TED Community » Steven Rappolee
About Me
A first journey through the clouds, a formative memory
One of my earliest memories is that of my very first trip in an aircraft. I was about 5 years of age or so, and the scene from the planes window was a vivid one. The plane took off from my home town of San Diego with a flash of runway and a roar of noise from the engines. Just at liftoff I could feel the weight against me as the nose of the plane lifted up from the runway and after words for some minutes as we climbed over ocean beach California. The plane must have taken off to the west into the wind because I remember seeing to the north the homes and the shoreline of the Ocean and Pacific beach communities, and just a bit north of that, my home in La Jolla. Below and to the north, surf and breakers did their battle of with the ages and the elements trying to where down that shoreline. Had I been at the beach that day, or any other day I could have smelled the sulpher salty smell of the foamy surf. Out in front was the vast blue of the pacific and just then the plane went through the cloud deck that often lingers just off the beach in Southern California? What a shock! The aircraft was in a fog that whipped past the planes wings and the window and just as suddenly I could see the first cloud tops as my plane broke through the top of the clouds. The billowy white cloud tops where entrancing as it reached towards the blue above. The aircraft was in a valley of clouds as it flew through the sky and then again suddenly through fog and out into the blue valleys between the cloud mountains again. After a time the aircraft was above the valleys and mountains of clouds and I could see in between the billows of cloud tops below to the ocean beneath. I do not recollect much else of this trip, I am told we landed in Rome Italy several oceans later and I do remember old buildings and a farm with a colony of bees. The farm in Italy was a pea farm, and I remember the smell of crushed green peas and plants in the combine of the tractor, and an acrid sharp twang of odor coming from a sea of white beehives. This farm was in sharp contrast to our visit to Milan Italy, a gritty industrial city, whose downtown smelt like and looked like sooty diesel exhaust. In 1963 Italy was awash in old Mediterranean culture buildings and ruins covered with black grey soot. In fact the memory still persists of “old town” in San Diego, it is here in old town that the old Spanish colonial buildings house museums. Old buildings together with sea and cliffs I think contribute to who I am, someone who visualizes the trip through both time and space that all things make.
I know now that my parents at the time of my first trip worked at a soon to be opened University of California at San Diego in 1964. The University of California at San Diego can be seen just before entering the fog above the sea as aircraft take off just south of La Jolla.
I remember this trip often and recently I have come to believe that this memory has had a great influence on my interests and my journey through life and time. Just after high school I joined the Air force reserve and worked on aircraft engines just to learn how they work and to satisfy that love of all things aviation and spaceflight. I have over the decades devoured every text or PBS program on the great cycles of hydrology and geochemistry that tells the history of our planet. This life cycle of our planet can be best seen where the sea meets the cliffs of La Jolla. I am sure my fascination with the history of life comes from my first moments in the clouds since clouds feed all life. In the last decade I have from time to time worked on national oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) fishery research ships out at sea. The life cycle and evolution of the seas excites my soul as much as knowing where the atmosphere comes from. I can sit in a tavern on the beach in San Diego or in Port Huron and imagine where every molecule of wind, surf and cloud has been in the last 4 billion years. Even the gasoline and natural gas that runs our cars and heats our homes has slept for just a few hundred million years in the rocks below since those molecules last saw the sunlight. Strange thoughts for an afternoon spent looking out the windows at the Zebra lounge out on the river and clouds of Port Huron? No these thoughts are not strange at all, these thoughts power my homework.
My favorite rock ballads sing of “stardust” and “dust in the wind” so its no surprise to me that I find my self taking courses here at ST Clair Community College in biology and geology. These courses will lead to a health care profession or the sciences, but I am sure I will
follow the lead of my soul that will remember that first flight through the biosphere. Those thoughts from that first flight will lead me to a position back out at sea on a research ship or perhaps Antarctica even if only as a health care worker.
- Location:
- United States, Fort Gratiot, MI
- Gender:
- Male
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A comment on Conversation: Evolution only applies to the bodies of humans, not their souls. Natural selection only explains the adaptation of species.
Evolution over great periods of time does meld both.
if you seek both or one of them, ask as i do , what can i do in my life while I exist to make a contribution generations unborn when i know longer exist?
EDIT
make a contribution to culture, do not make a fool or doubt science as you do.
A comment on Conversation: Roughly 52% of the world's population is under 30. What is best way to harness the energy and ideas of youth?
A reply on Conversation: carbon taxes placed every year in an invested sovereign wealth fund for children born that year and every year after.
$ 40 million every year at 10% growth minus 7% inflation for 60 years yields just short of $40 Billion! An amazing result. This would represent 60 years times 10,000 births or 600,000 Alaskans. At age 60 each Alaskan born child would have $263,510.13. We can do better!
As long as the child stays a resident we should place into this trust 30 percent of the dividend each year, let’s say $400. $4,000 at birth plus a $400 annual addition at 7% for 60 years yields $636,401.46.If we let the citizen have 5% every year at 60 this is “only” $32,000.However this amount meets my goal of at a future date certain, the need for government social welfare transfer payments to the elderly would end, this would most like happen 80 years after the year of enactment when most Alaskans between 60 an 80 years of age would be beneficiaries .
A comment on Conversation: What is wrong with the 1%?
but this does not create innovation in the poor or educate them to take these high tech jobs................
A comment on Conversation: What is wrong with the 1%?
carbon tax developed the world economy :)
A comment on Conversation: What is wrong with the 1%?
my idea is that a carbon tax would grow future new born childrens sovereign wealth fund
A comment on Conversation: Should public schools in the United States eliminate the traditional A to F grading scale? And if so, what assessment do we replace it with?
I would like to investigate the UK open university concept
is this any different from UCSC?
A reply on Conversation: carbon taxes placed every year in an invested sovereign wealth fund for children born that year and every year after.
i see you have no profile here, are you a troll?
every citizen should spend there off time thinking about how to improve our planet, off from work or as in a student statues.
we call it volunteerism
you want to increase birth rates planet wide? and with out concern for their welfare or happiness?
my carbon tax fueled sovereign wealth fund creates wealth for future american new born children, but it creates jobs for people the world over.
have you heard of the many micro loan programs that help poor people the world over start small business such as a fruit stand in a local farmers market, many of these programs are coops but they turn a small profit, worthy of an investment from a larger player.
A reply on Conversation: carbon taxes placed every year in an invested sovereign wealth fund for children born that year and every year after.
I am no economist but in a honors class last year I explored Adam Smith and Karl Marx, capital is "rented money" or Marx would disagree and stated its exploited money that bares little resemblance to labor.
so I leave my money with the stock market or bank, I am hoping it grows.I am sure its used to expand the means of production or factory or jobs increases.
so Tim, time and money grows production right?
workers have jobs do to private and in some cases government spending but the money invested in expanding production or services is responsible for the ability to consume services and goods
the key here is time and capital( or money) is this right?
So the carbon tax center advocates a tax to solve an important social problem CO 2 emissions, we want less consumption here of a product that is produced, conservatives would yell this would slow economic growth, consumption so the carbon center advocates tax trade offs IE we will reduce the payroll tax by the same amount as the carbon tax.
market forces course conservation the carbon tax rebate returns that spending power to the tax payer
Tim Colgan this plan might be, "what gets consumed must be produced" but with no growth or loss?
or
coal miner is laid off, high tech green worker is hired
or the club of Rome was right but also wrong
I agree with the carbon tax center some of the carbon tax should offset the costs of energy to the poor, but who are the poor?
new born children and the elderly! my plan does the help them today or tomorrow but 60 years from now it will.
and much of the magic is through compounded growth of capital invested during those 60 years.
$200 Trillion !
"what gets consumed must be produced"
well Google "earths GDP" you will get 68 Trillion,grow that by 3% for 60 years and that amount is only 10 % more then the SSI sovereign wealth fund This I think is wrong, I believe that over 60 years this money rented over time would increase the world GDP growth rate above the 3%
A reply on Conversation: carbon taxes placed every year in an invested sovereign wealth fund for children born that year and every year after.
unpaid
most folks I know would like to improve the standard of living of the global population, this would have the intended consequence of bringing down population growth rates,
what! you hate taxes? I want to invest the money in new born children every year for the long term, Seth do you hate children?
and taxing polluters brings me great joy and good tidings :)
Mandate?
you are right there! my country's tea parties and republicans only are interested in the here and now and would sooner let the ocean waves cover Florida and New Orleans before acting, Still my idea of an invested SSI fund is something some fiscal conservatives like so my idea might very well be bipartisan.