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.

Why Human Life in the Universe Need End Eventually

Stoics and peripatetic philosophers had a different take on fate, God and spirit. My point of view is Christian. One could describe a biological/physical reason why life is less than eternal physically. Apparently humans souls or spirit or information is eternal. Adam and Eve were set in a perfect place; like a condo with a fully stocked refrigerator on a tropical beach and found to be imperfect and unable to exist in perfect compliance with the Spirit. Without correction they may have become quite decadent and cast votes eventually for the moral equivalent of Democrats in what should be a Holy space.. Humans sinned, learned the difference between good and evil and were cast into the thermodynamic universe that is a containment facility. Thermodynamics mean that humans need to consume energy to exist- and therein is the source of so many human problems. All thermodynamic processes and forms change and end including humans. Matter is just two-dimensional massless particles slowed in the Higgs Field and given therein a third dimension to become entangled and massive. Maybe its like one of those complex knots where one can pull the ends of a string and it disappears. For some reason God doesn't want people to be eternal and off balance morally speaking, defective like wobbly wheels with bad kingpins on a high speed electric car. I would agree with Stoics on this point; that to be defective means to be out of compliance with the will of God. Some are saved that comply with the perfect way of the Lord (God himself), and the rest are free to go their own way to hell.

Christianity's Central Origin

 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.

Elements of Jewish Pre-history

 Ah- you know that Jericho is 10,000 years old and it wasn't populated by faeries and gnomes. Jews (Abraham and party) arrived in the region circa 2000 B.C. more or less. I would guess that archaeologists find evidence of humans in the area going back to at least tens of thousands of years ago. Modern Palestinians though aren't much related to the original people that settled Palestine. The ones like Yassir Arafat that resembled Ringo Starr were comparatively late arrivals from the sea who migrated in waves a little earlier than the Jews arrival, if I recall correctly. The sea peoples attacked Egypt and elsewhere and built a few coastal cities. Jews did war with them after a time, yet it really was Sargon and Nebuchadrezzer's invasions and occupations that beat down the locals solidly as they annexed the area to their empires. Jews were eventually able to move down from the highlands to take control of the lowlands.

I like the timeline since it does ‘resonate’ with the sons of Noah moving out to seemingly mix with and lead existing people living around the fertile crescent. Of course one must believe the flood was just in the lowlands of Iraq (still a large one) and the Ark came to rest uphill in the lost kingdom of Urartu on the highest spot in sight on what might have been a foggy day. In this scenario Noah's sons might have left some genetic evidence with the locals yet it would be rather vague. Abraham and his people could be a remnant of one of those original semi-indigenous peoples.

AI with Philosophical Questions

 AI does scan encyclopedias for existing information yet on philosophical questions they are not capable of much inductive reasoning yet. They tend to be conservative on venturing opinions and regurgitate what's already out there while remaining politically somewhat to the left and inoffensive. I think this sentence would get some criticism and laughs if a human wrote it. AI-"Additionally, the nature of ultimate reality remains a subject of contemplation, speculation, and personal belief rather than empirical verification." It misses the point that things entangled in the Higgs Field may be the ultimate nature of reality- even if its a ram caught in a bush made a substitute for sacrificing Isaac. Ultimate reality is likely to always be a step down from God; and that last step is a pretty big one.

Sartre and Stoicism; Fate and Determinism

 Some might say that the quantum field humans are embedded in, like everything else that exists, determines human actions. Stoics might argue about relative freedom and absolute freedom. Does one would need to be God to be absolutely free? Would God then be free if He had existed from eternity; an unmoved mover, or would He be predetermined to be who He is? I believe stoics might modernize their way of regarding the effect of auxiliary and proximate causes in this fashion- I wonder if Sartre's term 'ossified praxis' that he gave to things like highway signs could be applied generally to semiotic challenges to freedom to exist? A stop sign of course means different things to human powered vehicles like bikes and machine carried people in cars and trucks. A bicyclist must put physical effort in deciding to comply with signs that are primarily made for motor vehicles when none are present. It is comparable to the non-sign for jaywalking on an empty highway instead of walking a mile to find a crosswalk. With a profusion of signs of ossified praxis and aged object in existence an individual must be free to choose which ones he wants to interact with in some way. Sartre also wrote that one always has the ability to just say no to whatever is being demanded of them in communication. Even so, one has the issue of cause and effect such as Hume descried and the paradigm of behaviorism such as BF Skinner developed for human organisms. An individual has certain select degrees of motion- does a fish have freedom not to breathe water? Is it fated to breath water (if it is blessed) and therefor not free because it has some choices it can make in regard to directions to choose to swim? Do humans need freedom in every possible dimension to be free or just a few, or even one or two?

I wonder if causes can be differentiated from the complete complex of compresence; the field in which all things exist in the present, and if the Earth that has a cause, and the sun that warms it in addition to radiological elements in the core, and all things that exist now can easily be categorized into simple causes of a linear sort, or even of a nexus that determine human actions. Causes, being and time, space-time, the Higgs Field and deterministic massless quanta given a third dimension in virtue of being slow and entangled in the Higgs field so they have apparent mass do seem to have a significant element of recognition from sentient minds, and some things like causes seem to exist within the mind; like language, rather than externally in the world.

Responsibility and freedom for choices would in a sense appear to depend on the independence of thought in a Cartesian Meditations sort of way that seems implicit in self-aware reasoning that occurs in a contiguous field of quantum entanglement given the particular conditions humans in societies find themselves in as peers. It seems a dead reckoning and practical criterion for judgment with laws and other formal regulatory ossifications made to serve social convenience rather than to oppress.

Accelerating Expansion of Space-time and Geometry

 I was taking a coursera course on ancient philosophy and especially Stoicism in chapter 5 and found an interesting illustration of a Stoic idea about auxiliary and proximate causes in the context of fate and thought to apply some of it to cosmology. I wonder this;

A CYLINDER PUSHED WILL ROLL IN A STRAIT LINE WHILE A CONE PUSHED WITH THE SAME FORCE WILL CURVE. EINSTEIN'S GENERAL RELATIVITY EQUATIONS AND SOME CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE SUGGEST THE UNIVERSE AT SOME STAGE WAS AT A SINGULARITY AND EXPANDED MORE OR LESS UNIFORMLY WITH A HYPERINFLATION FOR AN INSTANT. IT EXPANDED FURTHER FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS AND RECENTLY IS EXPANDING AT AN INCREASING PACE. MY QUESTION IS; COULD THE ACCELERATING EXPANSION BE DUE TO GEOMETRY? IS IT COMPARABLE AFTER A FASHION TO THE DIFFERENCE OF A CYLINDER AND SPHERE GIVEN A PUSH? COULD THE INCREASING PACE OF UNIVERSAL EXPANSION BE A RESULT OF GEOMETRY AND TIME RATHER THAN FORCE? GENERAL RELATIVITY DOES INDICATE THE CURVATURE OF SPACE-TIME.

Retrospect; A Dozen Years After Obama Admin Began the Queering of American Law

 Nearly a dozen years have passed since the Obama administration began levering queer marriage into law across the U.S. By 2015 a leftist dominated SCOTUS approved homosexual marriage. What has occurred in America since that sea change toward decadence and the dark side of the force?

On Christmas eve 2010 I was in Anchorage Alaska where I spent all but 30 days sleeping outside on the ground. It was a cold time and I was not quite broke earning $200 a month writing on-line as a top 5% peer-reviewed essayist. I wrote in opposition to homosexual marriage and used terms like ‘queer’ occasionally. That was why the Boston-based Helium Company banned me from posting their and confiscated my earnings. Democrats banned as many writers and sites opposed to homosexual marriage as they could and Wall Street Ce Os were also purged if they spoke out against homosexual marriage. That seems in retrospect plainly a part of the modus vivendi of the Democrat Party of the U.S.A. to win through legal force through laws passed by Democrats and Democrat judges. After failing to convict President Trump of anything including impeachment or collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election Democrats ungraded the charge to include insurrection for protesters bum-rushing the capitol. A Colorado court banned Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 Presidential ballot in Colorado. Those judges were all appointed by Democrat Governors.

American families are no more secure and probably less so. The legal fiction of queer marriage has undermined the integrity of biological family history and gender lines. The nation has seen an influx of sex change policies and the public educational since has embraced a closer to being neutered or spayed gender neutral approach to social reality. What is of actual concern thought is the Democrat Party’s propensity for violence and disinformation as it has sought to expand its homosexual hegemonic policies globally.

Democrats have taken up a rule by judicial decree way of doing politics whenever it can get a Democrat President in office. He, she or it will pack the court with morally leftist judges who will rubber stamp Democrat policies of moral decay while failing entirely to solve border security, inadequate taxation of the rich, environmental crisis or basic income for all Americans that kicks in when they have fewer than 12,000 dollars of annual income.

Democrats have used disinformation and war to compel the world to submit to their corporatist partnered agenda of moral decay for the masses and concentrated wealth for the 1% they serve. They have made sure Americans are as dopey as possible expanding cannabis sales in as many states as they can.

Homosexuals should be able to live without fear of violence or have less than equal social rights. Corrupting marriage and jettisoning gender in order to reassign centuries

of marriage support to same gender pairs was gross public corruption and should be rectified by a conservative SCOTUS eventually.

More Bang for the Buck with Enhanced border Security

 The porous border portion in Arizona should be secured with a large berm with solar panels covering the sunny side to charge electric-self-driving patrol cars moving along the top. If one wants double security one could build a pair of canals behind the berm. One would carry salt water piped up with solar powered pumps from the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez to New Mexico and the continental divide where the salt would be removed through condensation and capture under clear polycarbonate roof panels shaped to collect the water and let it flow to micro-canals on the sides where it is further directed in pipes to the fresh water canal that is underground.

Congress needs to return to the practice of multi-purpose constructs that get more value for the buck and actually improve matters physically when they are invested in and built. The southwest could use more freshwater.