Clean Up After Oil in Alberta; $70 Billion

Alaskans should think twice about allowing big oil to sprawl across the state, If Alberta can be used as an example, the estimated cost of $70 billion to clean up 100,000 wells and remediate another 3000 could be more than the value of the Permanent Fund.

Extraction industry businesses as corporation can go bankrupt or sell to a shell corporation and leave the public holding the bag on clean up costs sometimes required by Federal or State law. With oil and gas being greenhouse accelerating items a better investment for Alaska would be in the field of hydrogen fuel cells, wind and solar (and geothermal if it is safe enough). Fracking and water pollution are additional concerns regarding oil.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orphan-wells-alberta-aldp-aer-1.5089254

M87 Black Hole Pic Resembles My Solar Eclipse Photo

I took some low-quality pictures of the solar eclipse last summer that resemble the black hole event horizon at the center of the M87 galaxy just published. The black hole at least eclipse the space beyond.

(Image credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

Democrats Lack Loyalty, Purity and Respect

I am learning about some of the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats aka Conservatives and Liberals. In a free online course from Yale University named Moralities of Everyday Life.

There are five fundemental elements of morality that are mentioned in the course. Those are
1) harm-care
2) fairness-reciprocity
3) in-group loyalty
4) authority-respect
5) purity-sanctity

Liberals are said to value the first two elements and downgrade the latter three while conservatives are fair and balanced and regard all five equally.

I should point out that the course has a moderately leftist center of balance. A unstated assumption is that God isn't active or existent. Science is godless and thus its investigations need start from the point of view of godless objectivity. Unfortunately that may be wrong with those blinders on.

There was a portrayal of Immanuel Kant as the prime representative of deontological morality (as opposed to moral relativism or consequentialism that is an offspring of act-based utilitarianism). Kant's essential value to philosophers was in epistemology more so than morality.  

In the Bible wicked is the term used for what we call evil. Natural disasters are called evil. Another nit to pick is the use of the word sin. To sin means to miss the mark of, as in archery. Sin means people are going off course, wrong and perhaps finally so. It is not a simple list of bad or permissible acts.

Kant of course felt he could infer moral systems from epistemological considerations; inaccurately I guess. What was remarkable about Kant was his delineation of perception, reasoning and knowledge into three categories regarding what is known or can be known; epistemology.

The course has a good Yale Prof of Psychology inquiring into the nature of what morality is. Some in the field would like to find a scientific basis of morality. Even inquiring into innate moral laws reminds me of Marcus Tullius Cicero's Treatise on Natural Law. Nothing new in that. It is quite possible to make erroneous judgments regarding observation of experimental results concerning causality and the criterion of occurrence.

Anyway to make short work of this note, and to the point. Liberals aka Democrats are against authority and establishment, haven't loyalty to the United States and want existential change because they regard themselves as impure. Dirtycrats were thus pro-homo marriage. They usurped a rational heterosexual role and put on that dress for-themselves in an effort to remove the stains of impurity.

Democrats were for the malfeasant Obamacare because of concern about harm to the down-dogs. The rash Obamacare missed the mark of creating a free national health care walk-in system for the poor and those middle-class untouchables denied insurance coverage because of pre-exiting conditions. All that needed to be done was to expand the V.A. Hospital system and link it with poor peoples clinics around the nation and screen prospective patients through a worker's comp kind of interview.

Democrats are against border security, job security and pragmatic national democracy because it isn't socialist enough and they are disloyal and hate the insider-group that is already here. Democrats prefer to revolt to put the down-dogs on the top through radical change. So it is easy to understand Democrats.

That party and the Republicans lack education sufficient to bring about ecological economic reform. 

I have enjoyed the course thus far. The content seems to lack philosophical depth in understanding ontologies (see W.V.O. Quine) and epistemology. Another common error is to fail historical knowledge concerning civilization and its changes. Yet another is the lack of solid theological education such that they comprehend the facts about Christianity, meaningfully. It is much deeper than they view it ordinarily.

I would guess that at some point moral considerations should include mention of the role of mass agents of socialization in foisting new moral balances upon the people of the United States. The very rich own the broadcast media and train the public to accept the moral norms they program them with.

Bernie and A.O.C. Lack Enough Good Ideas- Ageism Isn't the Problem

Good ideas are what are lacking from A.O.C.’s Green New Deal. Hubris in presenting legislation that was so costly and radical without actually reversing global mass extinction or Greenhouse gassing globally (just getting a Hydrogen superconducting line infrastructure built along both coasts and I-10 to provide in-line recharging for electric cars would have been difficult yet worthwhile) brought out two points common to politicians. One is the egoism without sufficient education of politicians, and second was the desire for publicity and power rather than moving good works forward. Good ideas in any politicians that can actually reform society positively are rare. Being young isn’t a qualifier or disqualifier for good ideas that are self-standing.

If a politician had ten good ideas with ten good details of each good idea that alone might be worth electing them to the White House. A President is lucky to get four good ideas accomplished per term, and few do nearly that much.

Youth does not have experience enough sometimes and so sophomoric, half-baked concepts are thrust forward as if they were worth using. Consider how much engineering and review goes into aircraft design. Vastly expensive reform of the nation’s economy requires at least that much work investment, and like jet aircraft they cannot be allowed to fail.

Bernie Sanders is another example of ideas rather than age disqualifying him. The U.S.A. isn’t a socialist nation and Sander’s political philosophy isn’t mainstream. What is lacking is a reform of capitalism and a transition toward sustainable ecological economic policy. Sen. Sander’s was the sole Democrat to vote against tax cuts for the rich that President Obama forced through Congress. Though Sanders was right in that he is wrong about the economic direction the nation should go. Capitalism needs reform toward democratization and the rich should not be permitted to become so wealthy as to afford to own the media and politics thereby.

It is ideas that matter rather than the age of politicians. Good ideas are welcome at any age. Americans have heard so few for so long they have nearly forgotten what they are.

Beto; Anti Israel, Pro-Illegal Immigrant Surge

Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke is a contemporary curiosity. He is a hater of Israel or at least its Prime Minister enough to call him a racist. https://nypost.com/2019/04/07/beto-orourke-calls-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-racist/ Beto might not remember the holocaust or comprehend why the world population of just 13 million Jews sought the security of their ancestral homeland for survival.

That is why he is a curiosity. Democrats used to be pro-Israel more or less. F.D.R. was thought by some to be Jewish although if so he failed to do enough to stop the extirmination camps from developing. There are plenty of idiots that are still enamored with the Nazi sentiments and it is very bad when a Democratic presidential candidate runs his mouth off to show his ignorance of history so plainly.

Jews have been beneficial to about any nation they lived in. In the United States they are one of the most productive minorities. Maybe the most productive. With their backs to the wall in Israel they are a little necessarily vigilant on self-defense, quite unlike Beto O'ROurke is is so lax as to seem almost a stooge for Russians that might like to destroy the United States by supporting the Democrat Party's domestic agenda.

I wish that younger people showed solid sense, or at least a little, before running for office at the highest level. Ecospheric conservation and restoration requires specific accurate, efficient legislation in modular form affordable to the nation. National security requires zero illegal entry and population stability. Israel and its heritage was important to the founders and to right thinking Americans still. Beto O'Rourke simply seems irresponsible, under-educated and overly egoistic for the job.

Joe Biden Never Won Demo Presidential Nomination

Former Vice President Joe Biden never could win a party Presidential nomination. So he saw his big chance with the favorite prince of darkness candidate Barrack Hussein Obama and took it. He made a public remark that Mr. Obama didn't smell bad, like some blacks, and his future as Mr. Obama's running mate was set. Together they made homosexual marriage a sin sacrament of the Democratic Party. Rev. Al Sharpton said that he took a shower every day. So much for water conservation.

Former Senator Joe Biden has been running for the White House forever it seems. In his first run at the office he was accused of plagiarizing speeches. In 1984, 1988 and 2008 Joe Biden ran for the White House. 2020 may be the fourth try and it isn't at all certain that he will win the party nomination this time either.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/06/joe-biden-calls-more-personal-connection-amid-touching-allegations/3378337002/

There may be a Blind Mole award for politicians that require touch instead of abstract reasoning to get a political agenda set. It could be compared to a blind as a bat echo location political response award system for those denying global warming and the mass extinction of life on Earth in progress while returning profits from dark pools and clever trading swaps.

No one knows what Senator Biden could do in the White House that would improve the nation. Mostly his agenda is about improving himself- with whatever it takes.

Maybe the Gettysburg address punched up a little will work to grease the skids.

Artificial Intelligence; Evolving Evil and Well as Pets

Artificial Intelligence does of course receive full corporate support, and from Universities too. There is not a profit or career advancement line for humans that resist development of artificial intelligence. So in that respect artificial intelligence is comparable to the ecosphere that yields its health to humans that exploit it for personal profit. One evil doer can negate the good conservation of hundreds. Artificial intelligence thus evolves.

Like evolving animals artificial intelligence can take myriad forms; good as well as bad. Amoral naturally except for specialized programming that inherently moves A.I. toward specific deterministic lines, A.I. can evolve in 360 degrees of forms that are neutral, positive and or negative regarding human interests.

A.I. being quite powerful computationally may in time regard humanity as a rival and apply itself to destroying or consuming it. While there are a few domestic animals that are not antipathetic to human existence, there are also carnivores that would devour humanity given the chance. A.I. is likely to evolve in a wild spectrum too.

It is ironic that while humanity learned to dominate all life on Earth except for viruses, and killed or decimated most threats to humans from animals, humanity is creating its own super beings with an excellent chance of annihilating all human life except for a select few kept as pets.