why YOUR god isn’t the last vestiges of humanity’s inculcated and indoctrinated ignorance into a system designed to repress or negate the need for any deep thought about such issues. 

We see YOUR god and all of the others as merely artifacts of our ignorance to natural phenomena. We don’t question why hurricanes form, or why prayer doesn’t work, or why sacrifice doesn’t (and never did) work. We don’t question why earthquakes happen and attribute them to some godly benefactor being pissed at us, because we know about plate tectonics. We KNOW fire rains from the sky because really big rocks pass through our atmosphere and smack into the planet. We KNOW tsunamis happen when plates shift or when rock cleaves off into the ocean from a cliff. We KNOW that humans are descended through millions of years of evolutionary processes, and that when we die, just like every other creature on the planet, we die. We KNOW the earth isn’t the center of the universe, and, instead is merely one chunk of rock orbiting one average sun that is just one of hundreds of trillions of others. We KNOW our observable universe came from an expanding singularity that formed about 15 billion years ago.

And we KNOW that we don’t know why, but we are perfectly willing to try to find out. What we are NOT willing to do, is continue thousands of generations of willful ignorance in attributing those unknown (as of yet) natural phenomena to the actions of humanity personified onto the unknown.

Your god shrinks every single time something unknown becomes known, just as every other god has shrunken and become discarded as humanity’s knowledge has grown. Your god will eventually be discarded just as all others have. It is the next logical leap of humanity - to let go - and see that what we are is what we are and what we have is all we have.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Heidi,

I have to say your experience is very typical, and not entirely out of context with what I said about indoctrination and inculcation. I in no way want to belittle your experience or say you didn’t have it, because you most assuredly did have it. I have seen the same thing with my sister, with her children, and with several people in my life.

Suffice to say that that process you went through (I still don’t know what age you were when you started going to church, but I can only assume that it was quite a bit younger than 10) didn’t really work with me at a young age, later in life when asked as a guest to my sister’s church, or even later in life as an event that I will tie in in a little bit.

When I was very young (2, 3, 4, etc.) I attended a Methodist church with my parents. I got the standard church experience (as much as any methodist can), but I was always one to ask why?, and I also never really felt susceptible to the methods used in church to make the crowd groupthink like it is desired by the people who indoctrinate people into such systems as a profession. When everyone else in the church was concentrating on every word the pastor said (by design) and tuning everything else out, I at a very young age thought the whole exercise was boring and frankly a big waste of time. And I kept asking that question why? and even at that young age was not satisfied with “because God did it.” I found the stories implausible (the Ark, the Flood, Genesis, etc.) - there were too many holes, etc.

So anyway, jump forward to 1987 or so, when I had gone off to the military. During the time I was at my first military duty station, a hypnotist came to the base club as part of a show for the troops. He asked for volunteers from the audience to be hypnotized and of course I volunteered as did about 150 others. The hypnotist started using his technique on the group of people who volunteered, which largely consisted of speaking monotone mixed with passion, throwing in emotion, and really skillfully getting the volunteers in a calm mode where they only concentrated on his voice. He performed exercises with the volunteers to get them thinking, talking, responding, and exercising in unison. He continued that and some other techniques to get everybody on the same wavelength, and then started weeding those out that the method wasn’t really working on. (I happened to be one of those.) I was toward the back of the group, so I could readily see what was happening with the group as a whole. That peaked my interest on how a hypnotist actually does what he does.

So anyway, shortly after that I went home to visit my sister. Between 1985 and that time I visited her in 1987, she had become “born again” thanks to her husband (at the time)’s desire for her to attend church with him. And she was REALLY into it too! I went home on leave to visit them, and everything I could see had a blue dot on it. The mirrors, the door knobs, doors, windows, refrigerator handle, sink knobs, etc. I asked what that was about, and the answer was that every time you saw a blue dot, you were supposed to think of Jesus!!! My point is, she had just been “saved” and indoctrinated in to to the particular church her husband attended, so she was rather zealous about the whole affair and felt she needed to share the good word with me. So I was invited to attend church with them (since they were going to dinner afterward and didn’t want to have to come back and pick me up).

So I went. And do you know what? The experience there was almost exactly what I had seen at the show with the hypnotist. The same techniques were used to get people into the mood (or into the “spirit” as it were), concentrate on the speaker, and become a mind of one. As this didn’t really work on me as a young child or as an adult, it certainly didn’t work on me then. The main difference between the two experiences was that the ones that it didn’t work on at the hypnotist’s session were weeded out and told to sit down and watch the show - the ones it didn’t work on at the church were singled out (thank you not) for a lot of added peer pressure - we were brought to the front and prayed over, sung to, (sung with), praised, touched, and otherwise coerced to go along with the existing groupthink. I saw it work with several of the other people who were brought up with me.

Since that time, I have looked into the factors and methods used during what I witnessed in that church, and also looked into by what mechanisms people could indoctrinated into such systems. I looked at how cult indoctrination works, how Stockholm’s syndrome works. I looked at why people JOIN cults - I looked at whom cults target for indoctrination and why. Certainly those were factors - if you look at statistics the most easily indoctrinated are those very young, those that have reached a low point in their life, those rejected by society, and those with deep seated emotional, alchoholic, behavioral, or drug abuse issues. And what I found was the methods and techniques used to indoctrinate susceptible people into any cult was exactly the same as those used to indoctrinate people into not just any church but into any religion there is.

But ultimately different areas of research and experience tied it all together for me.

- Pain. My father had polio when he was a child. He was one of the kids that had his feet and hands and arms and legs literally strapped to boards and was bent the opposite way that his muscles tried to contract from the disease. He suffered unending and constant pain for weeks, and to this day he still gets out of bed and has to walk off his leg muscles contracting in painful directions. He told me that over time, he basically learned to control his own pain by putting his mind in a special place, and then he could will the pain away. I learned much later in life that that is a form of biofeedback, whereby a person learns to reach a mental state that allows them to “self dope” by releasing brain substances called endorphins, which are your own body’s natural opiates for pain control - essentially the same as heroin.

-Thrill Seeking and Runner’s High. Of course people can self-dope endorphins using other methods- by pushing their body to produce endorphins to counteract pain by causing themselves pain (or having someone cause it for them) and also by “thrill seeking” - putting one’s self in situations that cause release of endorphins.

-Drug use. Of course if you are of an “addictive personality” you may just opt to short-circuit relatively weak biofeedback mechanisms and resort to doping yourself chemically using other sources.

What do these things have to do with religion you might ask? Plenty. It turns out, by scanning the brains of people during these activities, brain chemistry, temperature, blood and oxygen saturation (and usage), and other measures, scientists can figure out what parts of the brain are stimulated by various things. They can watch the cascading releases of various chemicals (including endorphins) that occur related to those activities, and the effect those chemicals have on the brain and the physiology of the affected person.

And guess what? The same is true for religious and other brain doping activities. The same parts of the brain are stimulated (i.e. making oneself high) irrespective of which of the above activities are performed. People basically learn a biofeedback technique that allows them to “self-dope” just by thinking about a particular subject. Whether that subject be Jesus, Abortion, Trees, Animal Rights, bondage, various fetishes and sexual disorders, etc. - the same mechanisms of doping are in effect and the same areas of the brain are affected.

Not only that, but recent studies have shown that certain parts of the brain can be electromagnetically stimulated to induce exactly the feeling you say you had - presence of a being and oneness with the universe, etc., and they have also shown that when those regions of the brain are damaged through trauma or disease, that a person’s religiosity can change or be eliminated completely, suggesting that the whole affair is nothing more than a matter of brain chemistry.

It is entirely possible (and even probable) that the “religious experience” you had as a young child was really nothing more than the exact moment you learned the biofeedback technique that was taught to you by indoctrinating you into a system meant to do just that. And it is also entirely possible that you have continued to use that same method on yourself since then.

Take from it what you will - I make no assertion that my supposition HAS to be correct - I only ask that you think critically about what it is and why it is that you believe. I think if you do think critically about it and try to break out of the paradigm, you just might start asking why? as you may have done as a very young child before you were inculcated, and by exercising that muscle again you may just no longer be satisfied with the answer of “because God did it.”

I invite you to do your own research into biofeedback, pain, pleasure centers and mechanisms, cults, brain damage research, etc.

Okay. So I decided to do a decidedly crude experiment of my #oilWell killing idea. I used a piece of 1/2” tubing for my “Riser Tube,” an appropriate sized brass bristled rifle cleaning brush from my cleaning kit (bristles slightly longer than the diameter of the riser tube, and a large syringe from my farm animal’s medical supplies to supply oil pressure. (The oil was actually used motor oil from my truck’s last oil change.) 

For “Kill shot” material, I didn’t have any drill mud or concrete or even corn starch, but I did have some “masa flower” which is really gooey when even slightly dampened. 

I inverted everything to make it more manageable and less messy.

As predicted, the brush was easy to insert into the end of the tube, but impossible to pull backwards. Also as predicted, oil injected into the affair went by the bristles of the brush practically unhindered. (I actually tried to do everything and film it with my iPhone with the other hand, but the results were less than exciting or viewable.) 

I first tried my “junk shot by just adding the masa flour to the stream of oil, similar to adding “drill mud” to the flow of oil on the real well. It turns out that Masa flour doesn’t “clot” when exposed to oil at all..as a matter of fact it encapsulated the flour particles and let them flow around the helically spaced bristles along with the oil.

So I reset everything and cheated (a little) by injecting a few drops of water into the stream along with the flour (i.e. my “drill mud”) to make it “clot.” The flour (drill mud) immediately started adhering to the bristles of the brush inserted into the “riser tube” and the flow of oil stopped a few seconds later. I couldn’t even get it to flow by supplying considerable pressure behind it with the syringe. 

Of course this was a VERY crude experiment, but the idea itself is sound. It is assumed that a real “junk shot” in a real-world scenario would be made up of stuff BP said it would - golf balls, shredded rubber chunks, etc., which would readily lend itself to clogging the bristles of the “brush.”

What is needed at this point is someone actually in the Oil Industry to get one of their high-paid mechanical engineers to do the math on the whole thing. We know the size of the riser tube (22”) so we need to know the diameter of the drill pipe itself. We also need to know the pressure of the material coming out of the well, and the increase in flow rate that would be caused by inserting the drill pipe itself into the riser tube - i.e. how much faster the flow and increase in pressure from the insertion of the pipe. 

Then some serious engineering needs to occur on how many bristles, what the pattern should be (Note: the rifle cleaning brush bristles were helically arranged - experimentation shows this is probably not ideal - it worked like an inclined plane on observation. An arrangement more like a chimney sweep’s brush might be better.) what the diameter of the bristles should be, how much longer they should be than the total diameter of the riser pipe, and THEN how much the pressure increase would be as a result of that. You’d also have to know how much weight would be on the section(s) above the “brush” section to overcome said pressure sufficiently to seat the brush section. 

Everything else is gravy.

Dan, you can believe this or not, but I truly do think that the constitution is worth protecting, and laws are worth following. If a law is wrong so be it - it is the right and duty of every single citizen to challenge laws they believe are unconstituitonal at every turn.

I defend constitutional principles, because the alternative (lawlessness) is much worse. I defend gun rights because of the second amendment. I defend the right of people to have gay marriages because to deny that is unconstitutional. I defend the right of women to choose what to do with their bodies with respect to abortion. I defend people’s right to terminate their life should they choose. And I also defend the constitution with respect to illegal immigration.

I believe each citizen has the right to do what they want (within the law) as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. I also believe, whole-heartedly, that each person must be culpable for their own actions. That entails, at a minimum, taking responsibility and accepting the consequences of breaking the law. 

You say I don’t care about illegal immigrants, but that is a lie, pure and simple. I just look at the entire situation from a different and historical perspective. I see the entire situation whereby 12+million illegal immigrants live in this country illegally and outside the purview of law AND without the benefits and protections of US Citizenship as a travesty on the highest order. They are exploited and (contrary to popular belief) underpaid, unable to get benefits, insurance, and many of the other things that make the American Dream the American Dream. It is a failure of government and a failure of AMERICANS that not only allow it to happen but benefit from it on the highest order. Illegal immigrants make up the bulk of the American human trafficking and modern slave trade. They get screwed at every turn - but the blame isn’t completely on the government - it works two-ways. Illegal immigrants themselves know what they are doing when they come here off the radar. They know at any time they can be questioned, rounded up. and deported. It is a risk they take.

I’m all for immigration reform - real immigration reform - that fixes the problem and makes reasonable accommodation to HELP illegals become citizens and to FIX the problem that prevents a real system of LEGAL immigration. But again, I ask you, what is YOUR solution? You have yet to answer and yet to offer one.