Covid 19 and 6 Degrees of Separation

Following reports of Covid 19 in the pacific Northwest recently one infers easily that the virus arrived at Seatac airport and generated a cluster in the Seattle are before travelling down to Portland, where a small cluster formed, then travelling east down the Interstate to Umatilla Oregon. One might guess that its next stop on the way could be Salt Lake City.

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-outbreak-death-toll-us-infections-latest-news-updates-2020-03-03/

The problem in containing the virus seems to be that it takes a couple of weeks for symptoms to appear after infection, and during that time the carrier can give others the disease.  With a few clusters in California already it is not unlikely that the nature of U.S. travel and transcontinental points of contact will deliver the virus to much of the country, although perhaps not with anything like the clustering density of China and Wuhan province where people live more close together in numbers and travel less than the west.

Maybe Mexicans considering crossing the border illegally will want to think about the idea of getting Covid 19 in the U.S.A. and taking it back to their medically challenged country. The Mexican heat is a fair defense yet the lack of good medical treatment may neutralize that a bit.

Soon I would guess a national appearance and clustering chart with appropriate vectors will become commonplace in the mainstream media. Then one will want to stay tuned for a good chunk of one's lifetime-maybe a year or two, listening to talking heads with a broadcast product better than impeachment. Maybe the inauguration ceremony in 2021 will be banned because of the crowd density, and Congress can appear in surgical masks. If that occurs it would be quite a show.

What About Terraforming Venus?

The atmosphere of Venus is mostly made of CO2; about 96%. Nitrogen comprises about 3.5% with traces of other gasses such as sulphur dioxide and water vapor. The Venusian atmosphere is 90 times heavier than Earth's. If N.A.S.A. were to prioritize developing technology to convert the CO2 of Venus into oxygen and perhaps coal it might be a practical way to find solutions for Earth's atmospheric surplus of CO2 and terraform Venus at the same time.

  https://www.space.com/18527-venus-atmosphere.html

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/liquid-metal-catalyst-turns-carbon-dioxide-coal

 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180301094857.htm
converting CO2 into energy

https://newatlas.com/caltech-reactor-convert-co2-oxygen/59869/

 https://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15606 
single catalyst splits CO2 into CO and O2

Venus is also quite hot. Its greenhouse gas and location a little closer to the sun have made its surface temperature more than 700 degrees fahrenheit. If the temperature can be reduced somewhat is could be possible for botanists to generate some form of exothermal planet that could thrive on Venus and also help convert CO2 into oxygen.

Some people would like to build a floating cloud-town 31 miles above Venus where the temperature would be cooler. Venus is closer to Earth than mars and getting there is easier. Yet converting the CO2 to oxygen and other materials would be a good project for drone and mechanical technology with an oxygenated atmosphere and extremal exothermal engineered plants bringing the entire surface of the world to one more useful for humanity down the road. Venus has more resources than CO2 after all.

If one insisted upon a float on the clouds approach, one might consider covering the planet with floating solar reflecting plates to cool the atmosphere a little. The floats might be used to convert CO2 to oxygen and whatever else-perhaps carbon monoxide and/or coal, and then shape to carbon into gliders to land at some particular place on the planet instead of being scattered all over.

Mars is still a good colony location for people living underground and under glass above. A moon base can serve developments on both worlds and additional planetary locales beyond

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2134206-extreme-plants-thrive-at-72c-in-new-zealands-hot-volcanic-soil/  exothermal plants

American Era of Hermaphrodite Cyborg Units

Since Henry Ford invented mass produced automobiles Americans have developed reliance on the machines for transportation; for everything. In effect they have merged their course of development with machines and become cyborg brains guiding the machine unit to their shared destiny. With male and female being completely equal in machine cyborg power the phenomenon has joined them into equality as hermaphrodite cyborgs reproducing as one.
 
Americans have a certain contempt for human-powered transportation since it is natural and slower. Males have select advantages over females in the work that cyborg-units wish to avoid. When cyborg units arrive at a parking lot the cargo-brain-controller debarks and ventures into a store to shop before scuttling back to join the host vehicle. 

Machines are a powerful component of American life. They dominate and destroy the landscape and ecosphere as cyborg units respect life only for aesthetic qualities and pleasure they can find within it (i.e. fishing, hunting). Cyborg unit-planning has guided the sprawl of sterile cyborg cityscapes in order to reproduce more cyborg units as quickly as possible. Machines should be used carefully, minimally with a view toward reducing ecospheric footprint.

Their was no grand cyborg development plan; it simply reproduced and self-reinforced as the dominant easy economic mode of being. Every citizen is respected only as far as they have been consumed by cyborg culture and compiled vast machine and building structure for-themselves, often with sin in some obvious form as a prerequisite for behavioral adjustment.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-hunter-gatherer-networks-human-evolution.html

Free enterprise permits the development of any idea for invention. The mass social application of inventions such as cars should not simply find a place in the nation or world without any careful zoning and left to rely on Darwinian trial and error. Just because transportation can design roads to everywhere through any sort of landscape that does not mean they should.

An intelligent human society would recognize the immense value of nature and wilderness to human existence. It is a physical, spiritual and economic life-support foundation for all biological eings on Earth. Indifferent cyborg hermaphroditic reproduction with no concern for the ecosphere may result in the destruction of human life on Earth. 

It would be possible to conserve and restore wild ecosphere with centralized high speed mass transportation and better use of machines for work related purposes. With intelligent though a human ecological economic economic infrastructure renaissance that features as much human powered yet convenient and practical transportation as possible could arise to replace the herm-cyborg unit ethos.

Down with the Sickness; Wall Street and COVID19

Wall Street has been down with the sickness since it learned of the Asian novel coronavirus. Democrats and the left media are blaming President Trump in advance for the mass epidemic that could infect Americans. This is all good stuff; American calm and logic ruling the day as it were.
https://www.forexlive.com/news/!/major-indices-get-hammered-all-down-44-20200227

With a large drop on Wall Street for the first germs that breeze in the prospect of something really serious occurring (ie weaponized plague) to affect the economy isn't wonderful to consider. Well founded sustainable ecological economics could be a little more sturdy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/27/stock-market-dow-coronavirus/

On the Global Warming "Hoax" (not)

Global warming is a threat to human existence on Earth. It is one of dozens of threats to human existence on Earth, possibly hundreds. It is also one people should do something about, and could if they weren’t such thoughtless users of technology without regard for environmental consequences.

https://www.fairplanet.org/story/what-are-human-causes-of-climate-change/

The farther north one goes the greater is the increase in annual heating. Alaska for instance is much warmer than it was in former centuries. Human pollutants and exhaust emissions are the primary agents of change. Fossil fuel burning is the main cause of greenhouse gases in the U.S.A. with industry being a close second.

It has been reported that with Arctic permafrost melting there is a potential for release of greenhouse gases trapped in it. There have also been reports that emerging microbes would eat gases such as methane before it reaches the atmosphere. Tundra fires of dry vegetation could release toxic metals trapped in the muskeg that fell from industrial pollution in the atmosphere. Fires could release mass quantities of CO2 etc speeding up the pace of global atmospheric heating.

NASA Flights Detect Millions of Arctic Methane Hotspots

Everything you should know about methane as regulations loosen

The Arctic ice cap is melting away and shrinking to a smaller size with each passing year. It may be gone entirely in summers eventually (maybe in 20 -30 years). The old Arctic ice with many years of life is nearly gone. With an open Arctic Ocean in summer the Arctic ocean absorbs more sunlight and a vicious cycle of warming increases persists.

-image credit Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

Unfortunately it turned out that human activities produce 40 percent more of the world’s methane than was believed previously. Methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It lasts just a decade so if humans quit adding methane to the atmosphere that would help slow the pace of development.

Humans are producing a far larger share of methane emissions than we thought

I should say that I am more concerned with ocean acidification than greenhouse gassing, yet each are empirical threats. Earths era of photosynthesis and oxygen increase began in the oceans a billion years ago.

The Most Powerful Evidence Climate Scientists Have of Global Warming

People that are comfortable don’t sometimes don’t want to think about global warming or consider it a hoax. They are something like ostriches regarding danger. Many people have 4 to 6% Neanderthal or Denisovan genes. Neanderthals were found to have bred with an extinct hominid that branched off from the human line 2 million years ago. So it isn’t too surprising to me that some people regard global warming as a host though more than 90% of scientists regard it as fact.

Recently a fellow that believes the world is flat launched himself to a homemade rocket and crashed it to death in the desert; he was trying to get high enough to see if the world is really curved. Personally I can see the world’s curvature from a boat on a large body of water, or from a jet looking out a window at 32,000 feet. One could regard a round world as a hoax I would guess, if one didn’t get up high enough for-oneself to see it. Global warming shouldn’t be harder to believe than a nearly round Earth.

There probably were people that didn’t believe that germs exist some decades after scientists discovered them. There is often a time lag between scientific discovery and popular acceptance of a true opinion. Actually there are numerous wrong beliefs pervasively held in societies today. I am surprised how many misinterpret the book of Genesis, including scientists. Christians may misunderstand eschatology and believe that the 1st century tribulation that Jesus said would occur before the generation living was entirely passed was not actually the tribulation. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. and the Christians scattered. Some just require a wrong opinion to be true because that is all they know.

Global warming is just one problem. A general failure to upgrade human economic infrastructure from the evolved way of non-sustainable technique need be changed to one based on ecological economic principles and practices. Mass extinction of life on Earth in progress need be stopped and reversed. Habit loss needs to halt. Human dwelling forms and theories need to adapt to so many people occupying and destroying the world ecosphere. The problems are nearly self-evident nearly to those that are not blind.

Ecological economics need be insinuated within the existing infrastructure and with the use of free market tools and directed regulation reform that leads to the natural selection of business practices that are not harmful to the ecosphere.

People misunderstand political philosophy and don’t comprehend Marx of Adam Smith well enough to know that they offered just their best ideas for the age rather than golden tablets for economic rules passed down from on high and valid for all times. People don’t comprehend what Mussolini’s political philosophy of corporatism was or how it works today and why wealth is so concentrated that political adaption to ecological economics is on a worst case track. One must enjoy a cool breeze while one can, and mild northern winters too.

Wonder if Starlink Will Be a Catalyst for Space to Earth Communications

Starlink is moving on with its program to cover all of the Earth with broad-band internet coverage from thousands of satellites that will be orbiting the Earth with a few hundred already in place.

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-job-posting-billion-dollar-market/

I wonder though if the orbiting planetary covering internet satellites will also be useful for other satellites, including small, inexpensive ones with cameras surveying Earth or other directions outward, to communicate with Earth entrepreneurs and companies via the Internet. 

That is will Starlink have some synergy with ad hoc space venture communications transmitting to Starlink as a relay to Earth for very low or nominal cost. Will it be possible for crowd-control internet space ops interacting with satellites and sundry ventures?  Is a Starlink system feasible for Mars or other planets of the solar system?

Sanders or Trump; Name Your Poison

Name your poison; kicking bricks or a flat beer left in the Mohave desert a few weeks. Neither 2020 candidate would be too interesting to spend time with unless a paid journalist. Each are the best their party has to run of course, yet politicians as a genre should be seen and not heard. Constituents need to go about their affairs and not be bothered by the lifestyles of the rich and/or famous i.m.o.

One would like top-level politicians to be intelligent inspirational, brilliantly well-informed progressives regarding ecological economics and space progress who would balance the federal budget, secure the borders and assure that no American need ever be down and out for very long. It would also be good if Gillette would release The Hot One shave cream again, yet neither event is likely to happen within our lifetimes (of this or the next few generations).

One can only hope that politicians do less harm to public affairs and don’t bother private lives. Politicians have some qualities yet overall their faults make the choice of any a Hobson’s choice. Like something from 1984 the Ministry of Truth expects too many to participate in the Daily Hate of reds or blues and sycophants to chortle praise of the chosen.

Postscript to Climate Change

Climate change isn’t the only judgment problem environmentally and socially speaking. Moral and other issues involving free will to make wrong choices are reflected in the overall decline of the ecosphere, wildlife, mass extinction etc stemming from the failure for political economy to implement ecological economics principals and practices. Perhaps society is too comfortable in habitual dopeyness. The dream world continues… for a while.

I wrote much of this post in various replies to a fellow who was seriously advocating for legalized illegal drugs, against the war on drugs and for the benefits as he saw them of all of the drugs, alcohol and tobacco of society. It is self-standing.

  Decadence has been with societies since the advent of civilization. Doped brains are degraded, deoptimalized brains. Sub-par thought that is currently reinforced socially with illegal drugs may be ubiquitous and endemic in subcultures of America.

 

A list of problems caused by drug and alcohol use could go on for volumes. Consider just a few; 150,000 annual U.S. lung cancer deaths, “Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years” -quote from CDC., appx. 70,000 annual drug overdose deaths in the U.S.A., liver disease, lost time at work, most people in prison had drug and or alcohol problems when perpetrating crimes costing tens of billions of dollars to society.

https://www.usnews.com/news/at-the-edge/articles/2016-12-19/drug-and-alcohol-abuse-cost-taxpayers-442b-annually-new-surgeon-generals-report-finds

Making the world work well isn’t that difficult yet too many fail the challenges environmentally and politically that turn up in global warming, mass extinction of species, regressive taxation, vast public debt, concentration of wealth and declining morality; humanity needs to do better. Illegal drugs countercyclically support mass corruption. The Presidential candidates of the Democrat party, for example, are a joke. Sanders and Trump may be honest socialists or capitalists, yet no candidate is competent with ecological economics; no not one. Neither has anyone a plan to pay off public debt and transition the political economy to one of ecological economics within a free enterprise paradigm.

Not too much can be said for a society that need be smarter and work together better with sobriety and whatever degree of abstemiousness they can manage without the crutches of dope yet prefer to hang out in the haze of dope, fake highs of catnip like delusions and bottle supplied forgetfulness of cell-killing alcohol. To develop a better political economy founded on principles and practice of ecological economics will require the moral rectitude of Moses in the desert eschewing temptations and for Americans withstanding the perils of indolence inducing prosperity.

 

Human health and brain chemistry are best in a natural state. Some exceptions for the purpose of conserving or restoring health exist of course. Good health is good health. Few have shown that tobacco inhalants improve athletic lung capacity and performance. marijuana uses impairs at least short term memory.. Hallucinogens have not been shown to improve motor skills or increase spatial reasoning. One probably would not like aircraft designers nor other advanced technical production to be much influenced by mind-altering drugs. Maybe 90% of motorcycle fatalities have some alcohol in their blood. The cost to society is very, very high for drug and alcohol use, yet of course some have always supported such things for various reasons.

I talked with a fellow that treated meth addicts once; he mentioned that they seem to be on recovery and failure cycles yet generally return to dependence. They often die young and to a certain extent live degraded lives. I prefer that people be healthy and women not pathetic with arms like twigs.

Like the bell curve it may be that just a minority actual prefer entirely sober lives and most people; the masses, enjoy a dumbed-down existence, I cannot say.

Puritans were actually quite good people; they came from the reformed church movement of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others and advanced society quite a lot in my opinion. Protestantism was a prime factor in the U.S. Declaration and political ideas of the founders; some people have forgotten or never knew much of western history.

Some regard altered states of the brain as unhealthful. Mass drug use for recreation and addictions have altered the course of history; it is not just a subjective thing personally experienced without effect on others.

For example, the Opium wars of the west to force China to allow opium sales and distribution changed Chinese history. The Chinese were experiencing mass addiction and fought to stop that.

Some have always supported illegal drugs and other illicit substances. That’s just the way it is. Some supported slavery and so forth.

Regarding taxes; if America was really fully dopey wealthy corporations would probably control the dope market and avoid paying taxes. Tax dollars would be used to pay for addiction recovery, crime compensations and so forth.

Legitimate medical uses of controlled substances was something I stipulated was o.k. My point about mind altering drugs, alcohol and tobacco being antipathetic to human and social well being is just what it is. extrapolating various inferences from that regarding other material goods that should be outlawed, or are, such as p.j.s that catch on fire easily, or shoddy electrical cords that cause death too readily, cars that are sold with bad break inspections, office buildings, bridges and dams that collapse because of bad construction material and so forth is a broader field beyond the narrow scope of just illegal drugs and legal libations plus tobacco.

Human health and brain chemistry are best in a natural state. Some exceptions for the purpose of conserving or restoring health exist of course. Good health is good health. Few have shown that tobacco inhalants improve athletic lung capacity and performance. marijuana uses impairs at least short term memory.. Hallucinogens have not been shown to improve motor skills or increase spatial reasoning. One probably would not like aircraft designers nor other advanced technical production to be much influenced by mind-altering drugs. Maybe 90% of motorcycle fatalities have some alcohol in their blood. The cost to society is very, very high for drug and alcohol use, yet of course some have always supported such things for various reasons.

Some don’t know the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans. In England they were quite similar as Calvinists, yet Pilgrims became separatists from the Church of England and some left with the Mayflower to America while Puritans remained loyal to the Church of England and only left for America when they were persecuted by Charles I. An article on the difference notes that Massachusetts Puritans; ”set the intellectual tone of the nation for three-hundred years”.

https://www.newsweek.com/whats-difference-between-pilgrim-and-puritan-397974#:~:text=

The world does not seem boring to me. One can always ind something interesting to do; from reading a book to volunteering for the Peace Corps or helping to treat people with dangerous viruses in Africa, if one has that ability. I liked jumping out of planes; it is exciting and makes the heart pump faster. I was an army reservist at the time so I felt it had some inherent utility value in case of war. Sailing or taking a small power boat (even rowing) in large waves can be white-knuckle exciting. I like motorcycles and only spilled a small one (250 cc) three or four times on ice or wet surfaces yet never found that exciting. Auto insurance is too costly and repairs on cars too high for my budget so I like motorcycles now and then.

Once when an engine seized and the wheels locked while going 60 mph I had a few seconds of exciting suspense waiting for the motorcycle to skid to a stop. Maybe driving a car fast fast is exciting. That could endanger others though. Going head first over bicycle handlebars to scrape one’s chin on the pavement happens so fast it’s hard to describe that as exciting.

Taking a smallish boat i.e 20–25′ can be quite exciting. If one is really in need of excitement one could sail across the Atlantic. Finding a way through the waves can be quite challenging and the penalty for capsizing rather severe,

Scuba diving can be exciting yet I found that calm is harder to achieve and more valuable in many activities than becoming excited. Some times one can be busy and resting between activities is more sought after than excitement. I cannot imagine doing anything under the influence of alcohol or drugs that is normally dangerous.

Recreational use of hills with snow and ice on them can provide exciting hiking opportunities. Hanging by a grip on a shrub on a steep edge after slipping through wet muskeg and bushes can be momentarily exciting. A view from a hike can bring some satisfaction too. Spotting a brown bear that has spotted you too can be interesting.

Writing a book and completing it can be exciting, or winning a bid on ebay etc. Reading science and developing better understanding is somewhat exciting, as is the prospect of eternal life with God and the Son beyond the exciting time of passing. Good luck with things.

Modern-Defense-with-1-e4-2.Bc4-Bg7 Blitz 3M

                                       I played black in this three minute blitz game

Sanders and Trump Each Muddied with Usual Russian/Putin Pawn Label

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump each have been targets of mud-slinging this election cycle; namely being favored pawns of President Putin. For some reason Democrats at the top find it requisite to associate Russian President Putin with opposition political rivals in order to boost themselves as default genuine American apple pie personnel. After the end of the war against the Soviet reds the left media gave the name red to Republican states and blue to Democrat majority states. Democrat and media leaders were apparently fearful of becoming thought of as residual reds themselves with the demise of communism in the former Soviet Union.

 https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-blasts-cnn-msdnc-for-grouping-sanders-gabbard-as-russian-sympathizers

Bernie Sanders as the sole Democrat candidate to have voted against President Obama's demand to fully approve keeping the Bush II tax cuts is regarded as the only Democrat who could actually make a difference to uni-party, deep state business as usual that is purposed to enrich politicians and concentrate wealth before anything else. Democrat leaders thus hate Sanders and the left media hates Sanders too; not as much as President Trump yet he is up there in the hate rankings.

 https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-russia-isnt-attacking-our-democratic-system-our-own-ruling-class-is

Sanders probably would need to tighten up his border security policy outlook to get elected. The nation and democracy cannot have illegal migrants running amuck over the border and thereby subverting democracy and political self-determination. If Mexico or any other American states wants to join the United States of America; a union of states in the Americas, that would be fine. They can ask Congress for that. What cannot be tolerated is gross corruption of borders and national sovereignty that renders democracy a farce and concentrates wealth and power with the majority becoming peonized.

The entire concept of the Russian President being a meaningful elector of U.S. Presidents is too farcical to be believed. Taking out a few million dollars worth of Facebook ads and more is just a drop in the bucket of the cost of winning a U.S. election.  The deep state media has already made it virtually impossible for large scale formation of political opinion that does not generally follow media preferential opinions; what ever happened to the Green Party menu of non-environmental issues dumped on it that made it disappear.

Bernie Sanders is the first candidate since Ralph Nader ran as a Green or Independent to present the prospect for rectifying American tax rates and making a difference. President Trump was elected for a similar reason in as far as he shared with Bernie Sanders and outside the deep state mainstream relationship. The United States has a real choice this year between environmentally indifferent, wealth concentrating capitalism and socialist leadership dampened capitalism that would in theory concern itself more with ecological economic policies within a free enterprise paradigm while also restoring a meaningful progressive income tax rate in order to pay down the U.S. public debt. With the two opposed dynamic approaches one cannot predict the outcome nor what the actual policy implementation would be if that is the November 2020 card.