Alzheimer's Dead Up 50%-Probably From Auto Exhaust and Clinton Era 'Dumbing Down'

People dying from Alzheimer's are up 50% perhaps as a result of a worse social environment to live in rather than from an influx of immigrants from a part of the world thick with the disease. People forget that Dumb and Dumber movies wern't always held to be the pinnacle of art.

http://www.livescience.com/59261-alzheimers-deaths-increase.html

Loud music, dope and profuse automobile exhaust may be exacting there grim toll in those exposed to cars, bars Clintons and global warming. Television could also be a contributing factor as people become dumbed down and encourage to disrespect intelligence, reading, philosophy and thoughtfulness general. Even before the disease manifests they have been trained to be victims.

Maybe Americans really should have worn tin foil hats to protect them from cosmic rays and cell phone microwaves. Nothing can stop fatty foods and obesity from clogging up the brain and letting swiss cheese disease develop,

I will try to write another pseudo-scientific article some other time. One needs to worry about what to write before the capacity to think disappears watching the broadcast media.

Seattle Should Trade Richard Sherman to Dallas for Zeke Elliot

One would need ESP to know how the Seahawks will do next season. Richard Sherman is restive and wants to move on and Coach Carroll should find a way to let him go,

Herb Adderly-Hall of Fame image credit

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/19446657/seattle-seahawks-cornerback-richard-sherman-let-go-problem-nfl-2017

WIthout a great runner on offense to keep opponents honest Russell  WIlson has fewer opportunities to complete passes. Coach Carroll shoud expect Elliot and a receiver in trade-maybe even old Jason Witten (who will probably make the hall of fame).

Sure reasonable people would like the Broncos to win the Superbowl yet their quarterback problems don't seem close to being solved; actually they have three that all could use seasoning yet aren't ready now. And Russell Wilson probably could use R.G. III or Johnny Manziel as an alter-ego and trainee rival to encourage excellence.

Theremgiht be some sort of quality cornerback waiting unsigned working as a Mongolian cowboy on the high plains somewhere that Seattle could get to work cheaper than Mr. Sherman. who would make less of a splash and more tackles.

How to Body-Slam the Media

Candidate for U.S. Congress in Montana Greg Gianforte reportedly body-slammed one of the media papparrizi that got in his face. Though the term may be more media hyperbole, or disinformation, here is a video with a minute of instruction on how candidates could really body slam (the media) when they get too invasive.

Congress should body-slam NPR and remove their funding from the Federal budget.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/a-transcript-of-the-greg-gianforte-body-slam-audio/528102/

The Self-Positing Ego and Dr. Ben Carson's Romanticism

The self-positing ego may easily be misunderstood. A=A probably should have a bi-conditional logic operator rather than an equal sign, or rather, it might be noted that 'I' is implicitly tautologous.

Fiche's paradigm seems incorrect, yet to various degrees those that have experienced life swimmingly without too much adversity may regard society itself as a kind of tabula rasa they can transform as readily as they might learn another language. I wrote a brief essay on a comment of Dr. Ben Carson serving in the Trump administration l will include below.

It might be useful to compare the point of view of Fichte with Bishop Berkeley and his 'ideamism'. Fichte sought to actualize his subjectivity as a transcending fact while Berkeley left it as an academic argument. In Berkeley's Matrix like paradigm the construction of reality is heterodox rather than solipsistic.

Kierkegaard was right on many or most of the topics regarding the balance required to use irony as a life-tool rather than to allow subjectivity to lead one to delusion. His 'Sickness Unto Death' can be summarized in the phrase he used that 'despair is the unwillingness to be oneself'. A clinically useful insight.

HUD Sect. Ben Carson in an interview recently said that ‘poverty is a state of mind’. Yes the remark had a context in which it appeared such as a given ‘mindset’ inertially exists as a cultural characteristic, however it is a useful comment for illustrating the point of view of certain German romantics of the mid-19th century.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/24/ben-carson-calls-poverty-a-state-of-mind-during-interview/?utm_term=.3e20a7fcad4a

Those romantics exploiting the concept of irony or subjective detachment from the objective social world-establishment to the point of abnegation and nihilism regarded social conventions as of little worth. There is another way to use the detachment or subjective perspective associated with Socrates and his saying ‘know thyself’ that isn’t nihilistic. Instead it is analytical-critical of society and culture while introspective and moving on to comprehend what is right and wrong, good or bad, true or false about society upon reflection rather than just dismissing it all.

It is somewhat ironic that the conservative Dr. Ben Carson personified the relativism vilified by conservatives who prefer objective facts and established empirical reality over subjectivity and detachment favored by the left. Obviously the truth is somewhere mid-way between the two extremes. The extreme subjectivity reaching unto solipsism favored by Schlegel and somewhat less so by Goethe can dismiss objective reality and say that for the individual everything is just a state of mind-even when it is pouring cold rain it would be nothing more than a state of mind for the romantic being drenched. The coefficient of adversity keeping one in poverty is not just one's own thought; it has reciprocals in the thought of others.

Poverty like slavery is not just a state of mind. When wealth concentrates and plutocracy controls and totalized the economy and when computer quant programs control 70% of Wall Street transactions at least in part, or when a city burns down with incendiary bombs dropping in from the sky it is more than a state of mind experienced or even constructed by an individual.

Saying that poverty is a state of mind reflects the poverty of naive realism drifting in as a cloud of optimism around the heads of those who have made it good rather easily with insufficient experience of social resistance to making things better.

Ben Carson's Romanticism; 'Poverty is a State of Mind'

HUD Sect. Ben Carson in an interview recently said that ‘poverty is a state of mind’. Yes the remark had a context in which it appeared such as a given ‘mindset’ inertially exists as a cultural characteristic, however it is a useful comment for illustrating the point of view of certain German romantics of the mid-19^th century.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/24/ben-carson-calls-poverty-a-state-of-mind-during-interview/?utm_term=.3e20a7fcad4a

Those romantics exploiting the concept of irony or subjective detachment from the objective social world-establishment to the point of abnegation and nihilism regarded social conventions as of little worth. There is another way to use the detachment or subjective perspective associated with Socrates and his saying ‘know thyself’ that isn’t nihilistic. Instead it is analytical-critical of society and culture while introspective and moving on to comprehend what is right and wrong, good or bad, true or false about society upon reflection rather than just dismissing it all.

It is somewhat ironic that the conservative Dr. Ben Carson personified the relativism vilified by conservatives who prefer objective facts and established empirical reality over subjectivity and detachment favored by the left. Obviously the truth is somewhere mid-way between the two extremes. The extreme subjectivity reaching unto solipsism favored by Schlegel and somewhat less so by Goethe can dismiss objective reality and say that for the individual everything is just a state of mind-even when it is pouring cold rain it would be nothing more than a state of mind for the romantic being drenched. The coefficient of adversity keeping one in poverty is not just one's own thought; it has reciprocals in the thought of others.

Poverty like slavery is not just a state of mind. When wealth concentrates and plutocracy controls and totalized the econom and when computer quant programs control 70% of Wall Street transactions at least in part, or when a city burns down with incendiary bombs dropping in from the sky it is more than a state of mind experienced or even constructed by an individual.

Saying that poverty is a state of mind reflects the poverty of realism drifting in as a cloud of optimism around the heads of those who have made it good rather easily who have no experience of social resistance to making things better.

An Essay on Socratic Irony (video)

Evolution of Christianity

Evolution can mean many things. Change and complexity increasing in time seems to be the main meaning. Things that don't work die off. That's the paradigm when someone says something like 'our seminary will grow if it's God's will'. In that case though it's a kind of directed evolution determining the winners within a pre-determined physical Universe of possibilities. The irony is that winning means being chosen by God for salvation unto eternity rather than the temporal. Plainly over time Christianity has grown in scale and compexity.

The visible church has evolved extensively-possibly more than any other human social organization establishment the past two millenia plus. To fail to see that would require blindness. Consider just the relation of Church and state, empires and ethics across the entire world from Jesuits in Japan and Brazil to the Orthodox church in Byzantine and Russian history, the tonsure and celibacy policies of various times, dead sea scrolls, illustrated manuscripts and PDF files.

Even so the concept of evolution does not require atheism as part of its meaning. Neither does evolution mean that one must accept Darwinian evolution as its meaning exclusively. Christian theology has evolved as well as the visible church. Arianism mostly died off for example. There are not too many Lollards about these days, and in the second century Jehovas Witnesses and Mormons had yet to see frst light. One could write on the topic for years regarding the historical evolution of the Christian church including that of the history of St. Cyril, Constantine and Irish Celtic Christians.

Chrstianity and the kingdom of God in the church of the Lord has increased like Abraham's children from a small sprout to a great tree rich with complexity and size. From being communicated just in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin the gospel is available now in virtually every spoken language and on every continent. etc.

Cheeto and the Whales; Plundering ANWR

The costs of destroying the purity of ANWR will far outweigh the benefits of tearing up tundra, melting permafrost, laying miles of pipeline, spillling pollutants, wreaking havoc on the Beaufort Sea, killing off marine mammals with noise and increasing global warming. Increasing dependence on what should be an obsolete energy technology, and would be if Alaska didn't have a goal of being a second world energy state, is good mostly for oil CEO bank accounts..

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/whales-dang-big-science-may-finally-answer/

President Trump, who acerbic democrats called Cheeto and the orangutan common ancestor of humanity, should send Johnny Depp in full pirate regalia as Ambassador to ANWR to inform the humans of Arctictown of the benefits of fossil fuels and value of ANWR to Exxon-Mobile, BP or whomever.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/05/22/ape-that-lived-in-europe-7-million-years-ago-could-be-human-ancestor-controversial-study-suggests/

Neither party has a responsible budget paradigm. Democrats are the nag half of Republican husbandry such that it's a one-party system of spendthrifts. U.S. public debt is a litle shy (about 80 billion) of 20 trillion and the federal budget is about 80% tied up with little for discretionary spending. What is needed are new ways with sustainable ecosphere and economic policies, and nations seldom meet new challenges to alter economic infrstructure practices sucessfully. Each party is working for a global plutocratic oliarchy-Obama's tax cuts helped with that. The ANWR gambit is just another plunder everything possible and concentrate wealth for the 1% tack.

Irony and Individuality; Why Nihilism is Relatively Meaningless

I have sometimes wondered what culture people come from such that they ask questions like; 'who am I', without having suffered from amnesia. I haven't really been troubled by a problem of cosmological meaninglessness or personal identity crisis. IMO people that have might be originally from a tightly controlled social environment wherein they really are turned out in cookie cutter fashion. I commiserate with people that have been formed in mass produced circumstances rather than with the freedom of individuality.

Escaping from conformity formerly was something of a European problem perhaps. In the United State from the time of the founders people were doomed to be free individuals on the edge of a frontier. Spiritually the frontier never really closed before the 1970s.

Cosmology is neither a source for anxiety about meaninglessness. People exist everywhere as individuals and it was what they think subjectively that they experience as conscious thought experience. It is their freedom to put together whatever package of knowledge and data they can in the best possible configuration within their own capacity.

I suppose the Universe and mass energy might be compared to a pointillist painting with everything made of strings, branes, quarks and atoms including individuals. As in the novel Utopia that means 'nowhere', nowhere is where anyone exists...one place is in an absolute sense (against a transcending Universal backdrop), as central as any other. Even so people are not just quantum dots clumped together by their own free will. Instead there are forces, patterns and destiny that holds people together in addition to elements, planets, stars, dark matter and energy etc.

Individuals exist apart from any other in a unique space-time position. In theory the force of gravity holding them on Earth could be negated with technology and they might relocate anyplace in the temporal Universe. As individuals meaning would still be relative to themselves and their understanding of all of the waves of communication they perceive, and reason about what they find.

Kripke and Quine had somewhat different approaches to nominalism and pluralism, Platonic realism and nominalism (e.g. 'Naming and Necessity' and 'Ontological Relativism'. Particulars and Universals such as Socrates regarded and Plato wrote of were somewhat ahead of Aristotle's great efforts at classifying human knowledge are tools for existential analysis. Irony or self-objectivity about the external social world with one's subjective capacity of thinking for oneself is what all humans necessarily do to a certain extent since they are not automatons only resembling sentient beings. While everything is relative to one's subjectivity, communication is a socially dialectical phenomenon. Words and ideas; meanings- are more phenomenal things to be perceived and used as one constructs their life-project in-the-world as best as they can.

Jesus Christ was/is the truth that makes one free. He was God-for others and one of the three persons who is God. One is phenomenally free yet existent within various physical force fields. People are as unique as anything that is just as one planet is not another though there are billions, and one number is not the same in an infinite series though there is an infinity of them.

Developing introspective and reasoning skills can be fairly said to have entered intellectual history with Socrates, yet he also was an exponent of classical virtue. I believe he should not have been able to precisely define 'the good' yet he does provide a fine exposition of classical virtue and pursuit of the good and knowledge in the Platonic dialogues. That is lacking from modern nihilism and relativism. Socrates and classic virtue did not vacate morality claiming that relativism made everything absolutely subjective. Just as Jesus said the kingdom is within you and the truth shall make you free, Socrates sought to awaken individuals to an inner reflection on virtue and its meaning finding that it would comprise a dialectic with the natural world. It is a kind of natural law as Cicero wrote of later, yet even more virtuous.

Any age may have a spirit of the times. However the Holy Spirit is the sole guide worth following. It is wisdom as well as natural law. It transforms the individual from bondage to nature and unreflective pursuit of baser desires to contemplation of virtue, the good and the divine. With irony and individual might discern that it is his or her own responsibility to improve their intellectual library of understanding of how the Universe or Multiverse functions, to be aware of one's place in the temporal phenomenon and to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior who is prior to space-time in any possible material Universe. 

Salvation does not mean that one blandly, blindly follows the way of the cultural-economic world show wherein 'one struts and frets an hour upon the stage meaninglessly signifying nothing'. Christians may work, construct, design, solve, journey, forgive, innovate and provide relief so far as their capacity permits. One has an infinite sea of words, ideas and Universes of learning and wisdom to consider in this life awaiting the personal eternal transformation to the realm of God, who is good.

President Trump Joins Eco-Pirates withn ANWR Lust

President Trump wants to plunder the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for its oil to provide global oil corporations more oil than they need already. Trump's analysts have given him ANWRs value as 1.6 billion dollars over a decade, yet the environmental costs are probably greater. And the United States already has more oil than it needs due to fracking, fracking has already started in Alaska and existing fields may be regenerated, and eventually the public will be left holding the bag with the costs of cleaning up after thousands of weather beaten dried up wellheads, pipeline, melted permafrost from global warming, costs of saving endangered species, costs of leaking oil wells into the Arctic ocean and rivers never before polluted by mankind, underground water purity violated with fracking fluids etc.

The President really is unlikely to get a second term if someone other than satan doesn't run against him, as he loses independent yet ecospherically informed voters. The high Arctic needs to be protected, not plundered. He may want to have Johnny Depp in full pirate gear serve as Ambassador to ANWR  persuade people of the value of extracting the oil.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/23/trump-proposes-opening-anwr-to-drilling-selling-strategic-oil-reserves/

Irony and Human Knowledge

The book of Genesis is arguably the most influential work in human history. It has influenced innumerable intellectuals and ordinary people. Yet ironically it has largely been misunderstood.

Especially interesting as an illustration of the double-edged nature of knowled regarding bomb making knowledge yesterday was a suicide bomber detonating him or herself (or indeterminate in the midst of sex confirmation evolution) at an Ariana Grande music concert in England killing more than 22 people. Knowledge is dangerous yet human life is dangerous, as is virtually all animal life. The three stooges with uncertainty on how to use or configure what-they-know.

Ferdinand Christian Baur was the founder of the high form of Biblical criticism at Tubingen and was influenced by 'Kierkegaard's dialectic' (ref. Wikipeda). Preaching or providing one's opinions about the state of worldly affairs and/or religious concerns is of the essence of irony.

And that too is why it is ironic that the largest paradigm for human existence at its traditional genesis is misunderstood. Adam and Eve were cast out of an atemporal existence not subject to space-time entropy and then were cast out into-the-world. Apparently they existed apart from the space-time Universe. Only after the fall did they receive the containment corrections for original sin. Human mortality and the paradigms for animal existence in the Universe were where Adam and Eve as souls were sent. That is, the physical existence of being human and like animals requirement to metabolize is the context for original sin.

Thus what's wisdom to man is foolishness to God, and one may only be saved through faith. One may knock oneself out with the greatest quest for knowledge and still end up as simply human and isolated from God in the material, human condition. 

The state of the Christian church in Europe since the second century has always been an important part of civil society by increasing degrees. The church-state relation concerned empire and counter-empire, reform and counter-reform. Human development occurred within the church in Europe inseparably until recent times, as well as in parallel cultural establishment. Human knowledge and the body of thought that comprise the history of ideas continues as a fire growing from its earliest days possibly in the Balkans circa 7.2 million years b.p. where mankind may have branched off from big apes according to recent scientific reports.

Church establishments like all cultural establishments and organizations tend to seek to expand. Perpetual revolution or creative destruction seems to be the nature of governing and organizational establishment even if within a conservative evolutionary rather than a violent paradigm. Christians probably need to use irony such as Kierkegaard employed to be able to take the gospel of Jesus Christ for itself rather than as given by an established organizational hierarchy with goals virtually indistinguishable from those of any acme organization to sustain the standard of living of its members.

The human quest for knowledge will continue until the age of the gentiles is fulfilled.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/god-cosmology-and-nothingness-theory-and-theology-in-a-scientific-era/ebook/product-22947558.html (free download)

Socrates and Subjective Truth

As a practical matter; stones don't think and people do. Digital recorders and parrots can repeat what they hear without belief or knowing what the meaning is. People just existing as part of a social order may live without thinking much about why anything is the way it is either. Socrates wanted to stimulate people to think critically and to develop their own reasoning capacity, although it may have been because he was secretly symathetic to Sparta's form of government (much more like that of 'The Republic' than Athenian democracy. Free thought requires that one determine what is true or not for-oneself rather than blindly repeating what one has been told.

Subjectivity and truth are different concepts. Socrates sometimes found truth and subjectivity coinciding, sometimes not, perhaps. Modern philosophy makes retro-interpretation of Attic paradigms a little challenging. There wasn't a philosophical field of epistemology Socrates could use to compare and contrast his ideas..

Truth theory for example. There are many of them. I prefer the correspondence theory or the truth assignments practices of propositional logic. One may make up a truth table and assign various conditions such as true or false,being or nothingness to the sentence and clusters of sentences of it and test variables or constants of it for consistency etc.

I believe Socrates great contribution is that of being the founder of analytic philosophy along with Plato and Aristotle. Particulars and Universals in word and ideas, forms and a realm of forms; that was genius. Kierkeguaard's role in developing irony and subjectivity occurred in a different poltical-historical context yet is comparable favorably to that of Socrates-even more so as the political dangers were probably greater internationally. Kierkeguaard can't be credited with founding the practice of subjectivity for individuals yet he was modern popularizer of it. His writing such as Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death are I think, his great contributions.

On Socrates other notable features concerning subjectivity and individualism of which he is extolled so commonly ( I recall encountering that even in elementary school world history), I believe people don't regard his historical paradigm well enough. He was a combat veteran of the Peloponnese an war and might have had a little PTSD. He seemed more than a little stoic in the modern sense. The Republic described by Plato really resembles a philosophers ideal dream of Sparta transformed.

Supposedly Socrates twice saved the life of the brilliant Alcibiades during the wars. Before Alcibiades defected to the Spartan League he chiseled the noses off some of the Gods of Athens. The war ended only in 404 B.C. and Socrates was executed in 399. His efforts to corrupt youth exteded to seeking support for the restoration of oligarchy apparently. That is what is called sedition now days.

Socrates must have been a little torn by the comparative political systems of Sparta and Athens. His inner voice or Daimon might have been a deeper balancing thought speaking to him for clarification. Although Socrates evidently did believe in God, it was an unknown and transcendent God for him that Christians might identify with as being omnipresent.

A substantial part of the subjective-objective truth paradigm has been resolved by analytic philosophy (e.g. Kant (The Critique of Pure Reason) Strawson (Individuals), Quine (The Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Word and Object). Yet for Socrates and later Kierkegaard there was so much virgin philosophical turf to plow that it was more than a lifetime task developing the terms and paradigms for individuals and society. Sartre wrote that his Existentialism was a continuation of the French rationalism of Descartes insofar as it examined thought from first principles of cogitation and self-reflection. Yet the idea of criticizing social constructions and ossified praxis (Sartre's term) formally was virtually non-existent in Socrates day outside the writings of Hebrew prophets (i.e. Isaiah).

It is useful to have social roles that people can easily fit in. Socrates wrote that the unexamined life is not worth living though, and if one is to find Christ in a non-Christian culture that is certainly true. It is also true if one has an undesirable social role and wants to get out of the gutter as it were being exploited by Jobba the Hut. In the U.S.A. 11 million jobs in retail are expected to disappear to robots the next 10 years. The unemployed keep finding it harder to find anything meaningful to do for earning a living. Stability can be good, yet in ancient Athens the contrast between unchanging social forms and radical change that would be brought by Alexander, Macedonians and subsequent hordes of new pagan gods was like a calm between the past and the perfect storm and giant waves of the future.

Von Trump Plan to Cut Food Stamps a Bit Too Much

Finding work for the elderly is difficult. The socialization of youth and cultural insensitivity may preclude an amicable work environment. If reasonable work is actually available few would not prefer to have the cash rather than to subsist on food stamps. And children receiving food stamps don't have opportunities to work in sweatshops 20 hours a day anymore due to oppressive legislation passed in the 1920s.

Even so children and the elderly take half of the food stamp budget and President Trump wants to cut that 25%. Everyone needs to tighten their belts while the 1% get tax cuts and 62% of the national income of course, yet I feel the food stamp program should be reduced no more than 15%.

https://qz.com/988864/federal-budget-2017-trumps-budget-would-cut-200-billion-from-food-stamps/

I worked for a while with a federal jobs program for the elderly 20 hours a week being unable to find any other work. Actually I learned a lot in those 20 hour position working for a while in the State of Alaska archives and in a start up non-profit in Texas. There are interesting things to learn that don't pay anything of course. I finished an M.T.S. program except my thesis wasn't conservative enough for a particular theological seminary so I just let that go. The history and theology was fascinating though. I have found a good course intro in logic via Stanford and a course in Denmark of Soren Kierkegaard for free at http://www.coursera.org

 My A.A. and B.A. degrees being useless, and an automobile required for work as a painter-if anyone would even hire a 62 year old to climb 24 foot extension ladders and trim buildings. I believe many people have worse time finding employment as they get to be over 55. Millions just struggle on without substantial work as best they can until retirement age because the U.S. Government never had the creative capacity to provide real incentives and tax policies that would prioritize hiring those out of work longest, the most poor and the elderly.

Government doesn't take realistic jobs for citizens seriously enough at all.

Human-Big Ape Divergence May be of Macedonian Orignin

An interesting new scientific report indicates that the earliest divergence of the future human line from that of big apes may have happened in the Balkans-my guess is Macedonia, about 7.2million years ago.

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-scientists-million-year-old-pre-human-balkans.html

The Mediterrainian Sea was dried up at the time and the dry seafloor about as hot as hell. Wise apes moved away a little to friendlier climes on a savannah in Southern Europe. A bit higher altitude would have been good for big apes seeking to beat the heat.

Not until much later when national boundaries were formed did the human line really find itself able to focus on good technological progress such as powering 3000 fork lifts at Wal-Mart distribution centers with fuel cells and to consider how God could have issued a Universe from a zero-dimensional brane or string infinitely small.

Enes Kanter Should Seek Costa Rican Citizenship

N.B.A. star Enes Kanter should be given political refugee status from Turkey for a couple of years obviously, yet he should seek Costa Rican rather than the U.S. citizenship that he wants. U.S. citizenship isn't all that its cracked up to be anymore.

https://www.si.com/nba/2017/05/22/enes-kanter-press-conference-american-citizen-hopes

Right off one should suspect the reason of any guy that wants to take citizenship in a country with homosexual marriage and a public debt of just 81 billion dollars short of 20 trillion. Costa Rica is a nice country with a few good volcanos and wonderful beaches without a lot of military issues abroad.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Turkey is a nation that few would want to be live in; heck, they even have N.P.R. reporters there, yech! So its easy to understand that being persecuted by his homeland the N.B.A. players views the U.S.A. as better. Actually the U.S.A. has been in decline since Ronald Reagan left office.

Democrats are the nag half to Republican husbandry. SInce Teddy Kennedy's brain was warped by a tumor the party lost any sort of reposnsibility and just b'itches out of office and piles up debt when in. Republican of the 1% don't actually care if the 1% gets all the national income though they can't say so. It was the responsibility of the 'Crats to keep the budget in order for the people, and as mentioned above, they lost their minds about 1992. The nation's federal budget brain is on permanent vacation.

When his playing days are over Mr. Kanter would have no problems being a U.S. resident if he choose since he is likely to be a millionaire if he doesn't bling it all away in Las Vegas. Yet getting a good fishing boat and taking internet college courses from a remote mountain hut my be kind of a fun lifestyle. He might even get into Costa Rican politics.

Christian Evolution

Has Christianity evolved to present its message suitably to the language of the day?

I would point out that many of those new Bibles are written in the vernacular for ordinary people. That was even the case with Gutenberg, and the Good News Bible, KJV etc. The protestant reformation was an upgrade to suit believers of the day. Evolution can have many varieties of meaning not all of which are bad or that include atheism, falsehood, corruption of true interpretations of scripture etc. Even the Catholic church has mostly stopped reading mass in Latin for the congregation. Not all religions in history have changed though. Even so one recalls Paul's ability to adapt delivery of the gospel to various audiences; and the way the gospel books themselves were written differently in tone for different readers by different authors. Though math has evolved the Pythagorean theorem remains true as does Euclidean geometry.

Evolving the delivery of a message does not require corruption of the meaning of the message itself.

Kierkegaard, Socrates and Aporia

Quite a bit to think about regarding aporia. The idea of losing one’s self (going a bit beyond just emptying ones’ thought of preconceived ideas) is important in the Bible (those who save their lives shall lose them and vice versa) and in other fields such as Buddhism and with the idea of emptying the mind entirely. Yet the aporia of Socrates for me runs into a different sort of problem; that of criticism of an existing order, or external social structure, that is a common human experience for several reasons.

Socrates was gifted at criticism, yet he did so for a purpose. I must say that Russell’s criticism of Socrates during W.W. II where he said he was a fascist has influenced my ideas about Socrates such that instead of simply regarding him as being a revered and wise philosopher he was a supporter of the restoration of oligarchy and an opponent of democracy and the common man as a political peer.

The Republic of Socrates is the cause for Russell’s criticism I suppose. The two philosopher guardians of the state are virtually dictators, though benevolent ones. IMO Socrates derived the Republic as an abstract of Sparta, and Sparta was an enemy of the Athenian democracy. Socrates was charged with corrupting youth-a true charge insofar as he was trying to persuade them to support the restoration of oligarchy. So he was an actual enemy of the state in a political sense.

I won’t go too far here into the rights and wrongs of Socrates in regard to his political position. Yet his daemon in more interesting; that idea of innate ideas being brought out. Logical ideas such as those of Pythagoras could be elicited from anyone with help, as logic may be an innate paradigm for thought. It turns out that the realm of forms may be deeply consistent with quantum cosmology and standard forms for mass and energy. Maybe Plotinus' paradigm of The One allowing The Intelligence to issue the forms from a zero dimensional membrane (modernized) is entailed in the Republic.

Returning to aporia as a critical method and approach to making new idea happen. I believe that invention and redesign of anything can occur after taking things apart in the abstract and reassembling them with additional elements.

I look forward to the introduction of Hegelian elements in the course since Kierkegaard didn’t seem to like Hegel’s work at all. Aporia however as a negation of existing beliefs will forever be popular; even Marxists use it interacting with capitalist ideas. Negative criticism can be applied to anything as an analytical tool. I think what one does with it, is subjective, although one may be drawn by a calling of some form, in a way in following the will of the good.