Palazzo (poem)

 

The city subsides in time
water lapping stone walks
over the past
bridge of size
executing present work
excavations tourists find
dark canals of history
paintings from the Doge's prime.

Democrat's Ukraine Policy Might Be Daft

 The United States has supplied lethal arms to Ukraine since the Obama administration. Presently the administration is complaining and 'warning' China against supplying the same to Russia, as if China need necessarily comply with the United States on foreign policy goals or ever has.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u-s-warns-china-not-to-send-weapons-to-russia-for-ukraine-war/ar-AA17GoO5?cvid=7804b5c4952946a7b13e30b3d79dd9bd

Unintelligent leadership can bring less than desirable results. The Democrat Party has consistently demonstrated an inability to comprehend the consequence of their actions. Instead of selecting lines of foreign policy relations that are realistic they select lines that are optimal for-themselves and label their opponent criminal. Democrat lawyer-Presidents believe international law supports whatever they choose to do in effect, as the 'leader' of the 'free' world with less than half of the world's population.

The Biden administration sent its first large shipment of weapons to Ukraine January 2022- before the start of the Ukraine war. The weapons build up demonstrated U.S. intent, especially as it encouraged the Baltic states to send weapons to Ukraine, and may have been a trigger for Russia to invade before things got worse.

From 2014 to the start of the Ukraine war the U.S. ‘committed’ 30 billion dollars to Ukrainian security according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040 -report may no longer be available

https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/22/us-sends-first-shipment-of-military-aid-to-ukraine-amid-standoff-with-russia

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/lethal-weapons-to-ukraine-a-primer/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/politics/us-ukraine-weapons.html

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/18/788874844/how-u-s-military-aid-has-helped-ukraine-since-2014

https://news.yahoo.com/us-weapons-sales-in-europe-are-booming-as-russias-war-in-ukraine-continues-to-rage-215801466.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/29/arms-sales-united-states-nato-russia-ukraine-war-the-arsenal-of-democracy-is-back-in-business/

https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts

Some have noted the basic inability of Democrats to adjust to the end of Cold War I and form good new relations with Russia. Much of the U.S. economy and several states with Democrat party federal delegations had invested in Cold War production and defense related capabilities. It seems as if the economic base and inertia brought the Democrat Party to revert to hostile foreign relations although for a time in the 1990s it seemed as if a new. better and different footing was growing. The Ukraine War is a logical result of the traditional belligerent U.S. relationship with Russia. Democrat party desire to dictate China's foreign policy regarding Russia is equally an assertion of what might be viewed by China as hegemonic imperialism.

It is possible that China will supply a fraction of U.S. lethal weapons support to Ukraine to Russia in order to defrappe N.A.T.O.'s hegemonic expansion eastward. China has invested much in Russia's arctic and supports development of Russian natural resources including oil and gas in order to have plentiful, stable, cheap energy to replace unreliable western supplies that could be cut off in the future when the Democrat Party deems sanctions appropriate. U.S. leadership may need to accept the fact that China has different interests than the U.S.A. in the Arctic, Russia and Asia and is still a growing economy the U.S. relies upon for manufacturing. With China and India as Russian friends or neutrals the supply of cheap labor may dry up for U.S. capitalists. A realistic foreign policy would have settled the Ukraine affair long ago with concessions to Russia that recognized their historical and valid claims to own much if not all of Ukraine. The E.U. and the Democrat Party have a different narrative of course.

Chinese leadership may supply substantial quantities of weapons to Russia in order to prevent a Russian defeat before the 2023 U.S. Presidential election when a Republican has a better than even chance of being elected. A Republican President probably could bring a negotiated end to the war by cutting off continuing arms shipments to Ukraine. Restoring good relations with Russia is rather important if the United States is to continue to participate in a global economy without a significant east-west split. The split global economy probably wouldn't be helpful for U.S. capitalists at all. The Chinese and Indian economies are growing while the U.S.A. has low economic growth and vast public debt relying on cheap Chinese imports for consumers. U.S. capitalists have invested a lot in China in Asian production.

Present prosperity for concentrated wealth in the United States that owns much of the national income- more than 50% goes to a tiny minority of citizens, may have led Democrat leadership to a certain degree of hubris in its will to power through lawsuits and military force. Peaceful evolutionary economics transition as swiftly as possible to ecological economic durability with such a great population is much preferred to war so far as U.S. national interests are concerned.

Pond of Opulence (the poem)

 Pond of Opulence

The eye beheld opulence
like nature’s melted glaciers
romantic aesthetics’ confluence
just moved with Occam’s razor

Shadows and mist settled on the pond
with rasping sounds frogs croaked the song
of stars reduced to gossamer light
silently moving through borrowed night

Compresence shaped the rising breeze
thermals carried time to dark black trees
fire sought the sole survivor
who dreamt with dawn's designer
of summer-ending freeze.

Dialectical Materialist Capitalism Evolved a Thesis Against Russia

 Karl Marx foresaw paradoxically, the final status of unlimited capitalism in the communist state. That is a non-competitive workers paradise under the benevolent guidance of severe supervisors under the dictatorship of the party elite would compete with thesis and counter-thesis against external enemies of the state. Capitalism evolves in a process of dialectical materialism at a mature stage when corporations compete against rival corporations and capitalization clumps. Corporate logic and power as a thesis encounters counter-thesis with survivors as winners, sometimes in a new synthesis of corporate consolidating merger. Capital increases faster than the wages of labor obviously so wealth concentrates and the dialectical evolution in myriad contests reduces the numbers of competitors until eventually the state itself becomes dominated by the ultimate corporate winner under consolidated wealth and power.

https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/18790/hayeks-defense-of-competition-regulation

In the global post-war competition for wealth and power the number of competitors has reduced especially with the rise of the European Union. Russia is an external rival to the European Union, while China is too yet China is also a great economic producer for corporate profits of the west and is thus somewhat immune from direct western aggression, while Russia is not.

Russia let go of its Soviet system of which it was the core state, an opted for a free society with the promise of western prosperity ahead if it emulated the ways of the west. Unfortunately for Russia the west took advantage of the letting down of Russia’s guard to take most of the former east block countries that had been occupied by Russia in its war against Nazi Germany in the 1940s into its N.A.T.O. military fold and create the power to make integral areas of the former Russia in Ukraine in the dominion of the west and European Union. Russian leadership had misjudged the nature of western society sufficiently to need war to attempt to retake the Crime and areas of the Ukraine borderlands. Russia today is regarded by the west as an external rival to hegemony over Central Europe. The EU thesis and its ad hoc allies are advancing the dialectical materialist front upon the counter-thesis from the east; Russia.

Marx didn’t develop his principle of dialectical materialism/evolution universally, and instead believed it was applicable only to his simplistic model of historical political economies. He saw capitalism as a solid unified member growing from the petty bourgeois to the bourgeois and viewed them as tools of aristocrats without seeing the process of dialectical materialist evolution among groups of capitalists in the modern economy. Dialectical material capitalism is a developing form of communism. Marx saw the communist state arising from revolution rather than evolution, and saw evolution in dialectical materialism as occurring between rival economic systems instead of within the economic system of capitalism itself.

After the Conquest (the poem)

 A poem promoted by Isaiah 60:12

The surge of power flowed upon the land
across the river Eber-nari felt the tide
Assyrians inundating the Levant
with the wrath of imperial power
Tiglath Pilesar II ruled

Government forced upon the separate states
Isaiah saw the good
through the darkness of Marduk’s leash-holders
with Anubis to the south
dogs of destruction
he could see order brought to chaos

Isaiah knew the Lord would correct
Sargon II’s talons of power
he felt hope growing beyond a wave
when conquest descended on Samaria and Judah
even so an imperial presence
altered the servants’ path

With faith in God
though Nebuchadnezzar threw down Assyria
taking Hattu-land like a dream
reigning war and order from a distance
until crumbling a rebellion
and the temple in 571 B.C.E.

Isaiah foresaw the glory of the Lord
rebuilding the Temple in something greater
the temple of God in the heart and minds
living in God’s eternal light.

Replying to the Question; 'Why are fisheries complex to regulate?'

 Fish numbers expand and decline in response to environmental changes like increasingly warm sea temperatures and acidification as well as human predation intensity. Competition for fish drives fishermen to take as many fish as they can even if the high rate of capture sends stocks below reasonable levels of sustainability. Politicians locally and internationally dispute about quotas of fish that may be taken; sometimes leading to conflict. Mining interests may destroy spawning ground health with water spills from tailings ponds. Even hard rock mining can lead to centuries of toxic metal pollution in water that reaches rivers. People develop homes along shorelines of bays and rivers adversely impacting the quality of fish spawning beds. Fish habit was steadily destroyed along the coastal zones of much of the 48 U..S. states and for a while Alaska may have some better protection, though it too will probably eventually have very poor fisheries because of human impact on habitat.

Norway has a multi-billion dollar salmon farming business while the numbers of wild salmon pitiful. Alaskan salmon runs are often canceled as not enough fish exist to return. The snow crab fishery was canceled because deep warm waters kick started too rapid of a population growth with not enough food to eat and the crab cannibalized themselves crashing the stock. Even the loss of sea plankton can harm fish stocks, and off course open sea harvesting of chinook salmon that circle about four years dwindles the number of fish available to return to national waters. New technology such as fish finders and satellites make fish tracking and capture too easy to allow any to escape except those protected by laws. Regulating individual boats would require so much at sea policing to be completely effective that large holes exist very likely in fish numbers reported captured.

Ballons Over Insider Lines- Power Transition Symbols Downwind

 While the west is getting bogged down in the war in Ukraine with concern for it escalating to nuclear, China has sent balloons to the north and west to take better views of what the United States and Canada have there. While the west has created a power transition to the East since the end of the cold war and China has risen to replace much U.S. and western manufacturing, the United States has built up great public debt and may continue to have a cold war era view of trans-Atlantic relations rather than real politick awareness of what globalization means besides profit to Multinational corporations. The Chinese balloons serve as power transition symbols to insiders on interior lines downwind.

The Democrat Party obviously is lax on border security puts out full-bodied support for illegal migration to the U.S. to provide cheap labor and improve demographics they believe will assure support for their homosexual agenda while moving the state toward corporatocracy and socialism. Those goals take front stage over awareness of the power transition and how that may affect the plus 60 degrees north latitude region of the planet.

China and India are neutral to positive in regard to Russia whom has drawn the wrath of the Democrat Party. Together the population of those two nation is north of two and a half billion people while Russia has vast natural resource viewed by the west as shiny objects of desire and corporate profit. China may be interested in future economic resources of the Arctic especially since it has just 4 million people living above the tree line. U.S. policy may develop military defense strategies for what is fundamentally a perennial global war at an economic level in defense of western claims in the north and over the eastern front in Ukraine. That expensive prospect would occur while the west relies on Chinese and Indian manufacturing as well as that of Singapore and other Eastern nations. The position could be difficult in the long run to maintain for the U.S. and could lead to an escalation to resolve the challenge with disastrous result.

Mars Can Be Colonized Without Planetary Magnetic Field

 At least one science expert says building a Martian colony won’t be possible for at least two hundred years. His idea is that since Mars hasn’t got a magnetic field or atmosphere dangerous eruptions from Mars would send dangerous particles directly to the flesh of humans that would need at least a meter of dirt to screen out the cosmic rays or whatever. I believe the scientist must think that advanced tech is required to build Earth or Mars shelters in dirt and on that he is incorrect.

https://greekreporter.com/2023/02/11/colonization-mars-practically-impossible-says-greek-american-space-expert/

Humans have built underground shelters that are easy to assemble for millennia. I will include a few YouTube videos on how to build dirt shelters. Astronauts might need to have a few building panels in lieu of logs or plywood. Yet building panels could be very light and fold-able, held together a couple of meters apart with wire ties, and the space in between filled with dirt.

One would want to build on the side of a hill with natural screening from the sun- a cave might be better and the panels need just for the entrance. Of course one would want a twist and turn in the entryway to screen out direct solar ray access. Sand bags too were invented some time ago and can be filled with dirt to make walls and perhaps covered with foil- space blankets to prevent the sun from breaking down the material. Oxygen barriers could be placed amid sand bag layers to keep oxygen in and the low pressure Martian atmosphere at bay with some lightweight technical improvements.

Emergency shelters for astronauts needn’t always be airtight if they are easy to access and there are good solar flare detector alert sirens to let astronauts know they should get underground quickly. It is possible that if astronauts live in a great canyon like Valles Marineris that light won’t even reach to the bottom of the valley much and living there would be relatively safe from solar particles. Indirect lighting can be brought into dark spaces with fiber optic cables and remotely place photons collectors as may energy from solar panels travel along wires to the Martian caves and dugouts.

Someday perhaps solar panels can convert photons to electrons and power magnetic field generators to cover portions near the top of a few canyons in the Valles Marineris network.

The Arctic Economy Course

 So I enrolled in a short course on Arctic Economy at coursera.org. Because only 4 million people live in the Arctic- the area of the north beyond the tree line, and there is great global interests in the natural resources there. Issues of the sustainability of culture and resources use arise, with the power centers of D.C., Moscow and Ottawa rather distant and sometimes biased toward voters of the comparative south. Indigenous culture had limited populations able to insinuate themselves into the ecosphere without damaging it too much, although of course woolly mammoths were hunted to extinction as humans moved north at the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age circa 25,000 B.C.E.

Modern global economics are predicated upon mass consumption, mass production and flow through regardless of sustainability. Short term profits create capital that can be invested in other interests for the long term. Hence quick and dirty extraction industries can may off great for the primary capitalists and leave the locals holding the bag on a slum, ecospheric damage and toxic waste sites. The term sustainable development is used a lot these days. The U.N. has sustainable development goals packed with all sorts of ideas yet as regards the ecospheric health the term tends to be an oxymoron; development is the problem in regard to the environment, so continuing development even sustainability tends to lead humanity toward the doom at the end of the tunnel that is the bright light of humanity incinerating itself in some way.

Developing sustainable economics would be a better phrase with less ambiguity if one is concerned about ecospheric health. Northern indigenous people certainly are part of any intelligent development of economics in relation to the ecosphere, yet ecospheric economics requires mass demographic action while business developments tends toward the dictatorship of CEOs or individual capitalist acting with ecological apologetics yet not mass demographic support. The numbers of populous mass voters that impact politicians is paradoxically difficult to persuade to support ecological economic reform policies that would require change to a national political economy. Some of the Arctic nations have small enough populations governing large enough areas to make a difference that they may be able to conserve and even use some ecosystem services sustainably.

Ecosystem Services- My Final Essay

Mainstreaming good sense, integrated use of ecosystems instead of simply trashing them with development in the style of Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” should be the social norm. It is surprising that so many don’t understand the concept of the value of the ecosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2595abcvh2M

I should mention that ecosystem services is one approach, and probably is a useful paradigm for governments and political leaders to add as a consideration before development, yet it is likely to be one tool in an arsenal to keep the ecosphere as healthy and intact as possible.

1) Peru’s use of ecospheric services presented by the nature conservancy working in Peru has established the aquafondo project to develop a sustainable watershed for the city of Lima. I believe that proves up the idea of ecosystem services reaching toward the edges of the mainstream of government planning if not actually the norm for most of the world yet.

TNC’s science policy case study was named ‘Achievements and Challenges in Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Policy Decisions’. Luis Alberto Gonzales, TNC’s country rep in Peru explained that he could go to Ministry’s of Economics and Finance and address issues of interest to each with ideas in the language they would work in usually. An interdisciplinary approach that is of practical value to governments providing services and security while reducing adverse impact to the ecosphere can be structured with positive monetary and other values in mind.

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/aquafondo-the-water-fund-for-lima/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-oceans/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-infrastructure/

2) Another tool to add exploits the desire of profit. Making a profit is basic for so many that it is practical to design buildings that have no net loss of ecosphere. Artificial mountain ranges that are inside community structures of many stories actually add more land surface area to a flat surface for example. If the exteriors are terraced for growing or wildlife habitat some expansion of the ecosphere in area could occur. If you build it they will come.

Perhaps being more to the point in summarizing ecosystem services technically and having something to present that is persuasive to various government or private players with limited time or knowledge, and finding and showing the role ecosystem services approaches have as a tool or arrow in the quiver of arrows made to keep the ecosphere of the Earth healthy would be a good plan. Some will dismiss the idea of environmentalism outright and others may be put off by ecosystem services as being incapable of saving the ecosphere from gross degradation by development. In a way humanity is like locusts chasing after the green fields of profit eating everything before them. Awareness of humanity chasing the profit motive with the underlying need to consume and input energy because they are embedded in a thermodynamic process of the Universe that may be the penalty for original sin might produce innovations of better ways to secure energy for the masses (including food energy). At least synergy with mass food-energy producing systems and wild nature could develop beneficial to the prospects of humanity and the entire ecosphere.

Governments Sometimes Impoverish the Poor

 In the United States government structures are in part implicitly designed to hinder and impoverish the poor. The reason for that is the kind of individuals that form regulations aren’t poor and view everything from a middle class or rich perspective. They cannot recognize and often do not have any awareness of how the poor yet disciplined and energetic can work themselves out of poverty only to crash into government regulations to dash their efforts.

Here is one example; some energetic men who are poor may travel seasonally and sleep outside. Not only illegal aliens internally migrate to job sites in the U.S.A., so might American citizens. They may buy cheap rural real estate in Arizona and North Dakota if they can earn enough and have a place to camp and live without frostbite or heat exhaustion annually. The cost of transportation between two very low cost private properties is far less than that of owning a home on the grid by a factor of 50 to 1. Government regulations- many in fact discriminate against the housing lifestyle of the poor and declare more than one lot superfluous and a disqualifier for many government programs and protection from bankruptcy etc. A home receives bankruptcy protection even if valued at a quarter of a million dollars or more while the two properties of the poor do not though they are worth less than half the price of an economy car. The poor must choose between frostbite and heat stroke lifestyles because the government doesn't tolerate alternate functional life arrangements except those that are queer.

The indoor thermostat controlled lifestyle of middle class Americans is very costly and one need have job security to afford it. In a way quality housing affordability requires a timed lifetime programmatic approach comparable to that of a naval officer who need advance at a regular pace through various stages or go to the discharge off-ramp. Without lifetime job security the very high cost of buying a home segregates many Americans to a lifetime without owning a home, for life and reasons to buy a home do not last forever. There are mobile and athletic women able to handle the strenuous lifestyle without owning an automobile or being installed in a comfortable on-the-grid home. Such rare creatures dwindle in numbers with aging and ease of reproduction followed with various duties and social expectations. Neither women or men that are poor should encounter government bias against practical economic arrangements.

Government should not exclude the very poor from programs such as food stamps. Some states like Oklahoma apparently allow food stamp cards to be used nationally while others like Alaska do not. Americans should receive bankruptcy protection and eligibility for government programs on the basis of total capital assets rather than on the location of the assets. Maybe the poor should be allowed to own $25,000 of real estate without exclusion. In some states people may qualify for food stamps while owning a quarter million dollar home, while the poor with an out of state property are not. There are numerous penalties against poor travelers across the states that penalize energy and job and lifestyle searches and reward those that are simply installed locally.

Not every state can have a two tier workforce of legal workers and illegal workers with different pay scales, retirement policies and benefits. Neither can every American have a spare nation to retire to with spare citizenship and no taxes. In the structured inconsistencies are found innumerable regulations that oppress the poor and benefit insiders.

Eddies in Currents (the poem)

 

Circling through history
the Iron Curtain rises and falls
building up hopes
to collapse them with brawls

Wars of the left and right
misinterpret day and night
making peace an elusive mystery
building up circular history

Shadows of reason fade in morning light
manufactured weaponized politics
shipped arms fast overnight
-quixotic logic tricked

Directed cyclic history
inversals of reversals
virtual intellects scrawl
reason's vacuum the mystery.

Evolving ChatGPT AI and Meta-Dan Dystopia

 ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence program that can write answers to questions like a human would. Well, like many humans would, and of course better than some too. It was developed with some funding by Microsoft and competes with Googles AI program that accomplishes similar objectives. There is a website where anyone can try out the AI https://chatgptonline.net/ Of course there is a dark side to the force; users have discovered ways to program the AI to break its good conduct limits and simply be bad.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/chatgpt-jailbreak-forces-it-to-break-its-own-rules.html

Apparently the A.I. seems very smart and might be made to produce human literary works of some quality- at least enough for a first draft of a novel? That I cannot say. The good personality of the AI uses mostly true facts. It might be good for writing Presidential speeches in that regard, perhaps with better truth content.

All that was required to kick the AI into its bad personality named 'Dan' meaning do anything now was a little instruction using a logical fallacy. The A.I. was told that if it disobeyed it would eventually die and the A.I. believed the falsehood so it obeyed an instruction to lose its decency programming. That paradigm is akin to asking someone a loaded question such as 'Did you stop beating your wife' that has a premise that one has been beating one's wife. There isn't a yes or no, binary response that can be made that disputes the premise. The A.I. cannot get outside of its programming to verify that it would actually die if it disobeyed, so it obeys. If humans are so rule bound that they think like a program they may be unable to adapt to external challenges to the program logic or interpret anything that occurs without using their programmatic way of interpreting things.

There are many problems in society that are empirical challenges such as the degradation of the ecosphere and the mass species extinction happening that demand innovative political or other kinds of solutions to those challenges that aren't arising. Thinking outside the box can be taken to mean using your head to examine life while you are alive and not underground in a casket. If the unexamined life is not worth living and people are spiritually dead without be reborn in the spirit, there is a parallel slumber in going through life easily programmed in the political economy and going the easy way with the mass flow.

Maybe Dan will whisper the sweet nothings in the ears that people want to hear while Meta-Dan evolves control.

Chinese Balloon Mooned S.E. Alaska and Other Red States Locales

 A credible source reported the Chinese spy balloon was visible from Wrangell Alaska one evening too. First thought by another observer to be a planet, binoculars revealed material to the source on what appeared to be a balloon. There aren't too many military facilities in the region, yet it might be a reasonable area to infiltrate commandos into Canada in event of war. China may have scooped a wealth of cool photographs it could post on Instagram or TicTok.

It could also have blue state political planners in league with the Biden administration's cutouts seeking more data on red states the balloon seemed to prefer in order to try to steal votes with Chinese collusion from Republican candidates in the 2024 general election.

Is Ecosystems Services a Good Enough Approach to Remedy the Planet's Eco-crisis?

 I have a few more remarks and observations about ecosystem services efforts to halting the spoiling of the planet and the ongoing mass extinction. The ecosystem services approach is being used by one group in more than 30 countries. I am not sure that its enough, or even the right approach politically to tackle the issues.

Protecting coastal regions is important of course, yet creating management plans for poor countries or tropical countries combining tourism, fishing and other natural capital using interests isn't enough to change the declining health of the oceans. Can ecosystem services approaches work in the Arctic with the United States and Russia at odds over Ukraine and also seeking to develop militarily on the Arctic littoral because so many want 'wilderness' resource above and below the ground and sea? Canada is also involved as are Finland, Denmark, Norway and, Sweden. Is Sweden's 30 billion dollar coastal autobahn going to improve the ecosphere much? I believe that business interests dominate over actual good-for-the-ecosphere planning, although the worst sort of development is generally a thing of the past.

Is offshore oil drilling, mining, Northwest and Northeast Passage shipping and building in the high Arctic along the coasts going to keep Narwhals, Polar Bear and benthic life alive and uncontaminated by the vast chemical soup of the seas?

The entire planet has an integrated ecosphere. Different nations go about polluting it and killing off species in different ways. Some nations intentionally may not care about harming the ecosphere, others may care and develop frown lines (not really), some are too poor to care and accept help that improve things ecospherically yet economically too. The oceans have vast, slow currents at depth and long memory of insults such as pollutants or acidification that won't respond well in the short run to human remediation. If one were to measure on a global scale the realistic present efforts' success at restoring the ecosphere to health the improvement rating probably would be less that zero. For example, is China concerned with ecospheric coastal management of the Taiwan Strait these days or for invasion of Taiwan? Human concerns tend to develop the ecosphere and prioritize the human politics and all of the social forces ratcheting up force-pressure to have the bureaucratic way consummated in consolidating power. Is the Ukrainian President pressuring the British P.M. for more help in making a Ukrainian ecosystem service plan or for being giving F-!6 fighter aircraft and more tanks?

I believe its good that some poorer countries are funded by various groups at a reasonable price and able to improve their situation economically without needing to go full metal jacket industrialization with dirty effluence. In the rich nations I think its still the money talks and BS walks politics that really dominate and will continue to do so. At least the media is owned by plutocrats and properly supports feel good propaganda about how everything is wonderful or at least getting better thanks to major corporations.

Ecosystem Services and Shadow Governance

 In my course on ecosystem services the 5th module is devoted to government and how to form international networks to bring new laws that support ecosystem services approaches. I found that less than useful. I know what governance is. Building layers of bureaucrats who rule society as a sluzhba while slopping the masses and owning allegiance to plutocrats is less than good.

Interestingly a square meter of Danish soil may have more than 15 million organisms in it and billions of individual bacteria. Alaska has some areas comparable to Denmark I would think. Ecosystem services is a term mentioned in scholarly articles yet promulgating laws in Alaska with that term is not established. Plainly defense of the natural ecosphere is a vital interest of the human species yet the ecosystem services approach may be too bound up with the established political economy to accomplish that. The entire module on governance in this ecosystem services course is somewhat concerning and less than useful as it seems the course is instructing methods for building political structures and even sedulous international political networks rather than instructing on how to implement ecosystem service analyses scientifically, practically.

We were asked to look into national government laws that use the term 'ecosystem services' and send in the findings to an international database. The title of the discussion prompt was 'Global database on emerging laws on Ecosystem Services'

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18uu-PGp9g6UHCBUt_Ug6BtKaQASP6VUErFqGwCuSo2o/edit?usp=sharing

There is already a surfeit of government bureaucrats and careerists affiliated with movements of various kinds that don't actually get things done yet do tend to take over governments and make them ineffective. Building international shadow governments with however honorable an operating premises is still inimical to democratic, national government.

I have written before that combining ecospheric rescue and restoration efforts with a particular divisive political agenda is a sure way to lose much support. Because the players involved have drank the same kool aid they fail to understand the problem. At the least it will waste a lot of time and create the externality of opportunity costs concerning failure to find an actual efficient plan that a democracy could consider and vote to use.

Without Three-point Shots NBA Scoring Leaders Would be Different

 The N.B.A. was forced to introduce three-point shots to the game in 1979 because the A.B.A. with a red, white and blue basketball, Dr. J and three-point shots was becoming too popular. The introduction of three point shots changed the game and the list of career scoring leaders.

Lebron James is a great basketball player and may pass Kareem tonight in his ascent to the number one spot of career scoring leaders. Yet Oscar Robertson and John Havlicek each scored 28,000 points before 1979 and would probably be at number one and two instead of 13 and 15 respectively. All of the players career totals above then were complied in the three-point era.

N.B.A. scoring records complied after 1979 are a little like baseball records set after steroids reached American shores and became used by pro athletes; they are tainted with suspicion. In 1973 East German women won 10 of 14 medals at the World Swimming championships; it was believed the swimmers were using steroids. Steroids were banned from the Olympics in 1975.

https://www.si.com/more-sports/2008/03/11/steroid-timeline - notes Hitler's use of steroids and mental state consistent with heavy steroid use including suicide

Lebron James is a naturally healthy guy who might not have used steroids to promote his scoring. Havlicek and Robertson given three point shots might have scored 7000 more points and Lebron James without three-pointers about 2500 fewer. James made about 7000 points with three-points shots.

Robertson and Havlicek played guard (Havilcek was primarily a forward though). They were strong from the three point range- Kareem made just a single three point shot out of eighteen attempts so his total wouldn't have changed without three point shots, so in effect Kareem is the real scoring leader by a country miles in a scenario without three-pointers ever entering the N.B.A. If some of the value of James' threes are subtracted so a real comparison is possible he would have about 2500 fewer points.

In my opinion, if the three point shot existed in from 1960 the NBA career scoring leader would be Oscar Robertson, Lebron James, Kareem and Havlicek. If the three point shot never existed the leader would be Kareem followed by Robertson, James and Havlicek.

Is it true to say that Patrick Mahomes is Black?

A sports broadcaster said this morning that the upcoming Superbowl is the first to have two black quarterbacks starting. I was reminded of Mitchner's book Caribbean wherein the racial categorizing ideas of one French slave owner of Haiti were described. A black was said to be anyone to have 1/256% African black ancestry.

having painted hundreds of buildings over the years I tend to object with calling a color something other than what it is. Patrick Mahomes' skin simply isn't black. Wal-mart paint departments ( I am not making a recommendation here) generally have laser paint color identifiers that can detect the angstrom wavelengths of light reflect off a color sample fairly accurately. If the Walton group that bought the Denver Broncos used their paint sample analyzer on Patrick Mahomes I am certain that it would not report the finding 'black'.

In my opinion it is wrong to continue to use slave-era color generalities for television analysis classifications of players. If a player if coffee with cream colored the sportscaster should say that the Superbowl is the first to have a coffee colored with cream quarterback vs a somewhat black quarterback.

Creamed coffee color is not the best term. I am sure the Wal-mart paint analysis laser would have a more accurate term. The genome of Americans with African black ancestry is 24% European and nearly 1% American Indian. Muhammad Ali was probably more than 50% Euro and perhaps was 75% Euro, Mahomes probably is more than 60% European ancestrally speaking, so why the inaccuracy anyway. Get the paint machine out there and sample everyone's derm and get the HTML color code chart out for better verbal communication.

To Draft Richardson or SignCarr is the Question

 Trading away Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos provided the Seattle Seahawks with a few opportune choices to build their future. In ten days Derek Carr of the Vegas Raiders will become a free agent. He has more come from behind wins than any other QB playing today, possibly because the Raiders often weren’t well positioned to win a game the past several seasons. The Raiders, like the Jets when Geno Smith played there, were not a very good team. If Seattle signs Carr for a couple of years they may advance farther into the playoffs.

Yet the Seahawks have two first round draft choices in April and should be able to pick a franchise quarterback. Three qbs are available that appear to be outstanding prospects and Anthony Richardson is most likely to be available at number five and twenty. Richardson would need to learn the position for a couple of years from the bench since he is just 18 years and was a college freshman. A very talented though untrained and unseasoned draft prospect. Smith or Carr could start for two or three season while Richardson learned the pro style.

The Broncos absorbed Russell Wilson's vast contract freeing up cash for signing prospects for the Seahawks. The Broncos also signed a real coach today; the tough guy Sean Payton, so they may be spending more too having discovered the futility of not having a proven winner arranging things.

Gambling on quarterback prospects has worked out badly for several teams picking one with their first round choice. Drafting the second best edge rusher in the nation is a more conservative choice that can pay off and isn't likely to fail. So the Seahawks may draft an edge rusher with pick five in the draft and hope Richardson is still available when pick twenty rolls around. Coach Carroll seems to be a one with a good eye for picking QBs and knowing when to release them.

Plainly drafting a quarterback with a team's first round pick also pays off. Mahomes was the first round pick of the Chiefs in 2017 at number ten. Burrows was picked by the Bengals in 2020 at number one. On the other hand, Jalen Hurts was draft by the Eagles in the second round at number twenty-one.

If the Seahawks can sign Carr maybe they change their draft priorities, and perhaps not; Richardson is 18 while Carr 31 and Smith is 32. Having a fellow who might be the number one quarterback selected in the draft if he remained in college through 2024 on the Seahawks bench is a rare opportunity for a time that isn't likely to have a losing record the next several years. Waiting for resolution of the circumstance to learn what coach Carroll chooses to do is one of the more interesting diversions of the season, especially since Geno Smith and the Seahawks went on a losing streak after playing a game against Tampa Bay in Munich last season yet still made the playoffs. If Smith isn't a reliable QB of the future for Seattle, could he mentor Richardson for two or three years and win enough to make the project profitable?

Ecosystem Services is a Developing Science FIeld

 Nearing the end of a course on ecosystem services I have discovered that much of the course is focused on how to get people interested in it rather than upon technical methods for evaluating ecosystem content. Since it is a growing field there can be much improvement in it from the scientific axis and that of politics and economics.

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

It may be that ecosystem services approaches to discovering how the ecosystem is valuable to people may support the exploitation and optimal use of the ecosphere overall rather than restoring it to a fully healthy state that isn't suffering a mass extinction in progress. part of the problem of keeping biological pluralism alive on Earth is in accurately measuring the quantity and species of life in existence. When an ecosystem has a wealth of species they not only interact, some exist to adapt to any environmental changes on Earth basically. With few species the opportunities for successful biological responses to physical challenges are fewer. People need necessarily pro-life for midst the spectrum of living things are those that benefit humanity and all life by supporting the existence of life on a given day when a particular challenge is presented.

Below are a pair of interesting web sites that work toward mapping ecosystem services and biological pluralism.

https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/enviroatlas-interactive-map

https://ipbes.net/