The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Member Menu

Central Asia Exploration

Spain Reconquista

Bhutan: Land of Thunder Dragon

Reconquista Exploration

Wheeler Expeditions

Member Discussions

Article Archives

Archives

L i k e U s ! ! !

YOUR LONG-TERM GOALS HAVE TO MATTER TO YOU

Where do we find the energy to achieve big, long-term goals?

How can we persevere over time and through adversity to create something that requires a commitment of several years?

Simple. It has to matter to you.

Not just a little bit. It has to matter enough that you’ll see it through.

When someone calls me for coaching, once we’ve established the goals that they want to accomplish, one of the first questions I ask is “Why is it important for you to reach these goals?”

If the reason is something like, “My parents want me to…” or “My boss wants me to…” or “I’m supposed to…” I know we have some work to do before we get to the nuts and bolts.

Somebody else wanting us to do something is rarely a strong enough motivation to make changes in our lives. And reaching big goals usually requires making big changes.

Changing behavior, learning new skills, overcoming personal limitations – all take consciousness, time and willpower.

Read more...

BRAND THE REAL ENEMY: DEMOCRATS

I have written about this issue before, but with the midterms approaching, I thought it bears repeating. It’s so very, very important.

STOP saying liberal.

STOP saying woke.

STOP saying progressive, Socialist, or Marxist.

Those words don’t appear on any ballot.

Not anywhere, unless you live in Vermont and Bernie Sanders is running.

The word that appears on election ballots is DEMOCRAT.

We need to be perfectly clear. Those who are causing most all of America’s serious problems are DEMOCRATS.

The vast majority of our political crises and problems are caused by people who either identify as Democrats or vote Democrat.

Once something is branded — whether positive or negative — it sticks. Like Super Glue, that label is hard to shake. Whenever you speak, write, or post, identify our political opponents as DEMOCRATS.

That’s why we must BRAND the Democrat Party as anti-God, anti-America, violent, and the party of Big Government, elite socialists and Marxists: because they are. If we do not define them, they will define themselves, deceitfully.

Read more...

THE HYPOGEUM OF MALTA

hypogeumThe extraordinary rock-cut necropolis known as the Hypogeum (hi-po-gee-um) is the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. For over a thousand years (3500-2500 BC), the temple and burial complex (eventually housing 7,000 skeletons) was carved out and down – dozens of chambers, with rock-cut replicas of above-ground temples including simulated corbelled roofs. (A corbelled roof uses stone slabs that progressively overlap each other until the room is roofed over.)

The Megalthic Maltese learned to cut from the limestone bedrock with tools of stone and antler horn for they had no metal. These folks figured out all by themselves how to build extraordinary temples to their gods and goddesses close to six thousand years ago. Nobody taught them. They were the first. Only one reason Malta is one of our planet’s most fascinating places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #109 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Read more...

THE WORLD’S OLDEST WAR

Marcus Aurelius – Hapsburg Palace, Vienna

[This Monday’s Archive was first in TTP on September 23, 2016. Obama’s execrable 8 years were finally coming to an end, and the Dems losing their minds over the possibility of Trump. Ten years later, again finally, both Europe and America are done with the world’s oldest war, with scores of mosques in Texas and an Islamofascist from Uganda running New York, with mass patriot protests all over Europe, now, against the Moslem invasion of their countries and the governments that allowed it.  This time, at last, it’s time to finish the job.]

 TTP, September 23, 2016

Vienna, Austria.  This is a particularly apt place to discuss the world’s oldest war.  It’s been continuously running for almost 14 centuries, and it’s getting worse today.

First, however, let us note that Vienna has more history, beauty, charm, class, and friendly people than just about any city in Europe.  It leaves Paris in the dust.

Just one example.  Vienna was founded by the Romans as Vindobona in 15 BC on the south bank of the Danube.  On March 17, 180 AD, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was in his ornate tent in the center of the Vindobona fortress, having just won a victory over marauding Germanic tribes.

For many centuries, the street in Vienna along the traditional location of that tent has been called Schwertgasse – Sword Street.  That’s because on that day in 180, the Emperor’s son, Commodus, murdered his father with a sword thrust.  In the movie, Gladiator, Commodus smothers him – but nonetheless, the movie depicts real history.

Aurelius to this day is revered by Austrians.  That’s why there’s a huge statue of him in the courtyard of the Hapsburg Palace or Hofburg in the center of Vienna.

For the next thousand years, the people south of the Danube adopted and lived by Christianity, oblivious to the war that had emerged in the Middle East, Asia Minor, North Africa, and Spain between their fellow Christians and people calling themselves Moslems.

Read more...

THE NATURAL INFINITY POOL OF SOCOTRA

pool-of-socotraNational Geographic calls the remote island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean “the most alien-looking place on our planet,” because of its incredibly weird and bizarre plant life like the Dragon’s Blood Tree.

Yet it is safely far away from anarchic Yemen, peaceful and serene in its isolation. And it contains places of mesmerizing beauty – like this natural infinity pool on a cliff edge high above the ocean in full view. Socotra is spectacularly exotic, like nowhere else in our world. It is truly life-memorable to experience it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #129 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Read more...

HALF-FULL REPORT 06/12/26

“Boys in white dresses with blue satin sashes. Girls dosed with hormones ‘til they grow mustaches. Changing the gender of all your offspring. These are a few of my favorite things.”
You get to choose what’s funnier.  The 15-second AI spoof of Texas Hype-Woke Dem James “Six-Gender Jimmy” Talafreako that’s gone total viral, or the hysterical woke outrage denouncing it: Wild Deepfake Ad: Outrage As Pro-Trump Group Runs Wild 'Deepfake' Ad Of Democrat After Transgender Admission.  I can’t make up my mind which – both are so Schadenfreudelicious.

The spoof is the latest brainchild of Elon Musk-sponsored Citizens for Sanity.  Check out their mission statement to realize how they are Rational Conservatives like us at TTP:

Citizens for Sanity’s mission is to return common sense to America, to highlight the importance of logic and reason, and to defeat "wokeism" and anti-critical thinking ideologies that have permeated every sector of our country and threaten the very freedoms that are foundational to the American Dream.  
Right about now, though, Citizens for Sanity might consider focusing their ironic ire on the traitorous RINOs in the Senate.

Here we go – you’ll really love this HFR!

Read more...

MONGOLS FROM BYZANTIUM

Image by Grok

[This Monday's Archive was originally in TTP on June 9, 2007, 19 years ago to (almost) the day.It closes in hopes that by reading it, George Bush’s successor would understand the reality of Putin’s Russia.  Obviously Obama never did.  Today, we must hope that Donald Trump does.]

TTP, June 9, 2007

Here's one key in unlocking the mystery of Putin and Russia continuing to pick fights with the West instead of accepting the invitation to join it in a post Cold War world.

Pope John Paul II traveled to dozens of countries around the world, yet never Russia.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Vatican made numerous attempts to persuade the revived Russian Orthodox Church to invite him.  The attempts were always rebuffed.

Yes, you have a gangster-KGB elite running the country and the economy.  Yeltsin's biggest mistake was not breaking the KGB's power when he had the chance in the early/mid 90s.  So it took over with a KGB colonel (Putin) in charge.

That's how we have the richest mafiacracy in history, with Putin The World's Richest and Most Dangerous Gangster having amassed a personal fortune in excess of $20 billion.

Yet the KGB-ification of the Russian government doesn't fully explain the more fundamental cultural disparity between Russia and the West.  That lies in the Russians being Mongols from Byzantium.

Read more...

HADZA – THE LAST OF THE FIRST

hadza-tribesmenHumanity – Homo sapiens – began evolving from our Homo ergaster hominid ancestors in East Africa around a quarter-million years ago.  In all that time since, only one group of us is directly descended from those first of us, still living in East Africa, practicing the original nomadic hunter-gather lifestyle of countless millennia, their DNA unrelated to any other people on earth, their language unrelated to any other.

They are the Hadza.  It is with good reason anthropologists call them “the last of the first” – for there are less than a thousand of them left as cattle-herding and farming tribes continually encroach on the hunting grounds they need to survive.

The Hadza men hunt with bow and arrows, the Hadza women gather roots, tubers, fruits and berries.  They have no villages. Living together in bands of 20-30, they encamp in small shelters of boughs and leaves wherever the men have killed an animal like an eland (their favorite), warthog or some baboons, make a fire (the ancient hand-twisted stick method) and feast on it until it’s time to move and hunt again.

 

They wear animal skins, supplemented with clothes they trade for with nearby tribes like the Datoga.  They love to sing and dance around the campfire.  They smile easily and laugh freely.  The only metal I saw them have was Datoga-made arrowheads and knives traded for, and a couple of pots for cooking.  It’s hard to imagine a more utterly basic and simple existence.  Yet they live a far happier, purposeful, and satisfied life than a great, great many of our species elsewhere.

The Hadza live around Lake Eyasi on the floor of the Great Rift Valley at the base of the Serengeti Plateau in Tanzania.  It’s in the deep South Serengeti where our Wheeler-Windsor Safaris are during the late Birthing Season of February-March before the Great Migration begins.  You witness the most extraordinary wildlife spectacle on earth.  Can you imagine seeing 200-300,000 wildebeest stretching across the Serengeti as far as the eye can see?

cheetah-pool-reflectionNo picture does that justice, so you focus on the individual, like this mommy cheetah watching her cub’s reflection in a small pool.

 

Here is where humankind began amidst this primordial scene.  And the Hadza have been here since that very beginning.  It is such a privilege and honor to be with and learn from them.  It is having life-memorable experiences like this that we aspire to give those who go on safari with us.   (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #288, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Read more...

THE STANDARD OIL OF NUCLEAR

Rockefeller built the world's greatest fortune not by drilling for oil but by turning crude into fuel. Standard Nuclear means to do likewise, with a fuel so advanced it can't even release radiation.

A single uranium pellet the size of a gummy bear contains as much energy as 140 barrels of oil. It’s the cleanest, safest energy source known to man.

No one who knows what they’re talking about disputes this.

So why don’t we have nuclear-powered everything?

In short: We buried a miracle in paperwork. Since the 1970s, building a new reactor has effectively been illegal in America. It required $30 billion and 15+ years in regulatory hell.

I bring good news. In my many travels, I’ve met the world’s best nuclear entrepreneurs (yes, that’s actually a real thing now). I’ve now known many of these guys for a while and have become friends with them. This was the first time they’ve ever said the following to me (and they all agreed):

“Regulation is finally becoming a solved problem.”

One founder said his microreactor (a small nuclear reactor, or “SMR”) could be up and running next year.

So let’s talk about the “problems” remaining with nuclear. What do we do with the waste? And how do we get fuel? We’ll meet the entrepreneurs coming to the rescue on both.

Read more...

NEWSOM BROKE HIS PROMISE ABOUT FIRE MANAGEMENT

Last year, in the aftermath of Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to speed up “critical” wildfire-prevention projects.

Newsom issued an emergency proclamation to “cut bureaucratic red tape” and “fast-track critical projects,” including brush clearance, forest thinning, prescribed burning, and other forms of fuels reduction.

“These are the forest management projects we need to protect our communities most vulnerable to wildfire,” Newsom said last spring. “[W]e’re going to get them done.”

We filed a public records request to discover whether Newsom is keeping his word. As of last month, the Newsom administration had fast-tracked fuels-reduction work on roughly 87,000 acres of land. But internal records we obtained from state fire authorities indicate that state-approved organizations had completed projects totaling about 781 acres—less than 1 percent.

These numbers are disastrous. The governor’s office insisted that these projects, which are part of the state’s larger wildfire-prevention efforts, were “critical” and would help “protect communities from catastrophic wildfire.” The documents we obtained, which concern the fast-tracked projects, reveal that the Newsom administration has failed to protect the state.

What has put so much of California at risk to burn? In part, the state’s environmental rules.

Read more...

JUNGLE JUSTICE: THE TRIBAL DISMANTLING OF WESTERN LAW

In 1991, I had the unique opportunity to host three foreign exchange students from the United Arab Emirates at my home in South Florida.

It was a fascinating window into a culture fundamentally different from our own.

Having previously served as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Instructor of Biology at the University of Liberia (1972–1975), I was intensely curious about the social frameworks that shaped different civilizations.

In West Africa, the traditional system of dispute settlement known as the palaver bears a distant resemblance to a filibuster. Both sides talk, negotiate, and marshal support. The larger and more influential the factions involved, the more likely the matter ultimately rises to a chief or clan elder for resolution.

One evening, discovery came through a casual conversation. One of the students mentioned he had three mothers. Fascinated by the logistics of a polygamous household, I asked what it was like growing up with so many siblings and mothers under one roof.

His answer was strikingly direct.

“It is simple. There is strength in numbers.”

He explained that in the traditional world from which his culture emerged, the group with the greatest numbers usually prevailed in conflict. Maintaining a large family was not merely family planning. It was protection, influence, and survival.

At the time, I viewed his answer as a remarkable piece of sociological insight—a window into an ancient, clan-based worldview. Thirty-five years later, I have come to see it differently.

Read more...

THE ISLAMIC ETHNIC CLEANSING OF THE JEWS

A famous photo of Yemenite Jews traveling by foot to Israel in 1949.

The German ambassador to Egypt works out of a house that used to belong to a Jewish family. So does the Swiss ambassador. So does the American one. The homes were confiscated in 1956, when the Egyptian government declared, in a proclamation read aloud from the minarets of Cairo and Alexandria, that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state.

The families were given one suitcase. They signed documents “donating” everything else to the government. Then they left. The houses are still there; the families are not.

This is where the argument about Israel begins — not in Europe, but here.

There is a story told about Israel with remarkable confidence in universities, at the United Nations, in the opinion sections of newspapers that should know better. The story goes like this: European Jews, traumatized by European persecution, arrived in a land populated by indigenous Arabs and established, by force, a settler state. European guilt. European migration. European power. Colonialism wearing a Star of David.

The story requires you to ignore the majority of Israelis.

Read more...

HAVING THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

[TTP:  We’re changing things up here a little bit and moving Dr. Joel’s time slot (day slot?) from Thursdays to Tuesdays. This will keep a “news” slot in each day, and inject his particular wisdom into your week earlier to save you grief rather than later to rescue you from it! So, here is the follow up on Introvert benefits that he promised you in his last article.]

People who are extraverts - people who are more sociable, who like to be out, talk, and interact with other people, and who gladly put themselves out into new situations - tend to be happier than people who are not.

That's great for those who, by temperament, happen to be extroverts. But what if we are not naturally extraverted? We can still improve our overall happiness by doing extraverted things.

The delightful truth is that, from simply taking more extraverted actions, our overall happiness grows about the same as if we were naturally extraverted.

If you tend to be an introvert, if your natural comfort is to be more solitary, shy, or quietly inward, there are significant strengths to this that I’ll discuss in a moment. But you can get some of the benefits of an extravert, as well, by practicing certain skills; then you can have the best of both worlds.

Read more...

FEED YOUR BRAIN – PART 3

Dedicated to the memory of Skye who was Durk Pearson

[TTP:  This is Part 3 of  a series begun on May 28th and picks up right where Part 2 left off. If you haven’t read Parts I and 2, yet, please do Here (1) and Here (2). This is a transcribed interview with Will Block that was recorded just three months before Skye (Durk Pearson) passed away. Long-time TTPers will recognize Skye’s distinctive voice as he explains how to feed our brains!

EDITED:  Links to recordings with Durk about Mind™ and Lift™ were left out of Parts 1 and 2, so we are including them here. Sorry for the omission! ]

WILL: What about dopamine?

DURK:  Dopamine is closely related to noradrenaline; dopamine is involved in memory and motor coordination and it’s also involved importantly in reward. Whenever you do something that makes you feel good about doing it, that is due to release of dopamine. In fact, the reason that opiates are rewarding is that they cause the release of dopamine in part of your brain.

You might think, then, that everything that is going to give increased amounts of dopamine is going to be potentially addictive. The answer to this is, “No, it isn’t,” and for a very simple reason. The dopamine can be made from tyrosine and phenylalanine, so when you take our phenylalanine plus cofactors you’re able to make more dopamine, too.

And why isn’t this addictive?

Read more...

FLASHBACK FRIDAY – THE SHRINE OF SHAH-I-ZENDA

shrine-of-shah-i-zendaThe Shrine of Shah-i-Zenda left an indelible memory upon me when I was first here on my first exploration of Central Asia in 1963.  It is one of the many medieval wonders of the ancient Silk Road Oasis of fabled Samarkand.  Preserved through the centuries, it is still here in all its glory.  Come with me this September to experience it and so much else, like the Pearls of Shing, the Mountains of Heaven, and camping with Kirghiz nomads, in the mysterious and magical heart of Central Asia.

(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #201 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Read more...