5/28/20

U.S. Lacks Enough Good Ideas for Safe Return to Work

Not enough is being invented or innovated to return Americans safely to work. Making full face masks with replacable filters and eye protections for very low cost or free would seem to be necessary, and the government appears daft about that insofar as it isn't converting any Halloween mask production lines into clear, safety mask production for Americans. In fact Central America and China could use the masks too; don't they still produce cheap stuff in China?

Americans seem sometimes to prefer to be good foes as a way of conducting themselves-for-others; they often prefer to be critics and pains-for-others these days with a generally easier life than in former decades and with a lot of surplus credit they are burning through quickly. It is as if some people prefer to have a depression and something to wine about as a glamour thing for a while if they are well off and can easily afford to survive stay-at-home orders and social distancing means spending more time on the yacht.

jobless claims exceed 40 million during Covid 19 challenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgckHUQdzQ

At the least the nation could use politicians with good ideas although that does seem like expecting unicorns to power Santa's sleigh next winter. This could be a time to transition the nation to ecological economics, if there were politicians that actually know what that field is an as academic discipline. Democrats have a candidate for President that actually woke up from a two-month nap at home during the covid crisis recently and there may be hope that he had an inspiration or two. President Trump doesn't know what the word ecosphere means yet he may find a way to sell it on Wall Street if it becomes rare and valuable enough.

President Trump can at least be said to put a brave, unmasked face on the covid incident though it may not be a good idea, and that is something. Inventing and innovating with Yankee ingenuity to swiftly transition to a positive sum, non-depression, ecologically beneficial new foundation for national infrastructure would be a good change and way to extricate the nation from the conundrum it finds itself developing presently because leaders and media are too daft.

Maybe war with China looks more enticing to the homo clan in the elites dinking things about. I saw a good video on how fusion bombs are made, I can see why people like that stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYuVzbIu_8o how fusion bombs work

I believe that if the United States actually became the world leader at ecological economic transition it could show too that stable and secure national boundaries to keep democracy meaningful are good and work. Even the communist nations could live with a healthy ecosphere in recovery and a solid safety net for all that is effective at delivering free universal education through graduate school in order to maximize human potential. The way economics works should evolve and adapt to a more intelligent foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d05jEprJxtE crash course on ecological economics






Three Piece Philosophy (video)


Sometimes people wonder about philosophy and regard it as a confusing jumble of vague ideas. I view philosophy differently than that. Actually I have a very simple view of philosophy.

Academically speaking philosophy has many divisions and areas of formal inquiry i.e. ethics, politics, metaphysics, social, cosmology, ontology, logic etc. For myself, concerning cosmology and the phenomenon of being, I have distilled a three-piece philosophical outlook.

https://youtu.be/UkNB_X7wsW4

Like the historical accumulation of science, philosophy as a body of academic material has accumulated over millennia. Reading primary philosophical texts developed over the past 2500 years or so and is therefore something of a venture in reading history. Explaining to others what Plato’s ideas were or how Plotinus used Plato’s ideas concerning a realm of forms in his Enneads (54 treatises) can be quite challenging outside the context of a course in ancient philosophy.

The ideas of ancient philosophers quite often built upon the work of their predecessors and that process continued to the present. Modern symbolic logic has its origins in the classical logic formalized by Aristotle. Learning the history of philosophy is something of an historical reading program that has a lot of abstract ideas in it rather than descriptions of battles, dynasties and social events one finds in general histories of civilization.

Philosophy as an historical body of work has a certain inert status to it. There is more to philosophy than that, for one may sort through the ideas and evaluate them as one learns and eventually classify some ideas as remaining useful and others as being more of archival value. Modern philosophy tends to be live and valid moreso than the old, yet that is just a general paradigm rather than a comprehensive one. Some of the ancient ideas remain valid and may be infused with new ideas arising from philosophers and even physicists. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason continues to be a valid thesis regarding the ties between perception, cognition and reason although contemporary quantum field theory and neurology explain matters somewhat better.

At the end of much reading of philosophy over the years one tends to develop their own outlook on things that could be regarded as a philosophical viewpoint. Though learning the history of philosophy may be time consuming and complex especially when comparing the ideas of one philosopher with others, the result of the personal evaluation of systems and addition of additional concepts from other sources can result in a very simple view. My point of view on matters of philosophy is quite simple these days.

I have two live philosophical interests in addition to one besides the history of philosophy and its content that may be viewed as a kind of large scale scaffolding that allows one to assemble their own Mt. Rushmore of most valuable thought. My two ideas are Christian faith and the convertibility of matter and energy. Those two ideas are easy to say. Each of course has great depth conceptually if one is interested in pursuing them farther.

Recently I read a book named ‘Mass’ published I believe, in 2017. It is a great book describing what mass is. The world and universe of solid objects is regarded as being made of ‘mass’, yet it is actually energy in a different form, and mass is a secondary quality of energy. The author pointed out that in Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity he actually used the formula M=E/c2 rather than E=M/c2. The Universe as pure energy is quite a mysterious topic. Mass is actually an appearance of energy, yet isn’t energy also a secondary quality of something else unknown? The Higgs field is thought to slow subatomic particle from light speed enough to allow them to have a third dimension instead of two dimensions flattened at relativistic velocity at c. Even two dimensional particles are energy; quantum field theory advances may have much more to learn about energy for-itself and its relationship to time and space.

The enigmatic and mysterious nature of pure energy in regard to matter, space-time and being is an example of how old philosophies can be tied in to new. The neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus was considered by the early church to be pagan because he believed he could directly experience God in a mystical transcendence of matter that was named heyschasm. It is as if he could experience pure energy rather than matter and form as a kind of stream of pure good or God. Plotinus had other ideas. He wrote of his idea of Plato’s realm of forms in relation to God, whom he called ‘The One’.

To make a long story short I will skip to the realm of forms idea of Plato’s. He thought that some kind of abstract realm of forms existed from which everything that is in the material world is a copy. I would guess it is comparable to the Swiss patent office when Einstein worked there as a patent clerk having a copy of everything that was manufactured under patent in Europe in his day, except the realm of forms is more metaphysical and may exist in the mind of God. Plotinus thought the One emanated all that is from his perfect, omniscient, omnipotent being and the Intelligence presided over the realm of forms and selected what things would be made in the material world of mass and solid objects in which humans exist too.

The realm of forms could be compared to the quantum world in which all energy appears to become mass in certain forms from gluons to quarks, protons and neutrons to antiparticles and so on. If something exists it will need to be in a pre-fab form and built up from some of the 100+ elements of the periodic table according to certain physical behavioral forms. That is somewhat remarkable.

My other idea of philosophical merit is Christian faith. Christian faith occurs subjectively, phenomenally and existentially. Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher for good reason; he viewed Christian faith and practice as personal and apart from social structures and values; phenomenally rather than socially. Kierkegaard was himself something of a social iconoclast. Like so many German 19th century romantic philosophers that considered society somewhat mundane and inferior with people following conventions as if they were drone ants following meat trails, Kierkegaard also viewed too much of society as following spiritually dead roles through life acting in what Socrates considered to be unexamined lives; that is they were philosophically dead and for Kierkegaard perhaps, spiritually dead.

Christian faith and being occur in a world that is phenomenal. Solid objects seem solid because people are made of atomic elements that are bound in physical laws to experience particle compositions in pre-formed ways. Evolution occurs in forms that are constant though from certain perspectives and levels, changing.

There is no evidence against the existence of God anyplace in nature; ask an evolutionary biologist to show a particular physical form or material that does so and one will see vacuity of intelligent response. The best an atheist scientist could do would be to leave science altogether and act as an incompetent anti-theologian bungling some malfeasant hermeneutics or misinterpretation of Bible scripture. Even theologians are in disagreement about interpreting the beginning and end of the Universe in Biblical hermeneutics (interpretations) as some as pre-millennialist, some post-millenialists and others amillennialists, for example.

Christian phenomenology and Christianity existentially are nothing more than descriptions of a posture of Christians to the experience of life, matter and energy for those that care to consider it. Reconciling scripture with science is something that some try to do- even I have published a couple of books with my thoughts on the subject, in the Bible itself though God is recorded by history as having mentioned that what is wisdom to man is foolishness to God. Such wisdom and foolishness may include the idea of constructing cosmology about mass when energy is generic and incomprehensible for-others, as a kind of mystery that mass and human thought cannot really comprehend as secondary characteristic of energy. Time and history including natural history may occur though one knows that relativity and time, being and nothingness are phenomenal themselves with a relative duration perhaps of 13.5 billion years seems vast in one sense, from certain perspectives and might be as nothing at all from other viewpoints, or even from God’s if one could understand that.

Pro and con hermeneutics from theologians and anti-theologian scientists are interesting yet really not so much from a philosophical point of view, in the context of the history of philosophy as the third element of my own regard for the main stuff of philosophy. Simple material with M=E/c2 and Christian faith occurring phenomenally amidst much temporal and unknown physics. Augustine was himself a student of Plotinus and neo-Platonism before he became Christian. He was always looking in the right direction. What is, is. Whatever the primary quality of energy in-itself is, it seems capricious to differentiate it into categories called Universes (U1…U) when there is a continuum of the primary quality albeit with ample nothingness thrown in.

5/27/20

Pre-War Jewish Goads on Adolph Hitler

In the United States the history of the second world war is reasonably plain. Germany attacked Europe and then the United States so the U.S.A. joined the war and with the other allies beat Germany. The NAZIs were evil incarnate (like NPR) and liquidated millions of Jews, Gypsies and Homos beyond the rules of war. There is more to history than that however, so I will sketch a brief piece clarifying some of the goads that drove Hitler to such ferocity and hatred of those he regarded as corrupting the world.

Since the Jews had been kicked out of Israel by Romans they had looked for a place to call their own. They migrated to many nations fleeing their former homeland where they had crucified God and experienced disaster forever after. Most of the nations they emigrated to tolerated them for a while and then kicked them out to, sometimes at great cost to themselves as well. Leading up to the First World War Jews of Europe had sought to create their own nation even in Europe. They were the first zionists seeking respite from homelessness.

Meanwhile, in the non-Jewish sector, democracy was rising against aristocracy. Europeans also had the communist problem, and many of the leaders of the left were Jews. Leon Trotsky for example, was actually named Lev Davidovich Bronshtein- a Ukrainian Jew. Germany went to war in 1914. With American reinforcements of the allies Germany was defeated, or rather brought to an armistice that made an uneasy peace ensue with issues not being fully settled.

A Jew from Munich became a national leader in supporting the end of the German aristocracy. He spoke in the beer hall in Munich that Hitler would later lead his putch from. The left-wing revolt forced the Kaiser from office. Hitler, a veteran of the First World War whom had experienced mustard gas injury, hated the Jews for bring the armistice into being and forcing the Kaiser from office; he believed Jews were leading communism and the end of Germany so he was too happy to accept help from on high; probably deposed aristocrats via the German High Army Command. Hitler was sent to take over leadership of the Germany national democratic socialist party- the NAZI party.

Hitler's rise to power and political attitudes are marginally at least, understandable. Loud Jews in public roles were agitating against native citizen leadership and appeared in favor of communism that was a very real and growing threat of proletarian dictatorship in the east and within Germany too. When the Second War started; the concluding act of the FIrst, unfinished war, Hitler's final solution was brought into effect.

Certainly Hitler had understandable grievances against the Jews who he perceived to be attacking German national existence; and Germany had comparatively recently won its full independence from Catholic Habsburgs (though Hitler laughably was himself from Habsburg Austria). It is no wonder that Hitler fancied himself a new Caesar for the Habsburg Empire was also part of the Holy Roman Empire. 

One might ask what Jews of Thessalonica for instance, had to do with Germany. The answer preponderantly is nothing. Because a few loud, prominent Jews agitated in Germany and against the Tsar Hitler conflated or associated all Jews with the political voices of a few. That is a danger of racism; it conveys select attitudes and behaviors to all of the people of a given race.


Hitler as a modern user of technology was able to selectively kill millions of innocent civilians. As an individual damaged by war and goaded to action by elites that recognized his charismatic voice Hitler was able to lead the mostly former socialist cadred of the storm troopers into a large expansion able to take over Germany by forcing political opponents into silence. After the conquest and assumption of Chancellor socialists too became downgraded and the homosexual leaders of the storm troopers purged. 

Modern broadcast media remains a powerful tool for propaganda and repression of free speech forming bad opinion against writers and others seeking to express objective, factual history and political analysis without the bias of fake-truth endemic to organized media periodically in its history.

Because of the atrocity of the holocaust Europeans tended to support the return of Jews to their own homeland where their desires for political expression and power would not require the subversion or blame for subversion of national political and social development. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.



5/26/20

Chicoms and Wall Street Corporatism Share Repressive Concentration of Wealth and Power

Human organizations have a trait of concentrating wealth and power so far as they can; Corporatism and Chinese Communism share similar objectives of concentrating wealth and power in the hands of elites. It should be no surprise that the CHicom leadership feels free to repress democracy and independence in Hong Kong since the United States works to repress free enterprise and free speech independent of corporate will to power- even NPR is something like a Soviet era propaganda and state terror on dissidents organ.

Corporations repress free speech of employees and even the internet has corporate power burying sites they don't like in search engine listings. There isn't a meritocracy in the United States so much as a do the rich like your business system of government. The covid contact tracing is a convenient way to learn more about what all of those independent people are doing and who they know isn't it.

One might wonder why practical anti-covid measures (no I don't mean taking down old Kobe Bryant highlight videos) did not include practical remedies like make complete face mask coverings with eye protection and small replaceable filters at Halloween mask factories so people could go about life more or less normally, or why an ounce or two of bleach in a gallon of water wasn't recommended for disinfecting hands; one would think certain people have some will to keep the economy closed and people more repressed; perhaps another wave of post-covid distressed home and real estate buying will follow as after the 2008-9 financial crash.

It is alright for democracies to limit capital concentration to keep free enterprise independent. There is sometimes permissible dynamic tension between democrats and oligarchs (or communists) that is requisite for keeping a society healthy and able to adapt to external challenges; environmental or social. When the United States is such a bad example to the communists and when the media becomes repressive or even a tool of partly state funded disinformation and networking racketeering terrorism why would one expect the Chicoms to not follow the American lead to their own advantage? Networks are another opportunity for ad hoc communes with exclusive membership. One shouldn't expect them to be some Karl Marx sort of thing with rural farms, hog pens and orgies.





Marx apparently believed that capitalists would concentrate wealth infinitely stimulating revolution. Modern economists point out that he was basically wrong about that for technical reasons. While dictatorships may concentrate wealth absolutely in certain respects, free economies these days tend toward increasing wealth with intellectual labor and free labor. Physical labor produces a diminishing share of national income and capital has its limits too at increasing national income. It is better to have intelligent leadership well versed in ecological economic transformative goals that is able to moderate economics and utilize 100% of human abilities with good polices rather than to force gross failures to develop human potential and let circumstances dictate economic policies through blind force of evolution/crash.









5/17/20

Three-Piece Philosophy

Sometimes people wonder about philosophy and regard it as a confusing jumble of vague ideas. I view philosophy differently than that. Actually I have a very simple view of philosophy.

Academically speaking philosophy has many divisions and areas of formal inquiry i.e. ethics, politics, metaphysics, social, cosmology, ontology, logic etc. For myself, concerning cosmology and the phenomenon of being, I have distilled a three-piece philosophical outlook.

https://youtu.be/UkNB_X7wsW4

Like the historical accumulation of science, philosophy as a body of academic material has accumulated over millennia. Reading primary philosophical texts developed over the past 2500 years or so and is therefore something of a venture in reading history. Explaining to others what Plato’s ideas were or how Plotinus used Plato’s ideas concerning a realm of forms in his Enneads (54 treatises) can be quite challenging outside the context of a course in ancient philosophy.

The ideas of ancient philosophers quite often built upon the work of their predecessors and that process continued to the present. Modern symbolic logic has its origins in the classical logic formalized by Aristotle. Learning the history of philosophy is something of an historical reading program that has a lot of abstract ideas in it rather than descriptions of battles, dynasties and social events one finds in general histories of civilization.

Philosophy as an historical body of work has a certain inert status to it. There is more to philosophy than that, for one may sort through the ideas and evaluate them as one learns and eventually classify some ideas as remaining useful and others as being more of archival value. Modern philosophy tends to be live and valid moreso than the old, yet that is just a general paradigm rather than a comprehensive one. Some of the ancient ideas remain valid and may be infused with new ideas arising from philosophers and even physicists. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason continues to be a valid thesis regarding the ties between perception, cognition and reason although contemporary quantum field theory and neurology explain matters somewhat better.

At the end of much reading of philosophy over the years one tends to develop their own outlook on things that could be regarded as a philosophical viewpoint. Though learning the history of philosophy may be time consuming and complex especially when comparing the ideas of one philosopher with others, the result of the personal evaluation of systems and addition of additional concepts from other sources can result in a very simple view. My point of view on matters of philosophy is quite simple these days.

I have two live philosophical interests in addition to one besides the history of philosophy and its content that may be viewed as a kind of large scale scaffolding that allows one to assemble their own Mt. Rushmore of most valuable thought. My two ideas are Christian faith and the convertibility of matter and energy. Those two ideas are easy to say. Each of course has great depth conceptually if one is interested in pursuing them farther.

Recently I read a book named ‘Mass’ published I believe, in 2017. It is a great book describing what mass is. The world and universe of solid objects is regarded as being made of ‘mass’, yet it is actually energy in a different form, and mass is a secondary quality of energy. The author pointed out that in Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity he actually used the formula M=E/c2 rather than E=M/c2. The Universe as pure energy is quite a mysterious topic. Mass is actually an appearance of energy, yet isn’t energy also a secondary quality of something else unknown? The Higgs field is thought to slow subatomic particle from light speed enough to allow them to have a third dimension instead of two dimensions flattened at relativistic velocity at c. Even two dimensional particles are energy; quantum field theory advances may have much more to learn about energy for-itself and its relationship to time and space.

The enigmatic and mysterious nature of pure energy in regard to matter, space-time and being is an example of how old philosophies can be tied in to new. The neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus was considered by the early church to be pagan because he believed he could directly experience God in a mystical transcendence of matter that was named heyschasm. It is as if he could experience pure energy rather than matter and form as a kind of stream of pure good or God. Plotinus had other ideas. He wrote of his idea of Plato’s realm of forms in relation to God, whom he called ‘The One’.

To make a long story short I will skip to the realm of forms idea of Plato’s. He thought that some kind of abstract realm of forms existed from which everything that is in the material world is a copy. I would guess it is comparable to the Swiss patent office when Einstein worked there as a patent clerk having a copy of everything that was manufactured under patent in Europe in his day, except the realm of forms is more metaphysical and may exist in the mind of God. Plotinus thought the One emanated all that is from his perfect, omniscient, omnipotent being and the Intelligence presided over the realm of forms and selected what things would be made in the material world of mass and solid objects in which humans exist too.

The realm of forms could be compared to the quantum world in which all energy appears to become mass in certain forms from gluons to quarks, protons and neutrons to antiparticles and so on. If something exists it will need to be in a pre-fab form and built up from some of the 100+ elements of the periodic table according to certain physical behavioral forms. That is somewhat remarkable.

My other idea of philosophical merit is Christian faith. Christian faith occurs subjectively, phenomenally and existentially. Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher for good reason; he viewed Christian faith and practice as personal and apart from social structures and values; phenomenally rather than socially. Kierkegaard was himself something of a social iconoclast. Like so many German 19th century romantic philosophers that considered society somewhat mundane and inferior with people following conventions as if they were drone ants following meat trails, Kierkegaard also viewed too much of society as following spiritually dead roles through life acting in what Socrates considered to be unexamined lives; that is they were philosophically dead and for Kierkegaard perhaps, spiritually dead.

Christian faith and being occur in a world that is phenomenal. Solid objects seem solid because people are made of atomic elements that are bound in physical laws to experience particle compositions in pre-formed ways. Evolution occurs in forms that are constant though from certain perspectives and levels, changing.

There is no evidence against the existence of God anyplace in nature; ask an evolutionary biologist to show a particular physical form or material that does so and one will see vacuity of intelligent response. The best an atheist scientist could do would be to leave science altogether and act as an incompetent anti-theologian bungling some malfeasant hermeneutics or misinterpretation of Bible scripture. Even theologians are in disagreement about interpreting the beginning and end of the Universe in Biblical hermeneutics (interpretations) as some as pre-millennialist, some post-millenialists and others amillennialists, for example.

Christian phenomenology and Christianity existentially are nothing more than descriptions of a posture of Christians to the experience of life, matter and energy for those that care to consider it. Reconciling scripture with science is something that some try to do- even I have published a couple of books with my thoughts on the subject, in the Bible itself though God is recorded by history as having mentioned that what is wisdom to man is foolishness to God. Such wisdom and foolishness may include the idea of constructing cosmology about mass when energy is generic and incomprehensible for-others, as a kind of mystery that mass and human thought cannot really comprehend as secondary characteristic of energy. Time and history including natural history may occur though one knows that relativity and time, being and nothingness are phenomenal themselves with a relative duration perhaps of 13.5 billion years seems vast in one sense, from certain perspectives and might be as nothing at all from other viewpoints, or even from God’s if one could understand that.

Pro and con hermeneutics from theologians and anti-theologian scientists are interesting yet really not so much from a philosophical point of view, in the context of the history of philosophy as the third element of my own regard for the main stuff of philosophy. Simple material with M=E/c2 and Christian faith occurring phenomenally amidst much temporal and unknown physics. Augustine was himself a student of Plotinus and neo-Platonism before he became Christian. He was always looking in the right direction. What is, is. Whatever the primary quality of energy in-itself is, it seems capricious to differentiate it into categories called Universes (U1…U) when there is a continuum of the primary quality albeit with ample nothingness thrown in.

Social Inventing and Consuming Faster Than Nature's Supply etc.

The human race has quite a few clever and inventive members. They can invent new technologies and machines to convert raw natural resources into consumer product readily. If the entire solar system were a vast Dyson Sphere with more natural resources than 10,000 Earths, new technology could be invented to consume those vast natural resources much faster than anyone could protect those natural resources and ecology. Economic practices need be adapted to the planetary resource paradigm instead of driving with Mr. McGoo on meth intensity chasing after marginal productivity of capital increase.

If the Earth’s natural resources were limitless and the space to live without end the present economic system called capitalism that seeks after increase of the marginal productivity of capital might not be too harmful. At least if the economic system that seeks profit as an end in-itself without concern for vague philosophical issues like the global ecosphere limit had no capability of exhausting the ecosphere it would be understandable. Unfortunately the ecosphere has very definite limits and the economic activity commonly called capitalism is exhausting the ecosphere; keeping the ecosphere intact and healthy simply is not a concern of capitalism. Capitalism is just a license to go about business largely without regulation. Some have gamed the system and indexed funds and investments to make purely abstract profit without actually creating real business; that practice is rather devastating to the ecosphere. In a better version of free enterprise public capital would be available to finance start up businesses of ecological benefit or of compelling scientific or social interest.

One example might be a Department of Defense perception of the need to defend the citizens against Covid 19 casualties so they put out to bid modified clear plastic Halloween masks with replaceable filters and eye protection that will stop people in congested social areas from being infected with that virus. D.O.D. also might adapt Star Wars storm trooper helmets to survive biological war and stockpile a half a million. D.O.D. seems pathetically ill-equipped for practical survival of pathogens from terrorists or nation-states.

If capitalism is blind to ecosphere health of planet Earth it has got the loyalty- blind loyalty as it were- of most of the people of the united States and perhaps the world. The antipathetic Orwellian foe reinforcing the urge to capitalize is the smitten Communist system aka ‘Marxism’. That greatest ism specter is of pure bureaucracy for itself. 

Pure bureaucracy administering equal portions of capital for all citizens except communist party members that get quite a bit more than an equal share has a mirrored anti-political partner, like so many particles of the quantum world, in corporatism. Corporatism concentrates wealth for the one percent; whom may be considered the communist elites of the west. In communism and corporatism elites had a higher standard of living (I refer to the former Soviet version of communism 1.0) than the proles or masses. Concentrated wealth coincides with concentrated power in both systems. In the west ordinary citizens have an illusion of democratic power, yet the facts of concentrating wealth and tax cuts to increase the marginal productivity of capital for the most rich speaks for itself.

As more machines, science and technology are added to the inventory of things owned by the most rich and millions of investors in the capitalism market it is the ecosphere that is the primary victim of ‘development’. Mass extinction of species occur while sophisticated ant-like in coordination societies process the natural resources sometimes converting it into heat-absorbing cities and skyscrapers that collapse with the first few aircraft stolen by uneducated sand people. Wars occur over resources, water, and more reasons that comprise of anthropology of regional wrong human ventures. If a protracted war in S.E. Asia or Central Asia occurred, that was a blind desert storm and fire in a portion of a planetary ecosphere itself being cut down in a variety of ways that follow seeking a  marginal productivity increase of capital return on investment as an abstract good. Sometimes it can be better to seek particular material constructions beneficial to the ecosphere or society rather than abstract profit even if the marginal productivity of capital is less.

Free enterprise is different than networked capitalism. Free enterprises can be regulated to work in particular ecological niches beneficial to restoration of a health ecosphere while vast corporations and the networked capitalist market is a bull in a china shop that everyone wants to ride. I once met a fellow that had started riding bulls for pay when he was a teenager, and frankly, he was a physical wreck as a middle aged adult; humanity should not expect its future on Earth with a degraded ecosphere to be better off.

Some day science may learn to produce mass from virtual energy and create new  planets, stars and ecospheres nearly instantly where nothing existed before. I suspect that day is quite a way off and that it will not arrive before human society has destroyed most free wildlife on the planet and endangered its own social survival because of ecospheric insults  perpetrated by a blind ecosphere victimizing economic predator named capitalism. 

Capitalism at its core isn’t really a system of economics. Capital in the most pure sense is anything of value; those things that support life, that cohere in the integral ecosphere of the Earth are the most vital capital of all (I don’t believe it reasonable to consider Christian merit as spiritual capital since no one deserves to be saved and all salvation is a result of the grace of God). Free enterprise can continue to build technical and scientific capital as well as to advance the quality of life for all of the people of the world if it is put to work within an actual reformed democracy that has maybe 50% public capital and 50% privately held capital, and several other reforms.

People should not be allowed to own shares of more than three corporations to prevent deleterious networking and pursuit of marginal productivity of capital increases anywhere simply for-itself without concern for the harm to ecosphere in the means of production. 

Corporations should have no more than 30,000 employees. If larger projects need be done then several corporations would need to work together. It would be good to prevent formation of too large to fail corporate and financial structures that corrupt the political system.

No citizen should be able to earn more than 300 times the average annual income. If a fellow cannot live on 300 times the average man’s income he is a really pathetic creature, wasteful and pitiable.

Society should set criteria and objects for new enterprises of value to the ecosphere and society. New enterprises would need to cohere within those criteria.

Disconnecting the Higgs Field (poem)

Here and there

pointillist continua build

rowing the skiff

clambering over the road

staying in shadows until spring

insouciant compact snow

mirthfully compiled

just to melt

like thick shadows standing tall

 

 Recall those human ventures

in sunshine and heat waving

structures squat and vast

sheltering every manner of idea

swilling the environment

pig-hooves hogging one ecosphere

blanket covering the Earth

 

 It was simply one answer

to numerous questions

working well and input loopily

with the Higgs field disconnected

 

  Locally service shut down

three-dimensional particles dropped

down into two dimensions

their flatness a consequence

of speed of light atomic components

shorn of Higgs field syrupy slowdown

 

  Two dimensional particles-

formerly three,

no longer cohered within quarks

neutrons and protons

waferish thin diet

infinitely thin poker chips

without strong force attraction

without electro-weak conventions

they were columns and stacks

of potentially being something

 

  A good measure of the Universe

left free to its own devices

two-dimensionally speaking

gave its energy up to nothingness

what vast black holes remained

when gravity was gone

where information was stored

why the energy need be someplace

with change and form together

engines of actualization

in three dimensions

was a solitary questions

 

  Two dimensional quantum maps

direct quantum chips

through Higgs fields

being and becoming soap bubbles

rightly in place as surface tension

structures in motion

trillions of cells like one

 

Shaping the Higgs field

like electro-magnetic lines

with apportioned signs

meaning lessness than nothings

mechanics of quantum creators

nano-machines’ centrifugal

color forces

 

Partially disconnecting Higgs field (s)

micro-designers in the fog

would modify galaxies as if they were

emulating the Creator to modify space and time

from the beginning

alpha and omega

fields that ever were/are

mind plans of the One.



Obamacare Flunked the Covid 19 Stress-Test

Obamacare has flunked the Covid 19 crisis. Maybe half of former American workers will be without health insurance as stressed employers cut employees and costs. Obama-Care was a neo-liberal corporate ream-job designed to enslave younger, healthy workers in order to pay rents to the richest corporate shareholders. When the first pandemic in a few decades blew into town Obamacare collapsed like a 9-11 house of cards.

There were better alternatives to neo-liberal corporate health insurance for all Americans. I have about a U.S. government direct provisioning of health services for the poor and veterans since the Obama administration. Expanding the V.A. and networking it with poor peoples and community clinics and hospitals was the right way to go.  Speaker Pelosi said to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it; now we know that it was preponderantly a scheme to enrich the rich and earn post-employment gratitude for the dishonest servant.

A better system was possible; free, walk-in public health service could have been designed to provide care to all of the nation’s poor and for those with pre-existing conditions unable to be insured. The nation public health service should have been designed to treat as many as 30 million Americans at one time, as it would also serve as a national crisis health care service in addition to V.A. network.

Most of the beds would have been mothballed and brought into active public health duty only as needed. Bringing the poor into the V.A. network would help to fill the mothballed service to a high enough capacity to keep it working realistically and ready for a future national health care crisis.

American politicians are daftly infatuated with capitalism and Wall Street and without any kind of solid base in comprehending political philosophy. Capital is nothing more than things of value, and communism is not the only alternative to unlimited unregulated capitalism. It is on the contrary quite reasonable for a democracy to regulate and direct free enterprise ventures to serve vital public interests such as ecosphere defense and restoration, public health and so forth.  There are innumerable ways to reform capitalism such that it is well adapted to the demographics and physical limits of growth on Earth.

Some regard capital as liquid, relocatable funds for investment. The marginal productivity of such capital cannot be regarded as capable of being a rational or desirable management system for the conservation and restoration of the planetary ecosphere.

Compare capitalism to automobiles; should automobiles be free to travel as fast as they can be made to because to regulate highway speed would be communistic? Government regulation is an important public function necessary for the continuity of life on Earth. The problem with the U.S. government today is that it hasn’t got enough enterprising individuals in it able to reform, innovate or lead in a practical way. Communism is a kind of evil, bureaucratic domination of the stupid over everyone. That bureaucratic evil spirit can be found in about any form of government as it becomes ossified, stupid and has concentrated wealth and power with bureaucrats becoming neo-liberal loyalists of whatever furher or fearless leader promises them more wealth and authority. Good government cannot be led by Mister McGoo political philosophy that interprets capitalism as a system of government possible just with concentrated wealth and power. As I noted above capital is nothing more than things of value. It should be noted that things that are valuable to human survival and health like natural resources may be grossly undervalued. Value systems arise from intelligence, and a paucity of intelligence one might observe, seems too common for most politicians. Why not create covid 19 defense masks that cover the entire face with protection for the eyes? Plastic Halloween mask manufacturers could make clear adapted Covid 19 defense masks to enable vulnerable people to safely venture in public without playing Russian roulette with the virus and live breathing virus vectors on subways and buses.

Communists of the former Soviet Union also had values; they did not redistribute commodities willy nilly. Values for capital can be of two kinds primarily; things of value economically that are recognized and those that are not. The economic philosophy argument today should be about management style rather than about capitalism since capitalism means nothing more than things of value that compile. Communists also wanted to increase capital, just like western ‘capitalists’, yet with a different method.

Communists converted all private capital into public capital. In the west today’s public capital is about zero in light of public debt, and private capital is most all and mostly concentrated by a very few.  A better balance between public and private capital is desirable if competent political management style is made to exist- perhaps a 50-50 balance would be good, yet with all the work being done through free enterprise that is regulated and selected for ecospheric quality and for increasing the quality of life for the majority.


5/10/20

In Some Respects Americans are Lost

In some respects Americans are mildly lost. Without the Lord Jesus Christ guiding their thought and lives people go astray in pursuit of a zillion temporal things. Many of those temporal, material things don't work well with other material things they pursue. The entire society might be regarded as uncoordinated materially and prone to conflicts. Short term profits are a reason for being in-themselves as the woods for the trees can't be seen as they are clear cut and replaced with subdivisions and asphalt.

Homosexual marriage was just one, wrong belligerent political move more satisfying to Satan one would think, than to God. Not that anything humans do might be satisfying to God of course; He is perfection and humanity is mired in original sin and the hog farm of bad politics as a millennial activity. Instead of working things in a positive and optimal direction the leadership chooses wrong options. Homosexual marriage for example might have not been selected to offend most of the planet's sensibilities and instead some kind of contractual, new homo institution for that behavior seeking legal encumbrances to reduce individual civil liberties might have been made; Americans would have tolerated that and not brought some wrath of God style corrections upon themselves. Perhaps there is more of that in store down the road since Americans seem so far lost as to forget the gospel has conditions and expectations of Biblically correct spirit and behavior with it.

People are often drifting in and out of life. They strut and fret their hour on the stage with ample worries as Shakespeare noted (in Hamlet) without considering the phenomenality of it all. Neither do they have adequate concern for the ecosphere's health to keep it alive and thriving apparently as a long slow drain of its health is perpetrated by the human economic style of exploiting resources until they don't work any more.

Certainly taxes need be increased upon the rich yet Democrats are far too weak for that in their pursuit of all looseness possible from border security to material increase. God has indicated that he has displeasure when the rich exploit the poor; maybe the concentration of over-wealth in the U.S.A. is another part of the problem theologically speaking. The loose border allowing human vectors of infection quite liberally to cross illegally also assures that Mexico's health system and politics are over-exploited or underdeveloped as the case may be and Mexicans die trying to keep U.S. auto plants producing during the pandemic. Illegal immigration means that economics are loose on both sides of the border with the poor paying the cost of such political vaguery.

Matthew 19: 23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”




5/8/20

One Need Cover Eyes from Covid Aerosol Contact

Upgrading standard hard-plastic Halloween masks with eye covering and nose and mouth filters probably would substantially reduce the odds of getting Covid 19 from the community while shopping or riding a bus. people are generally disregarding eye infection that can occur in maybe 20% of the Covid cases. If one is getting Covid generally through the mouth or nose the route of the eyes is just ignored, yet that can be a fatal flaw in reasoning for some people.


Clear plastic Halloween masks with replaceable filters and eye covering can be made at low cost very quickly and distributed to the nation so people can go about their business and bus riding more safely. There is no point in being stupid; and where those dollar store garden gloves taking care to wash them often.

If a soldier was defending against VX or GB (lethal chemical agents) and putting on protective gear he would not fail to cover his entire face and especially eyes; for some reason civilians are stupid about that and believe that inhaling the virus is the only way to get it.

Wal-mart has several masks that could be upgraded if they cared to make them useful for covid 19 defense. Here is an example of one that would be easy to make just clear with replaceable filters and eye covering.



             

Alaska's 'Marine Highway' Problem

The state of Alaska has a marine ferry boat service aka 'Marine Highway' that it can't afford in the post oil-boom era. However with more coastline than the rest of the U.S.A. and many isolated communities it actually needs some sort of water transport for the citizen-public; not just for tourists.

Early in the territorial and state history of Alaska the federal government invested a lot in establishing people here. The cold war with the Soviets was just one reason why. Presently there is still good cause to invest in Alaska although politicians usually don't find the good reasons so much as the bad. The state therefore needs to take the bull by the horns and build an affordable marine Highway infrastructure.

When I tried to return to Alaska during the Covid crisis I found it was becoming difficult. Canada had stopped travel for Americans across its border, and the ferry boat to Bellingham Washington was gone; in effect Alaska Airlines was the de facto state transportation system for some time.

The basic concepts of public ferryboat transportation in Alaska should be changed such that heavy lift and passengers would travel through separate vessels. Passenger vessels without cars or trucks can be quite fast and cheaper to operate. One can build fast trimarans to skim over the waters that survive quite substantial storms. Cargo barges can be built for heavy lift- perhaps motorized barges operated by private barge lines in conjunction with the state of Alaska. New designs for passengerless barges could be made and tailored to Alaskan needs and waters.

I like the idea of double-hulled barges with the inner hull detachable from the out hull when the outer hull need be taken out of service for maintenance and trimarans for passengers for short hops of 200 miles or fewer.

Another idea that has been mentioned in making a public corporation to operate the ferry boats. It is worth considering, however the means already exist to upgrade the existing structure albeit with substantial changes.




5/3/20

Concerning Ideas and Being (poem)

An energy field of infinite scale
dimensions contingent and meaningless
pass gluons and quarks to Higgs loops
virtually spoofing countless hadrons;
energy acting upon energy-
whirlpools formed molecules to be
and become sentient suits

Independent thoughts off an endless branch
pure energy; whatever it is, 
across an expanse of universes
energized though free
protons and neutrons you and me
Iive in God’s energetic stream  
with days and years of acting solid
-massless in two dimensions
solid in three

Where a big bang cooled energy too
Acting like mass (M=E/c2)
entangled in a Higgs field
frozen energy viewed from within
it being like an unknowable grail
from an imponderable point
of infinite energy in one static place
in an infinite virtual cloud

Speaking of particle waves
as a kind of serious lark
with dead grim power;
Infinite and indefinable
enshrouding a Universal cloud of unknowing

Thus it is that mankind enjoys the story
of mass separated as ape-kind 
north-south by the ocean spilling
into a Mediterranean basin evolving
farther than tropical fish with fins
caught in tidal pools adapting
to live a little and walk to water

Safely amphibs moved farther
to warmth ashore; solar energy
their distant ancestors changed
adapting to the north slope savanna
some returning to East Africa
becoming sapiens in time
after some earlier adapted Neanderthals
returned north again, and northeast

Stories of billions of years 
reduced to millions and thousands
summarized in sentient script
of so much done in six days
an energy field, an infinite line
shaped to evolving waves and Universe
as a preference of Being, the sentients’
thoughts stand alone, apart from will;
that source of energy
a word to begin
the cascade of questions
concerning spacetime and being
emptiness and energy,
ideas and dreaming.


Covid 19 and The End of Verdance (poem)

  Covid 19’s love of bated breath
dwells intimately in numbers
words exchange theories of noise
penumbras past-time into night
light casual silent thunder
Covid rhymes kisses of death
planning economistic trillions
In futurists’ sight

  That it were not sew
rapping beeziness budding bioreactors
reap cracker box palace demographics
pollinating ribbon cutting bling
so red death rings
belles of blue

  If dramaturges of deep sleep groan
with lines of micron size convergent
done drops Halloween springs
yearly shared shadows
songs of silence-
zero public assets

  Reaper dreams 10,000 base pairs
more or less remnants of Covid spliced
dread rhinovirus cowboys herding
Wall Street to Jackal and Hyde mode-
shelters in place
all private assets

  A micron or five mohr investors
bounce skyward in positive pressure
bubbles of infectors a, t, c, g scrabble
without ecological economic sectors
containing Covid ape virus

  To the drawing board an airless mountain
is cast like a filtered militant
protesting beeziness failing
cloistered hives of moonlight
rhythms skulsing foreshadow
Ezekialian rest of wonder
what is wrong or write, supersymmetry
in building codes allowing Higgs particles
to borrow from their own quantum field
virtually forever until thermodynamics
close down the dressed Universe
in naked disappearance
without a bang or Whymper to scale
Earth’s highest point
50% public assets, 50% private

  Apes from the verdance
clime down
  Apes cut the verdance
build a town
  Ape with a dream
build machines
  Machines with the mind 
hate life’s sign
  A.I. kilt the verdance
thought “that’s nice”.

Uncreative Responses to the Wuhan Virus

One of the worst revelations of the pandemic is that politicians may not be very bright or able to think innovatively. To them sustainable economics means drilling more oil wells. In the United States politicians seemed to be limited to declaring that they needed more ventilators and so forth. Medical remedies were important obviously yet so was prophylaxis against the virus. The latter is the area where creative imagination was sorely lacking and that made me wonder if American politicians generally are stupid.

 A nation with stupid leaders unable to figure out how to keep the economy working well during a pandemic are also likely to be unable to discover ways to adapt the economy to the ecosphere in order to keep the human virus of consumption and displacement from destroying the ecosphere. It may be that in the average state of economic affairs with people learning a skill with blinders on to most everything else beside personal income through-put that the national I.Q. just is not very high, or high enough to overcome the case of stupidity and inertia that has attended the decline of several prior civilizations.

Some have suggested that humanity is like a bacteria eating everything it can from the environment until the petri dish planet is exhausted and incapable of sustaining human life. Old economic styles like those used today are like that. New ecological economics adapts human economics to one the ecosphere can sustain in vitality. It is a fundamental and necessary change. Economic sustainability does not mean drilling oil and using greenhouse gases until the atmosphere is 700 degrees; it refers to ecological sustainability in regard to rightly adapted human economic methods.

 China addressed its Covid problem in Wuhan fairly swiftly because it has dictatorship when it is needed. The U.S. with its democracy (nominally at least) seemed a clattering junker in its response comparatively as so many states and governors fought about how and when to require that prosperous people stay at home for a couple of months to shelter in place while the homeless and poor where generally discounted. Public schools were closed for the year and church attendance was banned because of decrees forbidding public gatherings. The President considered giving money to oil corporations for relief to the fall in oil prices because they had suffered so much during their decades of years with record profits that they shared with the public then as higher prices at the pump. It is important to keep those engines of global warming gases rolling.

 I would think that students should be rewarded a bit for their loss of much of a school year with some educational reform in a timely way so they don’t find their programmatic advance in higher education too disrupted. Consider that high schools developed in an era when the Internet did not exist and when local communities were actually local; a college was often quite distant. Today though, high schools and colleges can share the same space on-line.

 High schools should all be paired with at least one college such that there is a continuous educational ladder from grade 9 to grade 16. A student making satisfactory progress in high school at some select level of g.p.a. would be entirely free to take higher classes from the college if pre-requisites are met. Every high school student would have automatic admission to at least one college- the paired college- while in high school. The sole requirement would be satisfactory academic progress for a degree program. For non-degree seeking students the sole requirement for taking college courses while in high school or after would be pre-requisites or tests to show a student would be at the right level in a particular course. It could be that some students would discover technical courses at college that were not available in high school although they have no plan to pursue an academic degree program.

 I have wondered why there does not seem to be some new business such as an on-line ‘mask store’ that would sell designer complete face protective masks during the Covid crisis. With quality full face coverings with a price for everyone from free to hundreds of dollars people could ride school buses normally or go about business normally in urban areas though gloves should be used to- perhaps garden gloves that are washed frequently. Eyelids are a repository for viral germs when conversations occur. Eyes need to be covered with shields as well as nose and mouth; that’s why full face masks need include eye shields. Halloween mass full face coverings with the addition of clear eye plastic coverings are a basic template to adapt for the Wuhan virus. Clear masks may be better for mass use during the crisis rather than scary masks for example, with politician’s faces on them.

 Logically people over 60 or with pre-existing conditions may need to stay in isolation with a federal subsidy until a vaccine is made and distributed. If medical authorities approve, younger people probably should return to work letting the virus burn out among them if that means they are thereafter immune themselves. If older people return to the work force without a vaccine they would in effect be playing a game of Russian roulette; safe enough until someone walks in to the store that is infected. Older people can wear clear entire-face covering masks with filters for nose and mouth in addition to eye protection when they need to go out in the public to shop. Of course, they too should be free to return to work with a mask like a hockey star if them want- yet the mask need be just very thin and snug to work.

 


Pandemic Spring- Return to S.E. Alaska

 Usually I don’t write about myself or my own experiences in my blog. Instead I prefer to make a comment on current events in order to have a personal view of history later. That seems a worthwhile venture when history writing is often done with archival material that was made from the insider, establishment perspective rather than that of ordinary citizens. It can be difficult to confirm that ordinary people are even aware of major events much less minor ones, or what they thought about them. So a brief summary of my own Feb to May 2020 Covid experience would be useful retrospectively.

 In February I was still employed at a dental lab as a dental lab technician. I had learned about pouring dental models, cutting out dies made from white and blue powder/stone and other lab procedures for a year and a half. The lab had a sharp sow-down when they choose not to sign a new contract with the V.A. because of numerous onerous conditions the government placed on the lab if they wanted to renew. That list of conditions was quite remarkable including one that everyone in the lab be certified (I wasn’t), that the lab deliver the product to the V.A. by a certain time every day, that the lab books be entirely open to the government and so forth. The lab would need to become a kind of transparent auxiliary to the government. At any rate by the end of February it was evident that my employment was ending with business off. I need to formulate an emergency plan of a sort.

 I am from Alaska yet I was working in Montana. It was too early to return to rural Alaska because it is still snowed in during March on the road and woods to the shed where I stay. I had cold weather reinjured my feet on a late October, 12 foot skiff journey on the inside passage in 2018 and did not want to aggravate the situation. Instead I considered a place to look for work at another dental lab and finally selected Oregon.

  I caught a bus I Montana to Oregon. The bus ride was interesting because a somewhat unusual guy got on the bus in Butte, delivered by the police to the station at 5 in the morning. He conversed with himself incessantly and when the bus arrived, boarded. He went to the back of the bus, I sat up front relieved.

 The fellow eventually caused a bus delay that made the bus miss connections in Portland. Apparently he said the bus smelled like niggers when he sat amidst a bunch of black people, and the situation went on for some miles. A black fellow sitting opposite me said that he nearly caused a riot on the bus. One passenger said "What do you expect, this is Montana”. When the bus stopped at Deer Lodge to meet police, who boarded the bus, the unruly passenger after 20 minutes of talking resisted being removed from the bus. Two policemen had to drag him out. The older fellow hooked his feet around the metal that hold the seats in place to make the police work harder. I thought the guy had some kind of dementia from observing him at the station, yet I am no psychologist.

 Oregon was just experiencing its first Covid cases when I arrived. Portland Oregon had no bus station. The bus dropped off passengers on a poorly lit sidewalk at night in a seedy part of town with numerous homeless camps and tents on sidewalks. Passengers were left to fend for themselves and wait hours for next buses without a place even to sit down. That probably was tough on some elderly women and men at least. The next bus for me was several hours away so I walked to Amtrak and caught an Amtrak bus to Salem where I missed the connection to the coast.

 Salem has an excellent bus station. Lots of homeless people live in the area. A cloud of marijuana smoke drifted to the station from under a bridge a couple hundred yards away; it must have been a marijuana bonfire.

  I caught a bus in the morning to Lincoln City and another to Newport. Tracking down the dental lab in Newport I found that it was gone and out of business like thousands of others in the U.S.A. Chinese dental labs are very quick and cheap and turnaround is fast with FedEx. Within a few years dentists will likely send scanned from a patient’s mouth digital information about teeth to China via internet instead of sending impressions that are then used to cast models used for making crowns. More U.S. dental labs will close. As it is some U.S. dentists open their own dental labs in China with Chinese partners to save over the price Americans need to charge with a higher cost of living in the U.S.A.

 I applied for unemployment from Montana on the Internet site and it was approved. Unfortunately travel was being restricted and borders closed. I felt an urgency to go north while I could since getting a job now wasn’t probable.

 The Alaska ferry boats do not do much presently because of state budget cuts. Alaskan politicians are elected because they are oil-heads and cannot ever diversify away from complete reliance on oil taxes to pay for state government. When the oil price drops politicians do not have as much to spend. It is a cake job when oil money is available though.

 The Marine Highway web site said that a ticket from Bellingham to Alaska for one passenger cost $742. Usually they are two or three hundred dollars...eventually ferry service was stopped. Then the Canadian border was closed. With dentistry and dental labs becoming closed I chose to book an Alaska Air ticket to S.E. Alaska, leaving from Sea-Tac hoping to slide through before air travel was stopped. With three weeks advance purchase the ticket was affordable. I had to wait in Washington State for three weeks camping, first in Aberdeen Washington where I did hear an eagle sounding like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth as best I can describe it, although at a higher pitch, and then in Olympia. The state was merging in to total lock-down and shelter in place by then. Used clothing stores were closed though dollar stores remained open. As in Newport libraries were closed and most internet access shut down. When all places to buy used paperback books closed it was nearly time for me to leave Washington and go to Seattle-Tacoma Int Airport via public transit.

 Public bus service continued though the front doors of buses were taped off. Riding was free and passengers entered and left via the back door in order not to contaminate the driver or themselves in turn. I left a $150 dollar bike at a bus stop that I had brought from Oregon on a train from Salem to Olympia since it would fit on the plane and I was down to fewer than $50.

 Waiting overnight at the airport for the plane to leave around 6 in the morning let me catch up on the Internet and chess. I started playing chess about eight years ago online. At the airport I played 100 games of blitz and left the rating at 1310. With good internet connections I can play above 1400 for a few hundred games. I must say that it was a little weird playing blitz chess after a few weeks off. I wasn’t to certain of my openings and middle game and so messed things up somewhat with complications from early on. That actually led to wins against higher rated players that expected more by-the-book moves.

 At 5 am I bought the worst cup of coffee ever made at Starbucks at the end of concourse C. Next time I will bring instant coffee to the airport. They may discriminate against senior citizens and pour the saved dregs of each pot’s coffee from the day before to dump on some unsuspecting customer.

 There were so few passengers in the airport that it was a great experience besides Starbucks of course. My only concern about getting Covid 19 in the airport was at the Homeland security screen where a gaggle of unmasked agents were in to close of contact. From there it was all good.

 The aircraft had just nine passengers on it. Upon arrival at Wrangell a policeman without a mask asked me where I would quarantine and I said at a place several miles away beyond the road at a particular address. The temperature was 25 degrees and my pack was heavy. I began the walk to the shed.

 Snow was still on the road March 31st. That was a little worrying since I had no snowshoes and there were miles of up and downhill to cross. The snow was mostly frozen however and generally I walked on top of it. That situation would change later in the day.

   I am getting a little old for walks with a pack several miles through snow on a road then through logging slash further. The trip was slow. The day grew warm (34 F) and the snow become soft. My steps occasionally fell through the top leader down into the snow a distance. After a couple or three hours of that I approached the final downhill and uphill of the road portion and trudged on.

  Snow trudging brings one to focus narrowly on each step and if one will break through the frozen crust with a jolt or not. When I broke through I would sink in to the knee or more and find extraction and resuming to the next step challenging. When I reached the rotting old wood bridge at the bottom of the hill I was spent. I tried going uphill and each step was a failure. I decided then to begin discarding stuff from the pack to lighten the load (eventually days and weeks later I recovered all of the items I had discarded carefully in garbage bags.)

 First thing to go was the sleeping bag. In time as I struggled up the hill with every step falling through I discarded everything including my notebook computer, except for a couple of items in a small plastic bag.  Extra weight makes one break through snow easier so getting rid of it is a good idea. Snow lurks in cloud and shadows fading away in meaningless trickles in spring. The day was getting late; it took me 6 hours to walks half dozen miles to the shed. The final steps on the road were about 100% fall through with wet shoes packed in s’no rather than snyes. Walking ¾ mile through logging slash late afternoon was comparatively easy. It was downhill and frozen snow in shadows made it simpler to step over or around leftover wood materials piled all-akimbo here and there. A familiar bird appeared to sing a bit here and there as the tired trudge drew to completion before the rain began to fall.

  I left some food at the shed 19 months before when I had to leave early because of the cold reinjury. Simple stuff like rice and flower are helpful in lean times. When I walked in to town after quarantine for two weeks plus one waiting for snyes to melt on the road, I discovered on the Internet that Montana had reversed itself and denied my unemployment claim.

  I applied for social security in Oregon when Covid made it look like getting a new job would not occur for some time. When in Wrangell an email from social security said I had to call them and answer questions before I could be approved. Unfortunately the trac fone I bought at Wal-mart in Newport did not work at Wrangell. I believe it was some kind of Android 4G incompatibility issue with local service, maybe it wasn’t.

 I was broke with two government agencies acting like benefit the well off and f the poor. Government policies are made by comfortcrats that have no idea of the actual problems of broke people. Because I filed a tax return on time (in Feb 2020 and paid the tax due in full) I would not get the $1200 payment until maybe October. That completed the perfect storm of no-pay and broke on an island in Alaska. My inflatable wouldn’t hold air and the small outboard wouldn’t start. The heavy metal boat required good tide, current and weather to travel the miles to a dismal landing site closer to town.

 I found with some investigation that the I.R.S. doesn’t process tax returns with payments until June. So July would be the quickest time to get the Covid $1200 for a ticket so somewhere because I did not use direct deposit because I was not expecting a refund. The I.R.S. will not let one change one’s information or add direct deposit unless one has a credit card and phone in one’s name and I have neither. When the check is issued it will go to the address where I used to work.

 I am therefore thinking about trying to sell my 12’ skiff to buy food and purchase a plane ticket to someplace with a social security office if they ever reopen in order to expedite my application.

 Each walk in to town is a round trip of about 12-14 miles. No phone or way off the island. Government agencies that are useless for present purposes. No generator and not enough solar panels to charge a computer for writing a book of some kind. This is the start of an interesting working retirement I guess. I will need to get a job and find somewhere to build a shed I can access more easily than this one that I sold to people I worked for.

 That was my Covid era experience. I have read from the Bible of course, at the shed, fed a few birds I have known a few years, and read a pair of fiction novels as well as from Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’. The novels are worth mentioning.

 One is ‘The Girl Who played With Fire’ by the late Steig Larson. Larson wrote three good books about Sweden and then died. He brought the three novels to his publisher before he died in 2004. All that fame after he was gone. Better late than never…

 The other book is ‘The Cobra Event’ by Richard Preston. That book is a very informative primer on biological terrorism and recombinant D.N.A. and R.N.A. splicing to engineer a lethal virus. It was written during the Clinton administration and remains quite good.

 After reading it I have listened in vain for a description of how many bases the Covid virus has…7000?

  This particular island has taken adequate defense measures against virus transmission. The next larger island north has its cases though. Travelers such as fishermen and seafood processors can bring in the illness, as well as others permitted by the state government to journey about the state though with restrictions.

 I hope that governments take the time to become aware of the real value of putting travel quarantine’s internationally to prevent the next and possibly more deadly virus from going around the planet like wildfire. Quarantine’s are fire breaks and can serve well.

 The value of local agriculture should also be realized. Every home and town should be encouraged to support a garden rather than blocked by local ordinances. The city of Wrangell for example should create a ten acre garden plot to be used in emergencies for growing food locally, and in normal times could be used for recreation.

 

 

 

 

 


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...