Halloween P-Zombies

The p-zombie paradigm seems silly for-itself. Everyone might be regarded as a philosophical zombie and without implicit physical consciousness with consciousness merely attending a body in a reverse out-of-body experience kind of way. While Christians can regard everyone as spiritually dead unless and until an individual is saved and regenerated spiritually, people tend to take that meaning too literally as if they were legalists of the soul. They cannot be certain at all about the mechanics of that.

I tend to believe the soul is information of consciousness as a life record (envision digital data) and when saved the regeneration in behavior changes given through grace. God may recognize the soul as regenerated. Literal dualism is a water and oil kind of relationship- maybe there is emulsification to engage one with the other, yet that mechanics is really odd. Maybe there is a wide window fan that is also a spiritual council for zombies someplace in thought experiment utopia, I wonder why or what would associate non-physical thought with any physical place in particular. It does seems like an occult paganism sort of Halloween topic.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

 I could write something about duality of mass energy and spirit problem; probably the topic requires more time than I have to address it, now, yet for Christians faith goes a long way to compensate since the grace of God provides regeneration and whatever knowledge one needs about some issues. I believe mass and energy are contingent being and spirit is primary in the Christian paradigm. Neo-Platonism of Plotinus in his Enneads (54 tractates) explains the relation of the One to the Intelligence and creator of forms of things that are the material world. If spirit is the primary fact of reality (such that for instance, the Universe is a thought in the mind of God and divine relativity makes steady state of matter seem 'real') yet worldly people simply recognize matter and energy because it is apparent, then faith in God and the Spirit of God when it occurs (through Jesus Christ) is being born again (especially since it isn't the same as being born materially in-the-world) because it is a fundamentally different outlook and relationship to the Spirit of God. So I think one avoids the problem of spirit-matter duality as a literal problem since spirit is real (like Platonic realism) and matter-energy contingent). When one enters the kingdom of God spiritually, it is a relationship that is established to God, rather than a place one need travel in the material Universe. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you.

A Brief Sketch of 20th Century Ukraine Issues re Crimea

President Putin's reconquista of the Crimean Peninsula helped piece back together historical Russia. The Crimean Peninsula was part of Russia for about the same time as New England was part of the United States; should the U.S.A. give New England back to the previous owners, or just cut New England loose from the U.S.A. so it could come out as Blue Soviet Nude England?

The Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the Soviet Union 72 years from 1922 to 1991. Nikita We Will Bury You Khrushchev transferred the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 to ‘show the brotherly love between Russian and Ukrainians’. When the Soviet Union ended so did the Communist program.

Ukraine had mostly been part of Russia for hundreds of years before Ukrainian Bolsheviks put down “the national government in Kiev” and created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of which the present government arguably is the lineal descendant. When all of Russia and Ukraine was under communist rule the alienation of Russian from Ukraine was not relevant; dissenters could always move to the Gulag Archipelago after all.

History of Ukraine - Wikipedia

During the confusion following the end of the Soviet Union, Russia was at a military disadvantage, President Clinton’s policy helped wrest away Russian lands that pre-existed the Soviet Union in the drive to erase the former Soviet Union. It was bad policy in regard to Crimea.

I believe President Putin is fairly conservative in asserting natural Russian rights as far as international relations go. Invading any nations that weren’t part of the historical Russia in a settled and obvious way isn’t likely, unless it is in some sort of proximal self-defense requisite situation that does not presently exist. There probably is no Von Putin deus ex machina plan building up to beat down weak Europe.

Restoration of Russia does not mean restoration of the Soviet Union. Personally I prefer restoration and stability for nations and the ecosphere. The Bahamas could use some restoration now, except it should involve ecospheric building syntegrity.

A Bit of Space Navigation Desiderata

Navigating in space apparently requires exploiting gravity of solar system objects to save on fuel. The direct line, or curving line/tensor to meet moving objects like planets is different than just finding out where one is. N.A.S.A. is trying traditional sextants on the space station and they also have a program called SEXTANT that uses pulsars for navigation. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/x-ray-pulsar-space... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFs0k36uro
https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/.../deep-space... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=29&v=LVqjvvLO5XY

A Lt Col Should Not Judge Presidential Int. Diplomacy Conversations

The rather disgusting news that an Army Lt Colonel on the National Security council turned into an informant because he disagreed with Presidential policy he heard or learned about in a call to the President of the Ukraine concerning the Bidens is a plain sign that something is wrong in high places in D.C. Maybe the Colonel is a deep state informant-it's hard to say. 

The military should not be trying to manipulate domestic politics in order to support their own foreign policy agenda. If field grade officers-professional soldiers are corrupting civilian foreign policy efforts at the highest level that is a deep state activity; one that fundamentally disregards U.S. egalitarianism and civil leadership. Military people may be skillful at killing and Mongolian idiots at foreign policy with nothing more than a desire for a great defense budget.

What can be discerned is the disloyalty to the office of the President that people in high government positions may feel entitles them to become rats and weasel out information useful to opposition political party interests.

The Colonel felt that it was wrong for the President to ask the Ukrainian President to investigate the role of the Bidens in corruption in the Ukraine. The Colonel felt that somehow American policy of bi-partisan support for keeping Ukraine in conflict with Russia would be endangered so it was his duty to rat out the President for having a different policy interest- though it was speculative and derivative in the Colonel's mind-interpretation of the fallout of the conversation, and that is wrong.

The military cannot be a minder of civilian leadership initiatives in foreign policy. Civilians not the military make foreign policy. I for one have wanted the United States and Russia to have close, amicable relations since the end of the Cold War and actually, before. Russia and Ukraine should have shared a border on the Dniepr River so commerce could have more freely flowed and Russian history given its dignity. 

The military industrial complex may want permanent conflict to keep defense expenses and budget inflated, yet it would be better to address necessary threats rather than to prop up unnecessary ones to threat level on an equal footing.

A Colonel has a right and duty to report illegal orders from the Commander in Chief but not to frag the President politically for his convenience. Loyalty counts too.

President Trump should find some opportunity to say in a speech; "Look, this isn't my first rodeo", in order to recover from the damage.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alexander-vindman-a-white-house-nsc-official-twice-reported-trump-ukraine

What the Universe and Mind are Made of

I am not sure what the question; 'what is necessary for physics" means. W.V.O. Quine assented to the question of was he a physicalist, that is, did he believe anything other than physical stuff exists (and he said no). With energy and mass being convertible, the stuff of which the steady state of matter is apparent to people as embedded mass is just what is. 

Paradoxically Christian theology does not require a substanceless 'spirit' that is the mind at all, or for a soul constructed of spirit, since a soul in some respects is simply everything that one does and think as a physical being during a lifetime- and I am sure that God can keep track of that information as easily as someone using ebay tech can video capture stuff and keep track of what happens during one day at some place and store the information on a terrabyte thumb drive. The question of what is God made of as Spirit isn't answerable by anything that is substance and form in the Universe that one might refer to. 

Of course the entire Universe is simply what it is and no one really knows what anything is made of ultimately- even strings and zero dimension points can't solve that question. One can know the forms and shapes of things and how the forces and particles-waves interact, and that is a lot, yet the question of what they really are-perhaps digital information itself at some level, might never be known exhaustively.

Why would Bishop Berkeley have invented ideaism- idealism as an alternative explanation for reality, if he wasn't Christian or a theologian as well as a philosopher- and what about St. Augustine's concept of what time is? People should quit being insulting about Christian perspectives, or theistic perspectives concerning reality. One wouldn't want to start lining out people like Spinoza for instance, and so many others. The entire Universe could be a thought of God's; and every mind in it comparable to a subroutine; philosophers should have an interest inf finding truth and increasing knowledge rather than defending political popular repression.

I wrote yesterday about Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorems concerning sets and the set of all sets. Some Christians are theologians as well as philosophers and are not antipathetic to Cantor's trans-finite infinity paradigm concerning some infinities being greater than others. I suppose some would like to rule out relativity and infinity as mutually exclusive from Hilbert space metaphors of the verse (uni or plural/multi etc).

 Ontology as a definition- everything, might preclude use of the word 'entity'. I am not an ontology expert. Deontological abstractions from one may include 'nouns-entities"? If one were referring to God as 'an entity' i don't think that would work for me. I suppose one could use Heidegger's language etymology meanings to track down a reason why that lexicon  selection would be inadequate. Russell's paradox was a good point. I view these matters concerning intelligence as contingent being something like humans being subroutine trying to define a much larger programs containing n kinds of subroutines, with God being more than a large A.I. program-really undefinable. Godel's incompleteness theorems seem to reflect that inability, or work as a simile.

People noted the problems with language and means concerning philosophical issues in the mid 20th century. Russell too wrote about objects and sensation in his 'Essay on Metaphysics' early in that century. Quine and Strawson wrote a lot on the topic. In physics perhaps monism is more true than pluralism, since 'objects' are part of a unified field that has pluralistic features on the surface. People have knowledge as well as awareness- in fact that may be how intelligence evolved- with triangulation and re-enforced memory to better analysise and classify motion and 'objects'. Objects may initially have been more of a verb experience than an ossified class of 'nouns'. Nouns (nows) are presorted things. Knowledge of cosmology is concatenated learning. I trust Jesus Christ and God for various reasons that are not simply learning. Life is quite brief in some senses and God is good- those without faith might not experience the goodness of God so much as His incidental general provisioning of grace. Oh well, to return to just philosophical things. Sartre's Being and Nothingness explains present awareness and perception as epistemology. I read that book pretty well, its good yet there are so may philosophical works and schools concerning subjective epistemology and perceptions- that's what 'PF Strawson's 'Individuals' and Quine's 'Word and Object' are about for example. Still, there are so many more, even the very hoary 'Mind and It's Place in Nature' by C.D. Broad. Self-awareness probably differs from awareness. Then one has Cartesian rationalism, sensations, forth. Awareness exist within a unified field of physics. 

There is a Christian ontology, and many don't understand the trinity. The way God with a perfect divine economy relates to the imperfect in-the-Universe with entropy for being in time is through the Son Jesus Christ. Because of original sin- missing the mark-humanity was cast into entropy, birth, death, work. It is a sorry condition and people forget about God. They are lost and without merit. Jesus is perfect though and God sees the Son rather than the lost for those that have accepted his sacrifice. Jesus is the most remarkable individual that has lived. Look at what he said and compare that to what anyone has said before in history to that point.  Morality is what people actually do regarding patterns of social behavior and ethics is how they do it, or consider it. 

 Humans have the original sin of being temporal and subject to willfulness, entropy and imperfection-they consume energy to sustain existence. They have biological and reproductive drives, they gather in clusters and conflict sometimes. They have imperfect knowledge and conceits. Faith in the Lord and his kingdom (the Kingdom of God) is the only way to transcend the problem of original sin that governs humanity, yet humans that are saved are still imperfect. 

The Universe is like a train station and people should do the best they can while here regarding stewardship and helping or loving others. Jesus Christ was crucified though. That was the essence of human morality. Even wolf packs have a kind of morality-social behavior and ethics of who leads, follows, gets first bite on the prey etc. One may reason about everything in the Universe obviously. Isaac Newton was fairly good at that and was Christian as were so many others. One of the primary differences between the saved and those remaining lost is the different destinies when the individual's time in-the-Universe ends.

Atheism is a Zero-Sum Philosophical Effort, Unlike Belief in God

Belief in nothing is easier than belief in a creator of what exists; that is, belief in nothing requires no thought at all. Belief in anything such as a Multiverse, for instance, requires work and creative thought. I stipulate that artists of graphic novels and "smurfs" requires some work, more than nothing certainly, yet smurfs are inadequate straw men for supporting an atheist belief in nothing. 

The Multiverse and or Universe require work to understand very well, so far as human knowledge may understand. God is superior to the impossible set of all sets including itself such as Kurt Godel considered, and prior to all forms such as one may regard quantum physics and the energy thereof to fall into, before all Universes that would ever be, though a great paradox is that God is eternal and knows all things that would every be, including Universes- so one may wonder of Plotinus' ideas about the One issuing the Intelligence and therefrom forms (in his Enneads), and if all that is like Godel's set of all sets including itself. If it is, as analogous to Tegmark's level 4 or 5 Multiverse that is pre-existent in all possible ways of being (with each thought moving mind to the appropriate place in another with that branch), one has something to think about. 

One has a Multiverse as a thought of God that has eternally existed with God- that is something rather than nothing. Philosophical work in great depth can be afforded through contemplation of God rather than 'smurfs or belief in nothing.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phe-time/

 I like Matthew 22:33-46 about the absentee owner (God) and His Son. "Matthew 21:33-46 King James Version (KJV)
33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:
34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.
35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.
36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.
37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.
38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.
40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?
41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.
42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?"

The Left's Idea of Solely Religious Objections to Abortion

A doctor mentioned to me once that some mammals auto-abort when there is over-population. People are more like animals than most care to admit concerning behavior. Deontic moral selections are valid enough for those that have faith, yet the idea that some abortion is rational and others not is valid in the sense of ancient German laws, and those of the pre-Christian era. When people did harm to others it was expected that one could repay the perpetrator in kind with interest. When others victimize others, such as rape, or bashing a skull, seeking remedies to redress the balance to a normative state was the goal. The abortion of progeny of rape was therefore logical. Biologically it prevented rapists from profiting with progeny. Remember in times of war rape was often an opposition force policy-even in the Serbian conflict fairly recently. The incest exception was equally logical because of the awareness of society of the consequences of inbreeding. On purely human grounds i.m.o. abortion is worse than ugly; it is a testament to the evil of mankind with its low regard for others, for life and so forth. Marcus Tullius Cicero's 'On Natural Law' still seems meaningful considering how long ago it was written. People have made a virtue of narcissism and neglect interests of the commons such as the fracturization of the remaining land wilderness. They also have dehumanized unborn human life in order to allow killing it, for the left's interest in morality today is that of finding comfort at whatever cost. That is the left's idea of rationality. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bosnian_War

Atheism produces a null-set philosophically. Contemplation about the being of God leads somewhere. An empty mind is easier to achieve than intelligence. Being on the same thought-plane as amoeba is all atheist-hedonist-consumers require. That may be why it is popular in modern society.

Obama Judge Orders DOJ to Give Impeachment Comm Mueller Grand Jury Files

Another Obama appointee judge made an order in favor of impeach-o-crats that will help them move forward cherry-picking information to release to the media from their secret impeachment committee. The Department of Justice must turn over the Grand Jury transcripts from the Mueller investigation of President Trump. Usually Grand Jury transcripts are kept secret unless needed in a criminal trial.

The impeachment committee seems to be on another fishing expedition looking for something to stoke up the recall fire with. Plenty of smoke should appear from the committee with the Grand Jury transcripts that can provide ample data for juicy leaks.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/judge-orders-release-of-mueller-material-citing-impeachment-chance.html

The main problem with the fishing expedition is that House Republicans have been kept out to a certain extent and the impeachment committee is meeting behind closed doors. The public has a right to know what material is being considered for evidence to support impeachment. Since the Democrats would not keep any secrets unless it made their side look unfavorable the entire Grand Jury transcripts should be released to the public so the voters can consider the matter for themselves.

The Secret Impeachment-Recall Committee should allow the media and the nation in so the appearance of a Democrat KKK-style impeachment would go away.

Imperfect Wonders (poem)

So many Universes before the beginning

of time and space compiled in mind

thoughts with structures given like

forms of being and time

dimensions nowhere

compiled into layers before and after

points and ideas strung together

where imperfect beings woven from soil

toil to ever without levers
they were free to be and become

something like won and next    

texts grown green brought to naught

never ending shares with signs of rhymes

taut three sheets to the wind

union of savings the imperfect 

contingent tries to rise

bettered

from the fractured point of view

waves to the shrewd shapes

stars setting

Universes that were

smashed to dark infinite points

tightly wound up in gravity

so there the imperfect wonders

about the perfect representative

who offered his own life

for others

wasn't it simply the Earth
with its waterfalls and wonders
where time would stand still
future worlds beyond 
nothingness and nil.

Solid State Dream (poem)

Solid State Dream

3 April 2017

April’s concentrating growth starts when

time’s clocks accelerate intemperately

sprouting, budding, righteous leaves entitled

to live growing and die

-green disrupts so many silent hexagons,

sliding like freedom down the face of a mountain

Contemplating eternity with frozen light

solid state dynamics processing recursion

in-itself quantum fields echo time

hypercubes coated with reasoned tension

stuck upon surface-tensioned inner angles

where equal and opposite conflations shine

like dueling bureaucracies thinking of five’s

ways of working Klein’s bottle brigging loops

untroubled with cilia elsewhere

provide timeless answers

The rhymer sanctioned plain fractal’d down

buildings built time-in lines

to markets plus or minus forests

lacking a spiritual dimension

called and unchosen

Crassing through dozers

push over scrub trees shrubbed

sounds of sweet turned Earth smelling organic

pipes of sun-day morning

engines, cat-tracks little-feating

reluctant fields’ clocks

rushed to wind down

main-springed and broke

Primers of extra-terrestrial, terra-formed interiors

spit-wadded, shaped, placed just so

where nothing grows.

Speed of Light and Mass- Crossing Over

I asked a question at Quora about increasing mass as one approaches to light speed and got numerous answers saying that it doesn't, yet other have written about concatenated effects of gravity acting to increase mass as one nears light speed. I believe it does. It is supposed to become infinite at light speed. Others say it doesn't and one may just pass write on through with no problem. If it does increase toward light speed I would think a comparatively trivial gravitational field aboard the ship would be obliterated as the mass increased opposite to the direction of travel to infinity.

There may be a few reasons that apparent mass could increase to infinity- that is various fields such as the Higgs, as well as gravity, might be more localized, and passing through them too quickly could increase the forces acting upon the mass of the ship. Since gravity itself travels at the speed of light, it is hard to say what would happen if one went faster...something though one might guess.

Because all of the forces that hold mass together- strong, electro-weak, gravity etc exist within a certain space-time circumstance it could be that some of those that hold the ship together would fail making the mass transition destructively. Maybe all of the particle related fields act at the speed of light.

Others have asked the question- here are some replies... https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-human-to-survive-if-they-travel-at-the-speed-of-light

Someone pointed out that energy is converted into mass within criteria of general relativity nearing light speed. Maybe people confuse general and special theory paradigmata.

A Political Lynch Mob Hates the Orangutan

The Democrats have never stopped hating on Donald Trump. It is no wonder that hey feels the impeachment is a political lynching.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/22/congress-reaction-trump-lynching-tweet-054387

Comparisons between saying one is a victim of a <political> lynching is hardly the same sort of thing as saying 'lynch the n's' as Democrat haters of the president seem to be claiming.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/house-dem-trump-lynching-kkk one Democrat Congressman said that the President is now plainly like the KKK (because of the President's tweet). Rep. Shiff's impeachment committee meets behind closed doors like a secret KKK meeting.

Democrat organs don't comprehend analogy. They of course never use analogy or simile themselves, sometimes providing smarmy lectures as if Americans were immigrants clueless about the history of the south after the civil war.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/23/donald-trump-joe-biden-lynching-impeachment-comments-why-wrong/4069280002/


Modern Democrats have worked to expropriate language use and basically make it impossible to express dissent. Even the President needs to hush, though it was o.k. to say anything wicked about the President including his hair (color) reminding them of an orangutan or giant Cheeto.

Because most of the media have gone along with the hate interpretation of President Trump it is an onerous task to verify the b.s. level of each new claim about the President. One wonders how Democrats have time for getting any public work done with so much of their time spent attacking 45.

Advanced System Care Seems Like Good Free Comp Security

Advanced System care by IObit seems like good free software for keeping personal computers running fairly quickly. It is free to download and install though there is an option for a pro version that costs about $24 dollars a year for three computers.

It has a surprising number of quality features along with options to install other free IObit software that is very useful including Driver Booster. That program updates drivers on the computer. It is very useful in locating drivers on-line for items like TP-Link range boosters.

https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php

For those that can't afford establishment anti-virus software like Norton, Advanced System Care has the most practical and functional of the free software for computer security.

On the 'Freedom' of God

I.M.O. people don't often consider God philosophically very well. They compare God to worldly concepts and language rather than God for-himself and God-for-others. Freedom is a worldly concept. What could constrain God? How could he be not-free? I think the term is not too relevant applied to God. As far as Christianity goes, people that are antipathetic to faith tend not to consider the original sin criteria at all well, nor the necessity of God's intervention to liberate souls from original sin spiritually through the Son. 

Even so, consider God as a self-standing, self-originating being, or one that always was even before the existence of temporal Universes. Consider for a moment one being that is infinitely wise and omniscient- that is a lot to consider. So he is perfect and has a divine economy of perfection. How to bring in less than perfect beings into existence, when omniscience and omnipotence may be requisite for perfection?

Are Russian Assets In U.S. Politics What They are Believed to Be?

When Hillary Clinton mentioned a couple of Democrat politicians and a Democrat Presidential candidates as Russian assets one immediately thought of the problem of communist infiltrators in government. Since the Soviet era the U.S. government has had the problem of Russian spies and assets. If Hillary Clinton and the Clinton foundation had not themselves been beneficiaries of Russian oligarchs the mention of other Democrats as Russian assets might be more convincing. Yet what are Russian assets today in U.S. political personnel?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466730-trump-defends-gabbard-from-clintons-attacks-these-people-are-sick

Probably the Russians cannot be said to be communists. In contemporary Russian 1% of the people control 60% of the nation's wealth. In the United States the ratio is 1% of the people controlling/owning 40% of the nation's wealth. The inference is that Russian assets are likely serving political plutocrats globally. Giving tax cuts to the most rich is what a Russian asset would work for today. Wall Street could be regarded as a Russian asset.

 Very likely the latest Clinton b.s. about Russian assets is like the Democrat Party b.s. about Donald Trump as a Russian asset. He is simply a business guy without ecospheric conscientious regard or enough concern about Kurdish well being.

The most rich Americans should be taxed at a 75% percent rate to break up pay down public debt and to prevent concentration of wealth to plutocracy level. Government spending should be capped at some percentage of the U.S. g.n.p. except in time of declared war. Reason should replace rash spending as the principal for informing government policy. Perhaps most of the Democrat party are Russian assets and a few Republicans too. 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2020-dems-dismiss-hillary-clintons-attacks-rally-to-tulsi-gabbards-defense-over-russia-claim

Some Don't Believe in Cause and Effect

Aristotle considered causality 2500 years ago yet David Hume was the first philosopher to write formally about cause and effect dismissively more than 250 years ago. In a way though, cause and effect is a language problem concerning relationships between objects and individuals. The law does recognize causes and effects. Fighting words issued can be a cause for someone punching someone else. Hate speech can elicit federal arrests. Pulling the trigger on a gun can kill someone. Law recognizes cause and effects. Philosophically and scientifically the topic is a little more amorphous.

That is because of the nature of language. Words are inexact labels and reference terms rather than the objects they describe that are things in-themselves. Chemists of course understand that combining particular molecules causes or produces certain effects. Someone concerned with language accuracy might say that the scientist caused  an effect believed caused by the chemicals- and that is the problem with the inexact meaning of cause and effect…what is the first cause, proximal cause or even responsible cause?

No one doubts that physical relationships exist- that are predictable and that can be caused with definite effects. Striking a match and tossing it onto a pile of gas-soaked rags causes a fire. Putting hundreds of extra tons of weight on a bridge far over its weight limit causes it to collapse. Drinking a couple of quarts of whiskey causes drunkenness or death; the trouble is in trying to isolate events and provide a first and complete cause with words.

One may be asking too much from language in that case. Language has nominal and pragmatic value. One needn’t describe every element of how some circumstance came into being (such as Scots migrated to Kentucky and produced bourbon after certain religious troubles in England etc. and the Universe was created and the Earth formed in the void etc.). A few words cannot explain everything that exists- a complete complex of compresence to use Russell’s term- inclusive of all history.

Physicists can use Feynman diagrams to show relationships of particles. Particle accelerators produce particular results at certain energies. One may be said to cause a cascade of particles to exist- yet it is merely useful language rather than an absolute explanation itself. Words are just words.

President Trump May Be Determined to Lose Two Wars

President Trump's sudden withdrawal of U.S. security forces from Syria has the potential to reinvigorate ISIS terrorists in the Middle East. So one wonders if the administration's efforts to reopen surrender talks with the Taliban will undermine 18 years of U.S. efforts to build a stable, non-belligerent Afghanistan.

The President would like to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan because it isn't returning a profit one would think. The problems with the U.S. federal debt could be alleviated with good legislation and executive leadership better than with being penny wise and pound foolish from disengagement with foreign security interests in two troublesome locations. When so much effort has been invested by the U.S.A. in building security in two nations against ISIS and the Taliban it is wrong to be finding a way to lose after the main conflicts have been won.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-pentagon-idUSKBN1WZ0C4

The only thing the United States would get out of talking with the Taliban would be an opportunity to undermine our local allies as occurred in Syria. The United States will need to have troops in Afghanistan as long as it did in Europe following the end of the Second World War, for the radical Muslim forces are as serious about maintaining the status quo against all western culture as the Soviets were in fighting against capitalism.

President Trump should get the United States on to better terms and normalized trade with Russia as soon as possible, yet Afghanistan requires a commitment and focus within certain budget constraints of a century of necessary rather than a few more months. Instead of looking at it as a continuing war it should be regarded as troop deployment in a friendly country we are defending against terrorists that hate Democracy. While some member of the Democrat Party seeking to impeach the President may be Russian assets, I am not certain what that means since Russia is something like a Plutocracy these days with 60% of the wealth being held by 1% of the citizens (in the U.S.A. it is just 40% held by 1% of the people).

The President in his drive to help concentrate U.S. wealth has a lot of minion support from both parties. His tendency to throw friends into the fire to make up for the low tax rate the rich pay in order to save money is disturbing, almost equally to that of the content of  Democrat Party kool-aid. While President Trump is a danger to the environment's health, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats are a danger to the U.S.A. and human morality. One can name their poison  in 2020 elections.

President Trump Seems to Slight Military in Preference for Money

President Trump has seemed to slight military service in recent weeks in preference for what seems an avaristic glorification of the pursuit of money. He sold out the Kurds in Syria recently deriding their military alliance with the U.S.A. as nothing more than trying to get land. President Trump has never been homeless nor experienced starvation and cold or heat together. Neither has he received wounds in combat as many Kurds have done. Land and liberty are important to people and not something that should fail to receive support from an American democracy. The world is replete with ants that will sieg any fuhrer that promises them bread and circuses or reality TV.

The President also slighted former Sect. of Defense Mattis saying he was the world's most greatly over-rated general. The former SEC DEF replied in a video (see below).

Very few Americans would vote for the reelection of President Trump if there was anyone available besides Democrats.  People regard the President as an a-hole. They also know he will work to keep the economy strong and brag about that as much as he can, and will appoint conservative court justices.

The Democrats are a godless party of sin and sedition reprehensible in seeking to flood the nation with illegal aliens, a history of cutting taxes on the most rich Americans to shed crocodile tears about the low taxes on the rich later. They support abortion and queering up the world. They want to add trillions of dollars of public debt to reduce greenhouse gasses without competence in ecological economics either. 

Their leading candidate Elizabeth Warren is a former special education teacher suitable for teaching dope addled Democrats. The only apparently quality Democrat is Sen Corrie Booker- a Rhodes Scholar like Bill Clinton who is also the former mayor of Newark N.J.

Senator Booker unfortunately is probably a dupe of the Brits- that is the point of awarding Rhodes Scholarships (duping Americans so British interests are enhanced). Booker drank the Kool-aid of the Democrat platform of homosexuality etc, yet also seems to be somewhat racist against white Americans, so he loses middle class formerly mainstream working class support.

Democrats probably should run Booker since they are all bad and he is the least bad. Needless to say, the greatest a-hole is the only electable candidate that wouldn't damage the country as much as Democrats will. When white people run the bottom of the barrel for the Presidency they should not be reluctant to elect non-whites that are running their best available (not all are doing that in 2020 obviously). 

One cannot have a perfect society. What would it be though? A perfect society would be one that works well to address actual challenges to its well being efficiently. If a democratic electorate could recognize and design remedies very well to problems; if one were to make a list of the ten most important utilitarian threats or challenges to national and international existence or well being today, for example, and the society could solve them and move on instead of bogging down and being spaced out or electing bottom of the barrel candidates for leadership- that would be about as perfect as it gets outside of one led by God directly-for-others.

New V.A. Dental Lab Contract is Bureaucratic Comedy

The Veteran’s administration dental programs are known for slack and under quality work. U.S. dental labs that process dentures, partial dentures, crowns and other products for the V.A. need sign a five-year contract for that work. The new contracts are a complete 96 page joke that few dental labs are likely to be willing to sign. The Federal Government seems to be against small business.

The trouble is that the contract criteria seems to have been written by an aloof, uncomprehending bureaucrat without a clue about the state of U.S. dental labs. There are just 3000 or so remaining because much of the work was offshored to China that uses fast courier services like Fedex for quick turnaround. Most of the U.S. dental labs are small operations with one or four employees.

Obama era changes put 250 U.S. dental labs out of business. Now it appears that Trump era changes are set to put more out of work in an effort to force corporatist (Mussolini invention) consolidation on U.S. dental labs so a few large labs subordinate to global plutocracy can take over. Democrats are as guilty as Republicans in building up neo-socialist corporatism.

https://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Civilization-John-Ralston-Saul/dp/0684871084

The new contract has a zilllion conditions that many or most U.S. dental labs couldn’t comply with if they wanted too. For instance…

Each lab must have two fully qualified and certified technicians.

Each lab must be open 7:30 to 4:30 every day

Each lab must be located within 30 miles of the V.A. in some states like that might not work because of distances that need be traveled without dental labs near a V.A.
Dental labs must drive to the V.A. themselves to pick up models or provide courier service

Fedex and other pro courier services are not allowed

Lab contractor must have full digital construction capability (though the V.A. may not themselves)

Denture repairs must be completed within 4-6 hours the same day, picked up and delivered by the lab

Only federal holidays may be taken by the lab- no vacations

etc.

The stuff goes on for 96-pages.

It would be a good idea for the V.A. to use credit cards and pay for piecework at the same rate as ordinary dentists. It would be simpler and far more efficient to pay for what they need, The V.A. should deliver their own work to dental labs and pay for it when complete- that way dental labs actually would get paid for their work. Maybe V.A. work could be done by civil dental labs with a 10% discount off person-on-the-street price.

It seems to me that the federal government has moved over the years toward transferring costs to the civil sector with user fee increases while cutting taxes on the most rich (who now have a lower tax rate than the middle class).

China is Disgusting in Support of Censorship and Civil Repression

The Chinese reaction to a simple tweet of support for Hong Kong protests against cruel and unusual authoritarian laws that would arrest and relocate victims in Hong Kong to distant mainland judicial venues for incarceration and possibly torture is getting worse; they have demanded that Daryl Moore- the offender in Houston Texas, be fired. Plainly President Trump should find some spot in his administration to place potential Ambassador Moore should he want to delegate some of his N.B.A. duties and serve the people of the United States more directly. Maybe the KC Chiefs should hire Colin Kopernicus to replace Patrick Mahomes while he is injured.

https://qz.com/1730643/china-asked-nba-to-fire-daryl-morey-for-hong-kong-tweet/

The Chinese authoritarian government is swelling in its maleficent desire to repress free speech and civil dissent globally in accord with its prosperity dumped by Apple Corp and other western investor. Those people will sell out anything for a profit in fulfillment of Lenin’s comment that the capitalists will sell us the rope communists will hang them with. The proper place for despotic oriental servility is China- not Houston Texas; remember the Alamo.

Determinism and Free Will

Free will and determinism, or pre-determinism exist in different paradigms that aren't mutually exclusive in actualization. That is there are theological and cosmological paradigms as well as the practical actualization of will.

  One may plainly think and then act upon the thought on a practical level. One has a few degrees of freedom of motion to act, and some freedom to think (if the boom box isn't too loud and you are trying to make some complex calculation), few degrees of freedom to move if bound and gagged.   If God is omniscient then he knows everything in every possible Universe and configuration, so in that sense it is necessarily pre-determined for God, and the will of people though free is pre-determined or determinate and not free to be other than what it must be.  

Tegmark’s Level 4 or 5 Universe has a different paradigm; every universe that possibly can exist does, and each though any individual has switches his consciousness to the static universe corresponding to the thought he has. The physical Universe don't change in their dimensional configuration, it is the thought that changes corresponding to the right space-time coordinates in each possible Universe. That is the past, present and future of every Universe already exists.

That is something to think about with such great complexity in stellar evolution for example. Maybe the complexity problem can be resolved with quantum computers, or since the foundation of Tegmark’s Universe is pure, abstract math (maybe built up like Leibnitz’s monadology or strings). A pure math Universe is closer to being like a Universe of Universes existing within the mind of God constructed with protocols of spirit.

On Totalization impacting free will.

People already shut down freedom of expression. Corporatism tolerates nothing in conflict with corporate interests preponderantly. The recent China-N.B.A. issue was a case in point; corporatism and communism each repress free speech. The Democrat Party and socialists tend these days to want to force things there way through any means legal or quasi-legal that work. Anyone antipathetic may find a kind of hate speech in any language-perhaps becoming easier with increasing power. Search engine stuff may be downgraded so nobody finds it; or the writer banned from social media platforms, an employee terminated, a web page closed down. Nothing new in the mill town wanting total political control to support its interests. The new thing is that the world is being totalized incidentally through global networking.

Impeachment Recall Campaign and Low Albedo

Democrats are still wasting time trying to impeach President Trump with a Soviet-style in camera secret committee inquisition while people are putting up heat absorbing asphalt parking lots and buildings. The least the fake environmentalist Democrats could do would be to pass a bill with tax breaks for high albedo construction including parking lots and roofs in order to help reduce global warming increase.

People in the north sometimes tear up perfectly good reinforced steel concrete parking lots to replace them with heat absorbing asphalt so they can reduce parking lot snow removal costs. That leads one to wonder- why not just asphalt over Alaska and Siberia too in order to increase heat absorption and make the world a nice room temperature of 90 degrees f (lol)?

https://earthsky.org/earth/atmospheric-co2-record-high-may-2019

A Note on Separation of State and Church

When government controls a religion and has a state religion history shows that it is bad. Because wicked people eventually take over governments, even if only for a while, it is better to have a separation of state and church. Adolph Hitler and Germany of the Reich era had an official church and people like Karl Barth left it, or wouldn't join it. Not even Christians agree on correct doctrine not uncommonly, imagine if President Trump, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders made the theological decisions as leader of the Church of America.

State churches aren't good for either Christians or secular citizens. I would say the Church of England is somewhat poor on theology and discipline. England led the way on homosexual marriage and the Anglican Church of Canada put a heavy price on native Canadian children. With a state church theological pursuit of truth is limited to what the state wants. The U.K. has religious pluralism though it has the Church of England. There are still Catholics and other protestants. I am not a fan of royalty or authoritarianism; some people are. 

The Roman Empire divided with the state church of the Eastern Empire at Constantinople. The schism led to the eventual sacking of Constantinople by crusaders and the later conquest by Turks and more war. I can easily imagine a different course of development for Christian history under different circumstances; the secular and political condition shouldn't really decide how Christians form ecclesiastically. I like a priesthood of believers church structure rather than a patriarchal structure.

 If government is able to influence religion that works badly for the church and freedom in general-even in the secular world. Sin in the world in Europe and North America would emerge as a certain percent of the population regardless of the relationship of government to the faith community. It was the government-the-US Supreme Court, that forced sin on the nation (homo marriage), reflecting elite desire for sin and populist sales.

Russia May Be Able to Support Kurdish Security

President Trump may have walked a tightrope in switching off support for Kurds, Syrian Christians and Alawi of Syria deftly last week. Americans were alarmed about the abandonment of the Kurds that appeared to occur overnight. 

It may be that Russia's entry into the Syrian ground game in a substantial way may offset Turkish aggression and defeat efforts from various players to make Syria a Sunni kingdom. A vast Sunni kingdom stretching from Africa to Europe would need to crush quite a few bodies to establish and undermine the security of Israel and others.

I have no idea what interest Russia has in Syria. Siberia and the North Shore is probably a much better place aesthetically.

Since Russia is no longer a Trotskyite communist nation aspiring to take over the world it might not be a bad thing to have Russia providing Syrian security at their expense instead of other foreign powers. The Shi'a have a problem with the Sunni now and then, and a secure somewhat neutral multi-religious Syria may  not be a bad thing at all concerning the suppression of sparks of sectarian conflict.

President Trump did not secure a lasting homeland for the Kurds in the region, yet the Syrians and Russians may provide part of one in exchange for the support of Kurds as Sunni themselves to defend against various Sunni elements that would like to destroy the Syrian government and establish a Sunni Syria. If the Kurds become victimized in mass then President Trump should assume responsibility in part and relocate those that care to move, to the U.S.A.

One must wonder what secret diplomacy occurred through unknown channels between Russia and President Putin. Apparently the Democrats hadn't any whistle-blowers listening in to the call.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/15/russian-troops-take-over-key-u-s-outpost-syria-after-withdrawal/3985962002/

Is There a Doomsday Clock for Global Warming?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a doomsday clock for nuclear war for decades. The minute hand has been at two minutes to midnight for several years too, I believe. The trouble with going full-tilt for panic too soon is that one can't get closer without resorting to Eleatic micro and pico-second intervals. If people establish a Doomsday clock for Global Warming it should not be at the panic place initially- give a little space to take note of worsening conditions.

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

Maybe these guys;The Union of Concerned Scientists have published a doomsday clock somewhere.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-nine-climate-tipping-points-now-active-could-threaten-the-existence-of-human-civilization/

https://blog.ucsusa.org/peter-frumhoff/global-warming-fact-co2-emissions-since-1988-764

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/06/29/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-set-new-record/#434893a743a9