10 October 2019

Shouldn't Some Auto Insurance Be Pay-Per-Mile?

Shouldn't some auto insurance be pay-per-mile or for when the vehicle is used rather than monthly? If there are people that would buy an electric car or jeep if they could afford it some people might not want to pay for insurance every month on a vehicle used just a few times a month or year? Some people would not be willing to shell out $100 a month for auto insurance when they just might only use the vehicle a day or two for transport of supplies, and ride a bike to work, or boat, the rest of the time.

Retired people might be a prime group to benefit from pay per mile auto insurance that might be more like a credit card's structure- even some with no annual fees. I wonder if pay per mile auto insurance presently exists?

About the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Analytic truths are self-consistent without reliance on something besides the internal logic for truth. Synthetic propositions involve something outside the statement. They are somewhat more like algebra with variables that can make a statement true or false depending on what they are. So the logic of math may be implicitly true (if it isn't false), yet mathematical statements may be analytically false. True math statements require verification, or something beyond themselves- for axioms or whatever, at some point need to be accepted as true for the rest of the math to follow. That premise is why Quine thought the synthetic-analytic distinction wasn't valid, so far as I get from reading the article on the analytic-synthetic distinction. A synthetic proposition that everyone knows is true such as "the Earth has been around a long time" is like a math axiom in just being accepted as true with some verification from experience. The epistemological criterion of the analytic-synthetic distinction is unavoidably challenging like Descartes' paradigm from the Meditations on a Method- verification of anything including experience originates inwardly and is an association of ideas and percepts with thought. Self-standing truth is God- everything else requires verification through association. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/

Matthew 27:22-25 and Moral Responsibility

 Matthew 27:22-25 seems like an assumption (a claim) of legal and moral responsibility for the execution of Jesus. Though they were a necessary enabling act for the worldly execution, since Pilate was agreeable to letting Jesus go, the Jews had no right to take responsibility for it was pre-destined by God. God knew people are doomed to work evil because of original sin. The history of the Jews in the books of the prophets is a great exercise in futility as well as faith. The consequences of the execution could have been said to be the destruction of Jerusalem with a million deaths that followed in an apocalypse, yet also the Lord's victory over death and actualization of the other prophecies. The Lord was the greatest prophet of the Bible as well as the Son of God. God can sort out the issues of free will and responsibility better than mankind. The end of the old covenant and transition to the new was costly. Redemption of those of faith in the Lord from the criterion of original sin through his atoning sacrifice is the greatest, or most meaningful event in history concerning human destiny.


Matthew 27-
22-Pilate said to them, “What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”
They all said to him, “Let Him be crucified!”
23-Then the governor said, “Why, what evil has He done?”
But they cried out all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!”
24-When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.”
25-And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

A Method for Learning Philosophy

Reading western philosophy is a life-long project (that one can complete generally by about age 40 with a lot of reading. Start with Plato's books where he narrates the dialogues and conversations of Socrates. Then proceed up along an historical timeline all the way to the 21st century. There are numerous books summarizing Western philosophy such as those by Will and Ariel Durant, Betrand Russell and Frederick  Copleston.. Read primary books by famous western philosophers and learn for yourself what ideas they developed, and how those ideas built upon one another's ideas constructively;each philosopher had a place in history. Some such as Socrates, Kant, Hegel and Hume, Berkeley, J.S. Mill and Jeremy Betham are essential reading. One may read people like Schopenhauer and Nitzsche for more depth, and eventually move into the Vienna circle era and with those associated with it developing formal logic. Sartre was a novel expositor of French rationalism continuing in the tradition of Rene' Descartes. Aristotle , Liebnitz and Frege developed logic. 

Linguistic philosophy is based on logic and the structure of words and meaning, and that is great stuff and useful in numerous areas today with such obvious applications as in computational logic. The twentieth century was something of a renaissance for philosophy with epistemogical inquires using formal logic, inward and outward meanings of words and objects shedding light. Classical ideas about nominalism and pluralism, knower and known and so forth were informed with ideas from modern physics and logic. 

William James and John Dewey continued practical applications of philosophy. America had people like R.W. Emerson and C.S. Pierce yet Saul Kripke, P.F. Strawson and W.V.O. Quine wrote informatively about the mind/language/external reality interface with logical analysis. Eventually while reading philosophy one should read a few of the works by great historians such as Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) and then read in a third thread the major works of Eastern philosophers (Nakamura's 'Ways of Thinking of Eastern People' is good) such as Confucius, Lao Tzu, Sakyamuni Buddha, and histories of the founders of the major and minor religions such as Mani and Manichaeanism, Zoroaster and Muhammad. 

One would do well to keep a King James version of the Bible around and read that forever, here and there as the spirit moves one. There are innumerable stops on the way of reading history and philosophy together, such as the history and life of St. Augustine, neo-Platonism such as Plotinus (with the Enneads), Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Empedocles and so forth. There are even pre-Socratic philosophers with great ideas; for example, Parmenides and Heraclitus. It is necessary to learn a scientific history of cosmology and quantum mechanics as well. Philosophy does exist in a real Universe with quite a bit to consider. 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNmENSiview



09 October 2019

If Turkey Attacks Kurds Many Americans Won't Like It

President Trump's Kurd policy regarding Turky reminds one of major General Rosecrans misunderestimating the situation of the line at the Battle of Chickamauga. Rosecrans thought there was a gap in the line so he misdirected troops to go fill it creating a gap through which General Longstreet broke through with eight brigades. Throwing the Kurds to the mercies of the Turkish military armed with U.S. weapons will make some move toward support for impeachment of the President.

President Trump could have used the opportune time to negotiate creation of a Kurdish state instead of letting Turks move ahead to slaughter Kurds. President Trump in pursuit of just money may have no heart in that monetary mercenary brain. Kurds have fought well as allies more than twenty years and it was wrong to abandon them cold.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/turkey-invades-syria-turkish-president-erdogan-announces-military-operation-today-2019-10-09/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chickamauga

08 October 2019

Pres Trump Should have created a Kurdish state in part of Syria

President Trump should have created a Kurdish state in part of Northern Syria to settle Kurdish allies with security. While the President may believe he is exercising statecraft in acting in harmony with Turkey to offset Turkey's turn toward Russia, it was wrong to leave the Kurds in what looks like a kill zone. Turkey has lots of weapons the U.S. sold them to eradicate Kurds in their way.

The Kurdish problem originated at the end of the First World War when the allies reneged on a promise to create a Kurdish state in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. President Trump is putting Kurds unnecessarily in harm's way in giving the inheritors of the Ottoman Empire a solid chance to occupy part of Syria 

What good Turkey can do in policing Northern Syria is questionable since Syria hasn't attacked Turkey nor intended to. While the United States may save some money in removing military forces from the region, there weren't many as it were and the axiom of penny wise, pound foolish appears to be the right description for a policy that fails to security Kurdish security.

Mosul is the natural capital of a Kurdish state and Northern Syria and the S.E. corner of Turkey should be part of the Kurdish state. It would be useful to solve the problem of Kurds needing to fight for their own land by having the allies correct their century-old error. Turkey would be compensated by being granted twice the amount of land in Syria that they conceded to form part of the new Kurdish state, as would Iraq.

President Trump is all business all the time yet in the present situation he should exercise statecraft that actually works. Northern Syria is a good field training area for elements of the U.S. military that can learn useful intelligence regarding operations in the area. Ignorance and ostrichism isn't generally the best policy. Some may ask if the Trump policy supports the need for impeachment.

It is of course good to discover ways to avoid conflict along with the expense of spending munitions and life and that vector could probably be advanced by settling Kurds into a Kurdish state. It is true that Syria would lose a little ground yet that may be the least bad option available.

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/7/20902699/trump-syria-turkey-erdogan-invasion-kurds

Map from the C.I.A. Fact Book

China May Be Better Without N.B.A and Hong Kong


China may be better off without the N.B.A. or Hong Kong. The N.B.A. promotes a lot of goons to multi-millionaire status instead of scientists and inventors, and that creates wrong social values.  Compare the service-value to humanity of a scientist inventing an internal food deodorant that when consumed would change the smell of bowl movements to that of roses versus that of putting a ball in a hoop like Fido. The latter has less social value than a dog retrieving a tennis ball, for the dog may be a watchdog sentry too.

 A Communist society may prefer such egalitarianism that intellectual work is devalued and repressed or exploited by meat-heads with money and power, yet the people are the real losers when ignorance prevails. Hong Kong is an entrepot for excellence in enterprise and intervention that would bring far ore social advance and prosperity for China as a free mini-state than as a vassal dominated by ham-fisted communist party rulers.

Good sense is rare in politics. China is probably no exception.

Chinese leadership shouldn't be upset about free speech nor work to repress it. In the United States censorship is accomplished in a similar way as the Chinese method used to retaliate against the N.B.A. for something a Houston Rockets manager said in support of Hong Kong protesters; they hit the wallet or buy up and close down offensive venues of expression-even with degraded search engine listings.

Democrats are looking to a former special education teacher for leadership to help explain issues to them. If only the leadership understood the issues that might work.


07 October 2019

Married Priests, Priesthood of Believers etc.

Pope Francis has opened up a dialogue for ending the celibate priesthood, that is, priests in that denomination would be allowed to marry as they were permitted until a millennium ago. In my opinion married priests would radically reduce Catholic priest's pederasty. Single priests in a time when life was shorter were able to be more militant and work missions like a soldier to a certain extent in taking the gospel around the world. In an era when television and the internet is saturated with sex and mostly naked female photos (like Linda Carter's wet t-short picture on sports news pages as an ad the past two months), and a large percent of people remain unmarried without a bad opinion about out of wedlock sex, celibate living is more challenging. It may have outlived most of its usefulness for the priesthood. *-quote;"It was not until ecumenical meetings of the Catholic Church at the First and Second Lateran councils in 1123 and 1139 that priests were explicitly forbidden from marrying"-endquote On female leadership I would say that the leadership should lead to a priesthood of believers church format where most people share leadership roles in small groups yet get together for a sing-a-long. Maybe men could have the main 7 minuted sermon for themselves and so technically leadership remains male. That would be like an opera where women don't usually sing bass nor men soprano. Other than that women would share the rotation of speaking roles in the service, although there should be beginner, intermediate and elder ranks based on attendance history as an adult. Quality theologians could prepare standard liturgical content for people to use in groups of 8 or twelve people. When all people are confessing Christians hypocrisy is reduced. When going to church means more than sitting on a chair and watching one knows that one might actually be missed if one did not attend to participate each week, When all Christians finally act like priests (humble ones) all Christians will be missionaries too. A real priesthood of believers church structure could be more supportive of Christians. It could have Christians job banks and savings for emergencies banks that are nationally networked (with a cap on how much could be saved and use requiring some peer group approval). A semi-monastic network of guest quarters for Christian travelers could be constructed across the nation for all Christians to use that have good attendance records at the Priesthood of Believers affiliated churches across the nation.

President Trump Needs to Secure Kurdish Security Directly

Giving the green light for a Turkish invasion of Syria endangers U.S. Kurdish allies. The Kurds are one of the few reliable long-term partners in the region so the President of the U.S.A. needs to watch out for their security as well as repair the relationship with N.A.T.O. member Turkey that has decided to buy Russian military equipment that is a danger to N.A.T.O. security.

While a Turkish presence in Syria might be easy to allow and will provide a measure of regional security they may be hard to get rid of as the former colonial power (of the Ottoman Empire). It would be helpful if President Trump would explain to the public what is plans are for Kurdish security and for the problem of Syria that the Obama administration started toward civil war and regional insecurity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-07/trump-s-motives-on-allowing-turkey-invade-syria-can-t-be-trusted

It would of course be great if President Trump could in some way get the Kurds and Turks to work together to secure mutual geographic interests. Actually that shouldn't be too challenging if the Turks are not indignant and meat-headed about it. Maybe a redesign of borders and citizenship issue could be creatively solved at some kind of camp David think tank for Kurds and Turks so they can work together for long-term regional security including Syria.


06 October 2019

Mitt Romney and Pres Trump Don't See Eye to Eye

Senator Mitt Romney occasionally throws dirt on President Trump. President Trump replies; it’s not unusual or difficult to understand. What motivates Senator Romney to attack the President and give aid and comfort to President Trump’s political enemies?
The former Governor of Massachusetts, who vacated that state some time after his Presidential campaign loss, is something of a Boston elitist. He finds natural synergy with those New England elites with Harvard associations that run a little blue-blooded. A moderate Republican, he was elected Governor of that leftist state because he wasn’t a Christian and was thus tolerable for the godless atheists that fill the state.
Even so Mitt Romney was a one-term Governor. He brought the forerunner of Obamacare to the state and that was the limit of his interest to the people of Massachusetts. Romney-care was essentially President Nixon’s health care plan that he he set forward to counter the Democrat's desire for Universal Health Care like that of England.
George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney, was a Governor of Michigan. He lost in the Republican primaries of the 1968 campaign to President Nixon. Perhaps Mitt took an idea from the winner of the 68 election as a model for Romney-care.
In the 2016 Presidential election, as in 2012, President Obama’s real birthplace became an issue. Donald Trump was publicly of the opinion that Barrack Obama was really born in Indonesia where he grew up and lived until age 7, instead of Hawaii. It was very possible to get a doctor to sign off on a birth certificate a little cooked in that era, and records of international travel no longer exist for when Barrack’s mother actually arrived and left the U.S.A. Donald Trump had valid points yet drew the wrath of those that don’t care to recognize U.S. boundaries and birth as meaningful compared to just anyone. George Romney, like Senator Ted Cruz, was not born in the U.S.A. and wasn’t really eligible to serve as President of the United States. That is another point of hate that Mitt Romney has against Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, like a good Mormon that he isn’t, doesn’t consume booze. Mitt Romney as a Harvard M.B.A. has the school's natural hate of plebeian billionaires (lol) like Donald Trump that cannot help acting like a populist. The Harvard elites joined with Hillary in 2016 and a Harvard paper actually offered “an exit strategy for Trump voters”. Mitt Romney is a Boston-Harvard blue blood kind of elitist with a sense of entitlement who merely needed to move to take up residence in Utah to run for and be elected to the U.S. Senate. I would guess he is part of the ‘deep state’ crowd that are so well off that party affiliations are not as important as belonging to the right clubs, or at least being a Harvard alumni.
There is no question in my opinion that Mitt Romney would have been a better President than Barrack Obama. He simply isn’t anything like a populist though and is far too left and a put-your-dog-in-a-cage-on-top-of-the-car kind of guy for red meat voters. Voters tend to want a have the dog ride in the passenger seat President, even if one can get flesh eating bacteria from a dog licking a face.
In the United States corporatism is evolving and uniting with socialism to pacify the masses of Democrats. The way it is going five percent of the people will own 95% of everything and the people will effectively rent houses they believe they are buying for thirty years. Democrat candidates are so ignorant and bottom of the barrel and devoid of intelligent political thought about how to benefit the masses including the poor with effective legislation that they can do nothing besides offer pie-in-the-sky multi-trillion dollar plans that will fortunately never become law and would add trillions to public debt besides being ineffective if they did.
Good politicians should talk about good practical legislation that doesn’t cost anything and just directs economic infrastructure to transition toward an ecologically sustainable footing. It isn’t too difficult yet requires intelligence lacking from Democrats. When Democrats are elected President they do nothing to egalitarianise the concentration of wealth so capital is built by everyone in better proportion nor to preserve individual free enterprise and expression from the encroachment and control of concentrated wealth and corporate power. While Democrat Rube Goldberg plans fail the politicians themselves become mutli-millionaires and the election cycle goes on.
President Trump is good for business and ordinary people and is a populist. Though he lacks environmental sensibility, in practical measure so do the Democrats. They wish to greatly increase public debt with vast government plans and economic disruptions that won’t accomplish much besides redistributing more wealth to Democrat Party donors that are contractors.
If Senator Romney really wanted to be helpful to the general public he would try to educate the public watching the political circus about ecological economic methods and how to value environmental resource services. Actually they may all be quantified and analyzed. President Trump is pretty good at business, though its not really Harvard reciprocating elite business, and he could perhaps, perhaps not, benefit from Senator Romney working for just the public benefit and not against the President occasionally. Senator Romney should remember that much of the country doesn’t appreciate the godless democrat way of working politics divisively. A good politician should get things done for all of the masses without turning them against one another. The way of the Democrat party since the late Senator Edward Kennedy became fairly loony (probably in the 1980 primary run against President Carter) has been division and trying to force everyone to live the way they want, and to extirpate opposition. That policy of destroying middle class independence and independent thought isn’t antipathetic to the will of the most rich to have a spineless dopey mass society totally controlled by the will of the 1%, and that isn’t good for the nation or world generally, because they aren’t that smart.

Elderly Working Poor Face Federal Age Discrimination

The working poor that are between ages 65 and 70 are denied the federal earned income tax credit that is given to people 64 and under. The cap on E.I.C. is $15,700, and if the elderly are not receiving social security in addition to pay for work there is no just cause to exclude them from E.I.C. payments they would receive if they were 64. Sleeping on sidewalks doesn't become suddenly softer at 65.

If those older than 65 who are the working poor have dependent children they may qualify for an E.I.C.

There are some Americans and U.S. residents that do not qualify for social security and need to work beyond age 65. I met a Korean living in Anchorage that had no benefits and lived in a cold van. If he could have found work, the E.I.C. would have been helpful too.

There are also elderly Americans that do not qualify for Medicare. That is another story, and a reason why the V.A. should have been expanded and networked with homeless and community clinics to directly treat poor legal residents and citizens for free, instead of the middle class bureaucrat milieu of Obamacare.

* I suppose this fascinating point might lead some to wonder if Boris Johnson would be eligible to run for President of the United States in 6 years if he were to become a United States citizen again. I don't know what the answer is to that. Boris was a U.S. citizen by birth then renounced the citizenship a few years ago. If someone who got rid of their citizenship takes it back up are they then a renewed natural citizen or just a naturalized citizen ineligible for the Presidency?

Besides Lindsey Graham and Mike Pence, Republicans may need to start lining up candidates for the 2024 election.

05 October 2019

A Course on Ecosystem Services and Sustainable Development

There is a good free college level course at coursera named Ecosystem Services; a Method for Sustainable Development.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/ecosystem-services

Ecosystem services management includes conservation of natural capital so it isn't destroyed thoughtlessly  by developers and building economic activities with ecospheric syntegrity. Very few U.S. states have any regions were significant work in a positive way is going ahead. A part of the problem is blindness to the human effect on the ecosphere with historical ways of living.

Ecosphere management and development are harsh terms to have in the same sentence so far as I am concerned. The issue isn't about capitalism versus socialism or another system of economics, the matter is about a lack of education and intelligence, lack of political will and economic interest, etc.

Humans should learn about ecospheric service before or early on in making settlements on other worlds such as Mars- and even on the Moon of the Earth- as harsh and seemingly barren as it appears. Once ecospheres are wrongly developed it is very challenging to restore them or even to evolve them with directed engineering and political economy of sustainability toward a state of being as good as that lost with wrong development of an ecosphere.

Democrats Say to Pres Trump; 'Yes MASA'!

Democrats searching for a clever way to expropriate MAGA have innovated or recycled the old name by which slaves called their masters; Masa. Democrats apparently with no sense of U.S. history believe the acronym for Make America Smart Again-MASA, is new and fresh. Actually though it is an appropriate slave term for idiots that believe that when President Obama made the Bush II tax cuts permanent when all he needed to do was to let them expire and then negotiate with Republicans from a position of strength with tax cuts for the most poor and then working up to the middle class (excluding the most rich). Being stupid is smart in the collective political memory of Democrats.

All of the inane democrat politics of the Obama and Clinton eras are regarded as smart no in the rosie glow of the past. On environmental reform Democrats then did far too little, and the total of that would not have stopped mass extinction of species and decline of habitat. What is required for that is a complete transformation to ecological economic policy and honestly the Democrat Party is clueless on what that is or how it would work.

Flooding the nation with illegal aliens in order to have cheap labor and keep the poor and their wages down is not smart policy at all and actually is harmful to environmental conservation and making the electorate better educated. The Democrat Party is working as best it can to make Americans soocial vassals of quasi-imperialism in the nation.

Someone should add up the total new federal debt  Candidate Elizabeth Warren's programs would bring if made into law-really, it isn't smart.

04 October 2019

Some Worry About Human Predation as a Pack

Predators are often individuals i.m.o. It is a pejorative term of course. A few prey upon the many. For example a few lions prey upon hundreds or thousands of ungulates. 

Some wonder why it is ethical to slaughter animals for food yet its not o.k. to torture domesticated animals (pets). Dogs are humanity's first domesticated breed and it is bad form to torture one cutting off a leg or whatever. Torture is wrong in any case. In 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' a philosopher living on a hill looking down on a town regarded everyone as sheep following along without being awakened- it is an old theme. Nietzsche had syphilis and it affected his worldview over time. Average people work and follow along without thinking about what an ideal society would be or how to build one, much less test out their theoretical work. Government is an improvement over anarchy. Civil order brings civil education and the knowledge of concatenated generations.

All animals consume food- that thermodynamic need is probably what original sin is really about. Adam and Eve were cast down into temporality, birth and death, the need to labor etc instead of being something like pure spirit. When Jesus gave his body and blood symbolically at the last supper, he apparently was aware of the fallen criterion of mortal being in a Universe. Through accepting his sacrificial atonement one is reconciled unto Spirit. Many want to stay mired in the original sin paradigm though, or don't recognize it.

It's OK to Ask Foreign Governments to Help Investigate Terrorists and Democrats

There is nothing wrong in asking foreign governments to help investigate corrupt Democrat politicians and terrorists. democrat Party politicians should not feel free to organize crime, shakedowns of foreign businesses and governments or to exploit White House connections to solicit billions of dollars of foreign investments in private businesses. Terrorists and corrupt Democrats should not feel they have sanctuary nations overseas where they can plot crimes against elected U.S. Government officials nor scheme to manipulate elections with the help of foreign governments such as Ukraine that is apparently a hotbleb of illusions used for broadcast media propaganda to influence U.S. elections.

President Trump would be wrong to disregard the contributions Interpol and the Chinese Ministry for State Security may be able to contribute to enfilade corrupt Democrat party personnel that have pressured China unreasonably to buy influence via purchases of shares in special Democrat Party foreign ventures with foreign partners. One should not expect the F.B.I. to act like the C.I.A. overseas nor vice versa. The C.I.A. probably should not spend their time investigating corrupt Democrats wreaking havoc abroad. Foreign governments should be the ones to investigate corrupt and other crimes perpetrated within their borders by Democrat Party member Americans.

As China slowly evolves toward free enterprise with certain capital ownership caps it is important to keep it free from corrupt Democrat party shakedowns that corrupt free enterprise and capitalization in sustainable technology. In fact it might be a good idea for the Chinese to ask President Trump to move to more sustainable economic policy as part of the current trade negotiations. Foreign help in moving toward bi-laterally positive economic policy for a sustainable human world ecosystem is as positive as picking the fleas off international business.

Shifty Knew About Ukraine Informant a Month Before IG

Rep. Adam 'Shifty' Shiff knew about the whistle-blower and the paradigm a month ago. That information gave the democrat a month to properly maneuver an impeachment edge, and explains why the Speaker was ready to move to impeachment inquiry even before the Ukraine phone call content was made public. It seemed that Democrats were overly confident that the whistler would have the proper goods on President Trump; when it turned out that the call was a meatless bread sandwich Democrats had little choice besides defending and accelerating all of the weapons they had ready and set into motion.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ukraine-whistleblower-did-not-disclose-contact-with-schiffs-committee-to-intel-inspector-general-sources-say

Representative Shifty was actually the guy that directed the whistle-blower to contact the I.G. via a helper. The entire matter seems improper use of secret materials by the Democrat party in an effort to advance their 2020 election prospects by weakening the President in the media that usually are not his fans.

https://nypost.com/2019/10/02/adam-schiff-knew-about-whistleblowers-complaint-before-it-was-filed-report/

03 October 2019

Starting a Novel With Action?

I read a great start of a novel with an F.B.I. hostage rescue team tight in an alley being slaughtered by a .50 cal machine gun. The level of detail was micro and realistic. As soon as one opens the book intense gunfire is cutting down the highly trained F.B.I. cadre. They drop to the hot alley gravel with spent shell casings flying about, blood flowing, hoping to survive. Just one or two make it to withdraw from the unseen shooter at the head of the alley behind a wall that was working his kill zone. With machine gun bullets searching close overhead time slows down. The omniscient narrator describes what is going through the minds of those still living, and of those fading out. I liked the action level yet the rest of the book seemed somewhat anti-climactic simply because of the intensity of the opening few pages. Sartre's play; 'The Condemned of Altona' occurs mostly in a prison cell and is all action, description and dialogue at one pace that might be regarded as action. Maybe it is more balanced.

There are Just Two Genders

People that believe there are no genders just don't think very well. Basic sexual gender differentiation is exceedingly simple- There are just two and versions of incomplete or unhealthy growth unfortunately. The anomalies are a small fraction of the normal healthy population paradigm. Some vegetarians that have radical anti-meat opinions haven't ever starved and are clueless about how hard it can be to get a chunk of protein in some ecosystems or why one needs weapons or traps to do so. 

Genders are simple, and reproduction isn't that complex. With poor intellectual skills people may have less applied intellect than animals that have no trouble comprehending genders. Supposedly former Vice President Biden became known for smelling the opposite gender.I suppose one could produce and sell a body spray named 'gender' with a zillion varieties. Behavior is different than anatomy and biology. Language too may mean anything, or be encoded to permutate to different meanings in some kind of logical progression. So gender today could mean illegal alien tomorrow, or could before N.Y.C. banned that word and put a $250,000 fine on the phrase for using it maliciously.

White Hole Froth for a Local Universe

The Perimeter Institute is an interesting think tank for cosmology related items. Some of their astrophysicists recently published a paper on the creation of the proximal Universe from white hole. The idea is that instead of a big bang a star in a Universe with a higher dimensions collapsed to form a black hole with one extra dimension. The event horizon chaff of that event is the material of this Universe that is expanding. Interesting idea that higher-dimensional Universe force fields could account for some inexplicable things like the expansion of this Universe with dark energy, and possibly dark matter too. Parmenides and Heraclitus thought about such matters- Parmenides in particular anticipated the spinning bucket thought experiment in a sense. Here is the paper and another with a different idea about black holes. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.1487.pdf

I should mention that as a Christian I haven't a problem with various cosmology theories. The Let There Be Light paradigm covers quite a bit of theoretical spatial configurations.

Congress Could Establish New Office of Perennial Lawsuits and Impeachment Efforts

When the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001 the Intelligence Agencies were discoordinated and not sharing intelligence that might have stopped the hijackers. In a similar way all of the Democrat Party efforts to reverse the 2016 election results and Republican defense efforts to stop that are discoordinated, ad hoc responses to perennial legal speculations seeking weak spots in executive Branch armor. Already an upgrade has been made to attack the 2020 election before it occurs. When the Obama team and the F.B.I. began their pre-2016 election reversal insurance policy it was an uncoordinated and ultimately unconvincing effort.  Plainly coordination in offense and defense to reverse election results and impeach candidates need be coordinated through a central clear-house. An office for perennial litigation would make that new normal formal.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/10/2/20894942/fat-bear-week-2019-katmai-national-park-fattest-bear-contest

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-trump-did-not-commit-an-impeachable-offense-on-call-with-ukraines-president-heres-why

Therefore the Congress should authorize a new Office of Perennial Lawsuits for Members of Another Political Party. Like Homeland security the OPLMAPP would share intelligence and expedite accusations and investigations with more transparency since it would have bi-partisan membership with the head being the same Inspector General that now investigates the Attorney General, Secretary of State, President of the United States and others. The OPLMAPP would map out brackets for law suits and help them advance through various rounds toward the semi-final and final party y party battle to delete the President or not.

The Democrat Party has been able to legally ransack the President's personal lawyer before, and presently has commenced actions against Rudy Giuliani Esq.; the President's personal attorney, so Attorney Giuliani has lawyered up. Fundamentally Democrat Party efforts have sought to implicate anyone in the Executive branch with frivolous yet tangle-footing lawsuits, who might have participated in a legal and now public phone call between the U.S. and Ukrainian Presidents. Because of the complexity of promulgated lawsuits interactively, and because of the challenging interrelationships and capacity f the congress to subpoena Executive branch materials that require defense too- and that make great fodder for Democrat party partisan mass media, the entire load of bull need be coordinated through OPLMAPP brackets and permanent lawyer-warriors for each party advancing and defending the suits with ongoing public transparency.

It could be that the creation of the OPLMAPP so the public can follow all of the bull from Congress, will need to wait until after Republicans take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the President is re-elected; the Democrat Party likes the present scattergun approach to blasting away at the meat of the President and may thus be unwilling to create a charged, neutral office t work on perennial impeachment efforts while the Congress itself tries to get some work for the public in.