2010 Drought Killed a Lot of Amazon Rainforest Trees

New data gathering method found that 4% of the trees in severely drought affected areas of the Amazon rainforest died in a 2010 drought. That rate is 400% higher than normal. Global warming causing northern forests to warm up and let beetles breed year-round to infest and kill Canadian pine trees isn't the only problem that warmer temperatures cause for forests.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/widespread-devastation-found-in-.html?rss=1

Some scientists say this is a problem for forests in the next few decades rather than in the year 2100. Global warming has the potential to cascade ecosphere issues sooner than the U.S. Government might be prepared for.

Reduce Spending, Return to Clinton Tax Rates & Make a New Dept. of Global Warming Remediation

The U.S. Government ought to try to act like grown-ups more in the sense of being efficient, accountable and effective instead of not so much. Because global warming may become a grave national security threat a new Federal Department should be created to coordinate American response on-the-fly as a realistic way to deal with more forest fires, more drought, more dry Mississippi River channels, desertification of farmland, hurricanes, coastal flooding, population immigration emergencies and so forth.

The Department needn't have a large budget initially. It would do well to have a division of direct attack on global warming causality, one on economic innovation and transition as environmental conditions change, and one to modify the environment directly within an increasingly hot world.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/08/us-usa-stormsandy-aids-idUSBRE8B61AH20121208 President Obama wants $60 billion for storm repairs

That last department would seek to reinforce wild habitat and to create new forms to continue viable agricultural habitat including large scale desalinization of sea water and replanting of areas that have lost their traditional ecospheric compliment of flora and fauna because of climate change.

In the meanwhile balancing the federal budget post-hast with budget cuts where possible and letting the tax schedules return to a responsible level such as existed during the Clinton era in order to run a surplus and pay off the federal debt soon saving a trillion in interest annually in the process should be done. Of course Rush Limbaugh is only for tax cuts and seems to believe that global warming is a hoax. Oh well, he now and then has some fair opinions on other topics.

The Foundational Questions Institute and Points of Cosmology and Philosophy

The December 2012 issue of scientific American has an informative article on the work and essays sponsored by the Foundational Questions Institute. http://www.fqxi.org/

David Tong-a theoretical physicist-wrote an article on the topic of the quanta of the smallest scale as digital or continuous. That's a philosophically interesting topic. Foundational questions have been philosophically pursued since people were able to think. 

Today one wonders not only about mass, but about dimensions and the philosophy of dimensions. Is their are an infinite number. If their is just one source hyper-dimension comparable to a Higgs field is that hyper-dimension infinitely divisible, or how dimensions connect together? How can one dimension be anything besides a dot singularity of infinitely small size? If a dimension fails to expand tied into some field does it remain at a particular one-dimensional size? How would anything with one dimension have direction or size?

Physicists theoretically study mass with math constructs such as appear in 'Calibi-Yau eleven dimensional space' etc.in order to design structures that would account for the mass order and quantum physical structures supporting the observable universe yet that seems an arbitrary and phenomenal selection of dimensions.

A friend of Albert Einstein named Paul Ehrenfrest explained why mass could appear stable and coherent in just three dimensions of space. There seems to be an infinite potential to consider the metaphysics that are possible beyond the physics of the phenomenal Universe (1).

2012 London Chess Classic Moves to Round Six

The 2012 London Chess Classic completed five rounds (there are nine) with many of the best players in the world including the all-time (so far) woman's chess champ Judit Polgar competing for the top prize.

http://www.londonchessclassic.com/classic.standings.htm

There are several top chess competitions each year including blitz matches of as few as five minutes (or watch good players at chess.com battle in three minute matches) and up. Top-ranked Magnus Carlsen is leading so far with Vladimir Kramnik in second and the American Hikaru Nakamura in third. Nakamura defeated the second ranked player in the world Levon Aronian in the first round with and interesting and stifling defense. He has been said to have worked with former world chess champion Garry Kasparov recently and maybe that improved his game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Viswanathan Anand of India is also in the running. He won a world chess title this year and is from India where the game was invented. For those that are a little bit far away from playing football yet enjoy following sport standings in the abstract the game of chess is fun to watch. With a little investment of time YouTube chess videos and play at chess.com (free)one can learn chess well enough to understand even simple opening of the Magnus Carlsen variation of the Magnus Smith trap in reply to the Sicilian Defense and the Fisher variation too. 

Fiscal Cliff Zombies Walk the Green Mile

President Obama fresh from a 'We didn't build that' comment on a drone Iran captured (or built themselves) had time to comment on the Republican Existential Greed Party plan to fairly extend and enhance tax cuts for the wealthy in order to help concentrate wealth and let jobs trickle down to China, India and Mexico while accelerating global warming greenhouse gassing in effect  said of the Republoft plan, 'Drop dead'.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323501404578161162667441912.html

Speaker Boehner in the avant guard wing of the Republican Party entertaining ideas of letting millions of Mexican workers flood the nation to help create jobs for Mexicans and votes for Republicans-Republican strategists are sure that poor Mexicans will be grateful to Republicans for letting them in and will vote to concentrate wealth for millionaires and billionaires) said in effect 'Drop Dead' to the President's plan for avoiding the fiscal cliff by letting the rich pay Clinton era tax rates.

The default plan to let the dread Clinton era tax rates return seems nearly unavoidable now as the respective plans appear to be dead men walking. We find this rather interesting. As the only political party in history to have used a nuclear weapon in war, the Democrat Party is not reluctant to go off the deep end.

 image credit White House.gov

China Increases CO2 Pollution to More Than 10 Billion Tons Annually-World Output Up 3.1

An article published Sunday in Nature Climate Change reports planetary CO2 emissions increased 2.6% in 2012 with China being the greatest polluter increasing its emissions to more than 10 billion tons while the U.S.A reduced its emissions yet is still second in rank at 5.9 billion tons. The trend of other countries such as China and Russia to increase their CO2 output along with the developing world presents a gloomy scenario for controlling global climate change and temperature increases. Scientists expect that the higher range of temperature increase scenarios will develop rather than the moderate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/02/us-climate-emissions-idUSBRE8B10AT20121202

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html

Inn 2011 global carbon dioxide releases increased by 3.1%. Without strident and ecospherically correct U.S. economic leadership toward low-entropy, low carbon production methodical transformation of production infrastructure the Lovelock prophecy of planetary population crash with desertification by emerge one day in the distant future a hundred years or two.

Atheist Acts Against Christians & A Clarification of Relevant Civil Rights Act Elements in Set Theory

A Pennsylvania restaurant named Prudhomme's Lost Cajun Kitchen provided a 10% menu discount to Christians bring in a Church bulletin on Sundays. It's a reasonably way to attract business yet charges were filed by the state after a complaint from an atheist. Recently the decision was found in favor of the complainant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/john-wolff-lost-cajun-kitchen-discount-churchgoers_n_1661439.html

Following is my opinion about such terms of the civil rights act precluding discrimination.

The issue is simple and can be expressed in set theory terms;

.The Civil right's acts enumerated elements that one may not use as a basis for discrimination (such as discrimination race, color, religion, or national origin) can be regard for-themselves as Universals A, B, C & D. One may not form a set using A, B, C or D as the basis for discrimination positively or negatively. That is, one cannot exclude Christian or others of faith, require them to sit at the back of the bus while non-Christians ride up front an so forth.

The set of elements one uses for offering specials on goods and services may include A, B, C, and D yet not exclude any. If one offers special rates to A, B, C, or D it need must be free to all members of the set. Probably A, B,C, & D must remain universals for themselves in any particular set and cannot be reduced to particulars of the universals A, B, C, or D.

It's alright to form a set to provide special access to goods and services if that set does not include the Universals A, B, C or D in it as test condition disjunctives.

The court probably failed to clarify what valid elements are that can be used to form a set for special business benefits and that didn't help at all, and may have fired up some godless atheists to expand their anti-Christian acts.

The restaurant owner could offer a 20% discount to anyone bringing in a bulletin from a Sunday meeting perhaps, as any organization can meet on a Sunday without violating the Set C.R.A. The restaurant owner probably would like the business of N.A.S.C.A.R. Sunday patrons with a program that showed they attended yet of course he might dispute that they were members of an organization.

If the civil rights act was the basis for a court discrimination against a restaurateur's 10% discount to those with Church bulletins it indicates the court's failure to clarify the range of applicability of relevant civil rights law. Those willing to attract business with sales discounts need plain criteria that will help bring in the maximum number of diners.

If the restaurant had offered a 10% discount to any organizational meeting on Sunday with a bulletin bearing the appropriate date it would have been plain discrimination on the basis of religion to exclude churches. One should be free to offer once-a-week discounts anytime including Sunday.

It was a remarkable change in the constitution of the U.S. body politick when a Sunday discount on veal cutlets, mash potatoes and gravy was prohibited while after abolition Sunday liquor sales blue laws. Atheists can booze and choose what football games to watch Sunday without worrying about paying more for Buffalo wings than Christians.

The intent of the law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion was perhaps written to ensure that Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Christian Scientists, Mormons and whatnot would not use sectarianism for housing and job discrimination. It can be wrongly applied when too broadly extended such that it prohibits religious organizations from enjoying equal opportunity with other organizations to receive benefits of a general non-religious based class discount. If private schools can receive research grants then so ought Christian schools.

Some atheists might yet be aghast at the concept that anyone should provide discounts to organizations meeting 'to better the spiritual well-being of mankind'' on Sundays. It might be that atheists feel they contribute nothing to better the human spirit and feel excluded on a religious basis with atheism on the dark side of the spiritual force. Plainly the language used in offering restaurant discounts must constructed carefully in an appetizing way.

Melt from Greenland & Antarctica Increases World Sea Level .95 mm Annually

Scientists found that Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets are melting (Greenland at a faster pace) and contributing to the rise in sea level. The rate of increase has risen several hundred percent since 1992. There should be a carbon tax and passage of tax credits for alternative energy.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html

Long ago Canada's Banks Island had foot-thick trees growing on it according to petrified wood discoveries. It appears that fossil fuels and cars are driving the world further in that direction with mid-west drought along the way.

The Obama administration will spend another 120 million on cheaper electric battery development though that hasn't worked before when the government spent 2 billion. Passing tax credit legislation for a decade might be a better way to go.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-launches-new-project-to-develop

Obamacare Will Inflate Public Cost of AIDS by Trillions

With medical costs at 400,000 dollars per AIDS patient over a lifetime the homosexual lifestyle bites hard on public budgeting. Obamacare's 'compassionate liberalism' approach to medicine will cost the public trillions unnecessarily at that cost will transfer wealth from the middle class to the powers of concentrated wealth. It would be far less costly to simply expand the V.A. hospital system to include the poor. AIDS patients could be given free AIDS drugs and medical treatment without transferring that cost to private insurers who in turn transfer the cost to the public paying taxes.

The C.D.C. presently estimates the number of people with AIDS in the U.S.A. at about one million and one hundred fifty thousand. That number multiplied by 400,000 dollars is about a half a trillion bucks, and of course there are another 12,000 individuals contracting the disease each new year. It gets to be real money.
Some public illnesses such as HIV are too epidemic and lasting to treat as usual medical phenomena financially. Transferring coverage for AIDS to insurers by force of law as a pre-existing condition probably will cost trillions when generic drugs and government incentives to provide low cost AIDS treatment to pharmaceutical companies could drive the cost way down-and should.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm

U.S. veterans already have a vast and epidemic number of head injuries and P.T.S.D. psych treatments as well as Gulf War disease and a host of other problems that could use a better V.A. hospital system and of course a substantial public hospital system would be a good way to treat large numbers of biological or radiological casualties some day if that ever occurs. It is better to be prepared and with a balanced budget than to be on vacation when disaster strikes.

Another D.O.D. Spending Reform Scenario

The President as the executive chooses to order troops here or there for 90 days (War Powers Act) before requiring Congressional approval (if they actually took their responsibility seriously) and the Department of Defense deploys them.

The D.O.D. should train the Army and Marines to fight a large conventional war (with the new unconventional, emergent weapons systems included) instead of anti-terrorist cell operations. Anti-terrorism wars tasking should fall to S.F. Black Ops in the 50,000 man rapid deployment S.F. BOP for efficiency. A conventional Army or Marines is rather a large target for-itself and attacked as a sitting duck in financially assymetric warfare thereby harming the United States with great cost effectiveness.

Obviously with American reliance on foreign fossil fuels the Bin Ladens of the world have ample spare change to finance terrorist ops now and then to which the states leadership responds with speeches and multi-trillion dollar troop deployments that are as effective as a snowball in hell at making permanent social transformations stop nurturing  terrorism.

The United States cannot become a colonial power enacting the mistakes of the past especially as a temporal occupier. That direction is an egregious historical error and ought to be avoided. The military is no substitute for intelligent civil economic leadership and a good society that others want to emulate. A blunt instrument does not raise I.Q. even if it obliterates some opposition.

Much effort to transform society for the good should be found in global ecospheric restoration concurrent with full employment and enhanced well-being of all American citizens.

Anti-safe haven interdiction efforts can be accomplished with surveillance droids on ground and air with some being as small as a mosquito along with aerial weapons delivery packages. If the governments themselves are corrupt the U.S. cannot simply send a conventional military to do nation makeovers and it ought not conduct aggressive war upon governments it does not regard as 'democratic' because they don't want to have a Wal-Mart society.

Contemporary U.S. politics are largely designed to concentrate wealth with real support from both parties and the is media owned by the rich even if they own both the left and the right broadcasters. The displacing political power of the media means that thousands of individuals never rise to run by acclaim from local radio podcast-broadcasters reaching consensus. That situation presents not even a semblance of democratic, popular nomination or selection of qualified citizens in the Presidential campaigns.

'Lots of Money' can be spent very quickly by the congress and war excuses for dubiously necessary contests are a modern leverage tool for redistribution of wealth to the rich from all taxpayers. Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address about the 'military-industrial complex'. The economist Lester Thurow described the military-industrial 'maintennance economy' pattern in a (1999?) book-The G.W. Bush administration embodied that non-creative political modus vivendi.

 A profligacy in spending and perennial foreign wars have defeated more than one civilization or nation. Incompetent and corrupt national leadership that fails to develop its economy in an ecospherically useful way as well as its social environment moves toward being an obstruction to democracy, human survival on Earth and Toynbean fin de sicle status.

One wants to have constructive civil rather than military engagement with adverse foreign powers, lend support to regimes experiencing subversive  anti-freedom rebellion movements and develop an excellent and consolidated intelligence gathering capability that would locate actual terrorist dangers to the security of then people of the United States in addition to the problem of egregious deficit spending.

Altruism doesn't require payment-that's why its altruism. Those fighting for their own interests (themselves, profit motive, family, global powers of concentrated wealth, NPR etc) should be paid moderately in a Democratic society. Their pay should be consistent with the best interests of the society. I met a medal of honor winner from EL Campo Texas that was a Green Beret that didn't get paid a lot ('Sgt. Benevidez had a glorious day'). He returned his medal to the Congress because of the way they treat the poor. The late Sgt. Benevidez was a humble auto mechanic-small business auto garage owner.

One cannot purchase freedom from hostile foreign or domestic powers without in effect paying tribute to the victors. A people that requires military substitutes for themselves is one in decline. In the Spanish American war there were far too many volunteers to accept into the Army. In the Vietnam war the Army volunteers that enlisted inn the 1950s fought very well until discharge about 1966 and at low cost. The draft Army didn't do too badly either considering and they weren't paid much either. Before the Bush administration a private e-1 might get just a few hundred dollars a month-and that's an acceptable cost for the nation to shoulder on a longer-term basis.

A permanent high cost military where a 'combat' soldier e-1 on some sort of foreign occupation is paid about 24,000 annually isn't reasonably sustainable. It creates a culture of paying off a mercenary militia that is economically devastating.

My father was a four year world war two veteran that wasn't paid much like the other 20 million Americans that served in uniform from a national population of what-about 140 million? Military training before the end of the cold war in December 1990 when President Gorbachev withdrew 250,000 troops from East Germany during the Reagan years had pay still quite low. Reagan developed a potential military power rather than exploiting that power in protracted-ill-thought out and ineffective military contests of less than total war. That is still not a bad idea. One should put a firewall between special forces (S.F. BOP) rapid response units and escalation by the conventional military by separating the S.F. BOP into its own force. The conventional special forces such as the Seals and Rangers would remain as they are.

The planetary anti-terrorism war so far as the United States goes should be met by the intelligence community and specialized rather than conventional forces.