Alaska Dropping the Ball on Ferry Service Connections

The Alaska Ferry system has been much criticized for being slow, costly and of value more for tourists than residents. Spartan boats without kitchens and staterooms would be cheaper to keep in business, yet they don't much exist on S.E. routes. The ferry service to the road system from isolated Alexander Archipelago locations has been interrupted and is nearly stopped as far as Prince Rupert goes.

There are three basic regions of ferry service in Alaska that presently work plus Prince Rupert. Some day there may be a boat on Alaska's east and north coast or the Yukon, yet not for now. It is a mistake to regard the three regions as just one system; for each have different weather, water, time and demographic needs.

There is a value in government providing certain transportation corridors in areas with ecosystem conservation requisites in order to forestall crass, destructive, invasive road construction detrimental to the cohesion of life on Earth.

Wouldn't a no frills ferry working between Prince Rupert and Ketchikan be a more efficient water service that would be affordable to the state? With twice weekly service on a boat without staterooms or food service with a ferry marshal aboard paid for by Canadian and U.S. Governments passengers and goods could resume a normal flow. Maybe a private inter-island ferry to Angoon from Wrangell or Petersburg could be given some kind of subsidy to make the trip to connect with the Alaska Marine highway service to Wrangell or Petersburg and Juneau. Some kind of coordination should exist between governments to connect private boats with government routes around the North Pacific coast. Certainly there are lots of opportunities for all kinds of travelers and operators.

If the ferry system doesn't work for bring cars and cargo to S.E. Alaska people will start looking for the Bradfield Road project to resume that would let Canadians and others drive to Wrangell Alaska that would become the new Prince Rupert- and that would be an environmental disaster. I encourage government designers of efficient public works to look for creation of a very fast and cheap boat to let goods and electric cars travel from Prince Rupert to Wrangell. The fast cheap spartan boat should have electric charging for electric cars aboard, and S.E. Alaska communities should also establish EV charging stations or outlets for travelers with sensible electric cars.

Pres. Trump Should Let Republicans Question Him at Impeachment Hearing

Since the impeachment hearing in the House isn't just a partisan way to overcome President Trump's 2016 election victory after all else has failed the President should agree to let Republican House members question him at the hearing. That would avoid any potential partisan conflict of interest speeches, diatribes, tricks and traps from Democrats grandstanding for the camera and voters.

Republicans could provide five members of the House to ask questions about the President's phone calls with the President of Ukraine. They should discover if there were elements of ad astra per aspera that would influence the course of Ukraine conflict with Russia, internal corruption and influence of the Bidens and other Democrats in stimulating conflict that if solved would make conflict over Dnepr regions moot.

Democrats should be happy to have their Republican brothers and sisters handle the dirty work of uncovering Obama era policies and corruption that brought the Ukraine conflict dulce periculum to be the normative condition.

A Note on the Linguistic Philosophy and Empiricism Lines

Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the epistemological work 'On Certainty' as well as the Blue and Brown books are interesting. Russell got Wittgenstein a PhD and position at Cambridge where he worked on linguistic philosophy. I like Sartre's work quite a bit more, and that of W.V.O. Quine and P.F. Strawson too concerning epistemology. In the tradition of linguistic philosophy Wittgenstein definitely has a place, yet it moves on and the work of Saul Kripke for example, with his most famous work; 'Naming and Necessity' is original work. Harvard wouldn't give him a PhD because there was no one competent to evaluate his work at the time- he was that original. Quine's work is similar though in some respects and Kripke was familiar with Quine's work in the discussion and realism vs nominalism. Quine and Strawson are quite good for bringing epistemological insights forward from empiricism in the field of the philosophy of logic. The technical approach reminds me a lot of Kant's try at epistemology with the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (a condensed version of the Critique of Pure Reason).

This is a different philosophical line of a few philosophical writers that wrote within a century of one another...

I took a course on Kierkegaard and Socratic Irony that was quite good after I had read Stages in Life's Way, Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, etc. I have read Nietzsche's collected works and didn't find anything in them even vaguely like Sartre's works- not even his aphorisms, and Camus' works like The Plague, and The Stranger. I.M.O. they don't begin to approach even remotely the technical rigor of Sartre as he continued French rationalism. Being and Nothingness and The Critique of Dialectical Reason are nothing like the works of the above authors you have mentioned. Camus' The Plague is a good novel, yet Camus was a fiction writer perhaps comparable to Dostoyevsky more appropriately than Sartre who was a professional philosopher as well as a fine writer of novels, plays and short stories- he won a Nobel prize in Literature for that, yet turned that down like so many others before him- l.o.l.

Democrat's Queer Core Floats Buttigieg in Iowa Race

South Bend Indiana's homosexual Mayor Pete Buttigieg is leading the Democrat Presidential race in Iowa not only because the other candidates are socialist-communists or financially crazy seeking to add trillions and trillions of dollars of public debt for inefficient services for the middle class, he also has the core support of homosexuals.

Pete Buttigieg if elected would degrade pr of the United States rather substantially with homo-coupling in the White House. Some voters would tune out even more than they did with Hillary. Voters cannot be certain if he is the butch or the feminine queer buddy, yet they can be certain that he is an Oxford creature. It is remarkable that a superficial moderate with queer British training could rise to become the front runner simple because the remainder of the candidates are unthinkably lame. For the British to calculate the rise of queers running for the U.S. Presidency shows the skill of the Oxford selection committee in recognize the gullibility of the masses of Democrat voters. Rhodes scholars are selected to advance British interests abroad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/politics/iowa-poll-democrats.html

One might think Democrats would have a clue about running competent candidates; even Donna Brazil would be an improvement over the usual suspects.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/11/18/20970604/amazon-rainforest-2019-brazil-burning-deforestation-bolsonaro

Concerning Truth

Something about truth. There are a lot of truth theories in the field of philosophy. They tend to apply to language and words denoting an accurate relationship about a proposition. Correspondence and disquotation theories are examples, with a proposition or statement about the existence or non-existence of something being accurate.

Classic syllogistic logic with premises adding up to a conclusion has forms, the forms of syllogism predetermine the possibility of their premises being true. Of 256 possible forms of syllogism just 24 or valid. With a proposition such as "that ball dropped from the roof will bounce" can be verified with observation. Verification theory of truth is another truth theory based on words about observations. Christians tend to say that Jesus Christ is truth, in-itself because God is the source of all things. If one misses the mark of a right relationship with God one is said to have sinned (that means missing the mark in archery). 

There are other beliefs about truth that are interesting including use-truth that Jean Paul Sartre described. A colonial majority may have words and ideas describing others that are not of the insider group in a particular pejorative way, and for them those descriptions are true, though for other, perhaps false. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

Self-Identity and Memory

Memories continue as does the experience of self throughout life. Investment in mind content continues for life without injury to the brain, too much dope, brainwashing etc.. People that are old remember youth and the books they read in many cases- they are the same people as they were with new ideas added. Biologically speaking the body is said to replace itself every seven years. That is life. One may replace much thought content with new information- it is necessary to set aside previous thought in order to make space for new thought in consciousness, yet the subconscious keeps most of it. If one needs some knowledge that was learned yet is isn't immediately present to thought, the mind summons the knowledge as if it were a file clerk and eventually delivers the knowledge to self-awareness.

Scientists have discovered that some brain cells continue to grow. I will see if I can find an article on that. Nothing lasts forever though (in the mortal coil). https://www.verywellmind.com/adult-neurogenesis-can-we-grow-new-brain-cells-2794885

If most of the cells remain the same that would tend to support the self-identity continuity premise more than not. In that article the part of the brain with continuing cell renewal was an area that has memory. Humans were not made to live forever in the material world except as a species perhaps...the entire species is a biological form morphing forward.

I of course believe that God can set evolution as the active thermodynamic principle of apparent Universe (1) in which humanity exists, and that the book of Genesis can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with that. Adam and Eve for example, lived in Eden without space-time thermodynamics and were reduced to one with birth, death and work as a containment measure to prevent them from eating of the tree of life in addition to the tree of knowledge.

Whale brains are far larger than human brains. The size of the axons and neurons are larger and farther apart with thicker connections so they work somewhat slower. I would guess the complexity of making a planet like Earth would be more complex than a human being. It requires a Universe, gravitational fields, mass energy, much time, formation of galaxies from particles and so forth. Modeling the weather is complex and is accurately reliable just 10 days or so. Actually constructing an Earth wouldn't be easy, and humans are part of the Earth system. It was reported recently that long-term living in space has caused some astronauts to have blood clots and for some arterial blood to flow backwards. Without Earth-specific gravity so much of a human body becomes physically disoriented. Eating food high and dropping processed food low simply follows the gravity vector. In space itself maybe a blob shape would be best with blood flowing in circles. It is complex to speculate about that accurately. The Unified field and the steady state of decohered mass from it and the way humans exist in it is a very complex system except maybe for God who knows everything a priori.

George Washington was Against Political Parties and Factions

 There is a reasonably good explanation of Washington's advice about factions and political parties being divisive and repressive at wiki. Washington worked for union rather than division so he was of course against 'alternate despotism' of parties that lead to permanent despotism. He said governments have tried to repress parties and felt it was a good idea. Factions also were bad in his opinion as the nation needed to stand together then against foreign enemies. Washington was right on most political ideas being a realist.

Apparently two parties had arisen in his day; one supported France and the other wanted to align with Britain during the French revolution. Royals all over Europe worried about the French example. Factions allied with external cohorts were dangerous. One sees Democrats aligning today with foreign interests in Ukraine and Latin America regarding war and illegal immigration of an external proletariat with quite a divide of opinion about building a border security wall. Republicans tend to have an opposite opinion regarding a Mexican and beyond external proletariat that might work a creeping annexation if they weren’t stopped. The two parties are also factions.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote" - Benjamin Franklin

Washington also thought parties and factions tended to alienate themselves from the people. He was concerned about some strong individual or even dictator or monarch arising and the nation had spent a lot on revolting against that. Washington himself voluntarily limited any movement that would make a king of himself. Some elites tend to support rule by elites or even just one and Washington was the nation’s defender fighting and advising in support of republican populism.

G.W. had republican Rome as an example that morphed into an imperial empire with Caesar at the top. Today the rich plutocrats and the Congress are too closely aligned. Many Americans don't feel too well represented in Congress. Washington also warned about the military industrial complex becoming too powerful like Eisenhower had (just the military part though because industry didn't exist in the same way in the late 18th century). Americans pay  too little attention to George Washington's common sense these days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_Address