The Colors of Very Small Waves © 2011 GaryCGibson (a poem)

Looking at the waves in colors
of waters clear and silent moving with surges
disbelief of sound is suspended
coinciding with motion
the sight of cold merged form
grains of sand dissolving
shadows of opportunity stricken
seaweed star ribbon of life
broken clouds change meaning less
rain passing with sunshine
flying horizontally like highway headlights
beads of icy time phenomenalized
blue sky patches receding in darkness
where water solid as substance awaits
in atomic weight of hydrogen and oxygen
Earth instead of spaced
nebulae of never reasoned society
neutralized with thought fragment echoes
design of nothingness placed
the colors of very small waves.

9th Circuit Court to Decide Fate of Obama Roadless Wilderness Fjiord

photo credit-N.A.S.A. Earth Observatory of Kennsington Mine

image credit-U.S. Forest Service (map of Tongass National Forest in S.E. Alaska)

S.E. Alaska’s Lynn Canal is America’s largest fjord in wilderness condition. Isolated individuals in Juneau with little to do in winters have attempted for decades to get the state to build a road nearly a hundred miles north along the Lynn Canal (fjord) to reach Haines and the continental highway system. Plainly the need for a highway is virtually non-existent. State population projections for the next three decades actually anticipate that the region will lose population as development moves north. The Tongass Forest wilderness area and Americans are actually lucky in that respect, for tourism, fishing and wilderness values benefit from the wilderness condition.

http://aktransportation.org/mega-projects/the-juneau-road-ferry-mega-project

The Navaho First Nations People the Navaho were evicted from their ancestral land and made to go on the Long Walk East before the civil war. Their lands in New Mexico and Arizona were viewed as resource rich. Today we are glad that President U.S. Grant returned the navaho to thei homelands in 1868 perhaps realizing that they would take better care of the environment than migrating resideual ex-confederates. Lynn Canal (fjiord) must be conserved as well for the sake of the American tribe and all of the wildlife depending upon it.

www.state.gov/documents/organization/38821.pdf

http://lynncanalconservation.org/

The development of a gold mine by a global corporation called the Kensington mine about halfway to Haines has stimulated the drive to build a road close to the fjord and on to Haines. The greed for gold drove countless First Nations peoples from their ancestral lands in America’s past. The desire to not only build a road to allow in hordes of RV’s, criminals, drug traffickers and easy ingression opportunities for terrorists with weapons of mass destruction from Canada’s headwaters of the Yukon District to the America will destroy the quality of life of Juneauites as well as the wilderness. Ten thousand prospectors and mining access roads will be built off the main road. Countless plinking of whales, illegal harvesting of grizzly bear for hamburger, skinning of marten, sables, mink, otter and torturing of bald eagles will occur. Fish producing streams will become polluted-in short the wilderness will be killed because of the quest for gold by global corporations flying in employees from Australia, Mexico and elsewhere.

Conservation of remaining fjords and wilderness areas in S.E. Alaska may be advanced with a Presidential Wilderness Legacy series wherein each President is encouraged to select a wilderness area in his or her name to add to America’s monumental conservation legacy. The Lynn Canal ought to become the Obama National Roadless Wilderness Fjord, and all roads within 15 miles of the fjord banned perennially.

President Theodore Roosevelt quote on the security of S.E. Alaska and concern about mining development in his 1903 State of the Union address. president Roosevelt was of course the founder of the national park system and a conservor of American wilderness as well as a President that confirmed boundary and administrative lines.

"As long as public plunderers when detected can find a haven of refuge in any foreign land and avoid punishment, just so long encouragement is given them to continue their practices. If we fail to do all that in us lies to stamp out corruption we can not escape our share of responsibility for the guilt. The first requisite of successful self-government is unflinching enforcement of the law and the cutting out of corruption.

For several years past the rapid development of Alaska and the establishment of growing American interests in regions theretofore unsurveyed and imperfectly known brought into prominence the urgent necessity of a practical demarcation of the boundaries between the jurisdictions of the United States and Great Britain. Although the treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, the provisions of which were copied in the treaty of 1867, whereby Russia conveyed Alaska to the United States, was positive as to the control, first by Russia and later by the United States, of a strip of territory along the continental mainland from the western shore of Portland Canal to Mount St. Elias, following and surrounding the indentations of the coast and including the islands to the westward, its description of the landward margin of the strip was indefinite, resting on the supposed existence of a continuous ridge or range of mountains skirting the coast, as figured in the charts of the early navigators. It had at no time been possible for either party in interest to lay down, under the authority of the treaty, a line so obviously exact according to its provisions as to command the assent of the other. For nearly three-fourths of a century the absence of tangible local interests demanding the exercise of positive jurisdiction on either side of the border left the question dormant. In 1878 questions of revenue administration on the Stikine River led to the establishment of a provisional demarcation, crossing the channel between two high peaks on either side about twenty-four miles above the river mouth. In 1899 similar questions growing out of the extraordinary development of mining interests in the region about the head of Lynn Canal brought about a temporary modus vivendi, by which a convenient separation was made at the watershed divides of the White and Chilkoot passes and to the north of Klukwan, on the Klehini River. These partial and tentative adjustments could not, in the very nature of things, be satisfactory or lasting. A permanent disposition of the matter became imperative."

The Virtue of Doing What Is Right

Doing what is right vs. doing what brings immediate happiness; it is amazing that this moral debate has not been decided once and for all. In the gaming era of techno-social indebtedness pseudo-realism may be mirrored in financial, money trading and investment networks in which international boundaries and real people are no obstacles to quick, vast profit taking for an intellectual objective of happiness that is wrong. The philosophy of consequentialism may be a utilitarian effort to select the best form of happiness with the least possible ill consequences, yet a eudaemonistic disregard for reality, social and even evolutionary effects on the watery planet in the solar system and galactic habitation zones may present future disaster and immediate personal harm.

The loss of a moral sense of right and wrong degrades an individual and a society. A global pursuit of abstract profits may lose sight of the rationale for production of goods that meet individual needs and undermine the political and economic credibility not only of a nation, but of many nations.

The Roman philosopher Cicero wrote a treatise on natural law. The book of Jeremiah cites God as saying that everyone knows him yet they intentionally forget who he is. Jean Paul Sartre might have called that ‘false consciousness’. I believe that the reference may have been to an innate sense of moral right and wrong derived from the goodness of God pervasive throughout experience. Human being may choose to do wrong or wickedness because they disregard the subtle conscience suggesting parameters of right and wrong in human social interactions.

Happiness may be found in personal egoism for a time perhaps, even with sociopaths that enjoy torture and murder that know their actions are wrong yet simply don’t care being happy in wickedness. Socially approved pursuits of happiness may too develop social trends in support of amorality in a belief that happiness may be procured through vice or change for-itself rather than with a definite better course in mind. Comparatively few social circumstance are improved through anarchy or random change-for themselves. Structured analytically directed actions even at the price of less than pleasure or immediate happiness may be the right response to innumerable existential challenges.

An individual might easily find happiness through the pursuit of doing what is right. Developing wisdom enough to determine what is right may also bring a sense of happiness. In fact happiness may be an adjustable goal appearing through the accomplishment of personal goals inclusive of right actions and thought.

U.S. Policy toward Egyptian and Middle Eastern Turmoil Should be Abstemious

Under British Government influence because of oil issues, the United States in 1953 developed a C.I.A. operation Ajax to overthrow Prime Minister Mosaddeq of Iran and restore the power of the Shah. That was the beginning of America’s troubles with the people of Iran.

Under the Shah and his secret police SAVAK that tortured countless Iranian dissidents, American interest of the military-industrial-oil complex prospered as we maintained a rather segregated from ordinary Iranian presence in that nation.
Fundamentally we believed that Iran might be drifting toward communism-probably an unrealistic notion. It is difficult to recall where communism has ever prospered in a Muslim nation.

The United States for the past 15 years has had a number of incompetent foreign policy postures. Largely the enemy is us; for we fail to balance our nation’s budget and to develop a completely independent non-fossil fuel technology for private ground transportation. Hence we support foreign authoritarianists that assure an oil supply to global corporations that have made America a nation of transport Luddites stuck in a perennial loop of internal combustion engines and foreign oil.

To regain some credibility and rationality in U.S. politics our nation should walk softly and carry a big stick. In Egypt we ought not pre-emptively select the next dictator to assure stability for concentrated wealth. Our policy should be to let the Egyptians learn from experience the difficulties in building a democracy for themselves. Like the Bolshevik Party the Muslim Brother may co-opt the revolution, yet America should not underestimate the strengths of materialism and liberty that call to Egyptians from Europe and elsewhere. Egyptians probably have no real intention of regressing as perhaps do Americans intellectually or liberally.

http://www.fouman.com/history/Iranian_History_1940.html

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php

To a large extent the United States in developing a strong nation, with defensible modern border security (not allowing 4 of 5 illegal aliens to enter successfully per attempt) with a sustainable resource base, full employment and qualitative economic growth would serve as a good example to the underdeveloped and struggling nations of the world. The challenge in achieving such a rational political state is our own, for we are co-opted by corrupt politicians and global corporate networks of business and finance pushing an agenda that render ordinary Americans and the poor quite politically powerless with a declining comparative standard of living.

Egypt may have several twists and turns in a real political transformation that we hope moves toward a better democracy than America’s decline into a corporate neo-feudal empirical vassal state. Instead of picking an object-foe in the conflict that eliminates the need to intelligent and adaptive political thought, America should observe from what distance is possible in the modern world, and morally support those actual democratic elements in Egypt carefully. If actual direct threats to American or Israeli security arise in the future those can be addressed with an upgrade of a Reagan doctrine if nothing better is possible.

Why National Debt Has Increased Since Women & Minorities Rose to Top of U.S. Party Politics

With the rise of minorities and women in federal politics the national debt has increased, industry outsourced, nation flooding with illegal Mexican immigrants, wealth concentrated and public debt skyrocketed. The reason is that there are no large constituencies outside the parties unhappy and agitating for change and inclusion. Without competition the millionaires and would be millionaires in Congress and the White House concentrate wealth and enrich themselves as the first priority.

President Obama recently served up a ‘we will bury you in bulldung’ moment with his plan to add six trillion dollars of new public debt by 2015. Like a ‘senior moment’ the President’s state of the Union speech ‘sputnik moment’ seemed to forget something; inventing new public debt by the trillions creates inflation instead of national economic security. Those trillions aren’t lofted sputniks that rhetorical competition will catch up with and pay for.

Now that ‘minorities’ are insiders and even leading the two parties just kicking back and forth a dialectical materialist transfer of wealth to themselves and debt to the public. 14 trillion dollars of public debt equals one year U.S. gross national product. President Obama plans to increase that by 2015 to 20 trillion dollars of debt. The President has a suggestion that in a decade the budget deficit could be reduced by half (a half-plast budget plan).

Democrats don’t want to cut the federal budget generally. Republicans don’t really either; they just want to redistribute the budget allocations away from the poor and middle class and too the rich through military spending.

Republicans want tax cuts for the wealthy and everyone, which increases the federal deficits. The rich get richer with fewer taxes that too often make their way to the poor-except in the case of national health care.

So Republicans and Democrats in political power kick back and forth the ‘tastes great/less filling debate of tax cuts and budget cuts with both parties getting what they want and failing to prevent the other party from getting what it wants. The net result is and out of control deepening of federal debt and no one besides the poor and Lou Dobbs-perhaps living in Siberia now, to righteously note the problem and the cure. The U.S.A. must raise taxes and cut the federal budget together. It also must develop better spending policy that gets more economic and environmental results for less.

When Gravity Theories Fail to Explain Observed Spin Rate Of Galaxies

The apparent variable strength of the force of gravity apparent in observations of differential rotational velocities of galaxies is a drive in creating the hypothesis that unknown or dark matter exists in the universe and in galaxies. Many galaxies have been observed to rotate at speeds fast enough that they ought to be flung apart because there isn’t enough mass and gravity to hold them together. Dark matter has been hypothesized as a hidden source of extra gravity sufficient to hold those galaxies intact.

Obviously the flattening out of space-time away from the densest mass toward the galactic enter in accord with Einstein’s general theory might account for velocity differences of mass in different regions of a galaxy. Space time itself may not be smoothly distorted by gravity-there may be washboard like folds of crenellated packings of space acting as speed bumps to create ‘friction’ to the mass passing in three or nine dimensions of space and one of time.

Theories of gravity are challenged today to reconcile with and observational differences of expected behavior.

Additional theories exist such as Milgrom’s MOND and Moffat’s MOG offering theories that correct Newton’s equation that the force of gravity drops off at the square root of the distance.

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

www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond

MOND theory (modified Newtonian dynamics) expects that gravitational force drops off inversely proportional to the distance and that there is a two-stage break for gravitational force selection at Newton’s or at MOND equation rates; if the speed of rotation is above a certain threshold gravitational rate ‘planes’ and has Newton’s value while if below that speed it has MOND’s value.

Obviously it would be helpful to understand what gravity actually is in addition to knowing how to make an equation to describe its apparent force in the Universe. String theory and extra dimensions may provide extra theoretical descriptions of how and why gravity acts as it does. Compact dimensions being wound up like the mainspring of a clock may unwind in the expansion of the universe or addition of space to our three large, known space dimensions. Really, there is quite an opportunity for cosmologists to advance a plethora of new and unsupported theories that might tie in to the observed astrophysics of Universe1, and that isn’t such a bad thing.

Ben Ficklin and President Obama; Transport for New Modes of Travel

Ben Ficklin was known as 'the mystery man of the confederacy'. Not a soldier, he was something like the famous Harry Flashman in being involved in everything from the founding of the pony express to owning Monticello and being arrested 'in connection with the assasination of President Lincoln.' He also attempted to get a trans-continental railway constructed before the civil war. Hw was born in 1827, died late in the century and is buried in San Angelo Texas.

http://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/benjamin-ficklin

http://files.usgwarchives.org/tx/tomgreen/cemeteries/ficklin.txt

President Obama should have some of the nationalist realism of Ben Ficklin and direct the construction of two lanes (one in each direction) across the southern part of the nation east to west exclusively for electric cars and other alternative vehicles not using fossil fuels. He should also establish an east-west and north south network of bike lanes so those of us that enjoy riding bikes across the country can do so without getting run over by trucks and rv's.

Most Presidents haven't left much of a legacy for alternative transport modes since the motor carriage got out of the barn. Real jobs for Americans building electric car lanes from LA (well, Palm Springs really) to Pensacola Florida should be something that any reasonably green and patriotic President should be able to get done if he or she isn't really a shill or yard ornament for the Harvard globalist clan.

New Scientist Reported Vatican Blessing of GM Crops-Vaticans Says Nyet

New Scientist Reported in a Nov. 30, 2010 article that the Vatican had given its blessing to genetically modified foods 'to help the worlds poor'. On Dec. 1st, 2010 the Vatican denounced the story as wrong.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19787-vatican-scientists-urge-support-for-engineered-crops.html

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004910.htm

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/new-scientist-plants-false-story-that-pope-approves-gm-crops/

Genetically modified foods cannot subsitute for good government, reform capitalism and low entropy ecological economic policy within cooperative yet rigid national boundaries. Ricardo's Iron law of wages (and food supply) still is a valid equation regarding population growth for non-advanced societies. Humanity needs to be educated pervasively about the fact that the Earth is a finite little island in a void with nowhere else for humanity to expand without extremely advanced technoliogical development. Private rights must be strictly protected, renewable economics applied to replace the disopsability and irrational growth exuberance and food supplies shared globally to eliminate starvation globally while valuable farmlands buried by suburban development recovered and returned to right productivity.

GM crops have the potential to infuse turbulence and organic phase discontinuity into world biomes. http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/world_biomes.htm

Disposable economics and destruction of the world ecosystem health cannot be well compensated for by a profusion of patented, propriatary gm crops.

Failure to Let Tax Cuts Expire Were A Turn In the Wrong Direction

The public debt of the United States is about 14 trillion dollars today. If the tax cut extentions had been allowed to expire the budget would have baturally balanced in two years. Since the tax cuts the President anticipates federal budget deficit the next decade at which time it might be reduced to 50% of todays.

By 2015 the public debt will be out twenty trillion, and interest on that debt will be more than a trillion dollars annually. Right now interest on the public debt is about 3/4s of a trillion annually.

http://www.federalbudget.com/

President Obama, in order to be responsible needed to be a Harry truman kind of 'the buck stops here' guy and veto any tax cuts. With additional federal budget cuts the public debt could have started dropping in 2013. With the tax cuts and a balanced budget, any budget cuts would have enabled direct reduction payments on the debt principle reducing interest payments as well. Adult democratic political responsibility.

The corporate world is already having record profits in many areas. The rich are getting richer. Jobs are being outsourced. Illegal aliens still come and go by the millions. High unemployent will continue for several years. Fundamental national political accountability has been breached with global corporate interests taking precidence. The federal government in 2008 and 2009 bailed out the corrupt rich with trillions of dollars of financial help and left the jobless to twist slowly in the wind.

The employed are making good money and can afford to pay taxes, the unemployed don't have to pay taxes except from leftover earnings for which they might receive amnesty. The rich need to be taxed at pre-Reagan cut rates.

I write about this issue with pragmatic concern. In Anchorage Alaska there were created 500 jobs net growth in 2010, 1000 new jobs are anticipated in 2011. As a 56 year old out of work painter I have virtually no chance of getting enough work even to leave Anchorage. That means another winter in a tent without propane for coffee,

What about the Alaska permanent fund dividend? In 2010 I had triple hernia laproscopy and ended up paying the surgeon with my future home lot. I was unaware of another 800 dollars owed to the anesthsiologist. I did not get a billing until leaving a seafood processing job in Juneau (because of heavy lifting as much s 200-300 pounds occassionally) and flying to Anchorage. The anesthsiologist turned the debt over to collection agency with a high rate of monthly interest though.

As an out of work Alaskan who rarely earns more than 4500 annually when finding a few homes to repaint the debt is fast becoming impossible to repay. The finance company will garnish the perm fund check each year so I can remain broke camping here annually. At least moose occassionally share the snow camping fun by sleeping like friendly dogs now and then near the tent-excellent social opportunities in Alaska for a U.A.S. alum.

The cost to bankrupty here minimally is about 50 dollars realistically for do it yourselfers. As that surgery was about the only debt or charged item I have taken on the past 23 years I am not happy about not being able to repay the 1500 dollars. The nation does not itself seem to be rationally inclined regarding repayment of its public debt.

A reform of American capitalism is needed as a general an oligharchy, anti-financial monopoly action, low entropy ecological economic are required too, and full employment rather than making America another Mexico or India ruled by elite financial globalists needs to be the goals of a 4th political party in the United States of America.

On Leonard Susskind's Summa Contra Anthropic Principle

Leonard Susskind is an important string theory theorist who has ventured a little into the realm of non-scientific philosophy. Historically there have been several philosophers who tried to reformulate philosophy as rigorous science (Edmund Husserl wrote a couple of volumes called Logical Investigations to reiterate that point), yet they often fail in the effort to persuade us of the value of the method beyond serving to admonish us to use logical, rational thinking), scientific method though is rigorous in-itself and yields particular rather than general results.

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

We understand the nature of science with its value in providing specific answers to specific inquires. The ability to falsify results of a scientific project also provides the probability of a result being true. If it cannot be false than a hypothesis has a hard time being true either. Maybe we discover that same criterion in the ability to have faith in God or even proofs of the existence or non-existence of God, yet as in science we know the results are only probable answers conditional in nature.

We agree with C.S. Pierce (a 19th century American philosopher) that science and logic provide results that work. Pierce invented the philosophy of pragmatism. For example, if one invents a new dance step on a slave plantation to win a contest on the theory that its best, and one does win the contest and ‘take the cake’ given to the winner traditionally, then one’s aesthetic judgment about the quality of the step and of the opinion of the judges is true. A better example might be postulating how to make the chemicals for a match, putting them together and testing them. Implicitly the hypothesis might have been false and the results hence falsifiable.

Dr. Susskind has written a book named The Cosmic Landscape; String theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design in which he has taken a step away from the obvious realm of scientific method beyond even the criterion of philosophy as rigorous science. That is o.k. however, for speculative thought sometimes advances the range of knowledge by providing hypothetical and possibly falsifiable models that may be used to construct new theories. C.S. Pierce in inventing pragmatism also created the concept of a trielectical nominative thought process of human consciousness. Of course today we know that there are more than a 100 trillion and consciousness associated with regions of a brain exists as a phenomenal cloud with ideas transcending time in a way with past memories, present thought and awareness and ‘anticipatory text’-like ideas drawn from experience and inference. Susskind’s speculative efforts to venture through a kind of anti-proof of Intelligent Design, or more specifically the anthropic principle, does yield some interesting data as it should.

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Landscape-String-Illusion-Intelligent/dp/0316155799

The Anthropic principles weak and strong appear as factual in the physical fine tuning of constants in cosmology. One may reasonably postulate a non-theistic explanation for the phenomenon, yet Christian theologians do not at any rate try to prove the existence of God through scientific proofs of Intelligent Design or even the strong or weak Anthropic principles evident as they are.

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

In fact scientific data acquisition about the Universe and its fundamental nature are changing faster even than theory about its constants and nature. String theory developed in the 1970s, while the acceleration of the Universe was discovered just in 1999. Now, dark energy is thought to comprise 70% of the universe, dark matter 26% and atoms or matter just 4%. While space telescopes have photographed light emissions to within 380,000 years of the creation of the universe from its point of inflation in the first second, the strange fact that humans are able to seem the beginning of the Universe in which they live existentially (trough the time it takes for light to travel to Earth in an expanding Universe) ought to strike people as rather strange. Even if there were a trillion trillion universes created in a multiverse, humanity might have existed at any other such point in space-time such that the first photons issued within the first million years of the universe could never have been captured for observation.

String theory is a marvelous tool for leveraging information about the quantum world. The theories about the quantum world and the Universe itself are moving targets themselves however, and the arguments about speculative constructions of extra universes, pre-universes, membranes, strings and space-time have infinite possibilities for themselves. String theory provides half a million different solutions to correct quantum equations describing the real condition of the quantum universe while the data about the observable universe itself is changing. That makes for uncertainty in the nature of the results, in its falsifiability and in where in space-time to place the data.

As Christians we enjoy the scientific efforts to provide knowledge of a factual kind, yet as philosophers we like to know when speculation is less than rigorously scientific producing pejorative opinion instead of hard data.