Japanese Whale Hunting, Origin of Chocolate, Tongass Forest Conservation, Exporting Alaska Fish Etc.

Federal efforts to move its Tongass National forest management policy in S.E. Alaska toward one of conservation and restoration rather than subsidizing plundering of old growth forest for loggers made progress. The bottoms 20% of Americans-those underemployed or unemployed need work and prosperity so life in the U.S.A. isn’t like living on a prison planet. If one gets a good job-maybe cooking- it’s necessary in these lean times to keep it until they need to pry one’s cold dead fingers off the spatula. The U.S. Government hasn’t had the same tenacity on border security and keeping foreign labor import supply down.

A productive river for salmon devastated from messy logging in the 1970s is being restored while the 2nd growth forests instead of old growth forests will increasingly be sacrificed to the logging industry for cellulose building materials. The old growth forest remaining in the Tongass is just a rump at about 10% of the original.

S.E. Alaska is also the summer home to many migratory whales. Some wonder if exports of Alaska fish to Japan processed in Japanese owned seafood processing facilities in Alaska should be allowed to continue while the Japanese continue to hunt world whales for ‘research’ dining (To answer the question; does tabasco or soy go better with whale?). The Japanese government values Alaska fish and if it wants to continue to snag vast numbers of high-quality protein from Alaska it should make peace with whales and vacate pursuit of the Antarctic and world whale population. Peace should not translate into Japanese as 'piece'.

Wanton destruction of the environment and whales is a consequence of primitive human characteristics inherited from the beginning of mankind’s development of society. It was just 4000 years ago that chocolate was first developed from fermented seeds in Meso-America eventually to become a royal beverage. Chaco Canyon’s Pueblo Bonito imported a chocolate drink in containers from Mexico about 1100 a.d. Royalty dominating quality food supply is not limited to chocolate in the savage era of human culture (no not The Second World War).

Human beings first arrived at Crete by boats or rafts between 130,000 and 700,000 years ago. It is reasonable to believe that if Homo erectus could make it to Crete across the Mediterranean Sea a few souls might have reached America by boat four or five thousand years ago. Whales have lived in the world’s oceans far longer obviously, yet the primitive urge to eat everything that is edible still drives mankind as much as fight or flight and the rituals of war. While the morality of eating creatures with the largest brains on the planet is debatable, the need to conserve a healthy world biodiversity is not. Genetic diversity is a requirement for non-inbred bio-diversity in populations of whales, snow leopards, North American wolves and countless other unique forms of biological creation. Mediterranean Sea

Alaska State Government Perennially Confused About Pipeline Options

The Alaska state government for several decades has vacillated in pursuit of various options to bring in oil or gas revenue to pay for the government operations as the North Slope oil fields are depleted. Even during the 1980s research and development studies for state or corporate financed construction of pipelines to bring more oil or natural gas to tidewater in south central Alaska or Chicago through Canada were main political interests. Nothing ever was constructed from those studies.

Former Governors from Wally Hickel to Tony Knowles and Sarah Palin along with countless candidates have made the construction of a natural gas pipeline a political plank. The simplest thing to build would be an LNG plant at Valdez or Anchorage and a pipeline to it, yet the practical is always set aside for the pursuit of ecological boondoogles.

Former Governor Sarah Palin ram-rodded through a half billion dollar state subsidy to a Canadian Corporation-Trans-Canada in an effort to get an oil corporation to build a pipeline and jobs for Canadians. With the discovery of new methods of fracturing natural gas from formations in the 48 states, the price of natural gas has decreased the interest in building a pipeline from the North Slope through Canadian pipeline infrastructure by special corporate interests. Environmentally that may be a collateral improvement.

The city of Anchorage also has a former state Governor-Bill Sheffield, in a powerful job as a Port Director implementing a construction project over cost, over time and budget. A Port of Anchorage expansion that is sputtering on with building errors reportedly could cost hundreds of millions of dollars too much for completion. The City must close libraries and forgo building warm pedestrian and bike transit malls for winter to finance construction errors.

The global price of gas and oil fluctuates as a regular instability adversely affecting U.S. economics. Building a pipeline and/or gas liquefaction plant at Valdez or Anchorage from the North Slope via Fairbanks flowing through the existing trans-Alaska pipeline corridor might at any given time bring in low or high revenues and royalties as empirical reciprocal values vary. The state and corporations wish to build when the price of natural is high or when supply is diminshed, yet of course the market is partly manipulated and supplies and applications are distorted to maximize corporate profit. The state might find an unreliable market price a reciprocol of political as well as geophysical supply factors. Yet as the state can afford to build the line itself and auction liquefied natural gas to world buyers generally at low or high prevailing market prices it has little reason to produce more rhetoric than gas.

Environmental effects for fracturing basement rock formations in the 48 states have already generated new pollution, toxic water reserves and flaming faucets. War in the Middle East can cut off oil supply and quickly drive up fossil fuel prices. A state government should build a pipeline infrastructure for gas carefully and in compliance with advanced ecological synergy concepts ahead of price fluctuations on the global market. A retarded construction rice changes in a volatile market has a good chance of being out of step at any rate. In a national emergency the pre-existence of a local gas pipeline and LNG plant would mitigate the supply issues. Needless to mention it is important to expect federal investment in lightweight car batteries without rare earth metals and a policy of electric cars without use of fossil fuels.

If Alaska has extra liquefied natural gas it can sell to China on the spot market perhaps a number of Chinese global warming gases producing coal fired power plants could be replaced with some burning cleaner natural gas. Natural gas spent in power plants instead of developing fuel cell generators, superconductors, wind and solar energy input) too quickly reduces national natural gas reserves.

Reince Preibus Moves Ahead of Michael Steele in RNC Chair Voting

After three rounds of voting Reince Preibus has moved well ahead of Michael Steele in the election of a new Republican National 'Komiteh' Chairman. Steele is so far losing votes and ground with each round of votes and seems likely to lose the job.

We search for a new Ralph Nadir on the political horizon yet will need to look elsewhere than in the Republican Party.

Let us remember the warning words of Yogi Berra apropos for national economic and environmental management; 'You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there'.

Blood Libel or Bloody Libel; Sarah Palin Didn't Pull the Trigger

Politics beyond the Pale of Settlement comprised 20% of European Imperial Russia. Jews were allowed to live 'beyond the pale' (pale derives from the word stake in Latin) and on to the border with Prussia. Sarah Palin has denounced as a 'blood libel' partisan efforts to interpret her rifle shooter's scope worldview and crosshairs placed upon American political districts with unfriendly politicians (including Arizona). Blood libel is itself an unusual term for an American of this century to use. It is a term associated with historical persecution of European Jewry.

Phonetically 'blood libel' resembles 'blood liberal' or splatter liberl--it is sometimes helpful to navigate linguistically farther away from shoal waters of double entendre to convince good people that you aren't a closet Nazi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beyond-the-pale.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement#Jewish_life_in_the_Pale

It is difficult to conceive of Sarah Palin as any sort of an historical scholar aware of the origin of the term. It is also tough to understand how such an idiotic choice of a term with obvious polemical potential could be used as a follow up to the assassin's targeting criterion (that is if we are not using shooter's crosshairs as a metaphor of picking flowers). Maybe Sarah Palin considers hunting herbivores as a manly activity that will prove her tough with voters, yet if a man used such imagery in contemporary politics he might be regarded as a fascist.

We do not suspect Sarah Palin believing the Mexicans are some kind of Jewish element beyond the pale. I personally believe three saltwater desalinization/border control canals should be built across the nation's Mexican border yet Mexicans in Mexico are not segregated-they have their own nation and should improve it as ought the U.S.A. including full employment for Americans (including myself).

Obviously giving a verbal interpretation of a symbol is difficult to do precisely. A swastika can be taken as a sign of the Hindu religion and the way Brahma stirs up reality as well as a symbol for the Nazi party. A presidential candidate in the United States ought to be far better informed than Sarah Palin in her choice of symbols for political tools. If she were a hillbilly talking about blood feuds it would be far better than using the term blood liberl, for then we might regard it as an historically usual expression of the megalomaniacal will to consolidate political power for her family as royalty-a common enough historical theme we suspect the Bushes and Clintons of a little bit every now and then.

As a well known charismatic churchgoer she must have been influenced by some nut job yakking about Jews spilling the blood of Christian children to use in Passover ceremony or something such. Such an idiocy might have its origins in an anachronistic and warped Russian pogrom creator's way of thinking perhaps (the tsar used to order a pogrom every now and then for social distraction when his citizens became restive of his tax rates), yet not in an Alaskan or American social setting at all. I wonder who actually picked that term for former Alaska Governor Palin? Probably we shall never know.

No reasonable people should believe that the crosshairs stimulated Lochner to shoot 19 people. According to Michael Savage's reports the killer used an hallucinogen named salvi divinorum that creates out of body experiences. Besides social rave, bad video games, high unemployment and being 4-F the kid was under the influence of movies like The Matrix and an hallucinogen reportedly more powerful than L.S.D.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum

Gov. Palin's importunate antique European terminology notwithstanding, she is not the Mexican border problems, drug war and use of a Mexican herb with hallucinogenic powers to alter the reality of the not-too-bright.

Global Warming & Cooling May End Civilizations

A scientific study finds that historical records of rapid climate change coincides with the decline and fall of empires.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19968-fall-of-roman-empire-linked-to-wild-shifts-in-climate.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Other interpretations are possible. Yet it was probably Attila the Hun and the Goths combining to assault a decadent Roman Empire in the same time period that led to the end of the Roman Empire. One might speculate that rapid climate change drove the Goths out of the North and the Huns off from the step, yet we like to think that it was the wild debauchery on wealthy estates and pretty jewels that stimulated the pagan hordes to attacks and plundering of conspicuous wealth.

With more than 30,000 people killed in Mexico in the drug wars the past 4 years perhaps Mexico is becoming more like a pagan host readying to attack an empire with climate change, or maybe not. If draught overtakes China because of global warming they will be motivated to attack Alaska and cooler places in Siberia and North America with hundreds of millions of soldiers and stealth fighters.

I still prefer to believe that dumb, uncreative political leadership is a better reason for the end of civilization as well as a factor in anthropogenic climate change including global warming. Throughout the past fifty years U.S. political leadership has avoiding taking the turn toward anti-ecocide insinuation of our society into a green peace with a stable population motivated toward quality rather than quantity growth with full employment and a fair, free standard of living for all.

For some reason homo sapiens sapiens believe that as the sole surviving species of the hominid line we are excellent survivors, instead, it may be a reason for less than optimism regarding human prospects on Earth-unlike varieties of ants, only one kind of human species exists and its prospects for destroying itself and the global ecosystem are excellent.

An Extra Essay on Calibi-Yau Space Cosmology

Calibi-Yau geometrical analysis constructed a six dimensional manifold serving as a model for the way six small dimension underlying our three dimensions of space that are 'full' size could mathematically exist. Such a construction need be mathematically consistent yet hasn't an implicit requirement that is actually is the representation of the structure of this Universe.

If it is the best and a fairly accurate representation that tweaked up with string or m-theory eventually supplants the standard model of quantum mechanics, what about the dimension of time?

Is time one dimension without limits that is fully extended as eternity in all directions in which emantaed spatial dimensions flow like leaves in a divine wind of omni directional yet compacted dimensions and potential? Is an omnipresent eternal time through which spatial dimensions journey a 'host' for the motion of atomic and chemical recombinant physics?

Toward the end of Yau-Nadis' 'The Shape of Inner Space' I have found a few more interesting ideas that I can add to my notes on the topic of string, M-theory, cosmology and Calabi-Yau space before closing the cover.

Extra-dimensional mathematical modeling arrives through algebra and geometry. Many avenues of approach exist to construct extra-dimensional shapes. Some of the shapes are useful for modelling how extra-dimensions may be formed in our Universe.

Preponderantly it is believed that our four dimensional universe may have six more dimensions compacted tightly and on which our four larger dimensions of space-time are attached. One of the interesting conjectures is that these smaller dimensions have a lot of intrinsic energy and are bound up by powerful membranes. The acceleration of space-time may be a consequence of these smaller dimensions 'flexing' their energy. It is also thought that eventually the smaller dimensions may suddenly become unbound and expand into full scale dimensions and the universe will then have ten dimensions fully expanded rather than four.

The smaller dimensions may have energy that warps the four dimensional space-time unevenly. A new kind of geometry may need to be developed in order to describe very small spaces less than a Planck length in size. Will such geometries map quantum uncertainty as compact potential scalable into warped space-time/mass-energy equivelences?

Within the context of Yau's technical knowledge helpfully put into plain language by Nadis this cosmological speculation seems utterly reasonable. The CMB or cosmic microwave background is a source for continuing research for traces of evidence such as polarization that could support string theory as a cosmological explanatory tool.

The possibilities for cosmology with string theory are increasing very swiftly rather than decreasing-good news for us philosopher-Christians interested in a complex Universe issued by God rather than a simple one such as some physicists regarded as possible a few years ago.The more numerous the possible varieties of Universal past, present and future are brought to mind the more intriguing is the power of God to issue a Word for the conservation of mass and energy to start. A zillion to the zillionth power of potentials arose from one creative will to be and become;its juxtaposition in a geometry of space-time phenomenal configurations is too interesting not to marvel at for its beauty of composition.

'The Great Theologians' by Gerald R. McDermott

This page turner of a little more than 200 pages is well worth reading. It is succinct coverage of just eleven theologians from Origin to Von Balthasar who have shaped the way Christians think about God and Jesus Christ. Especially in America we tend to overlook to what extent our basic Christian beliefs have been defended and conserved and on occasion liberated by the efforts of these individuals.

A notable point for simple clarification is the argument made for Biblical literalism today. It simply isn't as simple as that. In the 3rd century (born in the second), Origen wrote 'the first systematic treatment of Christianity as a whole' called De Principiis (first principles). Origen also explained the fourfold root of Biblical interpretation.

McDermott explains that Origen described four different yet complimentary ways of interpreting Biblical scripture. First is the literal reading (historical). Second is the allegorical (what you should believe). Third is the tropological or moral (what you should do) and fourthly there is the anagogical (leading up). This last interpretation has that interesting word anagogical. This category of interpretation points to the future with Jesus Christ for the elect. We may find meaning throughout the Bible in each of these senses of interpretation very often in the same scripture.

McDermott writes that Athanasius in the 5th century basically saved Christianity from the Arian heresy that Jesus Christ was not fully God and co-eternal with the Father. As a short, dark Egyptian monastic alive in the time of the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantine and later his son Constantinius who each tended to favor the followers of Arius that was no easy task.

Athanasius also developed the theological concept of theopoiesis (it means divination) relating that Christians develop an increasingly Christ like character as they move farther away from the sin nature of fallen humanity. Satan may of course continue to nag Christians and try to draw them back into the human maelstrom of the fallen material condition (possibly enticing them to illicit sex, global warming denial and ecological ecocidal politics), yet Jesus Christ having overcome death and providing a model for Christian right social relations brings the faithful (without becoming godlike) to be more perfect, as He is perfect, through the power of His blessing (shed blood atoning vicariously for all those of faith).

McDermott's breezy treatment of these serious subjects is an excellent reminder of the provident grace provided by a lifetime of sober scholarship. Many of these theologians were themselves dedicated to learning of Jesus Christ and the Biblical truth in trying times of continuous political turmoil. Often they wrote well outside academia and state sponsorship. Today's Christians can find inspiration in that as a generation of spiritual homelessness co-generated by church and state compels conformation to consumerism and globalism in a hierarchical corporatism commercialization; more intelligent and contemplative use of ecological and spiritual resources ought instead to prevail in ecclesiastical structure, economics, ecological and political renewal.