'Dark Signals' Wins Award at Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference

By Si Dunn

My latest book project, Dark Signals: A Navy Radio Operator in the Tonkin Gulf, 1964-65, won the 1st runner-up award in the manuscript competition at the 2008 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference, July 19.

There is ongoing publisher interest, but no deals have been signed yet.

While I continue researching and completing this book, I would like to hear from former enlisted sailors and officers who were in the Seventh Fleet in the Tonkin Gulf and South China Sea at some time between July, 1964, and May, 1965. I especially would like to hear from former shipboard and shore station radio operators. I am still gathering material and conducting interviews for final drafts of the book.

For more information, please contact Si Dunn, sidunn@hotmail.com.

#

Drive OPEC nuts! Drive Big Oil nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez nuts!

By Si Dunn

According to a recent Christian Science Monitor opinion column, the "patriotic answer" to $4-a-gallon gas is: "Drive less, and slow down."

That simple strategy worked during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and speed limits were lowered. And it worked during the panic-driven 1979 energy crisis, when gasoline again had to be rationed and speed limits had to be lowered to bring demand back into balance with supply.

It isn't rocket science to suggest that making heavier use of the Internet, email and telephones also can help conserve gasoline. More people working from home at least one day a week will lower gasoline consumption and also ease gasoline-wasting traffic jams. Furthermore, having a workforce able to continue business away from the office is a good survival strategy for companies suddenly hit by a disaster, such as an earthquake or fire. Californians have demonstrated the success of this strategy over and over in recent few decades.

The next President of the United States (and it would have to be Obama, not McCain) will need to give Americans a patriotic challenge: Slow down, drive less, and use every technical and common-sense means at your disposal to help push down our nation's thirst for oil. Our nation needs your help.

Congress may have to have the courage to impose some restrictions on highway speeds or higher taxes on gasoline sales (and use the money to fund mass-transit improvements).

American automakers may have to move economical vehicle designs off their back shelves and into showrooms at breakneck speed.

Motorcycles, motorscooters and bicycles may become even more trendy and numerous on the roads.

Perhaps civilian Hummers and oversized SUVs can be donated to the military in return for a tax break and refurbished for combat or for duty as live-fire training targets for pilots, drone operators and artillery crews. We aren't likely to see many solar-powered Hummers festooned with peace symbols and flower-power slogans buzzing down the road.

Speculators and oil executives aside, gasoline prices mainly are a matter of supply and demand. The less we demand, the more supply will remain in the pipeline. And prices will drop.

It should become both patriotic and socially trendy to use mass transit and to shop closer to home and to work closer to home or at home. We also should recall how to walk or ride a bicycle or hitch a ride from friendly neighbors when making short trips.

Neighbors may need to step away from their big-screen TVs long enough to get to know each other and work out schedules for carpooling to shopping centers or grocery stores.

More goods can be ordered online, even from local companies, and carried to you via the U.S. Postal Service, which already is delivering in your neighborhood. Local businesses may have to hire more bicycle delivery riders. You may have to walk a half mile to your next haircut and actually get some beneficial exercise.

The basic goal should be to "Drive OPEC Nuts! Drive Big Oil Nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez Nuts!" by driving less and spending less on gasoline. And this new lifestyle should become a permanent fixture in American culture, even as gasoline supplies once again rise and new energy alternatives such as wind power, solar power and hydrogen power increasingly come on line.

Drive OPEC nuts. Drive Big Oil nuts. Drive Hugo Chavez nuts. We know exactly how to do this, if we will just have the courage of our conniptions. We are rebels and innovators at heart. Instead of Don't Tread on Me, we can fly flags that proclaim Gasoline??? We don't need no stinkin' gasoline! and Let them eat oil!

If we do this, we won't be driving tanks, Hummers, mine-resistant behemoths, and thousands of our young men and young women into any more trillion-dollar battles for sand and Middle Eastern oil.

#

McCain Advisor Dr. Phil (Gramm) Declares We're All Mental Cases

By Si Dunn

We're all a bunch of whiners, and the recession is all in our minds, one of John McCain's economic advisors, Dr. Phil Gramm, recently told The Washington Times.

"Whew! I feel better already!" a recently laid-off airline baggage handler declared after learning of the upbeat economic diagnosis by "that other Dr. Phil."

"For a moment, I thought was severely depressed about losing my job and not having any money or benefits. It's great news to know that I am just imagining all of this and whining without appreciating how well off I really am! Things could be much worse. I could still be commuting 40 miles each way to that job I used to have and still paying record prices for gasoline. I should count my blessings," the ex-baggage handler declared.

He was interviewed while standing in a block-long line outside the local office of his state unemployment agency. When others in line overheard Dr. Gramm's diagnosis, loud choruses of "Hallelujah!" erupted, and many people left the line and headed home with big smiles on their faces.

"John McCain and his brilliant advisors will save us all from the economic sins of poverty!" one woman shouted as she tore up her unemployment application form. "It's all in our heads, people! All in our heads!"

#

John McCain to Fight Global Warming by Cutting Earth's Atmosphere

By Si Dunn

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Building on his promise to preserve and extend George W. Bush's tax cuts for wealthy Americans, Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced today that he will fight global warming by removing 50 percent of the nitrogen from Earth's atmosphere by 2012.

"It's mostly an inert gas, folks. It just floats there, takes up space, and does nothing to contribute to economic growth," McCain declared at an impromptu press conference near the Lone Sailor statue at Washington's Navy Memorial. "So we're gonna suck it straight out of the sky and start creating more room for carbon and other aerial byproducts of a robust, growing economy."

To avoid a nitrogen glut, McCain also announced a plan to encourage automakers to voluntarily retrofit existing SUVs and other gas-guzzling vehicles to run on nitrogen by 2058. "Yeah, the cars will be pretty old by then," McCain conceded. "But if they are kept up on blocks in a decent garage, they can provide affordable transportation and housing for the poor--housing that the federal government won't have to subsidize--fifty years from now. What low-income family wouldn't want the chance to live in a classic Ford Expedition or Chevy Suburban or Lincoln Navigator and also drive it around burning almost-free nitrogen?"

A spokesman for the Obama campaign had no immediate comment. But a well-placed Obama consultant hinted that the Democratic contender may now be working on a plan to reduce hot-air emissions inside the Beltway. "He'll say that we deserve a cooler government. And the best way to get it is to reduce Republicans in the House and Senate by 60 percent, or more, by 2012."

#