Memorial Day and Alternative History

I am a little bit skeptical this memorial day about many things today being in a philosophical disposition. I recall a church lawn with a cross representing powers of ten of each aborted child since 1974-something like 40 to 60 million.

I recently read George S. Patton's poem on Armistice day ending the first world war-it has a glorious opinion about soldierly deaths.

I think though, that the decision of the U.S.A. to enter the First World war was perhaps the pivotal mistake in foreign policy of the last century. If the European powers had continued to grind each other down toward some kind of peace its unlikely that World War Two would have occurred, the holocaust also wouldn't have happened and Lenin would have continued his N.E.P. reform policy and Stalin wouldn't have become leader of the Soviet Union.

I believe that the Ottoman Empire would have continued in the middle east to slowly wither away with Arab enmity directed towards Turkey rather than the west, and the United State might have entered war on the side of China to liberate Manchuria occupied by Japan if Japan had attacked Pearl harbor and Attu which isn't likely.

The cold war would never have happened and a German aristocracy resembling that of today's Britain might have developed a stable social environment. The First World War ended with an armnistace leaving many German veterans convinced they had not lost. It also brought the end of the German aristocracy with a leftist led revolution to get rid of the war government and replace it with a popular government. That process led to many internal German changes such as the ending of the 700 year old Bavarian principality and the rise of the German Democratic Socialist party led by Adolph Hitler.

With a weakened Germany following the end of the First World War the Soviet Union was able to build up its military forces while Germany was tied down by the onerous terms of the armistice. With the aristocracy gone and populism rising with much communist activity the German Army leadership sent the charismatic Hitler to take over the German Democratic Socialist Workers Party and the rest is history; the populist NAZI party was able to agitate against the communists and received approval in that regard from the deposed aristocrats. Logical political developments as a series of reactions to internal and external political organization and events were challenges prompting responses. The United States failed to realize the consequences of destroying the comparatively moderate German aristocracy in creating a very imbalanced and unstable Europe with the military intervention.

When the United States intervened in the First World War it upset the balance that had been reached between Germany and Russia. Lenin had signed off on the treaty of Brest-Litovsk giving away the Ukraine to Germany, and it isn't improbable that Stalin and others hated Lenin deeply for that later finding an excuse to poison Lenin.

With the second world war as has been said the last battle of the First World War the allies pumped up Stalinist Russia with arms and intelligence in order to roll up Hitler. If Clemenceau's advice that the U.S.A. not sign a separate treaty with Germany that did not guarantee the peace had been followed another opportunity to avoid the Second World War might have forestalled the great changes ahead.

Because the Soviet Union presided over a wrecked Eastern Europe the Cold War and the nuclear arms race developed. The Vietnam War was enabled by the tremendous military power that the United States had enabled Stalin to gather during the Second World War and its aftermath.

When so many people die following bad foreign policy decisions its a little like a chess game in time that reduces the options one may take as the game unfolds. Now the U.S.A. is moving beyond the middle game in its bad political intervention decisions and failing to upgrade the quality of life of its citizens consistently.

That's some of why I am skeptical today of Memorial Day observations by a nation pursuing oil development globally, polluting the atmosphere and spending more on war than realistic national defense of environment and quality of life of the poor.

Parable of Quacks in Grecian Economic Tragedy

Everyone is searching for a Grecian formula to restore the faded luster of the founding state of western civilization. Many wonder if Greece should leave Europe and bring back the Drachma. Euripides wrote brilliant tragedies in ancient Greece that inspire moderns to emulation in the theater of the absurd macro-economic policy called the Eurozone. Alaska has righted its economic future relying upon Trans-Canada and Exxon to build a gas pipeline across Alaska one day so the state government can exemplify self-determination and that resolute frontier spirit.

While the Eurozone may not have its own Jack London right now, it has got the example of American nationalism for a model in building up Greece today. Federalism in the United States developed to assure that its Eurozone forerunner of the 19th century permitted free trade amongst the states without tariffs or taxes that were unfair. If a state had economic troubles while other states were thriving the federal government would lend a hand with a T.V.A. program or mini-Marshall plan for the region.

Europe today seems to have two economic doctors with opposing plans. One calls for the austerity of amputating the legs of Greek Government spending while the other wants to put Greeks on a regime of heroin, Valium and reality T.V. It is believed by some that neither of those would bring the patient Greek Government to health.

What is required of a Eurozone that works well is a beneficial federal interventionism along with spending cuts for Greece. Cutting Greek spending without providing alternative investment and finance stimulus would be a one way design to reduce the Greek Government to a facade condition while the people would find no national ability to build up a local economy with the stratospheric Eurozone thriving economies far overhead investing in globalism.

The United States since the end of the cold war has been hard at work dismantling its own federalism and nationalism in favor of globalism that tends to impoverish the national economy and national government’s economic health as tax cuts and foreign investments do little to create a healthy national economy. Federalism in the Eurozone that works would need to regard the nations of Europe more as states were in the U.S.A. between 1865 and 1990.

Federalism and globalism combined tends to tie the hands of member states or nations from helping themselves nationally while global banks corporations are free to locate wheresoever they will. I suppose the logical direction of such policy would be to concentrate real wealth in China or wherever the global economic powers determine their best prospects to be. Fortunately the U.S.A. and Greece each have a proud history with much consolation symbolically speaking as they adapt to bread lines and Soviet style repression of national sentiment and expression.

Memorial Day

The waterfall of the past

is a rhyme

a standing wave of nothingness

beside the mind

shadows fall on the water

time collects the surge of precipitated drops

people and events placed

on the river flowing

with memory into history’s abyssal pit

its never quenched thirst for more of the present

receiving shapes into chaotic dissolution

disappearing forever over the edge.

Create New Class of Banks With Lower Limit on Flim Flam?

The large banks seem to be global vacuums that suck up American capital from savers in order to gamble on speculations with quantitative trading. So why not create a new class of banks that cannot invest in extra-territorial properties or in derivatives, collateralized debt obligations and so forth?

One might think initially that the drive to create higher profits that lets larger banks in theory have a competitive advantage over limited banks would make the new banks unprofitable-yet that is not necessarily so.

State banks could invest only within a state, national banks could invest just in the U.S.A. and Global banks-the heavyweight bunk class accomplishing political power acquisition as well as financial returns, could be those stratospheric players with Harvard grads in the clouds for global players to seek easy pickins.

Local people like to save money with security, yet without a gold standard banks must make that cash on deposit work. They would be allowed to invest in real business and producvtion, properties and so forth owned by either state or U.S. citizens respectively.

If the large banks are in effective civilly disobediant political anarchists seeking their own agenda of power to the detriment of the citizens of the United States then the antidote might be to create a new class of banks since it is so hard to force rational reform upon the global Blackbeards, Capt. Morgans, Goldmen and so forth of finance.

President Obama Skipping Release of College Transcripts

One blogger went so far as to offer a $10,000 reward for President Obama's college transcripts. One would think that like the sticker on the window of a new car a Presidential candidate would release their college transcripts so the public could see a little about what's inside before buying.

One gets all of these promises about what the car will do and no test drive is allowed generally so it helpful to have a list of the candidate's ingredients intellectually speaking. Sure he or she may have done a lot of unaccredited reading of good books or watched Lone Wolf McQuade 20 times however the college transcripts are a comparative minimal objective baseline. Did President Obama get a fail in Nintendo strategies at Columbia U?

One would like Mitt Romney to release his college transcripts too. The public might like to know if he was tardy any times in junior high and if that might indicate anything about skipping work tendencies to go golfing half the day.

Can Mitt Romney name five artists that have painted 'The Last Supper' or provide a Diophantine equation without tele-prompting?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/01/17/carney_dodges_question_about_obamas_college_transcripts_i_would_refer_you_to_the_campaign.html

G.R. (General Theory of Relativity) and Simpler Examples of Space-time

Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity is a little bit complex for most of us. There are famously sixteen equations that can be interpreted in a variety of ways in modern cosmological models, and us non-mathematicians want to learn the basics of space curvature and time dilation that happens in relation to mass.

The more mass is present the more space is curved. The sun has a lot of mass and much space curvature. Gravity is regarded in the paradigm as curving space, while all mass attracts other mass as if it had only a positive charge attracted to positive, and that mass curves space in proportion to its amount of mass.

I was reading a book called 'Faster Than Light' about the variable speed of light theory, and the author mentioned that Einstein's special theory of relativity was made with the paradigm that space is empty and did not account for the effect of curved space upon light or mass travelling through it. He needed to improve the theory and make it a General Theory of Relativity that would in one fell swoop surpass Newton's theory of gravitation.

I found a nice little book named 'One to Nine' published in 2007-2008 by Andrew Hodeges that covers a lot of ground about each number and some of its deeper, even philosophical significance. So one reaches the number four and finds a mathematical phrase that provides a really simply idea for understanding basic parameters of G.R.

A three-dimensional space-imagine a Cartesian coordinate x,y grid with another line penetrating through it like an arrow to make three dimensions (the flat grid like a computer screen is two dimensions) can be used to draw a sphere upon. With another dimensions of time allowing the sphere to expand or contract one has the number four that is usefully presented in the expression  T²  -  x²  - y²  -z^2.

Wikipedia has an useful article on Algebra. Describing many dimensions mathematically is something that is apparently a project with a major investment of time, yet of course math is purely abstract at heart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra

I was wondering about some of the discussion on the topic of time in the context of the special theory, yet maybe one must use the general theory to describe the relationship of time to experience subjectively.

There are innumerable illustrative examples of the special theory, yet it is G.R. with the contraction of time with speed letting one travelling near the speed of light experience time passing much slower than for those stationary on a planet (its really impossible though because as mass approaches relativistic speed it increases its relative mass infinitely and that requires an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it closer to light speed.

With the cosmic microwave background radiation and measurement of personal time from qualitative analysis of the elapse of time since the 300,000 years from Time = 0 in the history of the Universe when light first escaped from a super-hot plasma cloud in theory) anyone in the Universe should be able to tell what their time is objectively in the history of this Universe even with relativity.

It is amazing that mass itself and ties into space somehow 'curving' it perhaps by association with particular small dimensions in it, yet space is increasing in size outside concentrations of mass as if the dimensions of space were expanding along a time dimensions and unaffected by gravity enough to localize at any given clump of mass through space curvature.

Space is observed to be nearly 'flat' by astrophysicists I believe, and the intense curvature of space around mass especially about neutron stars and black holes is an anomalous or minority phenomenon in the context of space. It is a little challenging to think of dimensions expanding without mass, as if they should have any size or substance to increase. It is almost easier to imagine all of mass contracting in the Universe and space remaining the same size, yet of course that probably isn't so.

Hodges does provide Minkowsky's equation for the separation of two events in time (0,0,0,0) and (t,x,y,z). he is using complex numbers in the example (the book is easy to read for non-mathematicians and self-explanatory). An easy version Hodges provides where the speed of light is represented by 'c' and the value is one is:is c²t²  -  x²  - y²  -z^2...

That makes everything clear.

Normal Trade Relations Needed With Moscow?

China was given permanent normal trade relationship status by the Congress in the year 2000. In 2001 people in Beijing cheered at news of the attacks by Al Qa'eda on Washington D.C. Russia alternatively worked to defend against the Moslem terror agenda. Russia has been denied permanent normal trade relationship status by the Congress since the end of the cold war as if its leadership was more conservative than that of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party that rules over the modest business liberalization in that nation. That paradox seems consistent with the faulty reasoning of Congress on economic matters since the end of the Tip O'Neil era.

The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has written an article in support of granting PNTR status for Russia. That nation already pays for 11 billion dollars of U.S. exports and services annually (well, in 2011 at least), and the prospects for more business could increase substantially if a normal trade relationship status is effected.

Hope for the Lost

If in life one lives in opposition to the teachings of a church, the transition to death is unlikely to improve one's relationship to that organization. The catholic basic training webpage below provides some idea about problems of homosexuality. It is a tragedy when the unsaved are given incorrect moral instruction and are lost for eternity. It would be unthinkably wrong for the Church to provide false signs that seem to approve sin and condemned behavior to the living. Some of the living may still have a chance for salvation and eternal life with God after recognizing their sinful nature and changing that with faith in Jesus Christ for their atonement. http://www.catholicbasictraining.com/apologetics/coursetexts/8h.htm

V.P. Joe Biden Attacks Mitt Romney for B. Obama

Vice President Joe (Bite Me) Biden has attacked Mitt Romney for Bain capital's closure of an American state of the art steel mill made in 1888 after Mitt Romney left the firm. What isn't said about former Gov. Romney is that his fighting skill at economic trimming the fat and winning for shareholders is not such a bad thing if he is on your team. Team U.S.A. could use a fat-trimming conditioning coach to tighten up American production, bureaucratic bloating and improve conditioning in order that Americans can better compete against the Chinese Communist economic directive intelligentsia to whom so many American job have been lost while the U.S. national debt has been deepening.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/05/mitt-romney-defend-bain-capital-record-/1#.T7Uw3ui0x_Y

F-22 Crashes Mystery Revs Up Investigations

Why do F-22 pilots lose consciousness and let their planes crash and burn? The air superiority fighters are designed to survive opposition force aircraft attacks and surface to air missiles yet they cannot overcome themselves. This is a problem the Yoda of the Air Force should be investigating.

image credit U.S. Air Force

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57435262/pentagon-restricts-f-22-flights-safety-a-concern/

http://www.adn.com/2012/05/17/2468445/no-significant-change-in-jet-patterns.

The present cost of the Lockheed-Martin F-22 is more than 400 million dollars per aircraft. The Air Force has committed to buy about 183 of the swift, stealthy birds at more than 7 billion bucks. One hopes the pilots can get enough oxygen to stay alive at that price, perhaps with an open window?

Lockheed-martin should throw in some sort of fail-safe auto pilot detection system for unconscious pilots that would put the plane on auto pilot, eject the pilot from the aircraft safely to parachute to the ground or provide an electric jolt of awakening. If the very expensive yet neat F-22 is to have much use before retiring to the aircraft museums with the Space shuttle the mysterious cost-overruns and loss of life associated with the aircraft ought to be flanked a little with pilot safety monitors even while more exotic causes for the crashes like the one in the Alaska range last summer that got a search going to find the lost (and dead) pilot are investigated.

Maybe U.F.O.s are zapping the planes to demonstrate air superiority, hidden microwave directed particle beams are trashing pilot intelligence or the pilots are texting and lose track of where the ground is. The Osprey team designers could be free to help out solving the mystery.