4/5/10

On The Cost of Surgery for the Self-Employed Working Poor

My experience with the cost of surgery for an on-the-job injury while self-employed may be typical for the working poor who do not live within a theoretical framework.

The injury was in June of 2007, the hernia surgery in January of 2010. The charges for a four hour day surgery came to about 14,000 dollars--a bit steep for laproscopic surgery. I just got a phone call from a 'recovery center' in Anchorage claiming another 900 dollar bill for a physician I hadn't heard of. The surgery was in Juneau.

The medical coverage is good, fast and effective. It is also beyond the range of those poor self-employed Americans without corporate or government scale income.

I got the hernias while self-employed roofing. The government wants taxes paid on the earnings of the self-employed without insurance, even though the medical costs for that year were about triple the earnings. The I.R.S. almost always wants a flat ten percent regardless of expenses--thats the way it is. Wtihout regular deductions for social security, medicare and such they want money in a lump sum. One earns less than the standard deductable, has triple the medical costs, and the government still wants its ten per cent-year after year

Well, I had bought a new remote property in Alaska to build a home on, yet traded that to pay half the surgery cost. Forced to work to get out of Juneau after surgery at something with lifting. I picked up an end of a 30 gallon bin full of water and fish and got a heck of a strain. Workers are rather disposable in America. Another hernia without another home to trade would leave we short. The work in Juneau is mostly just for government workers and some corporate employment in tourist related things. Though the Juneau royal family politician-Dennis Egan-says things are good here, they aren't. The population and economic facts rarely change much because its a city of government workers in isolation.

At least the government takes care of those global corporations and broadcast powers allocating resources to concentrate wealth. Its good to know the government follows the Roman pattern of decadence and probably will collapse eventually with plenty of hell even for the bureaucrats and rich. Then, the barbarians over the border will probably have national health coverage and wear Gucci shoes, the U.S.A. will be invaded by corporate bill collectors and free enterprise absolutely impossible for noncorporate entities.

The tax credits the government has been giving to the middle class with corporate jobs to buy homes does nothing at all for the poor seeking to buy land to put a tent on. If one owns property then at least own might build a fair hut for a low cost instead of paying corporate for a rental (if one hasn't got a hernia or three).

4/3/10

After the End of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction; Part Three

Physicalism is a term Quine used instead of materialism. Quine's ontological terminology allows any term to be a non-realist term--that is unlike Kripke's neo-realism where words seem to have some real meaning associated with them for themselves, Quine seem to lean more toward Russell and others who felt words have meaning given by use. If physical means one thing to people in 1775 and another thing today--each meaning could be true,yet that's more of an historian of language meaning's kind of truth then and now rather than the kind of truth that one might find in some kind of analytic statement construction such as "every triangle has three sides".

Quine might have agreed with your statement above--yet in the Kantian context the analytic and a priori is something more independent of experience of the world of experience.

It was Immanuel Kant who developed the concept of analytic and synthetic judgments in his magnum opus 'The Critique of Pure Reason'. He later presented a condensed version of the Critique in 'A Prologumena to Any Future Metaphysics'. LikeBeing and Nothingness and the Bible, I have had that book around forever.

Kant's work is considered to have commenced modern philosophy as co-equal with Descartes. Descartes examination of the cogito and primordial sentient thought was a foundation for epistemological logic, yet Kant's work was more rigorously technical. I will place a pair of hyperlinks to descriptions of Kant's categories of thought. Analytic judgments are about things in the mind without necessary existence in the 'natural'world. Such statements such as exist in algebra suffice as an example, while statements about rainfall, a Superbowl game, bad federal building design in D.C.--these are examples of synthetic judgments. Quine however transcended the difference between the two realms that empiricists had made an opinion about.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-judgment/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic-synthetic_distinction

I will quote the wikipedia entry on their technical definition of a phrase each of Kant's analytic proposition and his synthetic proposition:

"analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept"

"synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept"


With analytic judgments it is easy to make intentional, within thought only tautologies or topics in agreement logically that do not necessarily exist physically. I should same it is in theory possible, yet perhaps only so far as one acknowledges the proposition as finite in nature, phenomenal and subject to the boundaries of the incompleteness theorem of Godel. Geometric forms are implicitly section-samples of some larger wholistic realm of forms perhaps--a conic section is just a conic section of a cone, sphere or some other arbitrary configuration of volume.

Incidentally, I think salvation through Jesus Christ may concur with Plotinian paradigmata of The One in this regard; Jesus may be the only sinless,perfect form permissible to God for integration into the eternal realm of forms, heaven,or eternal, scalable purposes of God. Humanity pervasively has local, non-eternal broken form in acceptable for scalable eternal being. The sacrificial work of The Lord who donates His grace unto the faithful provides human beings with The Perfect Form required of The One whom issued this temporal Universe with numerous broken forms within it. Even junk r.n.a. has a purpose though--so the unwilling to be saved through Jesus Christ may serve a useful temporal role unknown to many of us.

The wikipedia entry for Kant also reminded me of another important Kantian distinction regarding statements; the a priori and the a posteriori. I will quote a phrase each from the wiki entry on those:

"a priori proposition: a proposition whose justification does not rely upon experience"

"a posteriori proposition: a proposition whose justification does rely upon experience"


Taken together with the analytic-synthetic distinction it is easy to understand how empiricists could classify synthetic a posteriori favorably and a priori statements rather with bias. Darwinians would favor the synthetic a posteriori for physical evidence. Quine found the Kantian methods rather unwieldy. Obviously a lot of analytic and even a priori judgments go into theorizing about evolution that is added to the physical evidence, and such also occurs in anticipating the future truth values of present federal budget deficit and national debt predictions which have a discount rate greater than that of many too big to fail banks. Some governments feel they are too big to fail I think.

Empiricists believed that only synthetic judgments could present real information about the world--especially useful to scientists. Following is a link to a defense of Kant vs Quine. I agree with Quine however, and believe that Kant's noumenonal-phenomenal distinction is more important.

http://nzphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/08/kants-analyticsynthetic-distinction.html

The analytic synthetic distinction is of practical value in classifying various kinds of language and what it refers to, and is of value for philosophy in distilling ideas and language for logical consideration of meanings of terms and their validity in particular contexts. Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction was transcended in the same way the Einstein's relativity transcended Newton's theory of gravity. Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction is still valid locally for categorizing phrases and referents, yet not absolute--that is analytic judgments occur in a physical context too although in the mind, and propositions they can be about such as quantum mechanics, or string theory, may actually apply to the 'real world' such as might analytic statements such as 'the color of the apple is red'. From understanding of optics we know why the color of an apple may appear red to a sighted individual who isn't color blind. Newton developed a theory of optics.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08603a.htm

"____________________________"

That's an interesting inference. Plotinus pointed out that questions, language and communication in a sense exist only for imperfect beings lacking omniscience. If The One knows everything then there is no reason to ask anything. For Plotinus the existence of anything therefor was a mystery; if The One is absolute perfection and power,why create the temporal?

The phenomenal has the unknown too. Perhaps with analytic or even a priori researches one might attain more knowledge. That is possibly a history of math and algebra with Lie and Killing groups useful for string theorists who still develop an analytic framework without decent yet into conformal symmetry with the 'objective realm'of experience that is this Universe.

I think that sort of unknown area of research can only reveal the phenomenal however. A valid string theory could only be phenomenal, as I think can any a priori or analytic, synthetic or a posteriori judgment be only revelatory of the phenomenal. The noumenal is unknowable. I erred above I think in postulating to forms of the noumenal-such perhaps as you refer to for the discovery of which is a purpose of language. I think type A of the noumenal should just be the unknown phenomenal. The noumenal would be that vast realm forever unknowable to human knowledge.

Small Nuclear Plants and Containment of Terror Challenges Prolifrerate

If these petite nukes go in all over the world to increase electrical output then the requirement for security defend these little 8000 home power nuggets will increase along with nuclear waste. Letting ten thousand nuclear plants bloom may bring a hidden, down side of lethality.

Amory Lovins and John Price wrote a book in 1975 titled "Non-Nuclear Futures--The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy". Many of the arguments against the larger nuclear plants are valid against the small as well. Politicians are perhaps the least creative segment of society continuously dredging up old energy ideas and presenting them as new answers. They invest in upgrading old technologies instead of supporting new because of the wealthy political contributors that have investments in the old industries that paint America into a corner financially. They do not support either national financial or energy independence.

The new, small nuclear power plants that could be in a neighborhood near you soon. Ranging from 10 to 45 megawatts, these mini-tower nukes make local politicians and real estate developers drool with happy anticipation of new sumptuously profitable growth with private power plants. Microsoft and Exxon could buy these babies to power their corporate growth interests,and of course Google should need several to surge electrons for terra-flopping on wireless gaming of more virtual reality The city of Galena Alaska along the Yukon River is reported to be negotiating with a foreign supplier. Ninja-Spetnatz suicide bombers ofthe future may scuba under the ice at high speed to emerge a dark winter nght with a sonic laser ice cutter to blow up the shaft and kill the artificial salmon runs restored toreplace the lost native salmon population.

The effects of all of these temporal, deleterious, phenomena, concatenate environmental wastage and social danger--the environment gets bad. What is needed is rational long-range selection of modest, conservative infrastructures that will produce super-conducting electron storage and transmission channels of green input photons and wind energy.

Iran could use these smaller plants instead of large one--yet thousands could be built to power everyone's neighborhood--is that really a good idea? Larger plants are better for making clandestine nuclear materials for refining upward for nuclear weapons materials--and thats what the real power is about for some.

4/2/10

After the End of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction; Part Two

I believe that Quine in renormalizing the Kantian dichotomy from the analytic-synthetic distinction left a default criterion for philosophical epistemology rather adrift without a rudder. Plainly it was fairly difficult to maintain that naive realism presents the comprehensively true facts regarding theory of knowledge.

The implication of ending the separation between intellectual constructions and statements about 'real' objects and the 'real world' so useful to scientists of a certain persuasion brought more credence to the Dewian kind of linguistic relativism preferable in the Midwest and possibly amongst certain Bostonian academics. Pervasive skepticism about meaning in language regarding its ability to make statements about what true knowledge is also slipped a fog of Brahmanist-like temporal relativism over the ultimate value of science. I care about that because I enjoy cosmology.

So given that knowledge expressed in language may be a subjective ontological selection of terms and concepts such as W.V.O. Quine described in 'Ontological Relativity', ideas are not limited simply to selecting from ideas and concepts already made--they are synthesized for use in new emergent temporal circumstances as required to provide meaning. Meaning is found in the use of words to accomplish functions as desired in communication.

There is an unknown element to human knowledge, and that was what I mentioned above-rather than being convoluted it is expressly simple and plain. My opinion is that the unknown comes in two flavors; the first can be known and the second cannot.

Kant used the word 'noumenon' to describe the unknowable realm of things-in-themselves that cannot be known. What can be known is the phenomenal. Both analytic and synthetic statements are valid as far as the phenomenal goes, yet not for the noumenal. Perhaps some analytic statements cannot be used in the phenomenal either, because they are false, yet Quine believed that all analytic statements of mind occur in the wholistic Universe. My opinion is that the wholistic universe presents, for human beings, a noumenal-phenomenal distinction.--that is , I agree with Kant. The unknown within phenomenal parameters has the potential to become known, the unknown within noumenal parameters does not.

Since I am on this topic of linguistic relativism, I should like to mention an opinion that Shannon entropy conserves information not only of mass, but of 'the spirit'. The spirit in this present context means the sentient mind,its experience and personality. Because Darwinian insights about material causality referring to biological life processes may seem to differ from 1930's era common opinions, naive interpretations of, and additions to the Bible; it became popular and even dogmatic to assert that spirit does not exist, and could not outlast physical death.

A license authorized by meaninglessness regarding moral accountability logically followed a theory of non-spiritual existence.It became dogmatism amidst select unenlightened minstrels to a certain extent without conveyance of intellectual merit upon the point of view. It is a somewhat anachronistic ontology before modern science brought many more insights into the nature of language from both the analytic and synthetic sides, along with mathematics, genetic research and so forth. Spirit viewed as a sentient gift of a human mind, albeit with a substantial foundation in the wholistic universe, along with all information--is not necessarily destined to disappear through a process of annihilation by death of the body.

Matter is never created or destroyed (generally). The information of where or what everything is inclusive of the spiritual will be equally conserved. Life is not just a meaningless relativism--there are consequences for all things sentient beings choose to do.

Returning then to the nature of language; ontologolgies may be larger meaning-lexicons in through which one may describe world-view elements and relations. Describing a theory of knowledge within a given lexicon may in some way be analogous to the human experience of reality; downloading or collapsing a world-view reduces the potential from an all-possible worldlines of the uncertainty realm of quantum superpositions toward a more specific realm. There is an opportunity cost to collapsing any realm of potential world-views to that of the selection of a particular world-view.

William James wrote about 'forced options' in his pragmatist work. In several respects the selection of a world view is a forced option with the default world-views being less effective generally. That which human beings create or construct in knowledge is not all the knowledge that is, it is not all that could have been, and is limited to a phenomenal nature though it has pragmatic applications. Knowledge is a beans and bacon item. We are luck to such as we have yet might have had halibut cheeks if we were good at fishing and filleting.

3/30/10

Hutaree,HuT and Hut Liberation Theology

A special forces axiom is to sew confusion amongst the opposition forces. Conspiracy and collusion theorists that believe the U.S. Government today is a front for an evil Satanic empire seeking corporate dominion over the globe, might see the 9-11 destruction of the world trade towers as such a well executed action that created a new foreign enemy of an appropriate size and nature to increase Satanic globalist power. The recent Federal arrest of the whites-only Hutaree 'Christian' militia allegedly for terror planning activity--they are said to have planned to kill a policemen and then plant improvised explosive devices to kill more attending the funeral, has additional aspects of a Federal propaganda scheme to throw terrorist suspicion and profiling away from black Muslims in Detroit and on to white Christians--a happier target group for the black led federal executive branch and justice department.

2010 is an era where the Federal Government has signed off on homosexual marriage in the nation's District of Columbia, where people write on the Internet asking philosophically if human tissue grown in laboratories with genetic technology if used for food would be cannibalism, in which xeno-transplantation and trans-humanism are points of popular interest. Non-philosophers, and those of low I.Q. also economically challenged may reasonably wonder if the U.S. Government is a sinecure for a clave of wacko, perverted atheistic idiots. Who can say with certainty that it isn't?

Notably the former mufsidoon administration of President George W. Bush had luck arresting only incompetent black or non-white terrorists in the United States following 9-11. Perhaps the federal branch is somewhat biased after all--and I had previously believed them to be the paragon of truth, justice and the American way. Following the disappointing arrest of blond haired blued eyed Jihad Jane for planning to carry out a terrorist mission against a foreign cartoonist, we are persuaded that the arrest of white terrorists may increase during the remainder of the Obama administration. It is lucky the English Nigerian with pentex in his briefs seeking to orgasm over Detroit aboard an airplane flying in from Britain was not also white, for then pay-back might have been large within a vast right wing conspiracy context (either that or its a vast left-wing conspiracy).

Hizb-ut-Tahrir HuT The HT Group declared 'a jihad against police' in Kyrgyzstan in 2006 and was 'banned' as a terrorist group

Plainly the problem of the Hut Conspiracy is a consequence of Liberation Hut Theology that ensued the remification of persecution in America in the 1980s. Sarah Palin may not be a remedy to such injustice, yet she is at least from Alaska, and I saw her at church while she was yet the Governor of Alaska...she may be destined for higher office.

The philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote a prescient book before the great war of Europe named 'The Revolt of the Masses'--he anticipated that modernization would bring the completion of a revolt of the masses against the ancient regime of aristocrats and concentrated wealth. He was right, and the leaders in the mass wars were rather incompetent approximaters of liberation theory. The remedies to oppression were equal to or greater than the problems--it adds up. The technological revolution in the way of economic living compelled a revolt against the owners of wealth of the former economic system. It was a natural evolution in blood required by then lack of spiritual insight pervasively amongst humanity of the age. They had not yet experienced a second enlightenment of the masses equivalent ton the first with cheap mass literature of a trashy sort.

The hut is a kind of symbol of aboriginal independence. The hut is a simple do-it-yourself home that does not require a mortgage lasting half a lifetime to pay for. The hut is despised by the powers of concentrated wealth that are trans-national mortgage lenders. In the United States the foreign owned portion of rental properties fluctuates to as high as 25% of all properties and may go higher. The hut is the symbol of nationalism and of local political self-determination. The Satanic Government hates the hut and seeks to delete the free-holding ownership of local and personal self-sufficiency.

Patrick Henry and the other founders of the United States were not all hut dwellers to children of the hut. Many of them were hut or cabin dwellers. Abe Lincoln was a son of the aboriginal hut of the Illinois of his day. Many Americans still aspire ton the freedom of the hut and sentiment alloy sympathize a little at least with revolutionaries today fomenting revolution against a Federal government considered to be a brutal pimp for globalism flooding the United States with illegal foreign shock workers and outsourcing jobs to communist China. The hut represents the freedom of aboriginal America against foreign control and subjugation. The new revolt of the masses may comprise a high-tech hut in a national and locally led village or constellation of huts self-reliant as producers of their own electricity, food and books.

Yet the Satanic evil empire of globalism in which the U.S. Government has enshrouded itself like the undead zombies of some science fiction realm of the universe of doom may be more of an incompetent political drift by leaders in a race of greed than a skull and bones Harvard-Yale axis of evil. It might be corrected by less than the traditional ,means of violence or voting the founders provided as exemplary of the American political way of life.

The Huteree terrorist group of Michigan is an example of incompetence at revolutionary method. We know from reading Trotsky something of revolutionary planning. Isaac Deutcher's History of Trotsky showed his work with Lenin and other Bolsheviki in structuring their war upon the Tsar of Russia--even so it was the German military power that fundamentally enabled their success--they could not have made it non their own at all. The German Army defeat the Russian Army on the eastern front of world war one and sent Lenin in a train from exile to Russia to take assume revolutionary leadership.

The interesting thing about the Michigan Huteree group is its shared goal of killing policemen with the Kyrghiz HuT jiadist group. Such resonance adds fuel to the fire of suspicion that an evil planner is structuring propagandist coups for media consumption to dupe the masses into anti-hut, pro-concentrated wealth 30 year mortgage support that is quite inimical to the interests of the poor and the middle class. If such a Federal global evil-empire policy is in covert actualization, if the herd is being driven into an ideal glass cow palace of control and indebtedness, if homosexual militancy from San Francisco to Boston and Washington D.C. and Admiral Mullins in Afghanistan is an essential tool for the leverage of globalism upon removal of independent hut construction, revolution may be a remedy sought increasingly ahead.

The religious associations of the hut liberation movement may be incidental results of the organizational capacity of ecclesiastical structures applied to political-economic equations and interests in the lack of other organizational remedies suitable for economic war upon wealthy, powerfuel oppressors. Communist and Mohammedanism each have superior revolutionary organizational structure to that of a hierarchical Christianity or corporate hierarchical evil empire.

Such actual revolutions to attain the freedom of the hut would require right targeting of economic infrastructure that would bring down corporate power lines and enable only home powered electricity and fuel to flourish--killing policemen is the least harmful thing that could occur to corporate Satanic powers of globalism for they just hire more. Economic attacks by tearing down power lines, sapping bridges, shooting semi truck tires, pouring sugar in corporate gas tanks--that is the sort of thing that does not occur much because there is little real, present interest in revolt in the United States when the masses are still free to charge things with their federal national debt card.

3/28/10

Philosophy Journal hyperlink: Quantum Time Theory

I have made a philosophical inference such that instead of gravitons or gravity waves, time quanta may satisfy Einstein's relativity criteria. Time quanta emerged like virtual particles from the pre-big bang universe, and reversibility of time polarity could explain the expansion and collapses of universes amidst additional features.

On Golden Pond or Lake of Fire?

 I was wondering if a second Biden term would bring a Lake of Fire to the world with nuclear holocaust, or a golden pond for a reelected oc...