Soy bean farmers should get tough and creative instead of complaining about how much they miss selling their crop sales to the Chinese Communists. The communists choose to eschew the marvelous protein-rich bean as a negotiating tactic. That choice should provide opportunities for farmers to sell their crops to new locales where it has never gone before. They might also invent a new product that would preserve the beans far beyond their usual expiration date. http://thehill.com/policy/finance/395986-us-soybean-farmers-warn-trump-trade-war-with-china-will-cause-serious-damage
Some sort of soy-protein mint-flavored energy bars might be right. Soy protein and apple and apricots such as applets and cotlets are made of might be a popular product in protein deficient regions of the world. Soy and fruit together in a sugar-beet powdered sugar-coated mint bar could supply needed nutrition for people in Nepal or Tibet (or are the communists intimidating those areas still?). India might a market that could use non-perishable products that are very low cost, nutritious and cheap.
Quality non-animal protein food sources are just not dumped. I recall one winter scrapping muscles off beach boulders for protein and their wasn't much to the things. Not every place on Earth has lots of protein even at dollar stores that are affordable or even existent.
Choosing
peace and prosperity when the opportunity arises instead of war is
nominally at least the better choice. North Korea's Kim Jong Un
apparently is duplicitous about his desire for peace and prosperity.
His signals to President Trump regarding denuclearization were nothing
more than deceit to continue nuclear development through other
means. https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-cites-progress-in-north-korea-nuclear-talks-1530967772
North
Korean leaders played the Clinton administration famously even
getting Sect. of State Madeleine Albright to synthetic
belly-jig dance . President Trump is unlikely to be so compliant in
return for sweet nothings for the media that mean nothing.
KJ
Un may be looking to the mid-term election and playing for time
hoping that loose democrat party appeasers will return to take over
government. Its not really a bad tactic yet it might not work out to
well.
When
the former Soviet Union and President Gorbachev faced a similar
probably of occupying an inferior strategic military and economic
position the leadership choose to just allow glasnost and perestroika
to run full course. Peace and prosperity were a better direction than
war. Other than Democrat Party failure to work well with Russia after
the end of the cold war bringing distrust to those considering
letting down their guard and choosing to join mainstream western
economics, the decision to change for Russia worked out reasonably
well with few casualties, no war and debatably an improvement in the
lifestyle of Russian.
If
North Korea rapidly denuclearizes, allows free expression and travel
between north and south for business, and officially ends the Korean
War, it would be better off quite swiftly and remarkably. Korea could
become a technology strongman comparable to Germany. American soy
beans could flow by the hundreds of thousands of tons to bring
quality vegetable protein to the undernourished. There would be no
chance of civil war between northerners and southerners. Therefore I
believe Rocket Man is not playing with a full deck.
Caesar's conquest of Gaul was a necessary historical progression. Transalpine Gaul became a vast producer of produce for Rome in addition to other considerations. In a way it was necessary for Rome to conquer Gaul after the invasions from northerners that Caesar's uncle Marius thwarted (he buried 150,000 at Marseilles and the fields were said to be rich with fertilizer for produce). Gaul was colonized by upper class Romans that enjoyed vast estates. They had too enjoyable of a lifestyle and it was somewhat rotted from within. It is worth recollecting that it was the Huns and their speed of light comparatively speaking cavalry that showed the way to end the Roman Empire. The Legions couldn't move as quickly, and were corrupted with foreign recruits. Rome had a kind of natural lifestyle and ended rather naturally. It was a bridge nation between old civilizations and the new Europe and became a vehicle for the dissemination of Christianity. Really quite remarkable. A divine plan.
Good ideas exist in-themselves after they are made and used by others. Formalizing ideas and using them politically instead of thinking for-oneself is a problem of course. Today a generality for political platforms is that they elect inertially normal social symbols that cannot reform social structure or economics as required externally for-itself. Nietzche was wrong about a lot of things. Only one guy attended his college philology lectures- a janitor at the school. He regard the people as unthinking ants following customs in the village globally while he probably saw himself as Zarathustra living on a hill looking down upon the comedy-tragedy, metaphorically speaking. Is political ideology the same as or a replacement for religious and theological belief? The answer to that is of course no. Political affiliation has no potential for providing salvation unto eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ. Can prople that just pretend to be religious with an imitation of Christianity behave empirically in some way as comfortable Democrat Party cadre if they jump ship because they believe Christian association isn't socially as valuable in the present godless, mindless epoch? of course. Sociological behavior is different than what ideas are. Organizational structures may have similarities yet with different intellectual content or the lack of it. It depends how one is viewing human behavior; as an atheist and empirical scientific behaviorist, as a theolgican with true faith, as a social self-promoting opportunist etc. and so forth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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,Uzbekistanhas 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 theUnited States Department of Defensedismantled the major research and testing site for Novichok at the Chemical Research Institute in Nukus, under a $6 millionCooperative Threat Reductionprogramme.[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]
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]"
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%.
