12/30/11

Eurozone Is Taking on Bad Aspects of U.S. Federalism

The United States has traditionally been a people avoiding state of the art political philosophy research and philosophy in general with the notable exception of the founders. The U.S.A. has benefited from a tradition of political reform though that seemed to have died after the end of the cold war when economic and political corruption flourished.

Consider the European problems with its neo-federalism. It has some of the problems the U.S.A. has with federalism acting as a tool for the redistribution of wealth-while one state or nation can lever the abstract federal entity as an exchange of wealth redistribution it pork barrels bills and responsibilities as if no one is responsible-it is the problem of the federal entity and all those socialist freeloaders-even if the Republicans of Alaska when the late Ted Stevens was in charge of Senate appropriations was the biggest pork barrel per capita state of all.

While states or nations can get free money from abstract governments they will until the well runs dry instead of developing their own resources. Of course with international plundering of labor by trans-nationals as well as copius travel by job seekers everyone will end up living in megacities as drones on rations allocated by the oligopoly.

I suppose Germany as the center of the Eurozone reality can be made to feel that it should transfer wealth to lazy nations-and why not, since the end of the cold war local accountability has perished and Wall Street types globally have become self-help crooks knowing that no one is really responsible for collective political needs. Government may thus be used as an exchange for redistributing wealth to the top 1% of quantitative traders in dark pools and elsewhere.

The Reagan administration has become a Rock Candy Mountain dream of corrupt government financial planners and bad philosophical theorists that believe the buck never stops and may be minted from presses and electrons without accountability. It is the corrupting and lazy economic thought of those that have no significant philosophical reasoning practice.

The left and right are obsolete options of capital vs social thinking. No one believes that Congress could deign or invent new products better than a clown car of bureaucrats. No one believes that Herman Cain could name 30 foreign nations with a balanced budget or even explain what ecological economics is-Rick Perry may regard global warming as what happens when one drives from Denver to Austin.

U.S. states have political advertising that is financed by global corporations contributing to political action committees and globally own broadcasting networks and newspapers. Corporatism is concentrating wealth and domestically the federal tax lever is exploited by capitalists to manufacture weapons in one of the view industries that hasn't been largely outsourced for obvious reasons. Americans haven't developed a political philosophy that would reform capitalism and assure that all Americans have a minimum income and health care, a recovering ecosphere, secure borders and freedom from foreign political control.

Intermediate size domestic corporations should be favored instead of large corporations, and individuals should be limited in capital gains advantage in the abstract-it would be good to cap the number of corporations anyone could own shares of stock in to three. Capitalism wasn't perfected by Adam Smith and it can use upgrades and reform as much as a version of MS Windows now and then in order that it actually serves the masses rather than oligopoly or aristocracy.

12/29/11

Ancient Sea Levels & The Lost Civilization of Noah

About 25,000 years ago the Ice Age began ending, and by 15,000 years ago the ancient sea level about 120 meters lower than at present began to rise-it continued to rise until about the year 1000 a.d. Global warming may unnaturally make the sea level increase again a the last of the world' ice melt. By the way, one would think that the distribution of water weight to the ocean basins from the land and polar ice would affect plate tectonic a little.

In Alaska the S.E. region would have been affected a lot by those lower sea levels. Many of the larger islands of the Alexander Archipelago would have been connected to the mainland, and that is probably why the brown bears of some islands are genetically different from latter arrivals that migrated here after the sea level isolated and stranded one group of bear about 10,000 b.c.

Human ecospheric fragmentation isolates bear to this day as irrational ecosphere development puts politic-economy in the role of 'devil' in relation to wildlife adversely impacted by habitat fragmentation and destruction.

http://www.cfr.washington.edu/research.cesu/reports/J9W88040005S-JRobinson-THESIS-Uidaho.pdf

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/iceciv.html Ancient shorelines of Ice Age civilization(s)

Early behavorially correct humans migrated out of Africa perhaps 40,000 b.c. across the shallower Red Sea and along the Saudi-Yemeni waterfront to an oasis in the flood plain of the Persian Gulf (sea level was 100-300 feet lower then) may have been the lost civilization referred to in the story of Noah...see the article below on the Gulf Oasis civilization perhaps below the Persian Gulf...

http://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html Persian Gulf Oasis utopia destroyed by an 8000 B.C. flood?

http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/maps.pdf
On mapping of areas vulnerable to sea level rise

The One Percent Aristocracy

An aristocracy is rule by the elite. They rule because they have the power to, and of course they aren't elected. The aristocrats exploit every available intellectual lever to assert that they themselves are best and know whats best for society always-of course that means they must concentrate wealth, enslave inventors, make home ownership a disposable good and rent everyone a mortgage through global banks while digging 20,000 miles of tunnels after South African minerals useless for anything else and nothing at all on the moon for scientific research.

Unelected, non-representative government is the bummer of all the victims of the cranks that have the power to coerce everything their own way. It may take various forms of course; less than oligarchy, more than an Imperial Russian table of ranks without a Tsar.

Aristocracy develops like a network of cancer metastasizing throughout the body politick. Those networks of power coagulate and strangle the free enterprise of the masses of society through their mass power over the marketplace of real property and ideas.

Without reform aristocracy today drives society in a Lemmingway charge toward eventual corporate oblivion like Rowdy Yates herding cattle to Abilene. It isn't a rationally designed or responsive society-it is one making accident and unthinking social politics a virtue, one that opts for pagan trust in evolution and the mystical guiding hand and fickle finger of fate rather than intentional human intelligence and free will guiding maximized individual free enterprise to keep society and the ecosphere functioning.

Aristocracy may develop in world civilization today through corporatism. The concentration of wealth and co-option of democracy and polity (polity is representative while democracy is direct) in the U.S.A. is a fact of life. The rich own the broadcast media, and the government and the networks of society.

The rich pay just 35% in taxes and 15% in capital gains. That is going up next year or 2013 to 20% however they are making up for it by making a 10% capital gains tax on the poorest 10% who presently pay 0%. The rich get their contribution back through federal economic infrastructure support anyway.

Obviously the rich believe they earn their money and wouldn't change a thing. They take their value system for granted, and getting them to cooperate with a reform of capitalism that would be inclusive of the well being of all the people of the nation and environment would be impossible. The rich already comprise a kind of idiot aristocracy working against the survival of human and other forms of life on Earth in a free, functional and healthy ecosphere with liberty and justice for all. One that aspires even unto reverence for God.

Adam Smith' s theory of capitalism wasn't intended to be an abstract math theory of economics detached from its effect upon society. Smith and his friend David Hume sought the liberation of people from aristocracy rather than their enslavement under advantaged class tyrants by any name that dominated business. It is o.k. to reform capitalism to make it work for the poor too without lapsing into state authoritarianism.

President's Tactical Hawaiian Vacation

Financial leadership by politicians today is rather important to many of us poor, independent voters who care about economic malfeasance in high places

If we can set aside for a time, thought of Erasmus’ ‘In Praise of Folly’ and unlimited golfing junkets, let us consider what good things the President could be planning for next year in Hawaii rather than wasting time in Chicago presently in that monochromatic canyon of concrete.

The President could even now be working on a re-election theme book; ‘St. Laffer and The Gospel of New Voodoo Economics in The New World Order-How Everyone Can Have A Yearly 4 million Dollar Vacation , Special Bonus Vacations, 500 Dollar Haircuts, Extended Tax Breaks for The Rich, 32+ Rounds of Golf Annually, Gut Frank-Dodd and Exploit the Poor for Only 20 Trillion Dollars of Debt With Easy Credit Repayment on an Outsourcing, Hyperinflating, Deferred Depression Installment Plan-(terms of minimal high unemployment, neatening up of undesirable, over-aged, over-qualified , racially or non-swinging independents may apply in your area) .”

The President seems to work more for the rich than the poor, and gives the Republicans a tax cut each December, or someone, while continuing to borrow money from China. Next year the capital gains rate on the poorest will skyrocket from 0 to 10! In December 2010 the President was the leading cheerleader for tax cuts for the rich.

The President may be setting the stage for 10 million dollar twice annual vacations in the next terms to demonstrate upward executive mobility. How could the Republicans ever one-up that?

12/28/11

About the First People Exploration Culture of North America

One could use Toynbee's criteria of civilization and conclude that the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations were successful rather than failed civilizations. Civilization may have stages of growth, maturity and decadence. In Meso-America there was a succession of cultures that might be said to have overlapped and built upon others before.

Across North America successful cultures arose that adapted to the sometimes plentiful, sometimes harsh conditions environmentally. One thinks of the tour de force of Arctic ice survival of Yupik hunters waiting for a seal in a land without forests for burning fires or building homes. If one spends even one winter without heat in a tent north of sixty degrees its possible to get an idea of the level of survival competence and adaptation required-one didn't go into Wal-Mart for another Bic (they had seal oil and moss wick lamps).

The United States today may be taking the Universal phase in the Toynbee cycle-the highest before collapse-and corruption seems to be becoming institutionalized these years from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. It has over-expanded abroad, taken on vast debt, allowed itself to be flooded by an external proletariat and in sundry ways taken a turn away from concern about the well being of all of the citizens of the democracy in favor of concentrating wealth. Hardly necessary to mention the environmental management failure.

Native Americans were of course originally from several locations in the old world. People landed upon Crete by water-raft as long ago as 25,000 years. If they arrived by accident then assuredly people also arrived accidentally via the Gulf Stream and rich fisheries as long ago as 30,000 years B.P. Some archeological sites in South America seem to indicate sites as old as that.

Via Berengia and Alaska before the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age some may have canoed down the Pacific Coast. When the continental and western ice sheets parted enough a new route to Montana developed from Alaska and waves of immigrants from Eurasia arrived to journey south generally.

Of course the Aleuts invented the fasted human powered boat-the kayak-until recent times. Yet Alaska remained sparsely populated I would guess as the new age explorers ventured across the great land to unsettled points everywhere. America north of present day Mexico had at most about 2 or 3 million pre-Columbian natives, yet the population of the hemisphere was far more-enough that perhaps 16 million perished from a variety of causes in the decades following the discovery by Columbus. The population of natives in the U.S.A. declined to 500,000.

The numerous cultures of the sundry tribes made quite successful adaptations to the new world. These explorers and decedents reached the Northern Arctic littoral about 25,000 B.C. and in historical waves journeyed far to the east and south when the way opened to human foot travel.

Just because a culture or civlization ends it does not follow that it was not successful in its day-neither are people failures because they are mortal and destined for dust (or hell unless saved through the grace of God). One cannot say that Periclean Athens or even Sparta were failures because they no longer exist. There are elements of cultures from the Pre-Columbian era that still exit obviously, and of course the cultivation of the potato changed Irish culture for the good except for the blight a few years.

Of course far later pre-Dorset Eskimo were wiped out by Dorsett Eskimo with dog sleds for very fast travel. They reached the eat coast of Canada about the same time as early Irish and Viking explorers. Frobisher Bay's natives that still remember when martin Frobisher arrived early in the 1500s only arrived themselves a couple hundred years before.

Native cultures are of course pressured into becoming part of world civilization a Toynbee called it. Western civilization and that of the East were the last two 'successful' civilizations yet they too were merged into world civilization. It is virtually impossible to separate technology from culture anywhere, and global economics have made all cultures versions of a local tool using culture.

It is said that Cheetah-Tarzan's chimpanzee-actually it was the third chimp following two earlier very likely-died a couple days ago. In Tarzan's 1930s there were still several very isolated cultures, yet today none can escape the corruption. Capitalism run amok fails Adam Smiths goal of promoting an antidote to aristocratic domination of democracy. Native peoples hadn't the problem that ossified civilizations present generally-except perhaps in Aztec land where the shortage of human sacrifices meant they needed to look abroad for victims.

There was a great though short lived civilization named Cohokia at the site of present day East St. Louis with very large pyramids at one end of a gaming court with a very fine clay covered with sand place that was the equivalent of the super bowl of spear throwing at a target. The Cohokians manufactured a hockey puck-yo yo like object that was exported as far as the Texas and S. Carolina regions where some sorts of games (and pyramidal mounds) were also played or built. It is difficult to say where those Cohokians got there game from, much less their pyramid idea. Very little trade seems to have existed between the Missourians and the Aztecs.

Plainly though, the mostly non-violent (well comparatively) Cohokian in their declining phase experienced radical change. In less than a 150 year the civilization vanished along with the culture of aggregated non-Cohokian tribes serving it agriculturally. Someplace in North Dakota a village wall was excavated several year ago, and there was evidence of human remains and a massacre at that wall, and indications of a mass infantry-like charge with weapon-this was though to be unknown behavior in North America then, and occurred after the fall of Cohokia. What could it mean?

I wondered if Cohokia was simulated by arrivals from Europe-perhaps Irish or Vikings in the 13th century a.d. who traveled mostly by water and Wisconsin to arrive logically in St. Louis and recruit the natives to build a pyramid-something like Michael Cain in 'The Man Who Would Be King'. Well-very challenging to consider-yet the fascinating history of America and the explorer that wandered to and around it will be good for archeologists and writers for some time.

The early Americans or first peoples, and the second etc. hadn't the sedentary and intensely populous life and competition that stimulated the eventual rise of civilization in Eurasia-Africa etc. The first arrowhead was made in Africa about 200,000 year ago and it took another 190,000 years for a civilization to develop. The Americans mostly left Eurasia before anything much was made besides hunter gathering tools, rabbit snares etc. With so few people they had no need to develop cities, stone walls and so forth. Yet one can see how quickly they became skilled horsemen after the Spaniard brought the horse to North America, and of course skilled horse warriors. One should recall that it was largely Attila the Hun and his mounted warriors with lassos that shocked and awed the decadent Roman Empire.

The lesson of the value of cavalry and the need for fortifications accelerated in America too as forts were built by the Spaniard and attacked by Frobisher and Drake. Custer dying at the Little Big Horn was a Union cavalry officer that fought for Grant in the 2nd wilderness campaign. His brother, the two-time Medal of Honor recipient, perished with him on that grassy knoll, when Crazy Horse' band brought about a logical infantry defeat in detail purpose to the battlefield.

The advance of technology in Native American cultures was consistent with the demographic and geographic history of the advance and dispersion of the first peoples to the two continents. They were probably responsible for exterminating 16 of the 100 or so Native American mammals that weight 100 pounds or more. Modern Americans are doing better than that I would think with a record of specie extermination extending into the hundreds of thousands including all forms of life.

The failure of the present American cultural branch in politics to provide free health care for the poor and let the privileged pay for their own health care, the failure to abandon fossil fuel engines and move to advanced electro-magnetic public transport, indicates that the continuing demographic intensification of population growth and resource depletion may be moving toward a critical and dumb time of troubles.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8993313723654914866 The Secret of El Dorado

12/27/11

President Obama's Queer Influence in Review

Federal hate speech was a good present for the corporate Internet world permitting the deletion of non-conformist language whenever its useful to purge writing accounts-that is with a covering of federal support for corporate Internet dictatorship of the corporate will.
Hate speech I would think needs to be determined by the entire context of something written instead of by the presence of a few words that it o.k. for the object group themselves to use publicly yet not for anyone else if they are in political opposition.

With the Presidential conquest of the Pentagon's don't ask, don't tell policy and all of the faggoted political surge of last year and this in a number of areas it must seem like clear sailing for the powers of federal sin-the largest of which is the impoverishment of the middle class and real politick support for the concentration of wealth.

Four letter words may indicate hate if in a context of violence or urging violence yet be terms of endearment for some persons of interest I would think. The idea that it requires particular words to say things hateful or in a mood of hate is to separate language from actions, or to make language itself an action. If the broadcast media could be held accountable for hateful speech targeting individuals they too could be deleted from earnings and future considerations-yet of course they advocate in support of the rich and powerful organizations.

Free speech should be tolerated in the corporate Internet world inclusive of most writing places. If there are particular proscribed words the corporate doom decrees hold as self-evident expressions of hate they should be posted in scarlet letters where no writer could miss seeing them. It seems though that the corporate controllers most often like to keep their list of 'hate speech' items to themselves and entirely subjective opinion in order to have some sort of Soviet-censorship quality power to delete the politically non-conformist to the will of an ad hoc evil empire.

It may be that the word 'faggot' was kindled by the flaming homosexuals themselves in old London using a cigarette butt, salaciously sucking the tobacco down close, to communicate their coded sexual preferences in a safe manner in public, or not.

Homosexual abbreviated to homo may not be the best hope of homos-yet it is plain language effective and concise. After a winter camping in Anchorage in a tent after being banned from earning my customary 150 monthly at Helium two years ago for using two or three words to refer to queers my opinion is that the action of cutting off my earnings for writing was far more hateful than any action I took writing in opposition to the political putsch to queer the U.S. military and pervert the establishment of heterosexual marriage by including the homos. I invested time and money getting a bachelor’s Degree from the University of the State of N.Y. before they made queer marriages allright this year. I would pay the Excelsior College to take the useless degree back in order to sever any association with the state of dishonor.
I might also say for the benefit of the elitist vermin of Boston censorship (that isn't hate speech its simply my opinion) that to corrupt the word 'gay' to use as a reference to queers is an overt hate speech act a far as any straight guy named Gary is concerned.

The federal government corrupted the free speech of the masses for the benefit of corporate power and oppression when they generated their odious 'hate speech' laws. The core of social issue is not political speech written reasonably on political topics, but abuse of actual individuals personally. If an author is writing objectively about a class of social behavior in order to express his opinion on a political topic he is not obligated to use any particular language to do so. People may criticize the style of writing however it is in no way necessary or even reasonable to believe that personal hate of anyone, or that anything more than self-defense and defense of one's political interests is required to use language unliked by those holding an opposite political opinion.

The rich, the government and powerful organizations perennial have an extreme advantage over individual in political economy. The power to censor is one of the larger intolerances of all in a free society-one too often used and abused by the powerful, corrupt swine taking the nation down the path to perdition (whomever they are).

Constitution Gives State' Right to Control Immigration-Feds to Control Naturalization Criteria

from Article 1 Section Two- " Clause 3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons "

This article's mention of 3/5ths of all other persons in a state could be applied to slaves or illegal aliens equally well today. The framers of the constitution had their oars in the water so far as to realize that real people-even slaves or illegal aliens, have real consequences and should be accounted for within a state.

If 3/5s of illegal aliens in Texas or California were counted for congressional representation purposes each would gain several seats. This reality ought not to have been cancelled by the 13th Amendment ending slavery at all.

http://www.federalistblog.us/2006/07/delegated_powers_immigration/

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

The 14th amendment has been pointed out as affecting article, yet it actually by-passes the illegal alien or uncounted persons question and address only citizens in whole numbers rather than a 3/5ths. Yet the 3/5s probably is more applicable to demographic totals and a fair reckoning of what value non-citizens should have in counting for electoral representation than as some sort of statement about a slave being counted as worth 3/5th of a free voter in Massachusetts or Mississippi.

Regardless of the legal status of a person-homeless of land owner, the individuals existing are real and effect the political economy. When slaves were recognized as citizen if native born, or blacks as free born, and hence were inalienably citizens it became de trop to regard their votes or numbers to rate as 3/5s of the value of a non-oppressed voter. The people of the late 18th and 19th centuries did not have much of an illegal alien problem though, for which the original article One section Two of the Constitution is a reality check of political pragmatism today.

from Article 1 Section. 9.

"The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."

This section acknowledges the states individually have the right to choose to admit or deny immigrants. The constitution provides the federal government the right to make criteria for the naturalization of immigrants as citizens, yet that does not cancel the state's rights to choose who to allow to immigrate.

Article. IV.

Section. 1.

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

12/23/11

Liberate Public Education

Political contentiousness and interpretation of symbolic meanings never end in the litigious world of Washington D.C. So many litigation court hours were spent removing manger scenes from public court buildings and other public areas and so forth that the government expressed an inability to harmonize public mass education with the will of people to be free to exercise religious expression publicly including public schools. If the federal government forces minors to attend school until the 8th grade instead of doing something useful like brick making then it should not force them to stifle their free speech on religious expression.

To harmonize the different public interests the government should get out of the public school business and pay students to attend private schools of their choice with the government role simply being to assure quality control for all students.

Only students of the poor and middle class should receive subsidized public education, only the poor should receive free public medical services, and only the rich should be taxed at 60% including capital gains.

Diversity in public education means strength of independent thinking rather than Soviet and Nazi style indoctrination.

12/22/11

Philosophy as Rigorous Science, Chat, Thought or Whatever

Philosophical thought may be about finding meaning or whatever else is 'wise'. Wisdom may be simplicity or awareness of the truth within a convoluted social world with litigious minutia destroying the woods and the trees. Sartre wrote his 'Being and Nothingness' during World War Two Paris after being released by the Nazis from a p.o.w. camp. He wrote 'Critique of Dialectical Reason' and lost an eye during the venture, and also visted Stalinist Russia. One might consider his work unrigorous since it has no math symbols, yet it is a good way of viewing human social organizations with a different lens-simultaneously phenomenally and sociologically even with individual and collective epistemology baed on analysis on cognitive subjectivity.

Edmund Husserl was a philosopher born in 1859 determined eventually to make philosophy a rigorous science. He wrote quite a lot with titles like 'Logical Investigations'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that his later works were helpful in relating scientific ideas to pre-scientific conceptual paradigms. Husserl was a phenomenologist.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/

One may find rather readily quite a bit of depth in philosophical history of logic. Of course one remembers Aristotle' invention of classical logic, then one can skip to Leibniz' invention of mathematical logic that he kept in a drawer and never published, and on to Frege, Russell and eventually the 20th century analytic philosophers. The development of symbolic logic then use of it in an expanding permutation of forms found use in things from computer programming to algebra and SO3 groups etc.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/


That philosophical development of formal logic has had quite a number of individuals that have put work into it from Strawson to Kripke (Naming and Necessity). One may expand one' own interest in logic over decades if given an opportunity, yet one also might wish to apply such rigorous thought to the world of perceptions and even cosmology.

Individuals may read logic and epistemologies derived from it and apply it as a filter to consider the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' or simply to reading a newspaper and discovering commonplace logic fallacies in politics. Philosophical thought may lead one to an awareness of the inadequacy of the mundane social existence, of why reality T.V. and soap operas haven't much prospect for making the world utopia, or why the reorganization of society into a better functioning organization de facto is so challenging. Not all philosophical thought is along the lines of a technical occupation pursuit with guaranteed pay.

Many people with graduate degrees in philosophy become lawyers or else in order to draw a paycheck-not a bad idea either. Nearly a quarter of lawyers get into another occupation within a few years. Considering society without a paycheck may free one a little from corporate control and the threat of termination if one does not hush-that's why so many executives are fairly mute in politics today except for sycophantic utterances.

It is a good thing to have a rigorous approach to knowledge and run experiments. It is also interesting to have a disciplined approach to reading as much of the world's knowledge concerning philosophy as one may in a lifetime, yet of course the time runs out and one is left with faith and hope that The Lord will accomplish His miracles. One must try to apply one-self a little earlier then to apply rigorous methods to faith activities-perhaps the mere Lutheran style of reform bringing a Priesthood of Believers to graduate beyond the hierarchical priesthood left over from the feudal era...there are many disciplined activities for philosophers today and not all require scientific method.

On the premise that 'Anything is morally acceptable to prevent global ecosphere collapse."

I was wondering about that-nice thought. Means and ends issues though. I think its possible that if society is really rotten at heart that one might have to let it go destroy itself with a clear conscience and rely on God to save the elect.

Its also the case practically that social rule becomes increasingly corrupt in the public and corporate sectors as individualism is annihilated and collective power is concentrated. The people in governmemnt and the corporate world with so much power may be the least likely to fix anything in an ordinary Utopian perfection acceptable to perfectionists.

Merry Christmas.

On the History and Concept of the Theory That the World Is an Illusion

That the world’s objects change and decay ordinarily, and that the sky and seasons appear to change obviously provided an observation opportunity for early philosophers to regard and hypothesize as being temporal and illusory perhaps even derived from a perfect world of designs or forms. Plato described an ideal world of changeless forms, while Sakyamuni considered the temporal world Maya- illusion.

The idea of illusion and dualism is anthropolgically primordial. One finds its elements in the religious evolutions from Europe-India through the Vedic and in Zoroastrianism. Hegelianist evolution of the spirit as a world consciousness is another form. Neitzche and Shopenhauer were influenced by Zoroastrian ideas-the latter believed the world is an illusory, bad world with an implicit nature of evil (The World as Will and Representation). Karl Marx was inflluenced by a dualist criteria as a student of Hegel and his dialectical evolution is a kind of godless evolution toward utopian social reality through the maya of social dichord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

The Mayan calendar expiring in 2012 is held by some to be a reason to tour in the Yucatan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Vedic_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_religion

http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/category/religion/purification/ death of Mithridates by Zarathustran king

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism Ahura Mazada (good) vs.forces of chaos (druj) (bad)

With the pain and suffering of this world, with extended unemployment and the impermanence of lot ownership, one may regard the experience of life itself as illusory. With relativity and the evolution of time the manifestation of actualized forms may take unusual, unpredictable twits and turns. Even the calculation of probabilities is saturated with uncertainty including that mysterious beyond the parameters and premises potential for unknown force overthrowing the formalization of theory.

It reaches its terminal moment when as Sartre said death emerges as 'the complete triumph of the other'. What the otherness of being is that permits a universe badly defined and human beings to be and become is unknown.

It is yet challenging to posit that A is B or life is illusion. One might contemplate the odds of any existing event or process being and illusion I would guess...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#KolProCal

One should want to define the meaning of illusion and 'world' before applying the formula 'world=illusion' and decide if it is just the Earth or all of the solar system that are illusory. At some point in the Universal set there must be some real or existing entity for which the world is an illusion. If everything were an illusion without a real observer one might have an interesting cosmology yet an improbable one.

One may opt with Kierkeguaard to rely upon the transcending power and person of Jesus Christ to establish an eternal relationship with ‘The One’ God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_faith

The solid-state mass of this universe is at the smallest conjectured level believed to be energy. E=mc2 at least indicates the convertibility of energy into matter. Matter can be regarded as a steady state of energy. Energy is 'locked' into a steady state as mass. If one reads about the nuclear mechanic of the sun as a hydrogen star, and learn about the production of helium etc, and also about the primordial creation of baryons early in the history of the present math of cosmological theory one is reading of energy and mass as a steady state.

Simultaneously mass and energy are believed to be sustained immediately by a quantum field.

Quantum superposition and entanglement of particles, the wave-particle duality of mass-energy (vis the double slit photon experiment) is a remarkable field to read about. Quantum particles for themselves may exist in a field of uncertain nature in other dimensions that extrudes into the four dimensional universe and is snared by virtue of relations to other particles probabilities of cancelled out of being elsewhere into a steady state.

The mechanics of the underlying fields are unknown. How the steady state field relates to the underlying sustaining field is uncertain. Does time exist in that quantum field where every particle can be anyplace in it universe and doe not appear in this one until observed or entangled? Does relativity apply in the quantum field as it does in this universe with four dimensions?

The question of the universe being an illusion or not is really the wrong question. It’s real enough for what it is, and there are real sentient beings living in it. An illusion is a contingent term given a particular value like all other words I would think. Is the Universe like some other illusion, or is it like an emergent and apparent relative phenomena like the apparent wind speed aboard a sailboat of zero when it sailing along in a ten mile an hour wind from the stern with 100% efficiency?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

12/21/11

Augustine and Ontological Relativity

I wanted to mention Plotinus' neo-Platonism and his exposition of Platonism in The Enneads. Socrates at least believed in God, and the concept of One being emanating everything that exists seems the better interpretation of Plato extent. It was written only about 600 years after, in a language still pretty much like that of Plato.

Numbers are an expression of divisible relations-or an early form of relativity I would think. Natural numbers, rational numbers or Cantor's trans-infinite infinities with given ordinal relations that cannot be sub-divided infinitely (as in the Eleatic paradoxes) are a way the mind made order in representative structure...abstract structures necessarily about reality. The problem as Russell might have pointed out is a categorical error in language about where to categorize abstract idea and designs. As a Christian I have no trouble with any of the opinions because I think God can keep track of the math and quanta of all sorts.

The work of ordering and formalizing expressions of interval and structure with signs is accomplished in-the-world, and there isn't much difference between the mind as a field with trillions of synaptic connection routes processing sense input in its particular way in the unified temporal field of the Universe and the world itself except qualitatively. That is the mind and nature are phenomenal and integral within the fundamental universal monism.

Augustine could easily regard thought as valuable in a special or even Hegelian way. Because of the Creator's relationship to mankind it is ideas and relationships that are consequential. The Spirit of God transcends the material world or encompasses it, and Leibniz's spiritual one-dimensional monads or thoughts about the Intellect emanated by The One lead to the cloud of unknowing's mystery.

Augustine's penetrating examination of abstract objects as being real is something of a very early analytic philosophy as well as Platonist. Strawson's' Individuals' and Quine's Word and Object’ follow up the relationship of ideas to the real world, and improve upon the empiricism of the era that was ending and being surpassed by ontological relativity in epistemology.

The transcendence of classical realism for a phenomenalism and a subjective epistemology unified with the corporeal is a modern point of view. Mind is grounded in the noumenal and the quantum realm of probability statistics as well as naive reality taken as unshakable by traditional empiricists.

Plotinus points out a hierarchy of relations from The One to the Intellect, the realm of forms and the real world with so many examples of broken forms. One might take that as a fair approximation of the concept that fundamental structure given to quantum mechanical energy have an 'intelligible object' content as well as mass or energy. One might wonder if the way that quantum mechanical particles exist with concurrent uncertainty and determinism overall is not an illustration of the way the realm of forms downloads its designs into the actual solid-state universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon

President Obama Annual December Tax Cut Urging Returns

This time each year President Obama urges tax cuts saving the GOP the trouble of exerting themselves much. Like maggots eating away the dead flesh to prevent gangrene (too much taxation) tax cutting can go too far and start eating red, healthy muscle. Maggots after their work is done need to be doused with piss to kill them off (remember that if you have an open wound and flies lay their eggs in it). Tax cutting on the rich should have topped at 60%. The healthy infrastructure of the U.S.A. is being ate away and replaced globally by cheap labor and domestically by cheap illegal immigrant labor.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jeYmQnHmUVMMTpohHkMNA8Odwraw?docId=cb59100dd082478cad633 Obama Urges Payroll Tax Cut

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Obama-Urges-Congressional-Republicans-to-Support-Extension-of-Key-Tax-Cut-135059533
.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/us/politics/extension-of-payroll-tax-cut-passes-senate.html?_r=1


The rich may not mind the vast public debt with low tax rates as they can collect the interest paid on the U.S. federal debt themselves.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126413824
'How to Lose a Trillion Dollars'

If the U.S. credit rating is down-graded again, some investors are sure to profit. Fitch warns that in 2013 it may drop if more budget cutting (or revenue increases) fail to occur.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-usa-fitch-idUSTRE7BK1V720111221?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Eight Officers, NCOs/Specialists Investigated in Connection With Suicide of Alaska Private in Afghanistan

Eight Officers, non-commissioned officers and specialists in Afghanistan have been suspended in connection with the death of Fort Wainwright Stryker brigade soldier Danny Chen based in Alaska.

Charges in connection with the death range from dereliction of duty, negligent homicide, assault, battery, reckless endangerment and so forth. It sounds like Private Chen encountered substantial opposition personally, yet the case is open. Bizarre conduct for officers and nco's to say the least.

The soldiers suspended and sent elewhere pending charges...1st Lt. Daniel J. Schwartz, Staff Sgt. Andrew J Van Bockel, Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Duga, Sgt. Adam M. Holcomb, Sgt. Jeffrey T. Hurst, Sgt Travis F. Carded, Spc. Ryan J. Offutt, and Spc. Thomas Curtis

State of Alaska Government personnel are of course concerned when bullying occurs to its residents and Alaska based soldiers. In the military, soldiers under authority have no option of significant resistance to supervisory corruption as they are legally bound by oath to follow orders. Obviously soldiers should have some sort of technological witness chronomonitor to record abusive incidents.

The military like civil society exists within a social compact that allows smooth functioning of society and individual interest subordinated to the mass interests. Unfortunately sometimes those in power regard their opportunities for corruption as a natural right of themselves or as a class. It will be good if the matter is swiftly, methodically clarified.

http://www.adn.com/2011/12/21/2227948/8-charged-in-death-of-alaska-based.html

12/20/11

Alaska Gov. Mead Treadwell Says Alaska Coastal Management Plan Cost Would Be $5.4 million

American states with ocean coastlines have some input into Federal management of it's lands on those areas. I would guess that includes federal timber rich lands plundered in the Tongass Forest of Alaska as well as the other more than 6000 miles of coastline. St. Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell estimates the cost to the state to have it own coastal management plan would be 5.4 million dollars per year. The previous coastal management plan sunsetted out earlier this year, and so the next might go onto a state ballot

Just a few days ago a popular Juneau area beach named Sandy Beach was found after chemical laboratory testing sent by a local Tlingit group to contain toxic levels of mercury leftover from the Treadwell mine area that was driven below the Gastineau Channel and under the beach area. Long ago the Treadwell mine entrance at Sandy Beach collapsed.

The Treadwell Mine produced more than 3 million troy onces of gold before collape in 1922. Treadwell, a carpenter, sold his claim for 1.5 million dollars earlier and left for San Francisco. The mine at Douglas (across the channel from Juneau) went a deep a 2400 feet below the surface.

Mercury poisoning is a sad consequence of the mining process even today as it is used to extract gold from other minerals. In prior times fish contaminated with mercury were banned by the federal government from sales in the United States. It is on ongoing concern for fishermen, crabbers and others that make their living toiling to bring seafood to the table.

Some Alaskans have long been concerned about environmental quality and shoreline conservation and are concerned to stop the destruction of shoreline and contiguous ecosphere regions' health. The residents of the Earth aren't known to be planning to evacuate soon and return to the planet E.T. where sugar-plumbs grow toxin free.

http://hainesnews.net/2011/12/20/coastal-management-would-cost-5-4-million-state-estimates/


http://www.ktoonews.org/2011/12/12/popular-beach-may-have-high-mercury-levels/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwell_gold_mine

Exclusive Washington Lintel Article with Kim IL Gun

The Washington Lintel’s Best-loved reporter interviewed a former spook that traveled extensively in the entourage of dictator heir-apparent Kim IL Gun. He reports that there is much to fear in the Dictator’s skill at chess, since he has been playing against a computer since a very early age.

Best loved reporter; Paramount Dictator Gun, will your Dictatorship bring change to Korea?

Dictator Gun; of course. I shall introduce a contract with Korea that will liberate free speech of all Koreans and stimulate job growth. I shall move my pawns in staggered defense arrays, and aggressively send my knights to probe the running dog homeland.

Best Loved Reporter; Dictator Gun, will free speech be broad enough to allow criticism of your government or would that be hate speech?

Dictator Gun; of course the crazy may be critical or picky and swiftly executed.

Best Loved Reporter; that sounds like a fair and balanced policy. What other changes will you bring to allay Washington fears of atomic vaporization?

Dictator Gun; I will create a few new long range missiles-the Wang Dang Do and the Faggo-Dong that will bring gifts to the table for harmonious draw down.

Best Loved Reporter; Yes that is a good policy.

Dictator Gun; I will as well move our military to have the Gay Parade in order to bring tranquility to those seeking to overthrow my regime and replace it with a non-progressive junta.

Best Loved Reporter; the fine print of contracts can replace constitutional democracy quite efficiently, will you export your trojan horse corporate form of communism globally?

Dictator Gun; those were sufficient answers for your news feed.

12/19/11

God and the Human Circumstance

The question of why does anything exist is perhaps the most profound question. Not the quantum mechanics of an evident universe-but anything at all. Logically nothing should arise from nothing. Of course a void with energy implicitly within it is conjectured in most pre big-bang or before the Universe cosmologies in order to provide an original energy-mass endowment sufficient for a Universe to be and become.

It is difficult to comprehend why God would exist for all of eternity as an uncreated being existing without a beginning. In setting humanity the task of investigating its own exitence and origin, I wonder if The One learns anything about itself from the cosmological investigations of the Socrates, Platos, Newtons, EInsteins, Kants, Quines, Aquinus'and so forth. God is of surpasing excellence however and such questions as occur to humaniity may not be substantive for The One.

The notion that time must exist in a linear way is regarded as just a local experience in light of relativity theory, and it is easier to consider a before or beyond the Univere criterion in which God is not subject to a passage of time yet simply is. It is possible to formulate the paradigm roughly yet not possible to comprehend it at all.

Obviously God is not jut some sort of super human being. Humanity may have a bit of reason-only a bit, and in that regard might reflect the nature of God a little, yet otherwise and especially regarding conduct humanity is fallen and an imperfect form-to use a concept suitable within Plotinus' neoplatonic Enneads.

Why God created anything is a divine mystery. As an omnipotent Being omnipresent and omniscient He knows all things before they are created. Created things as well as space-time are apparent phenomena to those sentient beings viewing from within a given space-time paradigm of the One. That He sent His only begotten Son to bridge the divide that exist between fallen human nature and His perfect being is remarkable. As lost humanity views thing from its own planet and Galaxy within an apparent space-time flowing universe it tends to be entirely ego-centric and even downright wicked extirminating both sects of its own general race, myriad forms of life and even if it will, the planetary ecophere.

Albert Camus in 'The Stranger' (not as good as his book 'The Plague') had his protagoniist vomit on the beach in considering the fact that anything exit at all--the exitential vertigo of a philosophical soul. Human beings exist within the field of biological and cosmic existence that God has willed to be for a time. Perhaps it is a way to experience elements of his own creation from a different perspective. For an omnipotent being all things may be possible that are good. It seems churlish as a finite being to set comprehensively what parameters The One may have. If there is a pervasive monism then The One may know every element of the field of spirit, energy or whatever it is. To create the pluralism within the unified field is perhaps jut one marvelous work of the will of The One.

The Conservatism of William F. Buckley Jr. Had Oars in the Water

When William F. Buckley Jr. began his conservative movement in college during an era of college liberalism the evil empire-an authoritarian Soviet Union was in it full nuclear power and the Gulag, apparatchiks and industrialized economy ruled by the Supreme Soviet had Eastern Europe under it fist. Western civilization as a free society was defended only by the will to assert the idea of human liberty. Military, political and counter-intelligence activities were requisite at a high level of preparedness to balance potential Soviet invasion. A world proxy war to expand communism to the second and third world became Soviet policy following the death of Stalin. During the Vietnam conflict the American left became associated with some conservatives with support for the Soviet side and communist worldview. That many of the student protectors were jut self-interest draft dodgers or with a will to live and have the rich go fight wars for-themselves wasn’t considered a conservative recognition.

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1990 American conservatism no longer had the traditional enemy. Instead during the Clinton years it became itself an enemy of the poor and middle class America as it used its unchallenged power to consolidate wealth, betray the trust of the majority of conservative Americans and establish network of corporatism globally that changed the nation into a subjugated landing trip of new world order for aristocrats. Bad debt was distributed to the world, as American Wall Street quants became a non-producing skimming class.

William F. Buckley Jr. was an American patriot defending freedom against a powerful enemy. He was not a strong, emergent bully that would whuup the butts of his own people once the enemy was defeated through teamwork. William F. Buckley Jr. died before the first evil fruits of the pseudo-con corporate conservatism were enfiladed as aspect of an emerging predatory Wall Street, banking, mortgage, and corporate media aristocracy.

Real conservatives are not wise guy haves of dialectical media raving cons. Instead they conserve the planetary ecosphere, conserve natural resources, conserve morals, conserve family, conserve the wealth of the poor and middle class in helping them to secure their own prosperity-they do not reduce the majority to peonage, flood the nation with illegal aliens or develop a corporate lexicon of words regarded as hate speech and proscribe their use from the Internet by citizen writer.

Conservatism cannot be a technical right of repression of all but corporate interests and consolidation of non-democratic power. It cannot be an excuse to run roughshod over the actual economic interests of the majority. William F. Buckley Jr.’ conservatism was about the conservation of freedom and free enterprise democracy for all Americans-not just for an aristocracy. That I somewhat ironic since his demeanor was that of an intellectual aristocrat-one of a type I would think that would have warred to end the British aristocracy in America had lived in 1776, rather than take the side of conserving it.

12/18/11

Predator Drone's View of Last U.S. Convoy Leaving Iraq

It's a good view of the conclusion of a very expensive, paradoxical military action's final phase. With a congressional inability to create a balanced budget in the United States-and they are not even close, for with 14 trillion of public debt cutting social spending by even 50% would not balance the budget. Military spending needs a 25% cut, social security's top 30% should be cut, and the Bush-Obama tax cuts should expire. When the public pays nearly a trillion a year in interest on debt as it will in a few years with it being about 800 billion annually now it is getting little for its tax money if social spending is cut.

The Federal Government needs to run a tax surplus and pay off the debt. As the debt reduces its easier to finish paying it off. When it is eliminated its like getting the social spending sector paid for free comparatively (to the way it is now).

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/predator-convoy-iraq/

In Iraq, except for the terrorism after the invasion, the Bush administration might have created a perfect economy using supply side theory in two or three millenia.

12/16/11

E=mc2; the most famous formula

Mass (M) entirely converted into energy equals light moving away from itself at it's own speed. Hence E=mc2

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/emc2/emc2.html a technical explanation

Its kinda fun to think about. If superliminal speeds are attained by things they should have a different formula for energy. Faster-than-light speeds may have occurred during the early universe during an inflation. Maybe it produced weird energy forms and even unknown forms of mass, time and space that are 'out there' still.

Energy seems to be the process of association or dissociation of mass. Mass is comprised of energy ossified in solid state physics.


That mysterious (to me) nature of energy as the foundation of mass (mass in a non-energetic state) when it has settled down, ossified, established networks and basks in the gravitational glory of increasing mass sweeping up solar system debris and bits of dust strewn about for whatever reason is a fly-by-wire original nothing becomes something happening. Because its moving and energetic phenomena it can be slowed into mass. If energy is the foundation of mass, then what is the foundation of energy?

One physicist in Singapore posted a guest blog article at Scientific American recently something to the effect that exclusivist quantum probability selections entangle quanta from the all-possible locations relations that they seem to form solid state structures of mass for observers. Those clumps of mass would be the Universe's apparent elements for us humans.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/12/05/new-theory-explains-how-objective-reality-emerges-from-the-strange-underlying-quantum-world/#respondT

The nature of the quantum world is in some ways the most interesting and philosophically mysterious field of research out their today. Its good that so many physicists enjoy writing popular science books for general readers.

Darwinism & The Sun Dance as Evolution Phenomenalism

The Sun Dance is an ancient first people's religious ceremony of North America that seems to have parallel features with Darwinian evolution theory. The sun as the motivating source of biological being was implicitly recognized. The motivating power of life is energy in either case. Life on Earth in the ecosphere lasts not long without it.

Federal law violating the separation of church and state, in 1871, banned the Kiowa celebration of the Mystery of existence in the annual Sun Dance. The Kiowa traditionally placed a Buffalo head on a spear in the high church form of liturgy-not only because they relied upon buffalo as the basic business commodity after migrating from Montana to the plains, but because it was simultaneously the most excellent remaining specimen of life (besides mankind) grown by the sun on Earth.

Darwinian evolution theory is also a solid-state ecosphere rationalism though without the implicit religious devotion to the fundamental mystery of being. The Sun Dance was a concatenated celebration of life and its essential mystery without going into technical scientific details-it was a rational religious response to the challenge of the mystery of existence.

Contemporary Darwinians have gone to far in separating the scientific phenomenalism from the fundamental mystery that anything exists. With knowledge of the mechanics of the processes of the ecosphere grounded within a given phenomena of solid state physics, the evolutionary process as a process of change appearing in the quantum field of the Universe has transcended and eclipsed to the best of its votaries ability the philosophical and religious interest in the entire phhenomenality of being in all its phases from Universes to unknowable realms of time and space and even beyond into the non-temporal speculations of quantum cosmology and the powers of God.

All of the processes or states of being that appear to human beings as life occur at the will of God who phenomenally sent His Son to provide a way to surpass temporal process in a infinite, relativistic field of mysterious quantum processes and history. The sun and its energy is a motivating power to create biochemical structures from the Earth that become life in the event-process of a Universe. The transcending possibilities of the quantum mechanics of the things beyond the solid state phase of the Universe are for human beings today as distant from comprehension as was the meaning of the Sun Dance and Darwinian evolution theory passing the torch in a manner of speaking, of knowledge in the same mid-19th century.

The Sun Dance of the Kiowa and other first American peoples had a regard for the Mystery of Existence that is lacking from the mechanistic atheism of Darwinists today. The celebration of life as meaningless superstition is a core belief of amoral moderns in politics and science. Evolution processes are simply a characteristic of a 13.7 billion year process that has deeper quantum reality in no way exclusive philosophically from being an issuance and expression of the will of God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Dance

12/15/11

Newt Gingrich' PhD Thesis on Education in Belgian Congo 1945-1960-Lessons for U.S. Screwls? (use of radio vernacular)

A fact checker of the Washington Post considered former Speaker Newt Gingrich's career of eight years as an historian & professor besides his college education. Most of his life Mr. Gingrich has been a pro politician rather than an historian. He hasn't published a peer reviewed, scholarly article or history book, yet I can give him the benefit of the doubt. Most of his non-political reading might have been in history, so he has depth in history at least. He has 17 books on popular political topics. I have eight or nine Waveform Politics books of contemporary history essays (etc.)at lulu.com/garycgibson. I won't actually get another seven of those compilations of essays done. I will change the title of the series before that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/newt-gingrich-historian-fact-checker-biography/2011/12/13/gIQAJqiMsO_blog.html

Mr. Gingrich has got at least six fiction novels that might be co-authored on historical themes. I can't evaluate those having not read them. I don't like to review fiction books much anyway because they can stray from reality and the kind of refined soup straining an author must do with the words can be counter-productive to intelligent political and sociological reasoning. Its too easy to be critical of fiction books as if they weren't primarily for entertainment.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a great fiction novel called August 1914 that really does seem to be a realistic portrayal in fiction of a representative action of the German invasion of Russia. The Nobel laureate was a World War II artillery officer before being arrested by Stalinists and incarcerated for having been briefly a p.o.w.-that made them politically unreliable soldiers Stalinist believed. Newt has never been in the military so that's no worry.

My own fiction novels abstract social and political reality and neatly transform it into bits that could be thought of as something that extra-terrestrials might one day regard as fast food in some distant galaxy. I would like to rewrite them as a kind of exotic soup that would make a the Omaha papers Best Seller's List, yet the time to read philosophically meaningful material prohibits that along with frequent electrical interrupts.

Mr. Gingrich did not continue into his professional political life as a central African colonialist specialist. Perhaps some of his reading could be transferred and applied in places like Alaska, Mississippi and Massachusetts to get those native kids to be young pioneers of New World Order colonialist corporate policy. It would have been more helpful to the nation perhaps if he had done his thesis on why the KKK chose to use dunce caps as their personal organizational head gear.

The support the former speaker has received in the conservative for the rich concentration of wealth branch of the party isn't entirely remarkable. To some of the uneducated his oratorical style may appear to be what a smart guy is supposed to sound like-bright yet not to tough. Just toss Newt into the back of the pickup with the hay and shells and take him to the polls so people can get a look at him, listen to the smarts come out so they can vote right.

I believe that Mr. Gingrich's economic policies will not be very helpful to the poor if he is elected.

An historian named Daniel Rogers wrote an excellent book named 'The Age of Fracture' that I read this year. The rise of former Speaker Gingrich seems logical enough in an era described by Mr. Rogers. I will repost the review I posted earlier this year on that book.

The farther I have read in this book on American society and the evolution and fragmentation of political and economic thought in the United States since maybe 1960, the more I enjoy it. It should win a National Book Award. My undergraduate depth in philosophy and history allows me to appreciate the interdisciplinary scope and intensity of analysis the Princeton History professor Daniel Rodgers brought to these essays on fracturing or pluralistic platooning of more simple and aggregate forms of social thought in economics, sociology, politics, race, gender studies and more.

I had not considered the fact before that the 1960’s anti-establishment libertarianism of anti-war, anti-draft, anti-government radicals synergized very logically into a 1980’s anti-big government, libertarian anti-state neo-conservative political philosophy. One finds innumerable interesting points in this book to support development of one’s own new political theories as one realizes better where America thought amidst elites has been and how it got to be where it is today.

Even the law has changed significantly on the basis for assigning value and compensation for plaintiff claims. Real social values of damages differ from narrow, proximal differences, and market values of claims damages differ as well with time as an element.

Individuals rather than social aggregations seem to be the present American point of view from which social corrections of class inequalities might be made, or rather, disregarded. If social classes are specious then corrections for class inequalities are as well. This book surveys changes in language and social power structures, from Foucault and on to the philosophies of Rawls, Rorty and Nozick. The contest between structure and destructuralism in social perceptions and power, in the pursuit for social justice and relation to the market comprise dialectical intellectual and political evolution that from my point of view fail to appreciate the frontier, phenomenal and voluntary nature of primitive human social aggregation for which good character seeking to assure freedom and the best possible way of life for all within available environmental resource limits would have a temporal propensity for redistributing wealth to the lowest class of society in order to increase opportunity until it became socially and economically counter-productive to do so.

At this point I will leave off commenting about Rawls’ philosophy and ‘The Age of Fracture’ and describe a better way of regarding society, briefly.

Anarchy, State and Utopia by Nozick was a libertarian reply to Rawls’ earlier book of social philosophy ‘A Theory of Justice’ helpfully summarized by Rodgers in ‘The Age of Fracture’. I have read the classical philosophers of political philosophy, yet not too much the more contemporary as I stayed with analytical philosophy, cosmology and occasional retro-readings (regarding time eg. Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Augustine, Origin, Athanasius etc.) in theology. Readings in the analytic philosophy of W.V.O. Quine, P.F. Strawson, Cohen, and others led to a better understanding of the nature of language, words and objects and so forth. Because I view society as a phenomenal, evolutionary aggregation that creates its own linguistic and moral ontologies phenomenally and appropriate for various respective stages and circumstances, yet also believe in God and a natural structure of the Universe from its quantum level to a solid state level consistent with the concept of natural law, its rather simple to regard arguments about social roles, social and political power and so forth as also phenomenal historical circumstances. The ideal human society short of the arrival of God to supervise personally, would try to perpetually restore to human society the volunteer, equal access the fundamental material needs and freedom found in a healthy natural environment so far as possible.

In a very advanced society money as power is transcended and the individual has adequate power to provide for individual freedom. The primary political directive would be to prevent any kind of coercive subjugation of anyone else, such that all people would need to associate strictly on a voluntary basis.

Societies evolve and historically appear at any given place and time. Changing a social environment is always challenging and seldom is accomplished without discomfiture to significant portions of the population. When a society reaches a rational material balance with the ecosphere however, when technology becomes environmentally minimalist regarding displacement of the ecosphere and the economics of personal living needs are socially well advanced freeing society from direct needs to the preponderance of repressive competition or exploitation of the environment, then each individual should have enough energy to be creative and survive to prosper intellectually and physically without compiling power or energy in such a way as to be repressive of anyone else in society. In that advanced ecospheric social structure, one that incidentally is space-faring, money, energy or wealth would be freely available like water is to a primitive society in an area with lots of naturally flowing streams. In such a context of rational and socially prosperous economic management there would be no reason for anyone to try to dam up or compile excess water for-themselves anymore so than there would be a reason for a hundred wandering Indians living in Eastern Oregon 15,000 years ago to fence property.

Human civilization has existed for about 8,000 years, and the progress of human society in economics might be fairly measured by observing how it provides its members with food and other necessities of life. Before civilization, with a far smaller population, most of humanity had sufficiency in food. Human freedom was general as slavery largely is a consequence of organized social subjugation. With economic progress much of humanity is subjugated by bureaucratic and organizational structures requiring servitude in exchange for food, shelter and other necessaries. Medical advances are vast improvements over pre-civilization human conditions, yet they are not available to all and for many require a kind of financial bondage to get (debt). The advance of civilization will require a rectification of the deficiencies in these conditions.

One day when economic rationality has advanced far enough freedom from want for all of humanity may be a fact, and the ecosphere might simultaneously be restored. The prevention of crime and ecospheric unfeasibility vis demographics and continuity might be the sole coercive governance in a rational society with a productive economy of a lowest entropy condition.

Every individual might create a secure home as easily as flipping open a self phone that would disappear when flipped shut. No cause for permanent geographic displacement of ecosphere or geographic area would exist. Economic competition would stop. Quality technical progress could continue. Yet that would be more like the pursuits of knowledge that ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians pursued; knowledge for its own sake. Dialectical conversations would occur, and material fabrications could be accomplished when necessary for some particular exploration venture. Generally though the advanced society would have accomplished insinuation into the Earth ecosphere in the most energy efficient and effective way practical with barriers to travel overcome, communication ubiquitous, freedom defended and the economy renaturalized as an equivalent to nature able to cohere non-invasively within the ecosphere (nature).

President Obama-'Mission Accomplished'- (in Iraq)

President Obama Declares Mission Accomplished in Iraq-U.S. Flag Returned to Ft. Bragg
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December 15, 2011 04:18 PM EST (Updated: December 15, 2011 04:23 PM EST)
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About eight years after the start of the 2003 Iraq war to change the regime of the Dictator Saddam Hussein the war finally ends with the last U.S. troops exiting that nation and the U.S. flag ceremonially lowered. President Obama spoke before an audience at Ft. Bragg about the success of the mission, though he and others believed it was an unnecessary conflict.

The Iraqi Government obviously has many challenges. I believe they even had a few of their own protesters at their own Tahrir Square in the Arab Spring. Iran has a new U.S. drone RQ-170 that it can use to spy on the vast U.s. Embassy in Baghdad I suppose, and life has finally returned to normal with only sporadic suicide bombers, high gasoline prices, adversely impacted wetlands and global warming.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/us-soldiers-leaving-iraq-finished/story?id=15154685


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204844504577098711180800398.html

There were more than 4000 U.S. combat fatalities in the Iraq mission, with hundreds of thousands of injuries from delayed combat stress syndrome to concussions, and so forth that will require a lifetime of public expense to treat. It is lucky that Obamacare may exist to pay for treatment for life for traumatized veterans in counseling and so forth because the V.A. is often under-funded. Rather than the quoted 1 trillion dollar cost of the war, the real cost over the future is anticipated to be another two trillion for a cost of 3 trillion dollars. Probably a super-sized V.A. system expanded to include treatment of all the poor citizens would have been cheaper and more practical than the Obamacare plan-and there may be another war out there over the temporal horizon.

12/14/11

In Reply to 'What is the Purpose of Religion?' etc.

For much of human civilization the effort to make life easier or better; to get food when hungry easier through agriculture than hunting and migrating, to find a cure for cancer rather than stoically croaking in agony, to have a nation driving cars and watching big screen TV’s and football instead of inventing super-conducting electromagnetic highways or jogging super-marathons to work-that sort of seek-consumer-comfort project has been an essential goal of western civilization and that of much of the rest. It is why one fixes a leaky roof, makes war on bedbugs across Europe and generates electrical power. The revision necessary today is to accomplish that without destroying the ecosphere or reducing the quality of life for the poor and middle class.

The most strong men, those using steroids and performance enhancing drugs, want huge pay for playing kids ball games in order to have huge luxury things, pay low taxes and receive applause, glory and maybe enhanced dating opportunities, admission to the growing planetary aristocracy of elite millionaires and billionaires etc. Intellectually strong men (and women) might want some things to be made easy and others to be made more difficult. Who wants easy illegal drug importation into California from Mexico, or automatic rifles sent to Mexico? I think it would be great if it were easy to fly on a spaceship all over the Universe. Working to make difficult or impossible things easy has led inventors to try to make it so

In ages past of course people like Achilles wanted a warriors death as noble. Battlefield death avoided cancer and a variety of unpleasant, less glorious and unprofitable alternative ways to die.

If one has comparative social privations one wants things as easy as one's peers if possible.

The coefficient of physical, mental and moral adversity varies from circumstance to circumstance socially and geo-historically. Seeking after comfort as an end in itself can be as dangerous to one's well being philosophically as too much social and environmental stress. Of course those following The Lord have a mission in progress allowing them to rate challenges with a prioritization of values not the same as those with rather epicurean goals I would think.

'What is the purpose of religion' places the word religion into a class itself as an existing thing. If one is a sociologist one might examine them from an entirely empirical perspective and note ala B.F. Skinner some of the amoebic purposes of conformable behavior in each respective case. Philosophically speaking it may be inappropriate to generalize outside of the historical context or in disregard of it on the purpose of some religions assuming that all have equal functions within the meta-class of religions.

I believe the word religion is derived from a French word-meaning liege or allegiance. Christ had a mission to the world's lost different from that of other religions. One should at least make a survey of religions to learn why followers of particular beliefs regarded the works of the founder as worth devotion.

What is the purpose of life is a larger question that entails human responses to life in sub-unit paradigms such as 'what is the purpose of religion'. Some religious actions such as Islam may have been created for political organizing and power, yet one cannot assume that human knowledge has all knowledge of the purpose of religion if the origin is atemporal and divine. The search for the ultimate particle-a Higgs possibly, or a Higgs field as a field giving value and form to all other particles paradoxically itself possibly deterministic and not an all-possible world locations continuum before downloaded to observation. That is a Higgs field that creates solid state quantum particle selections entangling and excluding sufficient probabilities of being at other locations to statistically create the apparent Universe of solid state matter, has a comparable sort of uncertainty for human observers to us intrinsically that substantial knowledge of a Divine Being and His purpose have for clerics and mystics enquiring into the nature of God-one has a lot of uncertainty even if the topic is fascinating.

Capture of Drone RQ-170 Leaves Unanswered Questions

When the Iranian evidently brought the secret C.I.A. operated aircraft in for a safe landing perhaps by skyjacking the wireless controls or given the power to fly the aircraft by an insider espionage agent it is remarkable that the U.S. Government simply gave up power and had no dead-man device inside the detonate the air vehicle.

The entire idea of reducing large size aircraft with high radar profiles or small stealthy size for surveillance missions is somewhat expensive. Besides drone aircraft having some sort of explosive package that goes off if it flies below a specified altitude without being in U.S. government control, maybe U.S. legislators unable to get full employment and a better standard of living with no public debt within a reasonable time could be made to detonate to and a new set of legislators installed again with built in performance packages for incentive.

Some sort of a public employment, environmental and economic quality of life index made with public debt cognizance and so forth could be formed to rate any given congress on performance.

Very expensive fixed wing aircraft that are spy planes might be augmented by ultra-light transparent or lighter-than aircraft with miniaturized electronics and launched from large air-force planes by the thousands to have a very low radar signature yet be far cheaper. Maybe one could develop disposable cheap spy aircraft to deliver small amounts of emergency food supplies to starving populations without runways as well. That would be an interesting experimental opportunity.

Ideas About the Omnipotence of God

The neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus wrote of the idea of The One in his Enneads. That concept of omnipotence of the One is consistent with what one might think about The One from a human point of view as contingent beings.

Cosmologists and physicists today have several paradigms regarding the nature of the solid-state matter-energy of the Universal phenomenality. It may be an exclusionary probability entanglement of the quantum world of all-possible worldlines of each waveform. One may view a Feynman diagram of a one- loop process within a field (probably in more than four dimensions) and extrapolate to a Higgs field donating mass or energy to the standard model's particles. The One however is initial meta-field at some point, and it always seems to me that the renormalization of philosophical explanations of cosmology with quantum mechanical foundation returns to the enigmatic monism of the One as well.

Quantifying things as referents linguistically or paradigmatically within Quinian categories of lexicons ontologically speaking seems a normal language practice. One might quantify a universe or universes in the abstract, quantify them as of infinite extension in space or time, or avoid specifying any sort of certainty in location or time and space as a routine part of theory. When one makes an idea description of all that a universe is the meta-paradigmatic boundaries of the description are cloudy and like the maps of the pre-Columbian era full of unknown shores. Uncertainty and incompleteness seem like quanta themselves that one might classify in some way.

It is difficult to imagine a universe made with quarks, strings, membranes, fields, monads, spirit, matter, energy or whatever as anything less than a monistic phenomenality given some pluralism for human observers with a process with uncertain local and non-local boundaries. The quantum universe and physical processes that occur before or after anything could be said to exist, or while a Universe exist is one aspect of the monistic power. For the indefinable God that emits or permits the Universe to appear the contingent events are his willed emanations malleable to fact of existence.

Without requiring pantheism, the pluralism of a Universe and quantum explanations, or field explanations of membrane and string phenomenalities is transparent and subjective within the will of God.

12/13/11

Use and Reference Theories of Meaning

Well, I have a couple of minutes to write something about the topic.

Wittgenstein of course was an early linguistic philosopher, son of the richest man in Europe, who served admirably in the First World War as a soldier in Europe. He actually worked on the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus while stationed in Italy. That was a little like Descartes in some respects who was stationed in Bavaria as a mercenary and wrote his Discourse on a Method after thinking contemplatively in a sauna. Descartes was never in love with a British fighter pilot though, and Wittgenstein was.

I was rather shocked to learn of that eccentricity of the philosopher whom was also a competent engineer. I believe his wealthy background and wierd life brought him to examine language for-itself as some sort of solid ground, though of course shfting and difficult to define linguistically speaking. His fighter jock was killed in the war.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/

Wittgenstein’s work after he moved to Cambridge as a PhD with Russell's help included writing the Blue and Brown books-those express his ideas about language rather well. He has a rabbit reffered to by natives as a 'gavagai'. By association a language translator learns what the meanings of gavagai might be and then forms a lexicon. Wittgenstein also uses the example of meanings such as 'bring a brick' in brick laying parlance. I reallize this is not a very technical discussion. Good reading.

Word meaning origins as explained within a philosophical context however may be found described a little more completely with W.V.O. Quine's 'Philosophy of Logic'-read the first few chapters, then try his 'Ontological Relativity'.

Quine placed all word structures within ontologies that may be regarded as sets. Sets of course have the elements of the set as potential referents and meanings. Wittgenstein associated word use with situation that conveyed a particular meaning to a given word use. Quine can acknowledge that implicitly however as a logician he has taken a look at the construction of language from phonemes and morphemes and built up from that an explanation of elements of interest to a logician rather than a grammarian the points of interest in discussing truth.

Intentional theories of meaning versus the extensional in some ways have a psychological component that was elaborated by empiricism working along Immanuel Kant's epistemological distinction of categories and meaning. Philosophically the location of meaning-in the mind or in the world, and the location of qualities such as objects seen, is a perennial topic perhaps resolved by quantum mechanics a little. Ideas that are of the mind such as 'I don't like strawberry pudding' differ from ideas with external referents such as scientists like. Extensional ideas refer to the material world while intentional ideas have a psychological and subjective component.

W.V.O. Quine of course abolished the analytic-synthetic distinction in his ’Two Dogmas of Empiricism'. Empiricism was given a real punch on the jaw from which it hasn't recovered. Quine helpfully provided his 'Ontological Relativity' to explain how language has a use and simultaneous reference basis. I enjoy reading Quine now and then and recommend his work.

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Senate Should Vote to Defend Rights of Americans from Arrest and Exfiltration by U.S. Military

The U.S. Senate voted 99 to 1 not to clarify or defend the right of U.S. citizens to have due process of law when accused by the government of criminal or terrorist activity. Instead, because the laws are made by the rich and the rich were attacked by Al Qa'eda on 9-11, the Bush II provision allowing possible arrest of U.S. citizen sympathizers, associates or facilitators of Al Qa'eda and/or possible other activities deemed terrorist by the authorities greased the skids of the commoner Americans for rightless ransacking by black-bagging military exfiltration squads, anonymous foreign detention, stateless torture and military tribunals in-camera (secret). Seems like a rotten development.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/senate-declines-to-resolve-issue-of-american-qaeda-suspects-arrested-in-us.html

I understand well that overpaid politicians with bad bills ought to be given extraordinary rendition and water boarded at Guantanamo Bay until they come to their senses. Newt Gingrich perhaps might give back the Freddie Mac 1.6 million dollar payment for working up a history profile or whatever for the CEO as 14 billion dollars was pilfered and lost as bad investments (how do you get it done Newt?), yet ordinary citizens should be free from such perfidy even if they plan to revolt against the government and need to develop a plan of attack.

It should not be illegal to plan to revolt against the government especially if it is fiction used for gaming purposes. War gaming in the present should be as acceptable socially as re-enacting civil war battles. How otherwise could new Commandants of West Point make the difficult decision to field a coup and restore a good government?

The idea that the 58,000 millionaires of Boston and the U.S. military are in some way good enough citizens to have the right to arrest and exfiltrate U.S. citizens from Harvard U. for waterboarding interrogations because they have knowledge of networks of Palestinian and Somali terrorist life ways is silly. President Bush II's incompetent post-war reconstruction plans for Iraq did more harm to the U.S. economy than a dozen flights crashing into the Pentagon and other sinks of U.S. taxpayer funding ever could. Maybe a President should be exfiltrated to Gitmo for waterboarding to reveal if he intentionally planned to run up such a military debt that social spending could be cut-such wickedness lurks in the halls of the rich and of defense contractors!

The right to plan revolts even if they aren't used is as fundamental for American liberty as the right to own guns. Without plans it would be impossible to have a civil war to remove an aristocracy today-and the founders believed that Americans implicitly have the right to revolt against corrupt, unjust, capital concentrating, deficit spending, oppressive rotten government as they did themselves.

In times past actual revolutions against the rich and the feudal over-vampires have required actual violence to get on. Though the United States has entered the age of moral and economic perfection with perfected interpretation of the scripture of Adam Smith with impeccable exegesis by economist-monks of the Chicago School, and hence peace and domestic tranquility shall forever ensue, one day some substantial element of the population may want to roll the heads of the rich again. Americans must protect that right-of-revolt for future generations since it a foundational element of liberty, equality and social justice as well as of full employment and good pay for all citizens.

Economics take note of the comparative thriftiness of revolutions. In the Al Qa'eda incident the assymetric economic warfare was entirely in favor of the cost-conscious Al Qa'eda, while in the Libyan revolution the expenses of the revolutionaries was far less than the historical defense spending budget of the Khaddafi administration.

Al Qa'eda may be a foreign terrorist organization-in translation it simply means 'the base'. So if a domestic terrorist militia does not affiliate with a foreign terrorist militia or lashkar then they are free from arrest by covert operators with HK's, night vision optics, niitrogen grenades for flash-freezing and so on?

Reason does allow U.S. military forces to help bag really tough clumps of terrorists in the U.S.A. if need be, as they could be called in to fight a Godzilla after the monster slaughtered L.A. Sheriff Department warriors. In regard to military arrests of American citizens thought to comprise a threat to the class interests of the rich through whatever means really threaten the rich (raising their taxes to 90%?), that should just never happen. If they are American citizens it just has to be good enough to give them a regular trial and then let them go to plan their next nativist uprising against the occupation forces of evil repressing the masses.

The Senate should pass a defense of civil rights act that clarifies the point that none of the rights in the constitution can be abridged and transmogrified into neat little pieces of paper airplanes like meaningless zen koans that float through space without leaving taxable footprints. American citizens should never be removed from the United States involuntarily for any reason unless to help former congressmen plan how to create more funding for defense contractors while cutting taxes for defense contractors.

The magic world of military torturers that Senator Graham seems to believe is supervised by a more dependable kind of citizen or foreign guest soldier/proxy (though none dare call it torture) is an inappropriate location for American citizens to have their legal questions examined. It is easy to understand that empowered government apes of righteousness beleive they can do no wrong and should not be summarily executed for abrogating the rights of U.S. citizens, and I would probably feel the same way too if I used steroids or was all juiced up to have no respect for the U.S. legal system. Recursion of righteousness inquisitors and degrees of torture appropriate for those thought to be threatening to the rich are tough questions for the government to secretly answer and to leave vague.

I might suggest that if the incompetent border security against illegal immigrants was corrected, and if more stringent standards were used for awarding citizenship to a constellation of five passport holding Americans such that they could have just one if naturalized, it would reduce the number of technical citizens lusting to drop a nuclear bomb on Washington D.C. more than regular politicians of a few foreign countries.

The U.S. legal system should leave no ambiguity about the rights of U.S. citizens to have due process of law in a public court by a jury of their peers. The needless and corrupting drift into the dark side of the force is an infarction to justice and a corruption of the spirit of freedom that was the purpose of the American experiment in democracy. It is quite reasonable and desirable that military powers to arrest and exfiltrate U.S. citizens beyond the jurisdiction of the state and federal laws within the territorial boundaries of the United States be defended against rather than supported. Supporters of such insidious evils are more of a 'them' caliber that raised the rebel flag at Ft. Sumpter than defenders of the American way.

12/12/11

Much Anticpated Higgs Particle Announcement MaƱana

The CERN announcement tomorrow that people speculate will announce better evidence of the existence of a Higgs Boson particle of between 90 and 40 GeV yet possibly as much as 140 GeV will not herald the discovery of a 'god' particle embedded in solid state physics as a concatenated probability association of quantum uncertatinty. It would indicate that particle accelerators and theoretical physicists have taken one more step to fill in the sketch of the ways and forms that quantum energy takes in the Universe.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-does-the-higgs-boson

The Higgs field and its particle the Higgs boson are described by some as a new kind of mass, yet it has existed since the inception of the Universe within a given cosmological paradigm. Those cosmological theories change from time to time providing deeper knowledge yet not necessarily evolving in some linear, hierarchical order of consistency.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle


A Higgs field is in some ways comparable to an electromagnetic field. The standard model of physics differs from string theory, which offers a deeper explanation for the values of quantum particles. The Higgs boson should have certain values in order to fit logically into the paradigm of values of other quantum particles. The Higgs field is believed to be more fundamental than the other particles, masses and fields and in fact to give them their mass. In other words the particles of the standard model are regarded as localized expressions of the Higgs Field. The Higgs boson too get's its mass from the field.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Theoretical_overview

I have no idea how physicists extrapolate the existence of uncertainty within a primordial Higgs field. Perhaps uncertainty is local within the universal non-locality of the field.

The Higgs field was early in cosmological inflation theory regarded as a possible source of the energy in Guth's theory. Now the Higgs field isn't now considered a cause of the initial or present expansion of space-time. Knowledge of dark energy-the lamda force- and its relation to a Higgs field (if either exist) are full of uncertainty.

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