The First City in Europe Was Discovered by Manojlo Milošević

It depends on what the meaning of 'bigger' is. Akad and Sumer where marvelous civilization with the famous ziggurats. Square miles or the size of structures and temples might be criteria for example.  Fragments of the Tale of Gilgamesh on clay tablets date to 5000 B.C.

Europe in the mesolithic and the early neolithic was less civilized or structured. Yet a Serbian farmer named Manojlo Milošević in 1960 discovered a city site dating to 9500 B.C. that continued may be until 7200-6500 B.C. Keep in mind that Jericho dates to 10,000 B.C. or earlier.

 The Serbian city-the first in Europe, ws on a good fishing spot on the Danube and named Lepenski Vir. It was a small town rather than a vast civilization. Yet its architecture had its Frank Loyd Wright moments with earth houses  of triangular shape and concrete-like floors. In some respects human urban design hasn't improved much the last 12,000 years and has the same basic reasoning for its shape and resource use.

  Much cvilization technology moved through Anatolia into Europe. Europeans had been living in Europe for tens of thousands of years though without much in the way of urban design. Lepenski Vir was a definate upgrade in style and permanence for Europeans.

By 3500 B.C. there were some fairly elaborate smaller cities made of stone and wood even as far as Scotland. I have omitted mentioning the Mycenain civilization in the early to mid second milenium B.C. The first alphabet and writing in Europe arrived with them. They were probably from the Minoan civilization of Crete and Thera originaly and may have fled after the great explosive volcanic eruption that destroyed the primary city of that civilization and gave rise to the legends of Atlantis.

The first alphabet that was phonetic likely was formed by Moses.

Nothing In London for Pres Trump to See

President Trump apparently must make a trip to England as a kind of Presidential duty. Somehow with his knowledge of the place he has managed to avoid going to London. I visited England in 1987 and flew aboard a PanAM flight that cut over a bit of Scotland on the way to Heathrow. Iceland is really the feature attraction of flying to England. After Iceland its all downhill in a land without glaciers. It was late November and I stayed in London a night. There really isn't anything in London that one who has visited Des Moine Iowa would miss.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/06/donald-trump-to-avoid-london-during-uk-visit

The British Museum of Science is there and it is kind of neat. There is a moving sidewalk around outside of it that lets one walk very briskly. The Tower of London has a nice weapons collection in the basement and there is a good fish and chips vendor on the street some distance away.  That's about it. London has a lot of people, subways with deep escalator rides that lose novelty quickly, yet it's a good place to rent a car and drive to Lands End or Liverpool to catch a boat to Ireland.

More Thai Cave Rescue Ideas

Engineers from Elon Musk and some equipment will arrive in Thailand to help makie a rescue plan for 13 boys and coach trapped deep underground in a cave. All or nothing approaches to cave rescue resemble NASA planetary and lunar mission planning paradigms that are all or nothing. It is possible to cut down the problem to smaller pieces. One could place particular site-specific oxygen relief umbrellas anchored with climber's bolts to the cave floor where there are water obstructions so the distance to cross and desparation is reduced.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/06/asia/thai-cave-rescue-options-intl/index.html

Locating extra air bottles on the way is something like having Sherpas place supplies for a summit attempt on the mountain closest to the moon on Earth; Chimborazo in Ecuador. It is not necessary to make a complete summit attempt from sea level in one shot; it's o.k. to traverse pieces of the journey and even make way to the Whymper hut at 15,000 feet for an overnight rest before getting up early to hike to the summit (properly equipped of course).

The submerged areas of the cave should be 'bridged' with site specific crossing techniques (unless the Musk idea of an inflatable tube that would cross most of the cave length is readily applicable). Different means of providing air to portions of the cave that are submerged- a variegated approach to solving the equation, would be like Newton's approach to inventing the integral calculus.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/06/asia/thai-cave-rescue-elon-musk-intl/index.html

A Way to Study Philosophy

It is reasonably simple to become a reader of philosophy. It is great stuff. Worth a lifetime investment. Yet if you are interested in being a philosopher then the values one has will be counter-cyclical to those of many modern people and hence sometimes challenging.
 One may start off reading Plato's dialogues and then find a book about the Pre-Socratics such as Parmenides and Heraclitus. Bertrand Russell wrote a book named 'A History of Philosophy' as did Coppleston write another. Philosophy means 'the love of wisdom', and wisdom is about knowing what human life is, where human society and its values fit into the scheme of the physical cosmos, the relation of matter to mind and what spirit is as distinct from non-sensible matter.

Philosophy in a way is a record of the larger paradigm of the journey of human intellectual development and moral values since the dawn of civilization. A philosopher should be able to differentiate the various religions and cultural styles and content of world civilization as well as know the state of the art in contemporary cosmology. There are many books out there...to many really to read in a lifetime, about philosophy which is why it is useful to take a philosophy 101 course. There are free on-line philosophy courses at an introductory level at coursera.org that I highly recommend. Enjoy- philosophy is a lifetime avocation."1The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;

2To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;

3To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;

4To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.

5A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:

6To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

7The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."-KJV

Does MI-5 Have Novichok Too?

With four people in Britain being hit by contact with a nerve agent within the past couple of months it may be time for Britain to appoint an independent investigator as an internal affairs agent to determine if British espionage persons are conducting news manipulation activity intended to manipulate public political opinion and cause fear and trembling, angst and hatred of Russians.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/alarm-in-britain-over-new-novichok-nerve-agent-poisoning/2018/07/05/d108205c-7fdb-11e8-a63f-7b5d2aba7ac5_story.html?utm_term=.bf556b7842f1

If the public has learned anything from the Mueller investigation of Russian interests in U.S. politics- and no one should know about that since it is often as Al Gore said, 'like making sausage and you don't want to know what goes in it'., it's the value of finding collateral targets in addition to the ostensible primary target. A solid British hunt for dirt in the British intelligence and political community might turn up some bad apples and financial perfidy or hidden collusion with foreign governments where its least expected.

Novichok is a rather strange choice of a nerve agent to use since Russia invented it. Britain invented the nerve agent VX so it would have been a logical choice for Russian spook-assassins to use VX in order to throw off suspicion, unless they wanted to be suspects.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/05/novichok-wiltshire-poisoning-russia-putin-world-cup

Novichok (it means newbie in Russian) was first produced about a half century ago so it is likely in the inventory or can be cooked up by chemical cognoscenti of Britain or any advanced government (even if they are ecospherically retarded in economic policy).

http://theconversation.com/what-we-know-about-novichok-the-newby-nerve-agents-linked-to-russia-93264

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/novichok-agent

Iran made five versions of Novichok in 2016 and added the spectral analysis to an international database. Reportedly the Czech Republic made some Novichok agent A-230 to  learn about it, in 2017. Because it can be made into a fine powder and distribute in numerous ways it is an  unfortunate addition to the thanatological arts.

It is also possible that Novichok in solid form was stolen or sold to third parties after the fall of the Soviet Union when internal security was very low and border security lax. Malefactors of unknown purpose could release small amount of the readily smuggled lethal weapons any time or place, over any border.

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

quote from the wikipedia page cited above...  "Since its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been working with the government of the United States to dismantle and decontaminate the sites where the Novichok agents and other chemical weapons were tested and developed.^[38][40] Between 1999^[43] and 2002 the United States Department of Defense dismantled the major research and testing site for Novichok at the Chemical Research Institute in Nukus, under a $6 million Cooperative Threat Reduction programme.^[39][44]

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British chemical weapons expert and former commanding officer of the UK's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiation and Nuclear Regiment and its NATO equivalent, "dismissed" suggestions that Novichok agents could be found in other places in the former Soviet Union such as Uzbekistan and has asserted that Novichok agents were produced only at Shikhany in Saratov Oblast, Russia.^[45] Mirzayanov also says that it was at Shikhany, in 1973, that scientist Pyotr Petrovich Kirpichev first produced Novichok agents; Vladimir Uglev joined him on the project in 1975.^[46] According to Mirzayanov, while production took place in Shikhany, the weapon was tested at Nukus between 1986 and 1989.^[4]

Following the poisoning of the Skripals, former head of the GosNIIOKhT security department Nikolay Volodin confirmed in an interview to Novaya Gazeta that there have been tests at Nukus, and said that dogs were used.^[47]

In May 2018, the Irish Independent reported that "Germany's foreign intelligence service secured a sample of the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok in the 1990s and passed on its knowledge to partners including Britain and the US, according to German media reports." The sample was analysed in Sweden.^[48] Small amounts of the Novichok nerve agent were subsequently produced in some NATO countries for test purposes.^[49]

Description of Novichok agents

Examples of structures claimed as Novichok agents^{[50][51][52][53][54][55]}

Mirzayanov provided the first description of these agents.^[26] Dispersed in an ultra-fine powder instead of a gas or a vapour, they have unique qualities. A binary agent was then created that would mimic the same properties but would either be manufactured using materials which are not controlled substances under the CWC,^[28] or be undetectable by treaty regime inspections.^[40] The most potent compounds from this family, Novichok-5 and Novichok-7, are supposedly around five to eight times more potent than VX.^[56] The "Novichok" designation refers to the binary form of the agent, with the final compound being referred to by its code number (e.g. A-232). The first Novichok series compound was in fact the binary form of a known V-series nerve agent, VR,^[56] while the later Novichok agents are the binary forms of compounds such as A-232 and A-234.^[57]"

Immoral Paganism and the Concentration of Wealth

I thought I would write a comment about paganism and its relation to morality in the contemporary environment. Popular paganism takes forms such as the Harry Potter books and even Thor; the Brad Pitt version, although the character is simply an extra-terrestrial rather than a demi-urge. Upgrading pagan paradigms such that they become non-divines may actually be a useful thing. So I shall put that off the pagan list. There are many others though in the gaming world that are populated with pagan gods and demons.

Popular paganism seems a way to indirectly attack Christianity. Christianity is lumped in with all the other religious paradigms and God with gods. That equivocation of the Lord and God with all the others is a sort of inverse algebraic formulaic process of negating like terms on both sides of an equation (or all directions & dimensions of an equation if using some sort of Multiverse algebra possibly) in order to get zero- the atheist ideal.

Paganism is a necessary chaff and smoke screen for advancing immoral norms such as homosexual marriage, legal marijuana recreational use and other platforms of the Democrat party and decadent elements of the rich. Paganism is synergistic with the goals of the most wealthy and aristocratic minded that would make subjects of all usurping democracy in the process. Christianity actually reinforces individual rights and neighborly morality as everyone Christian is under the moral accountability of God, while paganism is used to destroy individual civil rights to advance just class rights. Those class rights are behavioral conformity planks. And anything to advance the behavioral conformity planks of the party is alright.

Paganism destroys civil rights rather than reinforcing them and that is good for incipient and recrudescent royalty that desire a world of dopey, compliant subjects without individual civil rights. Free expression is simply effaced for subjects of the secular paganism forever seeking to assert itself. The rise of paganism in the popular gaming and movie world also inherently attacks the idea of free will of individuals for self-determination. Popular paganism is against individual free will. Employing arguments against Christianity and Christian morality are ways to advance the collective agenda- a pagan global Borg in a sense of collective behavioral norms of what would be regarded by Christians as immoral,sinful conduct. Sin is a concept to the new pagans akin to sunlight to a vampire...they hate it.

Christianity allows a sober secular paradigm supportive of a scientific empirical rational view of the world. Calvinist pre-determinism does permit free will. Free will is necessary for Christians to be accountable to God for sin after all. Calvinism also strongly espouses pre-destination, and reconciling that to free will is challenging to some.

Christians do need to improve their Bible and theological understanding obviously. The Bible is perfect although the theologians aren’t. They lack an ordinary priesthood of believers as Luther apparently wanted. Instead Protestant Christianity has evolved into family led or sole pastored churches that leave Christians as career pew sitters. Evangelical Christians usually misunderstand end-times theology too; a great problem because they miss the completely accurate prophecy of Jesus for the apocalypse of the first century a.d., and that is a tragedy in a way. A priesthood of believers should be building up universally within an increasing Kingdom of God that grows until the time when the age of the gentiles is fulfilled (maybe when Elon Musk runs out of ideas).

Sober Christian rationalism can accommodate a world of ecospheric development and moral accountability to God without the avarice or fetish of commodities hoarding (since Marxism is dead I expropriated the term) sort of way of socially structuring society that requires a non-sustainable and ecospherically destructive version of unreformed capitalism in support of an unChristian, unMuslim and grossly unfair allocation of wealth. The new paganism just wants a world of amoral cyphers equivalent to amoeba or ants, without individual civil rights or intellectual independence, harnessed in service to the 1%.

Concepts for Thai Cave Rescue

The stranding of a dozen kids in a cave filled with water is a good opportunity for inventing rescue innovations. Unless the cave is too tight there should be some sort of thin capsule with an oxygen supply to stick a kid in and let the Thai Seals push/pull it out, one kid at a time. How much pressure could there be in that 2.5 mile long cavern? Would it be practical to make a capsule that can articulate to flex to get through tight spots?

Maybe the capsule should have some video game to distract the user so they relax the six hours during transit out of the cave. With a world of spectators one would think there should be some bright-ling able to open the door.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/05/thailand-cave-race-drain-water-caverns-before-new-rains-arrive/758692002/

pea pod image credit; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rasbak
By Rasbak - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194762

Where is the Outdoor Chinese Solar Lamp in E-Shipment

  I am not sure of what e-shipment is. The term shows up occassionally when I buy something from e-Bay. Innumerable cheap electronics and solar products are made in China. One should orde solid, low cost wind generators from Missouri Wind and Solar, however for practical, small, cheap solar light with leds China is the source of the bulk. And they sometimes are sent e-shipment.

E-shipping can deliver packages in fewer than five days or out there a month, if I am using the right terms.

http://www.eshipping.biz/

https://www.mainfreight.com/eu/en/eu-home/technology/e-shipment.aspx

Initially one might think, upon encountering the term, that the CHinese will 3d print something in your town with an internet command. Yet that technology is a bit in the future still. Apparently e-shipments are some kind of coordinated on-line inventory and logistics system. Maybe they keep truckloads in New Jersey and with an order have a machine pick out an item from a warehouse and mail it. Main freight above might work it something like that. It would be possible to avoid having to keep too much product abroad-perhaps replacing stock when items go out.

Still, I am not sure how that system works for ordinary people. That is, is it a practical way for anyone to sell things very cheaply abroad? Do the Chinese allow bourbon whiskey to sit in truck containers in Shanghai awaiting orders?

Virgin Chinese Economy May Renormalize After Trade Warn

Trade wars are a part of the old west. They have been around nearly as long as shooting or spearing wars. Trade wars and sanctions have helped stimulate economic innovation and adaptation for hundreds or thousands of years. Thus the impending trade war may shake up overly ossified elements in the Chinese and American economies that are favorites of bureaucrats that view institutions and corporate ossification as too big to fail benefactors of bureaucratic inertia.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/china-commerce-ministry-warns-u-s-tariffs-will-hit-global-supply-chains-idUSKBN1JV063

One can never predict where war will lead. I suppose that applies a little to trade wars though the analogy of war in two such different arenas is only as useful as three wheels on a car instead of four. Maybe the Trump tariffs will rectify trade at a level and in a form more ecospherically efficient (some humor is o.k. in a brief essay).

It is remarkable to consider the tonnage of human consumption on both sides of the Pacific ocean and the continuing decline of raw materials to support the rise of consumption. At some point new ways of viewing the value of the wild for-itself should supplant the purse demand for surplus consumption.

President Trump could escalate the trade war and bring more forces of battle to bear until the Chinese and Russians agree to stop all non-litoral North Pacific salmon fishing for seven years and provide war ships to halt anyone else from doing so (along with the U.S. Navy). It would be great to have large chinook survive all those drift nets of the international fishing fleet catching the fish in their years at sea. If that were to occur then something good would have emerged that could be said to be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Trump Books Haven't Corrupted Youth Like Rowling's

The author J.J Rowling mocked President Trump for bragging about his books in a Twitter post.

https://people.com/politics/jk-rowling-trolls-donald-trump-tweet-typo/

Hostile godless atheist Brits aren't terribly useful people for the advancement of a just and moral society. The author of several corrupting youth novels would be better spending time criticizing her own government for leading the world into homosexual marriage and hog warts herpiification, failing to Brexit solidly and turn entirely toward renewable, sustainable energy and ecosphere in the island kingdom.