Heraclitus and the Ukraine-Russia War

 Wars in Europe indicated a failure of intelligence and adaptability in political leadership. That is not surprising in an era of marketing products and people as products. pre-Socratic philosophers were not so superficial. In an age that believes itself wise because of scientific knowledge and quite assertive about rights and litigation, arguments and eros as a matter of course it isn't a paradox that politicians have no interest in understanding an opponent's viewpoint on issues; a necessary step toward avoiding conflict.

"... men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."- Heraclitus

Heraclitus sought the nature of what exists as a philosophical inquiry. His ideas arrived at monism and apparently he regarded pluralism as contingent being. Russian, Ukrainians want the same things concerning land- to own it, yet for politicians owning land or territory is an absolute and exclusive concern that precludes reason from the social process of adjudication.

Heraclitus stresses the unity of opposites. One of his edifying fragments providing an example of the concept is "Changing; it rests". Politicians should invoke the intelligence of changing the criterion to unify opponents in peace- the new synthesis. Heraclitus also wrote (B12) "Upon those who step into the same rivers different and again different waters flow".

Plainly peace is preferable to war and prosperity to poverty. A healthy environment is better than a sick polluted one and everyone involved loses much time when somewhat equally balanced military conflicts occur in a protracted paradigm lasting years. If reason and problem solving can end conflicts in a way that belligerents can live with that would better serve the world economy and even wholistic, non-partisan ideas of justice.

Heraclitus had several tings to say about opposites merging into the One at some level. One could take that as God creating quarks, fields, mass and virtual energy in an apparent vacuum and allowing energy and mass to take form...though temporal configurations change it, or evolve it as some prefer to say, the process is God's and that which exist is comparatively like a dream.

Russia and Ukraine could have an armistice in place and a race for the political powers to create a plan and discover finance to rebuild all areas of the conflict with a fifty mile wide D.M.Z. and free trade zone roughly divided in half between Ukraine and Russia. Ingenuity and finding ways to expedite peace and prosperity should transpire rather than to allow the visage of Mordor and Doom cloud the land.

Heraclitus said; "The road up and the road down are the same." and "The beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle." Those without ossified brains should be able to learn something from Heraclitus.

Heraclitus saw unity through the pluralism evident in all things; "though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a backwards turning attunement like that of the bow and the lyre". In that he could have been speaking of day and night- different phases of the diurnal solar cycle.

There is a free MOOC course available from which the quotes of Heraclitus were sourced for this post. It's here... https://www.coursera.org/learn/plato?

Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors

Heraclitus' Fragments B1

B1 (Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians, VII, 132):

"Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though, all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."

B54 (Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 5):

The unseen harmony is better than the visible.

Note on Pragmatism

Pragmatism was invented by Charles Sanders Pierce. Actually he called it pragmaticism. James popularized it. It is more like dead reckoning. I am not confident one could have a doctrine of pragmatism. That would require formalizing good judgment. Consider realpolitik of the 1980s with the way the Biden administration has operated things internationally. I think its far from pragmatic and it doesn't seem to promote general global peace or prosperity. Its kind of a worst case side of things. Consider that what is good for some may be bad for others, The idea of the Democrat Party having a pragmatic doctrine is somewhat laughable- even if they like science selectively. Pierce (pronounced Purse) worked on a tri-electical paradigm for thought advancing ratiocination. I wonder if he was influenced by Marxist dialectics at all.

On the Original Name for Africa etc.

A popular(increasingly) name for ancient Africa is 'Alkebulan'- it means garden of Eden or something like that. Africa or African names are mentioned more than a thousand times in the Bible. Here is a scholarly article on the subject. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext...

It's an interesting topic, that is, the origin of names for what today is called Africa. The name Africa supposedly originated when the Romans named the land after a tribe-possible the Berbers, living in Tunisia who they called the Afri. So Afri-terra or land of the Afris. Apparently Alkebulan, used in the Koran, may have either an Arabic or African origin. It requires research. The word is increasingly popular yet it may be from an old Arabic word 'al-qalb' meaning 'heart or interior'. I would guess that several tribes had their own name for various regions locally. The Bible refers to Africa generally as Cush or Kush. Kush was 'the most powerful kingdom in the nile valley in 1750 BCE". That's pretty early. For a while the Kushites or Nubians ruled Egypt.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissakravitz/2022/01/04/harlem-and-london-are-getting-a-brand-new-african-food-hall-alkebulan/

Some Europeans took Biblical names to a certain extent rather than the reverse. The Bible hasn't got names like Swedenborg, Rasputin, McTavish or Stanislaw in it. The names were originally Hebrew and translated-sometimes crudely, into English. To be more correct one might use the Hebrew spelling instead of English. Christianity had a centralized origin geographically speaking in the era before the settling of the western hemisphere. It needed to be near enough to pagan Europe that missionaries could bring the word of God to the pagans lost in their primitive ways. It was a transitional catalyst in bridging the older, fading civilizations of the fertile crescent with the rising civilizations of the north. Africa and Israel are 422 miles apart. Europe was closer to being colonized by an African religion than vice versa. Islam is also from the Middle East not Africa. Jesus was taken to Africa for a while as a kid by his parents, as Barrack Obama was removed from Hawaii and raised in Indonesia.

Christianity has been in Africa since the first or early second century A.D. The disciple Mark is said to have taken the gospel to Alexandria. Coptic Christianity has existed in Africa since the year 55 A.D. and is one of the oldest Christian churches.

It is the case that economic colonization has occurred with other cultural elements simultaneously. It is wrong to conflate the causality and meaning of all issues with those of the primary power and political force though. Even in history one should follow the money to determine power. Land used to be nearly equivalent to money. before machines proliferated even human labor as slaves was of great value to the rich. Today maybe technology is the main creator of economic value as an equal with natural resources while human capital is decreasing in value. Lawyers will face tough competition for work with Artificial Intelligence one of these days I would guess.

Millions of Africans risk their lives to migrate to Europe because it has economic power that southerners desire to obtain. I am concerned that they do not get anything like a true Christianity from Europeans these days. Being a nominal Christian was a convenience for many and a necessity for others. Mankind is corrupt with original sin and there isn't a pure society where one may contemplate philosophically and critically spiritual concerns without pressure if one were so inclined. At some point the economic power of the ultra-rich draws many followers to their values that today is more of a decadence, soma and homosexual, trans-genderized, mono-sexual, atheist mileau rather than Christian. Not everyone is chosen to be a Christian; "all are called and few are chosen". If one is just outwardly Christian and not spiritually renewed with the Lord's grace it may not have effective eternal value.

I tried using microsoft's AI Chat for a search of the Koran and it found nothing. Yet it insists that it is the oldest name for Africa. I will quote it's answer to my question about Alkebulan- "The term “Alkebulan” is believed to come from the ancient Egyptian name “Alkebu-lan”, which means ‘mother of mankind’ or 'garden of Eden’1. It’s an ancient African word that has been used to describe the African continent for centuries1. The word “Alkebulan” is derived from the Arabic adverb “qabl” meaning “before”. “Al” is the definite article “the”, and the suffix “lan” denotes the plural form of the adverb. Thus, the Arabic word “Alkebulan” means “the ones before”, or simply “the indigenous people”2. It’s also interpreted from Arabic as the 'Land of Blacks’3. It’s considered to be the oldest name for the African continent, used by many African cultures, including the Berbers of North Africa1. It symbolizes a sense of pride and identity for many Africans1. However, the exact origins of the term are still unknown1.”

The age of colonization didn't start for about two thousand years after the start of the events in the Bible became recorded. AVRM (Abraham) lived in Ur circa 2000 B.C. before famously wandering to the site that today is Jerusalem. The age of colonization is said to have started circa 1500 with Portuguese in South Africa etc. Yet European people like the Carthaginians and other like the Phoenicians have lived on the North Shore of Africa for a very long time. So they and Alexander the Great's military might be said to have begun an earlier age of Euro-settlement in the region. The history is complex. You may know that the Septuagint version of the Bible- the Jewish Old Testament, was made by 72 Jewish scholars translating Hebrew to Greek in Alexandria Egypt. Jews also lived in Africa while slaves of Egypt. Moses- a Jewish prince of Egypt (the Pharaoh didn't know he was Jewish), led them out of Africa and to the land named Israel presently. One should lose the racism and simply learn history from zillion sources.

Rocket in a Tube for 2025 Anyone?

 Will Trump or DeSantis finally build a nation-spanning rocket in a tube freight transportation system if elected? Using electromagnets to prevent a charge shipping container from scrapping tunnel walls, rocket engines will power the rocket shaped shipping container through a tube to a few thousand miles an hour to expedite shipping cargo and maybe bite into the cost and deflate prices at Wal-mart and other retailers a little that has made Wal-mart a prestige store for those that can afford a bottle of coke from an ice box near the check-out line.

I won't draw a technical illustration of a rocket passing through a tube for this comment so you will need to imagine that for yourself.

Concerning Evidence for the Soul and Shannon Entropy

 The soul may be simply information- the coordinate patterns of all of the quantum comprising an individual, he body, mind and history over the course of a lifetime. Information is conserved. With the data it would be possible to reconstruct any or all of a being for ever if an eternal being wanted it to be so. God may have better or more subtle ways of keeping track of sentient beings though.

Evidence is things and relationships evident. I wonder why it is that people leap towards ‘nothing evident’ these days…for political purposes I would guess. One shouldn’t overlook the evident. People exist, they have a structure made of quanta and it has a form. People know about Shannon Entropy and Deictic references I suppose, about patents, designs that outlast individual products because there is a record kept somewhere; of Plato’s realm of forms. I am presently taking a course on the Archaeology of Africa, one learns various techniques for interpreting the material present and its theoretical use in the culture long gone. One has evident matters like rocks, lithic artifacts and micromorphology, one uses reason to attempt to interpret the unknown, and what tools one has available, such as to interpret marks on ancient bones. One may ask oneself; how would scriptural references to something like a soul be understood or said today in modern terms. What part of human existence does according to modern physics last forever? That which does is information. Hawking theorized that information even escapes black holes. The criterion of Shannon entropy that information is conserved is the obvious association for what a soul is.

https://aurelien-pelissier.medium.com/on-the-conservation-of-information-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-f22c0645d8ec

New EMG Generator Said to Use No Fuel

 A no-fuel new device causes one to wonder how it works.

One might be able to use magnets like batteries? Instead of moving a coil through a magnetic field (or vice versa to push electrons down a wire could one use AI switching on and off magnets in some way, like a form of wheel motor can, or a linear electromagnetic accelerator/rail gun, push electrons down a wire? If the amount of electric needed to switch the ‘gates’ on/off were less than the energy that flows because of the field strength it might generate positive electricity surplus. The magnets have stored energy. I wonder why magnets can store energy, how much and for how much time before they wear down. The magnet would be the power source for the system. Maybe one would need to kick start it in a manner of speaking.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/first-ai-nonrotational-power-cop28

Magnets can be used to ‘induce electric currents’. The electromagnetic force is one of the four basic forces of nature as you know. Hence a standing magnetic field is a kind of battery in that it can induce the flow of electrons comprising a current. It is like a standing wave of force that need be discharged by moving through a conducting medium like copper wire to induce electron flow through a medium, rather than storing electrons in a box. I wonder if a magnetic field will run down at a particular rate when used as a force field to push electrons/charged particles. If the inventors have found a way to simulate motion of a medium through a magnetic field with gate switching then they are clever. Magnetism converts one form of energy to another very effectively. It is a force yet has no energy. However a force field is a power- a kind of battery. Photons exist in an electromagnetic field and can be converted to energy with voltaics for example. 

https://alum.mit.edu/slice/why-cant-magnetism-be-used-source-energy#:~:text=It%20can%2C%20however%2C%20be%20converted,Cohen%2DTanugi%20SM%20’12.

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

Moving that force field is a tool that may be underutilized though it is used for 99% of nuclear, fossil fuel power plant conversion of mass to energy. One might put powerful magnets on some tidal float/barge per example to push electrons as it rises and falls with the tide past some kind of coil. I like the idea a lot of using emg field for something comparable to a battery for storing force to make energy. Kind of like a lighter that isn’t a fire but can be used to ignite a fire if the conditions are right (such as oxygen being present). Exploiting electro-magnetic fields is something I have been interested in for some time in order to deploy vast fields in micro-gravity to accelerate charged modules toward the outer solar system much faster than chemical rockets. It is interesting to consider using a star to power an electromagnetic field of a few million miles in size to push charged modules to perhaps 3/4 the speed of light to Proxima Centauri.

A Comment on Photons and Time

 Time involves mass and change; photons have zero mass for time to grab on to. It is interesting to consider gravitons as zero mass particles; maybe they acquire mass and that is the gravitational effect. Google says that “The vacuum speed of light is not a valid rest frame, because it’s a frame that can never be at rest.”

Gravity also travels at the speed of light. Light speed seems to be the standard speed of zero mass particles, that all at any rate seem to be elements of a field when measured at a particular location. It’s funny that the wavefunction collapse doesn’t apply to massless particles unless they interact with matter.

The Higgs Field; Aristotle and Primary Substances

 Trying to associate primary substances with massless particles given the appearance of mass and a third dimension in the Higgs field is difficult; mass is contingent being so my answer is no. Everything that is mass is emergent and apparent being and half of a phenomenal event of massless particles appearing to have substance because of the effects of travelling through the Higgs field.

Rectifying S.S.I. and Basic Income Policies for US.Gov

 S.S.I. has a program for poor seniors citizens over 65 that includes a monthly payment. yet the policies for the program were not designed by poor people with actual experience at living a life in poverty so there are implicit unfair structures in it. There are some criteria that need be rectified. Some native Americans have for thousands of years maintained a winter and a summer residence instead of living year-around in one dwelling. S.S.I. eligibility criteria disqualify people that own two residences- even if it is simply a warm winter place and a cool summer place and the total value of each property is fewer than $10,000. S.S.I. would allow those better off and able to afford a $150,000 condo where they can live annually with electricity, running water, toilets and a road eligibility if their other resources were less than $2000. S.S.I.'s eligibility criteria drive Americans to be poor and to not help themselves. Because some poor Americans have two lots instead of one nice house the very practical low-cost living solution of camping on private property year-around in two places where the weather is tolerable is a disqualifier for the S.S.I. cash supplement program.

S.S.I. eligibility criteria should not penalize Americans for trying to help themselves. If they are on S.S.I. for being old or being disabled they should feel free to look for employment or try self-employment without worry they will lose S.S.I. if the job doesn't last and they won't be able to return to the program quickly. S.S.I. might better be regarded as the core of a national basic income that kicks in for the old and disabled first if they have fewer annual earnings than something like $20,000 and makes up the difference. Especially in this era of environmental and A.I. challenges and changes to employment prospects and stability it is important to create a national basic income infrastructure that is effective. It would enable Americans some lifetime security against losing all of their possessions and investments the next time there is a high unemployment rate and inflation.

Actually there are many poor Americans that would buy land in different climate zones to survive each year if they would not lose S.S.I. eligibility. The policy is implicitly unfair and a remedy would be just to allow one eligibility if they have less than $30,000 in multiple real estate possessions or a single residence worth fewer than $100,000. There is no reason to compel Americans to become poorer- seasonally homeless in order to receive S.S.I. and have a livable annual income. Neither is there a good reason to penalize ingenuity at finding practical solutions to where one can live in retirement affordably.People do discriminate actively against age for employment, and there is also race and gender discrimination from some quarters that everyone experience regardless of race or gender. Therefore making objective programs from the government that work for the poor should be a goal for rectifying implicit federal iniquities.

A Soul May Just Be the Quantum Data-Identity for an Individual

A soul may be just the quantum information/identity of an individual. Back in the day they didn't use physics concepts for spiritual terms that wouldn't be understood for two or three thousand years.

Pope Francis Appears to Give Blessing to Sin (homosexual relationships)

 In a move that will renew pejorative descriptions of the Pope as The Anti-Christ, Catholic Pope Francis gave Catholic priests the right to bless homosexual relationships : "that don't resemble marriage". He has made an apparent conflict of interest with the New and Old Testament reproofs against homosexuality even if he has some sort of Jesuit technical legalist exoneration for himself.The etymology of 'blessing' means to 'sprinkle with blood'. Since the context for Christians is the blood of Christ, it may require copious quantities since blessing present and new sins appears destined to conflict with even more portions of scripture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/world/europe/pope-gay-lesbian-same-sex-blessing.html

One might expect a partial breakup of the Catholic Church to follow as has occurred already in numerous Protestant sects. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/us/the-united-methodist-church-schism.html

One can make a lot of anecdotal arguments that disregard scripture. One may have false hermeneutics. The seven churches of The Revelation were warned about corrupt practices and bad behavior. Evil dogmatics simply evil. From an historical point of view one realizes these periods of social corruption and decadence are not new. Some day reform will occur or a new society will form without moral decay for a while. Then it will discover deficit spending as if it were rediscovering the ability to eat fruit forbidden in the Garden of Eden. A church that stands for nothing is a self-negation. A car dealer that sells just fruit is no car dealer.

Keep in mind what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and what Paul wrote to the church at Rome; the Roman Pope has plainly disregarded scripture and gone his own way. I Corinthians 6:9-11 KJV""Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate (malakoi), nor abusers of themselves with mankind (arsenokoitai), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." People may persuade themselves of whatever they like yet in so doing fail to be saved in order to have worldly comfort or tax cuts (lol). A gospel of hedonism or sexual license is not the Gospel of God. Romans 1:27 "27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

Comparing the Pope's decretals to Paul's apostolic letters to the churches is silly. Paul met the Lord on the road to Damascus. He received words directly from the resurrected Christ. Catholics may believe in continuing revelation while Protestants traditionally haven't. The Revelation warns about adding anything to it. (Revelation 22:18-19). The Pope has no Apostolic authority whatsoever. "Rev. Billy Joe Schmoe said today that he will bless sin from now on because there are a lot of sinners that want to be considered to be following the word and kosher. As leader of the First Church of What's Happening Now he said that since most of his flock are thieves ,yet trying to change, so long as they don't take nothin from him he will bless thievery" You are of course free to believe what you want. People that continue to egregiously sin are supposed to be put out of the Church until they change. I will reiterate the point that a Church leader is not supposed to bless sin. "Matthew 18:15-17 "15 “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ 17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector." The Vatican might want to start an impeachment inquiry into the Pope's conduct and replace him with someone with a square, solid moral foundation. He may move to liberalize abortion next, and then dope for the Catholic Church. It shouldn't be that difficult to just say wrong is wrong yet not hate or persecute people doing wrong. One should not bless what is wrong. Christians are supposed to be trying to live up to what the little books (biblos) relate, not trying to corrupt them, adulterate them, make sinful conduct OK and etc.

Global Warming; The Coefficient of the Concentration of Wealth?

 The atmospheric heating phenomena may be the coefficient of the concentration of wealth. Wealth concentration has a narrow point of view oriented toward profit that regards non proximal profit elements as beyond its range of interest, or externalities that are not too meaningful.

Concentrated wealth can afford to purchase support for policies that decrease taxation and environmental remediation. A more liberal tax basis that raises the rate of taxes on concentrated wealth probably would pay for a higher percentage of global warming reduction through government policy.

With overly concentrated wealth the electorate become stifled to a large extent in regard to expressing political opinions on taxation antipathetic to the preferred alternatives of the very rich. It may not be possible to effectively slow or reduce global warming without a near-term large tax rate increase on those earning more than $250,000 annually.

You Should hate the word 'Noble'

 I hate the idea of nobility referenced as superior (noble). Some fairly scummy characters have been nobles; they didn’t get there because of virtue. Often they were just the best killers amd/or the most conniving schemers. Mankind had a hard time overcoming those with superior political rights. freedom includes the right to hate things like obnoxious songs, bad politics etc. It is necessary for a democracy to be vigilant against cults, classes and concentrated wealth that would make mankind spiritless jellyfish-sardines malleable to their will.

In the Bible; Revelation 3:15-16″“15“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. 16* So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” Also consider Luke 14:26 “
“If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

One must be wary of government and corporate ideas about hate speech and psychological and political control of the masses for they have always been too happy to exercise thought control. Wrong, reprehensible acts can fairly be proscribed, and language plainly intended to cause harm may be countered but people need be free to thin and to hate things, and that basically means to reject things, that they do not like. Freedom of thought and speech are essential human rights for a life that isn’t subordinated to a superior class by force.

Besides Processing Memories

 Some believe that consciousness is primarily a phenomena to process memories. Consciousness does a pretty good job at evaluating threats like flying objects that were thrown at the brain housing unit. I believe it does more than process memory; consider people with amnesia due to organic insult who nevertheless have a full working consciousness. Socrates might have liked the concept though. In The Meno Socrates demonstrates that a slave boy has built in math memory. I read a refutation someplace of that Socratic experiment yet I would disagree with it anyway since it seems silly and contra to the way things are. If one can compare knowledge and percepts that are always arriving in the brain via senses, or even to falling into cold water, and even compare that accretion of data and sorting it out to atomic and molecular process of adding and radiating mass, there is more than an introverted regurgitation of memory going on.

Chooglin Solar System Tracks (

 

The F.T.L. train slid into the station
a universe with an infinite amount of energy
concentrated at an infinite speck of time
mass merged with masslessness
journeying inside out
shadows of no doubt

  Subluminal travel was for the poor
solar energy gathered and focused
just a bit to joke us
waiting along the train tracks
electromagnetic shaped power charges
from Mercury to Saturn’d knack

  Shaped charges imparting particles
field strengths casting ever classed things
two and a half months later
hopeful crowd of synchopaters
through the Oort Cloud’s rings
see the genuine articles

  Training striations of onion time
pealed off in layers
from that warped energy shape’s descending rime
particular universals
shear a circular edge forever introverted
subluminal.

Linguistic Epistemology (a poem)

 

Theories of knowledge in countless Universes
filled with sets of words
nominalism vs realism
lexicons for what is said

  Never filled with dread
what s said
rises with red blood
tides of where the spirit led

  To imagination electro-magnetics’
accelerators in space race
shattering speed to near light
inertial reference frames and gravity tight

  A solar system wired with e.m.g. routes
Earth to Pluto in two and a half months’ time
overcoming ‘lethargic chemical rocket doubts
pushing the envelope to fastest sub-luminal rhymes

  Worlds built in a literal day
one can’t sleep while A.I. makes hay
crushed rocket cycled to Dyson Sphere lines
somewhere, someplace, progress is more than a sign.

Stupidity of Modern War Shows AI and Drone Future for Land Battle

 The criminal stupidity of the Ukraine war that could have been avoided if the west shared some of historically Russian Ukraine with Russia has demonstrated the vulnerability of armored vehicles to accurate artillery fire directed by intelligence and surveillance from the land and sky. Not that Israel using Vietnam era M-113 armored personnel carriers should avoid some criticism. Maybe they can’t afford more modern Bradley fighting vehicles because the U.S. Congress hasn’t spent much on their milliary in comparison to that of Ukraine. Oh well.

Obviously tanks will need to be regarded as tiny aircraft carriers with a battle group of capable drone surrounding to defend them. From mines, from artillery strikes and other direct and indirect fire weapons. Planning for wars is a comparatively retarded venture when the smart thing is to avoid them with rational, fair and balanced international economic planning. Yet even the U.S. Congress can’t accomplish peaceful relations enough to pass a surfeit of good legislation.

Tanks may be downsized as well and be run remotely without humans inside them something like global hawk operators work aircraft from a distance. The inhumanization of war is something of a natural evolution of incompetent leadership in the U.S. and N.A.T.O countries that don’t prioritize ecological economic evolution with inclusiveness globally as immediately profitable or desirable as war.

Lebron James Didn't Really on a College Scholarship

 Lebron James never attended college. He was signed to the N.B.A. directly completing high school. Unlike most other N.B.A. players he never got a college scholarship. Giving scholarships to what are basically pro athletes is corrupt.

Colleges should give scholarships for scholarship; not sports. Sports in college should be intramural and purposed to build up student health. Colleges really ought to get out of the big man on campus sports focus and look toward becoming the best in the world with intelligence and education.

The United States has innumerable empirical challenges to day that can be solved only with better education of the populous. Better politicians, a better informed electorate, better philosophers,more quality scientists and a wealth of social science innovators need arise to overcome the reef of ignorance surrounding the island-like nation as if it were a coral atoll.

Pro entertainers comprise 5% of the top 1% of the nation’s richest. They provide good cover PR for the super-rich that don’t wish to be regarded as Scroggishish misers calculating like 100 lb weaklings how to skim off wealth from everyone in the country. Pro athletes in college should not receive scholarships though it is often touted how much revenue college sports- especially football bring to colleges. Creating an intellectual atmosphere on colleges is difficult enough without making colleges something like vast left-wing upper high schools churning out mediocrity to rise in business to make the nation a compliant plutocratic corporatocracy.

Colleges need to work hard to create a culture to support and develop intellectual excellence. It should not be a demographic dumping ground for quotas nor a place for developing athletes for pro sports. Sporting leagues should pay for their own minor leagues to develop prospects. Athletes that want to work in pro sports and yet attend college should receive scholarships solely on intellectual merit. Fundamentally the two activities should be separate.

Maternal Stress Tilts Odds toward Female Births

 Stress in females creates hormonal responses that tilt the odds toward female births. Apparently stress alters hormonal levels making it more difficult for sperm carrying y chromosomes to make it through cervical mucus to reach an egg. Sperm carrying x chromosomes are more efficient at navigating the obstacle. 

So a man may be quite stressed without affecting at all the odds for birth of either a boy or girl so far as present knowledge goes.

https://neurosciencenews.com/stress-fetal-gender-18183/

Lakers Loss on Opening Night was Logical

The Lakers opening night loss to the Nuggets wasn’t unexpected; the Nuggets have their act together and the Lakers; well, the Lakers are a work in progress.

One can count on Lebron James to score at least 20 points in limited minutes and for Anthony Davis to have erratic play and attendance. In the playoffs James can score 30; it is the rest of the team that will determine how far the Lakers go this year.

    They have several great young players...some rookies, and how the youth play together, rather than how the two old men of the team do is question. Coach Ham will want to find which of his players can be emergent stars. James in a part-time role can contribute like a champ for another five years if he reduces minutes and salary. Davis will need to step up or look to be traded when his contract expires. A wealth of young talent that can be great or fizzle is that fascinating question to learn the answer to this season.