10/31/12

Hot Air of Obamanomics Attempts Inflation of Bush II Policy Balloon

 President Obama has continued George W. Bush's economic policy since 9-11 of tax cuts and deficit spending to pump prime the economy. Reliance upon kindling to start a fire can be expensive when there is nothing to burn besides because the wood wasn't chopped. The U.S. economy may have a hard time catching fire with so many drafts, constraints and dangers to the environment and its resources from that internal engine of combustion.

President Bill Clinton's intelligence failures led to the sacking of Glass-Steagle and the rise of Moslem terrorist threats to the U.S. and eventually 9-11. President Obama continued that failure with his present foreign intelligence team in Benghazzi and depleted the intellectual capital inherited from the Bush II years that developed the capture of Osama Bin Laden and wrapping up of the Iraq troop deployment.

It is President Obama's continuation of G.W. Bush's economic policy of tax cuts and deficit spending that is the major threat to U.S. economic stability ahead. Perhaps there will be a natural readjusting downward economic collapse ever decade or two cycling the deficit spending based economy.

With the immediate economic slump in the U.S. following the twin attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon the two wars against Iraq and Afghanistan stimulated the U.S economic without being paid for with increased taxes. Like Obama deficit spending the wars were economic stimuli added to the U.S. public debt. President Bush did not know of the flimsy Clinton era reforms of banking and home mortgages well enough to anticipate better than most Wall Street forecasters that the U.S. economy could not survive the economic stress of two wars or tax increases. President Bush cut taxes to stimulate economic growth and in December 2010 President Obama was the head cheerleader for renewing the Bush II tax cuts for the remainder of his administration.

With twelve years of deficit spending to stimulate and economic that transitioned from bloated no-competition defense contractor outlays to quantitative easing (printing dollars to buy U.S. bonds) with trillion dollars annual federal budget deficit the U.S. economy cannot even keep pace with population growth in job creation or environmental inspiration. The hot air of deficit financed growth paying down trillion dollar annual federal budget deficits is a failure to recognize the continuity of an economy misfiring since 9-11 that needs fundamental reform and a different economic approach.

I would like to point out that the United States could be a leading example in showing how democracy and team enterprise can lift all citizens out of poverty rather than circling the wagons around a declining middle class attacked on all sides by their own lack of political intelligence. A real perpetual democratic revolution in the U.S.A. would renormalize from the growth of large stable and ad hoc elitist organizational hegemony to one of individualistic enterprise and legal egalitarianism. The United States should assure that no citizen lacks the basic food, transport, shelter and minimum cash income needed to get the citizen out of circumstantial economic whirlpools of oppression that cannot be escaped.

The pursuit of enlightened self-interest and the concurrent pursuit of happiness require that individuals have the actual opportunity to do so. A modern democracy should limit the size of corporations and the number of corporations an individual can invest in to let government and political expression per citizen be more meaningful. The broadcast media should be reallocated to individual citizen podcast slices. If the media at the time of the revolution were owned by just the rich it is probable that less support for the revolution would have developed.

For democracy to mature as a political form it must trust its own citizens enough to not feel a need to repress them in place trough economic oppression. For many modern intellectual enterprises economic stability is required even for basic ventures such as writing computer programming or other intellectual capital development investments of time. If an author must go without electricity and live in the stone age of a yurt annually his or her productivity will decline-and that's simply socially extravagant profligacy.

If the United States cannot mature in governance to reform democracy such that it really works for all citizens (and secure no-immigration borders are requisite of rationing governance) it isn't likely that any nation shall. The citizens need to be encouraged to be active, healthy and intelligent all of their lifetime. They should be able to be reactive to environmental challenges and arrest the decline of life on Earth. U.S. citizens should also have the intellect to create better lifestyles and dwellings without displacing the ecosphere in which human life coheres. If the United States cannot run a balanced budget and improve the lives of their citizens from the bottom up then who can?

The down side of being a nation of immigrants is that they can be fair seas sailing opportunists steeped in avarice that flee from significant changes and challenges that require if not sacrifice at least diversion from unreasoned consumerism. If the economy and environment are in decline in then U.S.A. well heck, why not just invest over the border?

10/27/12

One Theory About Too Much Government

There have been many theories about too much government being the problem for American economic health. Sometimes that is so, sometimes it isn't. The neo-narco state of Mexico has too little governing law enforcement in some respects, while a Soviet style state of insider party apparatchicks can be too much obviously. It is not only the quantity of government that is an issue, it is also a matter of government quality and orientation.


Petro-state governments have a cadre of insiders with cynched earnings from oil sales. The width of the dispersion of wealth may be decisive on the economic opportunities of the masses.
Government jobs in a variety of forms may be broadly available to many purchasing in effect social compliance and legions of followers with no interest in getting their head from under the hood of the machine especially if the resources are high and population low, and especially if there are opportunities for global corporations to outsource much of the natural wealth as the locals have been paid off. The insiders need to limit competetive private sector developments to maintain their power structure and a happy camp develops including payments to educational facilities and revenue sharing to municipalities. That social structure is intolerant of actual competitive economic development.
Some may regard the development of oil and gas resources in the U.S.A. recently through fracking as a movement toward pertro-statehood and the alternative economic development retardation that follows. A nation of oil followers burning fossil fuels moving toward 500 p.p.m. of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere globally seems a phenomenal trend. Instead of intelligent political leadership the nation since Bill Clinton has moved toward corporate statehood-even the Premeir of Communicst China's family has taken billions of dollars in lifestyle enhancement evidently as the urge to surge toward resource consumption and pure material production without intelligent limits has corrupted many social ecosystems.
Too much government can occur without a petro-state though. Simply building up state unions and bureaucrats with too large of numbers can require that very little social changes besides enhancing union benefits occur. The primary goals for ad hoc bureaucratic socialism arr to redistribute wealth from the corporate world to government workers, dependents and contractor friends. Too much redistribution can be a daylight vampire predation upon the corpororate herd of course bring low economic growth and high unemployment as anemia is pervasive.
We know though that government is an ad hoc networking in several respects these days. Bill Clinton's termination of Glass-Steagle let the People's Liberation Army buy in to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so many Americans can pay rent to the Red Army for being such nice landlords indirectly. They were tolerant of all the mortgage defaults and have stayed with the Federal Government through these hard times.
Too large of corporate size in wealth and employees works against competition and free enterprise. Social organization from communist parties to corporations let social collectives become intimidatingly powerful over the rest of the unaffiliated citizenry. The solution isn't to end corporations and take away their status legally as individuals since some social corporate structures are necessary for larger and complex economic projects to exist. The right direction to take, and one that is unliked by government or corporate sectors would be too limit the size of any corporation to 3000 employees and the number of corporations that anyone could invest in to three. If large development structures are needed it would be possible for temporary corporate relationships to develop to produce faster than light widgets or whatever.
To restore competition and to prevent the large organizational inertia that resists economic changes because of vested interest and cynched lifestyle mass social organizations of a private nature in business should be limited in size. Government without being wrapped up in spirals of interaction with too large size businesses might be able to downsize itself and perhaps, one day become responsive to real environmental and demographic challenges the nation and world face while yet searching for general social justice and equal protection of the law. Petro-states tend to function like soft authoritarian states where the rule of law is second in value to keeping class interests dominant over the state.

Language Exchanges Increase Membership


It seems like a good idea-going online to converse with someone in a language you are learning. At the University of Alaska S-E. a group of students traveled to Cuba to learn some Spanish recently-it would have been less costly and air polluting to just go online and talk with people directly. The exchange below has a million members.
There may be improvements in the software that will make casual conversation work as effectively as playing chess at chess.com with selections of language level and number of minutes to converse face-to-face with various topic choices. If I need to learn a language to communicate with those with vast social distance in government or media I may consider using 'the language exchange'.

President Obama's Council of Export's Policy-Outsource Jobs to Mexico!


President Obama's Council of Exports Chairman- a Boeing Executive from Chicago, has urged suppliers to outsource jobs and production to Mexico. Boeing is holding an outsourcing strategy session in Chicago November 15, 2012.

10/26/12

Fried Planets at N.A.S.A. Sciencecasts (YouTube)


N.A.S.A. Sciencecasts at YouTube have presented a new video on planets fried by their star's expansion in the red giant phase. Its quite good.
Since the discovery (very probable) of the Higgs particle confirming the existence of the Higgs Field it does make one wonder if gravity is simply a change of charge (flip flop) of local areas of the Higgs Field from positive (space expands) to negative (space-time contracts) in the presence of mass or energy.
Stars such as white dwarfs and neutron stars approach the quantity of mass that creates a black hole (formerly known as a Mitchell dark star) have enough quantum degeneracy pressure to resist the complete inward collapse of mass in gravity. Space-time is quite warped by such mass density. Stars like the sun that expand into a red giant phase in a few billion years through the process of burning up their hydrogen then helium and so forth fuel singe planets in orbit nearby.

10/24/12

Possible Complications in The Syrian Civil War

The tragic Syrian Civil War that developed as a result of Arab Spring momentum has so far cost more than 30,000 lives and has edged toward expanded conflict in Lebanon. Early on President Obama repeatedly called for President Assad to give up leadership of his  nation and that perhaps stimulated the organization and support for the rebellion that is largely sectarian. The end of the tunnel does not seem to be in sight yet we may anticipate a couple of additional scenarios that could develop.

If with the support of 'The Friends of Syria' and copious donations of money and material for the rebels from a few nations as well as transient terrorists visiting from several fundamentalist Moslem jihadist movements around the region the Assad-Alawite Government of Syria begins to falter, there could be international support arriving from the substantial military capacity of Hezbollah of Lebanon and Iran.
A Hezbollah intervention in the Syrian conflict would not occur before the Assad was on the ropes because of the damage to the prestige of the Assad Government that was for decades a supporter of Hezbollah of The Lebanon. In the Israel-Hezbollah conflict the Shiite irregulars demonstrated significant capability that would surpass that of the present anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
The potential for a Shia-Sunni proxy conflict in Syria does exist, as power abhors a vacuum and taking over Syria would be desirable for several Moslem elements and variants of Shiism. It is difficult to say where Israel would fit in all that-perhaps Israel would need to occupy Syria at the worst of the civil conflict in order to make a protectorate of it until the U.N. can find some way of fairly apportioning the property to individual deserving citizens. As unlikely as this last scenario is, it is probable that a simple transition to a post-Assad Government isn't inevitable.

Hecklers Attack President for Rape and Murder of Ambassador to Wazzoostan

 Hecklers interrupted a Presidential fundraiser for failing to rescue the Ambassador to Wazzoostan from a Lawrence of Arabia special before being killed last month. The administration viewed the developing events from a Predator drone for seven hours and confirmed there was nothing they could do to help.

 Critics say that seven hours was enough time for rescuers from the Elta Force to put their boots on, pack a lunch and rush to Wazzoostan aboard American-built Osprey troop aircraft to bring cookies and milk to the terrorists in exchange for the Ambassador's release. The administration said a sacrilegious educational video desecrating the role model of the Rebel Organizer For Liberation of Butch Power made in the States of Debt required human sacrifice to Moloch and further, the Ambassador to Wazzoostan was that sacrifice.
Administration supporters point out that in this election year confusion develops while in the fog of war about what really happened the last few weeks neither confirming or denying that it did exist. They also said that Ambassadors being raped and murdered are nothing to be concerned before an election. Even the perfect may let security lapses happen

10/23/12

Anomolous Monism and Quantum Neurophysics


I thought I would write a comment on an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Anomolous Monism. Its an interesting theory uniting psychological tokenism and physical causality within a monist paradigm without requiring a direct physical cause of mental events (i.e. ideas). perhaps I didn't express that very well. Here is the url for the entry...
The absence of discussion about quantum mechanics and its role in comprising the neural network of the brain, its synapses and chemical memory and thought processing is notable. A a deeper level of discussion I suppose that some philosophers look in to that sort of thing.
It is interesting that the brain and its memory seems to work a little like a computer memory keeps its impressions and ideas on various subjects until they are updated or changed by new data. Not simply facts about things but ideas about facts about things tend to remain as they are until new information arrives-what else could one do with data if there isn't anything to replace it (write science fiction?)
The brain like everything else seems to be made of particle-waves in various atomic clusters of molecules-and all that based in force quanta in orbital, string,  loop or membrane increments permitted by force protocol. Each bit of quantum force seems as if it has mass in its energy equivalence. By the time force-energy-mass is ossified in stable structure cohering like knots in a string made in a Higgs Field it is named by some 'physical'. Mental and physical events  are made of the same particle-wave foundation in different structures, so it is there that one gets to the monism of anomolous monism I suppose-though the language is of a different protocol level of description.
Spirit is a more mysterious thing. It make be regarded as donated by God to human beings because they are conscious yet it is easy to find like Spinoza a kind of pantheism in monism.  That's simply a simpler, earlier philosophical understanding of matters though.
While God may be the ultimate spirit that provides energy and mass to occur in Universal deterministic temporality., that is the force energy may arise from His will and so in a deep level everything is of God, there is a difference between God and emergent phenomena in the same way that a photon is an emergent phenomenality of an electro-magnetic field and human beings are an emergent phenomenon of a different and more complex series of fields. Though the D.N.A. of a plethora of biologically living beings shares many common bases it is the subtle difference and structures that enable one to say convincingly that a seal is not an turtle or a crab a sparrow. One may have a finite group of numbers yet the organization of the numbers may not be the same say in 1 through 10. These differences are phenomenally meaningful though they are just temporal and emergent characteristics of deeper, transcending events, processes and forces.

10/22/12

Lebanon Bracing For Politically Destabilizing Erratics from Syrian Civil War

Since the assassination of Lebanese Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan- a security chief Friday sporadic violence has developed between pro and con elements. The chief was a Sunni while the Lebanese President is Shi'a and supported by Hezbollah and perhaps Syria or Iran indirectly. There are concerns that the sectarian civil war in Syria may reignite the long dormant Lebanese Civil strife that ended in 1990. The Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990 was a very unpleasant affair.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/lebanon.htm

A loose political balance has existed since then between the Syrian backed Hezbollah forces and the Lebanese Christians with Hezbollah the dominant party. If the Syrian regime becomes defunct it is not improbable that the political balance in Lebanon will alter substantially. There have reportedly been Salafist Sunni militants involved in the incipient Lebanese conflict.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/10/22/lebanon-erupts-in-fighting/1649839/

Six Scientists & A Bureaucrat Convicted of Manslaughter for Earthquake

Six earthquake scientists and a bureaucrat were convicted of failing to provide sufficient warning of an Earthquake that killed more than 300 people in 2009's L'Aquila earthquake. They were given six year sentences.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/10/newsflash-laquila-earthquake-exp.html?rss=1

Professional malpractice may be a growing trend for the legal profession. Its lucky that politicians can't be convicted of that. At least the public will have the satisfaction of convicting scientists for failing to warn the public of global warming disaster and the end of most human life on Earth ahead should that occur in the next hundred years or two.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-scientist-sues-for-defamation

10/21/12

The Innocence of the President's Flip Flop on 'The Innocence of Islam''

Initially President Obama blamed the comic video 'Innocence of Islam' for the killing of four Americans andincluding Ambassador Stevens in Libya September 11, 2012. In the second Presidential debate the President denied that his administration had blamed the video rather than terrorists. That was a flip flop on the administration's explanation as well as its actual history.
The President's dissimulation was reinforced by the debate moderator who has since recanted her point. The Innocence of President Obama of his own recent administration positions leaves a few people incredulous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E55rwmKSyg Innocence of Islam (the video)
The President condemned all acts of terrorism or violence yet for nearly two weeks his administration misled the public advocating that wrong premise that 'The Innocence of Islam' drove a Libyan mob to a frenzy of violence that took the life of Ambassador Stevens instead of an organized criminal conspiracy of terrorists.
For nearly two weeks a Coptic ex-pat video maker endured the blame of administration mouthpieces for stimulating the mob of Libya to rage against all tings American. The poor video producer struggling simultaneously to find some way to speak out against the cruelty in Egypt given to Coptic Christians by Moslem members of the only major religion in the world that explicitly supports the notion that they have a right to rule the world and to use death and deception upon resistors and perhaps to make a buck became a felon in the video production by over-extending charges on credit cards. Following in the Wall Street banking bad debt tradition is no excuse for building up vast public debt of course. It is understandable if not excusable.
The poor man from Egypt was arrested in the middle of the night in Los Angeles, interrogated and made an object of government and media abuse. So much for free speech when it runs afoul of the leftist narrative.
The Obama team seemed to have lost some support with comments on the issue of the killing of U.S. Ambassador Stevens in Libya September 12th. The President now maintains that he did not blame a video for stimulating the assassination, but terrorists instead from the start. The C.I.A. reported the fact that organized terrorists perpetrated the event within 24 hours through official channels.
Vice-President Biden blamed the intelligence community as well as the President. There is no question that the public was made by the administration to believe that a 15 minute comedy video on the life of Mohammed that few Moslems had seen was the reason for the violence. Instead, a planned Al Qaeda assault made because of the opportunity to organize terror in the vacuum of Libyan law enforcement transpired.

10/19/12

Romney Surges to 7 Point Lead in New Gallup Poll


Mitt Romney has taken the lead in the Presidential preference poll among likely voters by seven points. The electorate may yet take direct action against the Obama plan to add another five trillion dollars of public debt if he is re-elected.
The Obama team seemed to  have lost some support with comments on the issue of the killing of  U.S. Ambassador Stevens in Libya September 12th. The President now maintains that he did not blame a video for stimulating the assassination, but terrorists instead from the start. The C.I.A. reported the fact that organized terrorists perpetrated the event within 24 hours through official channels. Vice-President Biden blamed the intelligence community as well as the President. There is no question that the public was made by the administration to believe that a 15 minute comedy video on the life of Mohammed that few Moslems had seen was the reason for the violence. Instead, a planned Al Qaeda assault made because of the opportunity to organize terror in the vacuum of Libyan law enforcement  transpired.
http://m.startribune.com/politics/?id=174996631&c=y An administration friendly timeline
The President has taken to general smears against the rising Romney with yippish 'witticisms'  (i.e. 'Romnesia' )that may backfire since there are so many voters of Romney's generation offended by the age bigotry of Mr. Obama. If the Romney-Ryan team cannot reform the problems of inefficient government retirement and disability support structures for the poor and middle class its unlikely that a better chance will appear before the U.S.A. piles of 30 trillion dollars of public debt within the next decade.

10/17/12

Why President Obama Doesn't 'Get It' About the Unemployed


President Obama and Mitt Romney each may hold foreign citizenship. Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama's father are foreign born (George Romney in Mexico to U.S. citizens) so the children likely inherit citizenship. Does the U.S. electorate care that jobs are being outsourced, free trade agreements to prosper cheap foreign labor are advocated equally by each candidate or that the 23 million out of work are about equal to the number of illegal aliens in the United States?
I wanted to write something a little bit counter-cyclical to the politically correct 'We are a nation of immigrants' theme commonly dumped as a justification for failure to secure the Mexican border against illegal entry by cheap foreign migrant workers and terrorists. Everyone has a right to exist and have a good way of life, yet the citizens of a nation should be first rather than long-term incidental casualties of political correct indifference.
Is America a nation of immigrants or instead the soft underbelly of nature that naturally predacious human beings swelled in to because of the natural repulsiveness of the tribe in the old world? In Europe, Asia and Africa human beings exterminated rival species and they still do including their own kind so a certain extent. Traveling to the frontiers to escape the oppression of tribes, nations and primitive bureaucrats ordering the infidels into the stew pot is not a new thing at all. America may be a nation of immigrants from its earliest days yet that is no commendation. Instead it is a proof that mankind cannot live within its environmental means.
The world today is over-populated regarding demographics and resource base. It is headed for mass social die off from one or more of a variety of causes. It also has the possibility of encountering mass economic collapse and a Soviet style state developing in the United States down the road as a dictatorship of the proletariat allocates scares remaining resources. The United States like all nations should live within its boundaries, secure those boundaries and make sure that all citizens have a job and adequate shelter plus productive and meaningful research prospects.
President Obama has unrealistically declared that all Americans should have highly skilled, high paying jobs and that is just a pie in the sky platitude satisfactory to CEO's that enjoy having an excuse to hire people from around the globe and to outsource jobs in order to find 'highly skilled workers'.  My college education was never worth a dime financially speaking, and the years and expense of college for today's youth is quite impractical as half are already out of work and they start life with vast personal debt to match up the vast public debt.
The majority of Americans are C students. Many have neither aptitude for nor interest in 'highly skilled' job training requiring years of education at large personal cost and years wasted without personal earnings. Sending a nation of C students to college for several years may train a generation for jobs that become obsolete before they graduate. The dark side of high skills training is the general uselessness of aforementioned skills for anything besides highly specialized work-those workers is the easiest for management to manipulate as the workers depend upon that corporate structure.
The future administration should lock out the illegal unskilled and semi-skilled workers and not undermine the millions of Americans that hope to be able to earn enough to earn a living wage at simple work. They are not all naturally feminist government bureaucrats expecting a cinched career of middle class privilege-many simply want the ability to get at least some work when they need it without needing to find a state where there are not so many thousands of Mexican workers standing around on the corner ready to hop into a truck to go work for the middle class for 2 dollars an hour.
Both parties should not write-off the unemployed and the need to provide real work and not simply foist unrealistic high-skills training. Though the middle class and rich may be accustomed to a certain standard of living so they cannot understand the interests of the poor at all for a minimum annual income even with part-time work-and providing incentives to the private sector to  hire the unemployed triaging those out of work longest first is the better approach in comparison to government programs-the aloof comfortable quantitative consumer pursuing their quantitative high-consumption and entropy lifestyles is not an acceptable excuse for the political incompetence of both parties in this election.
The next administration should be aware that the world population is 7 billion and that intelligent global planning for continuity of the ecosphere and all life on Earth at present levels needs to continue with a purposes rather than waiting for disaster to accomplish too little, too late. The United States and the world no longer needs immigration to exploitable soft underbellies of nature-it needs to realistically improve the quality of life where the people live. 

A Comment on Space-Time Expansion


I wanted to write a few words about space-time expansion, or the philosophy of. There is much description of various models for it, and paradigm criteria about what it is. It is a field with much prospect for conjecture and construction of hypothetical models as well as plain astrophysical observation and strict inference.
Time expands rather than passes. Time is a way of describing the relative positions of mass rather than of energy. Energy is always in motion whereas mass is not. When time changes because of the conversion of mass into energy partially it is the relationship of mass that has shifted with motion-even through radiation.
It is  said that the space of the Universe is expanding however it is possible to differ even with observations based on astrophysics. Most likely space is simply nothing at all and it is more correctly a field within space that is expanding for some reason.
The Higgs field is a candidate for such a space-field that gives mass and energy particles an opportunity to exist phenomenally. As photons are emergent characteristics of electro-magnetic fields, mass and energy are emergent, entangled quantum characteristics of a Higgs field. The Higgs field is another ponderable field of unknown constitution.
So what are the potential shapes for fields within the nothingness of space that may be regarded as a Universe-field? It is conventional to use the bubble or empty sphere arising with an inflation from an infinitesimal point as the model universal field. As that field expands it is like a bubble membrane in 360 degrees. On the surface of that membrane the field energy allows entanglements because of original anisotropy or uneven distribution of the field and that leads to entangled clumps of energy accumulating as mass in the field. The field has clumps of mass drawing in other mass through characteristic force protocols such as the nuclear force and gravity. Stars, galaxies and Mitchellian objects (black holes) arise and draw together in clumps as the field membrane Bubble Universe expands.
The Membrane Universe could have four dimensions and more small ones yet still be finite in area in real space (nothingness). One bubble Universe after another could be issued to arise and expand within the others preceding that have expanded outward.
A transcending bubble universe from within or without slowing down to contract or increasing speed to expand could create intra-Universal collisions or mergers. Yet there could as easily be transcending forces that pass through all of the bubble Universes in every dimensions like neutrino-Universes.
It seems that because a Universe-field is a continuum that the speed of light is limited to the field that allows it to appear sustaining the existence of all phenomenal particles. Quantum entangled particles seem to convey information faster than light because they are not part of a direct continuum. Their instant motion is not measured by the relational position change of subluminal mass.
It is good to consider a little how God might issue consecutive Universes with expansion characteristics within a space-nothingness without mass-time necessarily. I find it useful to regard absolute spirit as the intelligent creator of substance.
A Gravitationally Lensed Quasar

10/16/12

Alpha Centauri B Discovered to Have an Earth-Size Planet

The planet has been in orbit in the closest star system to the solar system for some time. Alpha Centarui B's planet is about the size of Earth and probably very hot. There may be more planets looping Alpha Centauri A and/or B and some  might be just right (or not).
Alpha Centauri is a triple star system. It is Alpha Centauri B with the Earth-size planet. 
image credit: E.S.O. Alpha Centauri A & B illustrated with circles. Proxima Centarui 4.22 light years from Earth is not visible in this picture.
Alpha Centauri system

'Proof of Heaven' by Eben Alexander


Dr. Eben Alexander's new book recounting his experience discovering heaven while in a coma for seven days seems worth reading. The neurologist explains that his neocortex was shut down during the seven days when he experience a deeper reality. 'Proof of Heaven' is a first person description of the afterlife by a scientist.
Dr. Alexander is a physician and has worked at Harvard-well, even so his story seems as credible as this sort of thing gets, and is encouraging. Human experience is subjective-even of reality, so unless several people experience the same event (such as visiting heaven) it tends to be classified unproven.
Extra dimensions beyond are a topic of physical cosmological speculation on the leading edge. Whatever mankind can do or imagine, God can do it better.
I noticed the story on the cover of the 15 Oct. 2012 issue of Newsweek. They published a brief excerpt from the book with a narrative of the experience. There are numerous reviews of the book (that I haven't read yet myself).

Alaska Man Killed by Brown Bear

A 54-year-old forest worker from Sitka Alaska was apparently killed and partially eaten by a sow brown bear and her two cubs on Chichagof Island. The man, Tomas Puerta, evidently had engine failure in the skiff he was using to journey to a job tree thinning and put ashore to camp.
This time of year bear might be topping off their fuel supply before hibernation, and they must have found the camp site and groceries interesting. Puerta's body was dragged some distance apparently-perhaps from a tent. If one is inside a tent and a large brown bear attacks one has little chance for defense unless packing a .44 mag in a shoulder holster to draw and shoot through the tent wall as the bear is munching down on a shoulder or whatever...
image credit-Alaska Department of Fish & Game
Photo of a Brown Bear

10/15/12

Team Obama's Empty Economic Quiver


The next President of the United States will face challenges the Obama team spent its economic arrow on with the January 2009 stimulus package and years of trillion dollar plus deficit spending and Federal Reserve quantitative easing. A group of 41 economics recently said they anticipate 2013 unemployment to be 8% while the nation's public debt deepens.
The Obama economic team seems to have signed off on the age of fracture existential do-your-own-thing style of hands-off management. If the nation were to re-elect Barrack Obama and continue the same policy that is a sure loser (the selling point is the Reaganomic maxim that increased growth and increased tax revenues would balance the Federal budget in a decade or so) they would probably get what they deserve.
The trouble is that even Mitt Romney would have a difficult time transforming the national economy and federal budget right away to a  rosy scenario. Romney might be able to perform much better at economic management since that is his strength rather than Mr. Obama's homosexual, middle class reinsurance and foreign Moslem revolution community  organizing skills. Certainly the Democrat party would have someone to blame the next four years as the debt continues to increase yet at a slower pace.
The down side of course are the externalities to the national job and security picture that aren't at all addressed by the happy valley Sunday crowd  monkeying around with the American Dream while planetary ecospheric and demographic catastrophes continue to build.

10/13/12

Curiosity Rover Finds Dry Streambed on Mars



The history of Mars may have been more Earth-like than is commonly held. The early solar system had much more water-ice drifting around and Mars may have been saturated had a much thicker atmosphere. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
The curiosity rover examined a dry streambed in the Gale crater and water-transported rocks.
Scientists believe that most life on Earth was rubbed out about 560 million years ago. It is possible that the entire Earth was covered by a mile deep glacier and that the iceball Earth epoch ended with Volcanic eruption breaking through while deep sea plate margin vents with water emerging as much as 1000 degrees kept a third branch of life alive (such as those large worms).
Because there were many collisions from more meteors and comets then some Martian rock may have been blasted off that planet into space and since Mars is farther from the sun than the Earth, gravity might have made that rock with Martian microbial life inside cracks drift over to Earth orbit and reach this world over time. Life on Earth may have a Martian as well as an  Earth origin. That is an interesting point about Martian exploration.

I should stipulate that though life on Mars may have grafted onto or even comprise land life on Earth with the seafloor vent worms being the surviving life form that evolved here (or not), that hasn't any effect on interpretation of the Biblical book of  Genesis as I see it for a number of reasons involving the literal time values of Genesis, the composition of Genesis as a record of the earliest human pre-historical general history acts of society in the Middle East  etc. I suppose one could find some context in which Eden was on Mars f(as improbable as that seems) from which humanity was locked out in a theistic evolution criterion.
One cannot be certain of ancient name-meaning values applied to particular geographic referents. In the day many nouns were actually used as verbs that linguistically ossified over time.
If one prefers one semantic value paradigm over others without Petrine values of a day to God being equal to a thousand years for mankind an determines the lifespans of the pre-Noah patriarchs the time values is near that of the appearance of Eukaryotic life on Earth .
image credit of Hottah streambed : N.A.S.A.
Martian Streambed (splash)

10/12/12

Tuesday's Foggy Debate Tactics


The debate between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney next Tuesday could bring explanations of why another five trillion dollars of federal debt, a balanced budget in a decade, a resurgence of Al Qaeda in the Middle East, the 'new' Syrian war and leadership to global economic brinksmanship rate another 4 years to develop.
Os bin Laden is dead yet Pakistanis chant 'We are all Osamas' . Debate tacticians will develop the main line for millions of unemployed discouraged from looking for a job and essentially ignore their existence to plump up the political picture for the campaign. The next four-year term will bring more rational economic and environmental plans to fruition.

10/10/12

Perfection in Moral and Political Philosophy

Perfection in moral and political philosophy, or rather, theories of, rated an entry today in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Having just completed reading a fiction book named 'Litigation' about some Chicago lawyers I thought I would comment on the topic.


For one thing, the phenomenon of developing a formal philosophy of moral perfection with the accompanying political system that perfectly develops human society toward an ideal good requires an objective construction. Some brilliant Spartan long ago developed a political philosophy to create perfectly moral individual citizen-warriors in the ideal civil structure, or believed he did and so Socrates and Plato built their own version of that system synthesized with the good, such as existed in the Athenian democracy they sought to overthrow, in the little book named 'The Republic.
Today we tend to regard the Athenian democracy as racist, quaint and for short-lived people supported by slaves and the Republic as fascist. In America the unexamined life is regarded by some as the perfect moral synthesis with political philosophy united with copious public deficit spending that can be repaid later by the rich or by uneducated immigrants or transferred in some way offshore through perhaps, quantitative easing and various extra-dimensional fiscal perfection of making pure profit on paper without making anything physically for trade. Of course I am a little skeptical about the idea of perfection in political or moral philosophy myself.

We know that if one is fundamentally opposed to business and supportive of government expansion, business may move offshore to China and production decline in the U.S.A. It is important to reform business with intense public support in politics of business and of its reform-perhaps downsizing it too so it doesn't develop further as a a tool of blind historical determinism to the detriment of individualism and life on Earth.
The unexamined life shot out of a cannon in Chicago has unreflective fat persons mass consuming and producing without regard for making philosophical considerations of the ideal way for humans to live. Mortimer Adler could do the moral and political agonizing for Chicagoans while the rest could take pills to stay alive and litigate about everything. Lifestyle of the masses in that context can adjust its moral and political criteria for perfection to impulsive, dedicated-even passionate consumption continuing until one drops dead and is outsourced to the Zen oblivion beyond the edge. Politically one might quantitatively ease the left and right fringes or advance radical adjustments in allocation of resource-yet it's all regarded as the phenomenal political acts of apostles of existential throughput for whom all things must pass.
In perfect moral and political actualization of phenomenalism the transcendence of the mass political gestalt is accomplished is implicit metatheoretically by the economic engine of history. We may view the city amidst the former stockyards and meat processors from a distance with a neo-cynical view influenced by Paul Tillich however we can be sure that actual moral and political reform is probably much simpler than developing a theory about it.
Creation of a perfectly moral paradigm with political reason would need to embody a Kantian synthetic a priori social judgment about the environment and mankind's relation to it-the kingdom of God lies within the soul and manifest as it relates perfectly to the environment without including the body for oneself and for-others.
In the midst of the rush of mass civil society with billions of souls toward a moment of eclipse of their own experience on Earth by the biological destiny all human beings share the reifying drive toward elevation socially is something of a way of avoiding the existential or even empirical facts of life that everyone shares. Recognizing the facts of life and deriving the most efficient and free political method to secure the maximal possible efficient free state for every citizen is the paradigm for shaping political actualization toward perfection.
Perfection is of course only relative. God confers with grace whatever could be regarded as perfection about anything inclusive of consciousness. Yet the networking of physical structures that could be a billion versions of maximally efficient individual dome dwellings synergistically allocated with nature's simultaneous own best interest as a free biosphere evolving for-itself might simple detach like stitches after construction. (alternatively it could be living a Fibonacci series like progress through realms of absolute spirit, conservation and rightness with God so far as possible etc.) For space-time allows no ossification of effort or end to be reached that is not surpassed by subsequent moments and the ongoing effort to correct the course of politics toward moral perfection requires liberty as well as discipline to comprise a continuum.
A world set with troubles
given unto created beings with things
like clouds and rain, dreams and plains
rumbling, crumbling across the first person narrative of experience
amidst buildings and ossified constructions
dumped upon nature's destruction
that too few understand
with galactic lenses of several dimensions
shaping gravity's paradox
that it works at the speed of light as if it were massless
like a photon following curved space-time
through four dimensions held together a little

As a field with variegated contents of probability entanglements
Universe (1) is a net without a cause
for plausibility enough waterfalls flow
somewhere with time this place one knows
given a few of infinite dimensions
restricted to hues of mathematical uncertainties changing
forms of orbital selections
viewed from Earth.

10/8/12

Turkey Looking for Partial Restoration of Ottoman Empire in Syria?

Much has been made by Turkey's President Gul and other partisan advocates for the termination of the Assad Regime and the Alawite rule of Syria of some overspill of Syrian artillery fire upon rebel sanctuaries just over the border in Turkey. Civil wars are not good things, yet no one believes that Syria has the slightest intention of invading or conquering Turkey. The saber rattling by Turkey and its copious shelling of Syria in retaliation hasn't any need of escalating to anything beyond the fringe friction of a civil war.

Turkey as a N.A.T.O. ally would receive full European and U.S. support if it is needed to defend Turkey from conquest by Syria. Yet we know that Syria has plenty of troubles surviving as it is from the full Sunni reinforcement of the rebels in Syria.

Turkey is a hot and cold participant in N.A.T.O. They were excellent allies during the cold war yet were also allies of Germany in the first world war and only neutrals in the second because they were not able to do anything else. Turkey has not been a continually participating nation in the war to spend a lot of money and drive out Al Qa'eda from Afghanistan, and treat out Middle Eastern Allies in Israel with a little rudeness.
The Obama administration has dome much to encourage the development of rebellion in Syria the past year with condemnation of the Assad government followed by lamentations over the civilian casualties that only occurred because the rebel movement continued to grow along with  the reaction by the Syrian government against it. It probably would be a mistake for the Syrian rebels to think that the Obama Government or N.A.T.O. will actually send troops or aircraft to hand the victory to the rebels. Neither should Turkey believe that it might persuade N.A.T.O. to green light a Turkish invasion of Syria. Restoration of the Ottoman Empire in part is not in the interests of N.A.T.O. or the United States.

The legal paradigm for a Turkish invasion of Syria isn't plain. Turkey is giving sanctuary to Syrian rebels who likely do a good deal of insurgency organization from there. The Nixon administration sent a South Vietnamese division into Laos and the plain of Jars without good results during the Vietnam War to try to eradicate rebel sanctuaries. The result was not good.

The principle danger to expanded conflict in the region as the current narrative goes is not Syrian aggression toward Turkey, but the problem of the 'friends of Syria' finding some way to send a large conventional military force into Syria so they can have their own way in actualizing a post-Assad Government. The tragedy is that so many civilians are dying because the 'friends of Syria' are determined to drive the non-Sunni Government from power no matter the cost to others living in Syria.

One needn't like or 'approve' of the Assad Government to believe that national self-determination is a fundamental right of nations.

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSBRE8970J320121008?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

Boze-Einstein Condensates, Absolute Zero, Mass, Energy and Singularity (an unscientific comment)

The convertibility of mass and energy means that at some point all of mass in the Universe might be regarded as energy. Mass is a steady-state form of energy. So when mass is frozen down to very low temperature-near absolute zero-that temperature is -459.67 below zero Fahrenheit-perhaps within a billionth of a degree of absolute zero, it behaves strangely.

Einstein and S. Boze developed the idea that when atoms are lowered to that temperature in a clump-instead of acting like individual atoms they would act like one large atom. The Boze-Einstein condensate is an interesting thing to ponder.

Atoms have electrons that orbit a nucleus made of a proton and neutron generally (that are in turn made of other particles or quarks). Just so many electrons can be in particular orbits at a time-the Pauli Exclusion principle means that electrons cannot share simple nuclei. More complex nuclei can have different numbers of electrons in various orbits increasing with complexity. I guess that's why heavy elements such as uranium and thorium radiate fairly easily.

Electrons are fascinating particles-waves. An electron has a wave like orbit with its frequency varying along with it's energy. Sinusoidal wave analogies of electron orbits with peaks and troughs let one regard a peak or trough as a particle value if measured at the right time. One can't get some of the information about the electron when determining its observation at a particular location.

So electrons of Boze-Einstein condensates must have virtually no activity-well, a little because they are not at absolute zero-just close to it.

Stars have potential temperatures of billions of degrees-in other words they have a lot of energy. Human beings live at very low temperature on the Universal scale from hottest to absolute zero-less than about 600 degrees above absolute zero. Human mass though short lived from out point of view is reasonably stable for such complex organic structures.

Could electrons ever be reduced to absolute rest at absolute zero? Absolute zero indicates the non-presence of energy?

Gravity always acts upon mass and so confers a certain energy to it. One would think that gravity traveling at the speed of light across space-time would give up some of its energy to space, for gravity must have some energy if it is to interact with mass at all. Neutrinos with nearly no mass interact very little with mass.
One wonders if gravitational energy would slow down at absolute zero, or if it would have its energy ossified? Boze-Einstein condensates with mass ought to have gravity acting upon that mass and therefore have energy implicitly lifting it slightly above absolute zero.

Reading through a book named 'A Matter of Degrees' explaining the history of physics on the theme of temperature I thought of these several points about gravity and its status at absolute zero that I assuredly can't answer. Yet they are for myself at least interesting points.

If gravity is also a particle-wave or something like an electro-magnetic field of vast size on might wonder if it has some sort of natural form such as a sphere that it returns to in space-time, and if its extent is altered by relativity itself in a kind of recursion based on its composition, or if absolute zero would 'freeze' gravity too.
Another derivative concept I wondered about was the conjecture about infinities in Einstein's general field equations that are said to be at the logical singularity in time=0 of the universe's  history. The equations (that I couldn't process if I spent the remainder of my days upon them) might function toward infinities, yet the actual content of mass and energy fed into them representing the actual amount of mass in the actual Universe probably would be finite. Even with infinite compaction it would logically that with a finite amount of matter to start with there would bee a finite limit to the reduction of a singularity.

Then of course as mass is compacted it increases in energy, and the turbulence of mass as energy perhaps reduced to its most basic form as a one-dimensional membrane makes one think of the opposite super-cool Boze-Einstein condensate acting as a single atom something like a perfect crystal matrix with everything including electrons frozen.

The singular might have one-dimensional membranes acting like a Boze-Einstein condensate. I wonder when or how the most energetic components of the Universe become as inactive as the most cool,  and how the gravity holding the singularity together would be exempt be able to keep enough energy to 'infinitely' compact the entire mass a Universe within.

I wonder if the extension of the special theory of relativity beyond the speed of light as was recently proposed by physicists with two new transformations besides the Lorentz transformation with objects traveling at c still reaching a singularity would apply in a low temperature environment or high temperature equally well? 

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-physicists-special-relativity.html

10/7/12

Dirtocrat Demolition of Democracy Failing to Employ the Unemployed

If workers cannot find work and exhaust their saving eventually they will end up on some kind of federal relief like as not. It would be far less costly to taxpayers if employers were encouraged more to provide at least part-time jobs so single people would not need to use food stamps.
A good society comprehends the real needs of individuals economically speaking an actually takes the bull by the horns and discovers innovative ways to provide employment for all.


Yes one might drastically reform society to make the economy more egalitarian and less stratified. One could cap the annual salary for any American at a million dollars and tax at 90 % over that. Inheritance taxes on more than a million dollars could be 50%. etc. No individual could own shares in more than three corporations, and no corporation could employ  more than 5000 persons. Quality rather than quantity and increased opportunity for competition would follow. Yet few Americans would regard humanizing the scale of business as anything less than whatever archetype of the collective political unconscious they believe exists as a good or bad mythic form.
The present godless atheist Democrats seem to be quite vicious in contrast to prior eras in public discourse. Some seem to have more antipathy toward Christians than Al Qa'eda of Iraq or radical Moslem elements and communists that have expelled to imprisoned the elect. Dirtocrats seem to have no value for the public debt as if it were fiction or a Republican lie to ignore. Neither have they found a way to encourage employers to hire those without a job for the longest time first.
Discouraged workers aren't counted in the D.O.L statistics for the unemployed those are people that haven't looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. Neither are the 'marginally attached' counted in the unemployment stats. Those are people that have looked for and can't find a job the past 12 months. There are 2.5 million of those.
There were 8.6 million people working part time in September that couldn't find full-time work. The stats are fairly simple, and Romney is correct that the real number of people is higher than 7.8%
It isn't just the stark numbers and the lack of adequate progress at reducing unemployment alone that is of concern. It is the poor way of managing the economy of the Obama administration that makes the need for top-level change desirable.
The administration has relied on Fed Reserve printing money to buy bonds and deepening of public debt while making little progress on reducing unemployment that has the unemployed hoping to swap out the President. If they can't fix it in four years the non-decadent public needs to put a new President to the task. The Obama administration seems to be leading toward a series of national financial crises in 2013 that a guy better at business might deal with better.
The Democrats seem to have forgotten so many fundamental governing principles of Executive leadership that they appear to rely on natural economic equilibria helped by Goldman Sachs & Harvard Alumni to pass on pearls of wisdom to the genuflecting President. The Congressional Democrats may be bold on transitioning toward queerocracy yet on the economic concerns they are timid and far away from being capable of any sort of significant reform.
That is not what America was about. The founders weren't timid or shy about reform. There are several reforms possible that would make free enterprise work again yet Democrats have become dirtocrats rather than innovative leaders. Independents must look elsewhere for actual democracy with respect for individual rights and American traditional values.

Imperfect Character is Universal

The question of why anything exists rather than nothing was a question that Plotinus considered in The Enneads. Why would The One order anyt...