Adventures With Danno, PM 11/2/24
"You Can't Make This Up, This Is Unreal"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, November 2, 2024
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
"But I Can Pretend..."
“I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...”
- Olethros, in “Sandman”
"Holy Books"
"Holy Books"
"Holy Books is the largest collection of high-quality sacred texts, holy books, spiritual texts as PDF ebooks you will find on the Internet. Download Spiritual Texts as free PDF e-books. Download PDF’s: holy books, sacr
ed texts, and spiritual PDF e-books in full length for free. Download the Bible, The Holy Quran, The Mahabharata, and thousands of free pdf ebooks on Buddhism, meditation, etc. Read the reviews and download the free PDF e-books.
Use the search function to find our free PDF ebooks or use the category list to browse books. All books on HolyBooks.com are Public Domain texts and free to download as pdf-files. This online library project is still under development and we are adding new e-books often. Suggestions are welcome. We are also maintaining Moral Paradigm – a similar site about moral and ethical questions."
“50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind”
“50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind”
by Marc Chernoff
"These questions have no right or wrong answers, because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.
1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
2. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
11. You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do?
12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?
13. Would you break the law to save a loved one?
14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity?
15. What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?
17. What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? What’s holding you back?
18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?
20. Do you push the elevator button more than once? Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?
21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
22. Why are you, you?
23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?
24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you?
25. What are you most grateful for?
26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?
27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first?
28. Has your greatest fear ever come true?
29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset? Does it really matter now?
30. What is your happiest childhood memory? What makes it so special?
31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
32. If not now, then when?
33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?
34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever?
35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?
36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?
37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?
40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?
41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?
42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?
43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?
44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?
48. What do you love? Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?
49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that?
50. Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?"
"Marcus Aurelius: How To Live Without Fear”
"Marcus Aurelius: How To Live Without Fear”
Developing strength by having power over the mind.
by Harry J. Stead
“The Roman Emperor Antoninus died in 161 and Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus assumed the roles of co-emperors. But, Aurelius’ rule was a challenging period for the Roman Republic. He spent the first years of his reign fighting the Roman–Parthian War of 161–166. During this war, the Empire suffered great difficulties and losses but eventually re-occupied Edessa in Greece where the deposed king was returned to the throne. However, the returning soldiers brought back with them a plague that would torment much of Europe for years, killing around five million people.
Later, from 166 to the end of Aurelius reign in 180, the Empire fought the Marcomannic Wars, where Germanic tribes continuously invaded Roman territory across the northern frontier regions. The Roman army, after a long struggle, managed to push back the invaders and re-establish the frontiers of the Empire.
Marcus Aurelius acquired the reputation of a philosopher king within his lifetime, and the title would remain his after death. He was a practitioner of Stoicism, and his personal philosophical writings, which later came to be called Meditations, are a significant source of the modern understanding of ancient Stoic philosophy.
Marcus Aurelius wrote the majority of the twelve books of the “Meditations” at Sirmium (modern day Serbia), where he spent time planning military campaigns and strategy during the Marcomannic Wars. A few of the books were written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia. And, the internal notes tell us that the first book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron in Slovakia).
“Meditations” served as Aurelius’ journal, a private source of his own guidance and wisdom during times of darkness. His words are simple and honest, and the sentences are delivered like entries in a diary; the pages seem to be a list of quotations, all varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs. It is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius ever thought someone would publish these writings. He simply wished to record what he believed to be true.
But, when reading “Meditations”, we do not get the sense that the author was, at the time, the most powerful man on the continent. The vulnerability of Aurelius’ words falls onto one’s heart, and you feel yourself empathising not with the vast fears of a Roman Emperor, where war and power are all that must occupy the mind, but, instead, with the melancholy struggles of a rather lonely man. For Aurelius was a man with no equals, a man who had all the wealth and beauty in the known world, yet no one to share it with. So sad are his words that the reader imagines the author to be a fragile being with the same worries and doubts as ourselves, rather than a head of state with a breast plate and a red cloak.
The journal was an attempt to counsel himself through his own darkness. The reader feels comfortable and calm with his words; we cannot help discover ourselves in each of his little splashes of wisdom. But, I suppose this is the nature of the diary. For diaries are intimate and individual, they allow the author to open their hearts and express their deepest passions.
And, by expressing our own unique message, the lyrics of our hearts, we touch upon a universal truth that speaks to everyone. Here lies the beauty of Meditations and the reason why it has been a major source of guidance to a great many people for almost two thousand years.
“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.”
- “Meditations”, Marcus Aurelius
John Dalberg-Acton, a 19th century British politician, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” He was correct. Power does tend to corrupt the individual, but only because power exposes the true nature of the ruler, not because it turns the ruler sour.
Marcus Aurelius is, perhaps, the exception to this law in Western history. He was the only ruler that somewhat resembled Plato’s idea of the philosopher king – he was the last Good Emperor. This is easy to see when reading his journal.
The central theme to “Meditations” is that if one wishes to keep a tranquil soul, then he should live according to nature. This is the underlining idea of almost every sentence he wrote in “Meditations.” Clearly, he tried hard to remind himself of this wisdom lest he become a tyrant just as those who came before and after him did.
“If you are distressed by anything external,
the pain is not due to the thing itself,
but to your estimate of it;
and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
The temptation to control and handle every movement of the European continent must have been overwhelming. Because, as an emperor, Aurelius had to stand firm against the weight of a vast and over stretched Empire; he was a god, waving a red sword over a map of the entire world. Yet, he was also a man among men, carrying the same limitations and burdens of those who served him. He was not all-powerful or all-seeing, but the people expected him to be.
But, nature made Aurelius an emperor and so he believed it his calling to live up to his greatest potential. He did not lose himself in wine and women and become a victim of lust and desire, as many others had done, nor did he rule from fear and anxiety. The man had a beautiful soul. He could have had everything he wanted, he could have fulfilled his deepest passions and desires, yet he chose instead to pursue the end that was good for everyone. Power does not corrupt, power entertains the irrational and exposes the dirt within the soul.
“You have power over your mind – not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength.”
- Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
The wise man, the truly good man, Aurelius thought, is in control of his own soul. This is all that concerns him – to be at peace with his own spirit. He only fears making chaos of his soul for it is the only power that he has responsibility for. If he loses control, then he loses himself and is powerless to fulfill his obligation to nature. And, tranquility requires that one releases all that which he cannot control. But, how great of a challenge must this have been for an emperor! For Aurelius stood over a kingdom that faced continuous threats of invasion from all sides, even from within.
Marcus Aurelius lived with a radical acceptance of nature. He moved through his days with no expectations; he never struggled against his fate nor did he resign himself in self-pity if the world betrayed him. No event should be mourned or celebrated. Because the victories of today may well be the cause of our demise tomorrow. Acceptance, only acceptance. And, with acceptance you will be able to find pleasure in each thunder and lightning that befalls you. Each event, in the eyes of a wise man, is a teacher, a lesson, a chance, a sign.
Aurelius believed that life never ought to be different from what it is and so he was able to greet the future with joy and compassion. Life continues to unfold and we should rejoice in every page for it is our fate, the will of nature.
Nature is unchangeable; we must not fight against it. Fighting against that which does not fall is foolish and will only leave us with a troubled spirit. Nothing outside of yourself should have power or friction over your peace.
Leave that which you do not control in the hands of God or nature. But, for that which you do control – your soul, your emotions, your thoughts – learn to steer them in your favor. Because every man suffers a great deal in their life, but not all people pity themselves. There is a choice.
Aurelius constantly reminded himself of this message in his journal so that he could practice its wisdom in his day-to-day life. And, in doing so, he freed himself from all that which could harm the peoples of his Empire – grief, fear, anger, and anxiety. For the peace of the Empire mirrored the peace of the emperor — he was the embodiment, the great incarnation of the kingdom. Because, in an autocracy, when the emperor falls sick, so must the Empire.
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to
look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
- Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
○
Marcus Aurelius’ work “Meditations,” written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty. It serves as an example of how Aurelius approached the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king and how he symbolized much of what was best about Roman civilization.”
Freely download, in PDF format, “Meditations,” by Marcus Aurelius, here:
The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"
"Quit Your Addiction"
"Quit your addiction
to sneer and complaint.
Try a little flaunt,
Call for comrades
who bolster your vim
and offer you risk.
Corral the crones,
Goose the nice nellies,
Hunt the bear that hugs
and the raven that quoths.
Stay up all night
to devise a new dawn..."
- James Broughton,
"Little Sermons of the Big Joy"
"What's He To Do Then?"
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
○
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,'
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
- Sydney J. Harris
"Curveballs..."
"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Real Story Behind All of This"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/2/24
"The Real Story Behind All of This"
"The Ugly Truth About Job Numbers: Lies Exposed," dives deep into the shocking discrepancies in the latest job reports. From government misinformation to the blame game with hurricanes and strikes, it's clear that the truth is being twisted. I've also got insights on the economic impact of commercial real estate foreclosures and the surprising bankruptcy of Applebee's franchises."
Comments here:
"Every Time Something Major Happens, It Is An Excuse For Rioting, Looting And Violence"
"Every Time Something Major Happens,
It Is An Excuse For Rioting, Looting And Violence"
by Michael Snyder
"We live at a time when it is expected that chaos will follow virtually every big event. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, there was looting. In the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, there was looting. The war in the Middle East has sparked wild protests and riots all over the country this year. And even if something really good happens, many people just consider it to be an excuse for even more rioting, looting and violence. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. But instead of celebrating peacefully, young men in Los Angeles looted stores and threw fireworks at police…
"World Series celebrations descended into chaos in the early hours of Thursday morning in Los Angeles, with shops being looted by gangs and fireworks thrown at cops in the street. Many of the rioters probably don’t even care much about baseball. But once the Dodgers won, large numbers of people recognized as opportunity to run wild. According to the LAPD, there was “looting at several stores in the area of 8th and Broadway”…
"Looting broke out on the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday night after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win the 2024 World Series. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said they had received reports of “looting at several stores in the area of 8th and Broadway” and people were urged to stay out of the area."
This has become way too common. When a team wins a major championship, it is basically expected that citizens of that city will start rioting and looting. A Nike store that had actually been boarded up in order to prevent looting was hit really hard. We are being told that a “mob of looters” was seen “carrying merchandise and throwing it into cars”…"The Los Angeles Police Department shared footage of a mob of looters running in and out of a boarded-up Nike store carrying merchandise and throwing it into cars parked outside the store about four miles from Dodger Stadium just after 11 p.m."
If this is what they will do when they are “celebrating”, what will they do when they are extremely angry? You might want to think about that. In addition to looting stores, the rioters also set a city bus on fire…"As looters ransacked businesses, other areas of downtown Los Angeles were plunged into madness. The LAPD said a “hostile crowd” — estimated at between 200 and 300 people — lit an MTA bus on fire about a mile from Dodger Stadium around 12:35 a.m. local time. Footage posted to Citizen captured the moment a massive crowd — the majority of whom were wearing Dodgers jerseys and apparel — surrounded and sat atop the graffiti-laced bus."
Needless to say, what we just witnessed in Los Angeles is not even worth comparing to the chaos that could potentially follow this election. Survey after survey has shown that Americans are extremely alarmed about what is coming, and that includes a new poll that was just released by the Associated Press…"American voters are approaching the presidential election with deep unease about what could follow, including the potential for political violence, attempts to overturn the election results and its broader implications for democracy, according to a new poll. According to that poll, a large proportion of the country is very concerned about the possibility of post-election violence…"
"About 4 in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results after the November election. A similar share is worried about legal efforts to do so. And about 1 in 3 voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about attempts by local or state election officials to stop the results from being finalized." Relatively few voters — about one-third or less — are “not very” or “not at all” concerned about any of that happening.
At this point, it appears quite likely that Donald Trump will emerge victorious on November 5th. To many on the left, that is literally the worst possible thing that could ever happen. I know that this may sound a bit nuts to many of you, but this is how they actually see the world.
There has never been a politician that the left has hated more than Donald Trump, and if he wins this election after everything that has happened over the last eight years, for millions of Democrats it will feel like the world is ending. And if President Trump attempts to crack down on post-election chaos after he is sworn in, it will just reinforce everything that the left believes about him. As Lee Smith has noted, we really are on the verge of a very troubling scenario…
"Prominent post-election scenarios forecast such widespread rioting that the newly elected president would be compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act. With some senior military officials refusing to follow Trump’s orders, according to the scenarios, the U.S. Armed Forces would split, leaving America on the edge of the abyss.
By vilifying Trump as a despotic madman who must be stopped before he can commence his reign of terror, the regime’s propaganda apparatus not only slanders Trump but also pre-emptively threatens the reputation, as well as the livelihood and perhaps the liberty, of current military personnel. The point is to push the military against Trump: When the time comes to act, will you stand for democracy or side with a tyrant who sees the military only as an instrument to advance his personal interests?"
Close to half the country is not going to want to be governed by whoever wins this election. Unless you are completely and utterly delusional, you should be able to see that this is a major problem. We are headed for unprecedented societal chaos no matter how this election turns out. I wish that it wasn’t true, but we are a deeply, deeply divided nation.
For a long time I have been urging everyone to find a way to love one another even though we don’t agree on everything. But people like me are being drowned out by those that are preaching hate, division and revenge. Now we are about to reap what we have sown, and it will not be pleasant."
Adventures With Danno, "I Was In Complete Shock At Aldi, This Is Unbelievable"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/2/24
"I Was In Complete Shock At Aldi, This Is Unbelievable"
Comments here:
"The US Is Funding 70% of Israel’s Wars"
"The US Is Funding 70% of Israel’s Wars"
by Kyle Anzalone
"A new report by the Israeli outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since October 7, 2023 finding that Washington is funding 70% of Tel Aviv’s military costs. In a little over a year, the US has provided Israel with more than $20 billion in military aid. “The scope of American aid since the beginning of the war is about 85 billion shekels… According to official estimates by the Bank of Israel, the total cost of the war is…approximately NIS 118 billion.” It continues, “Therefore, according to a simple calculation, The Americans financed about 70% of the war effort.”
According to the Cost of War Project, the US has given Israel $22.57 billion in military aid since the Hamas attack. Calcalist concludes without US support, Tel Aviv’s war would simply be unaffordable.
“There is no doubt that without the American aid the government deficit for the years 2024-2025 (which is one of the highest in the country’s history), would have increased by about 4.3 % GDP, which would have made it unfinanceable,” it says. “Therefore, it is doubtful whether this war would have been conducted as it is – neither in intensity nor in scope – without the American assistance.” The US has sent Israel tens of thousands of bombs, artillery rounds, and tank shells. Those weapons have been used to commit countless war crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
The official death toll in the besieged enclave now exceeds 43,000. However, a group of American healthcare workers who have spent time volunteering in Gaza estimate the actual death count to be over 118,000. Dr Tammy Abughanim, a pediatric intensive-care surgeon, said, “We cannot do our jobs, because Israel has made our jobs impossible, and Israel has made our jobs impossible with the direct support of the United States.” She added, “We all know the obvious step is to stop supplying Israel with the arms that it is using, the weaponry that it is using to target and kill civilians.”
o
Related, highly recommended:
"A 'Heroic' Preference For Self-destruction Is Taking Hold In Israel"
Israel teeters at the edge: it will not be able to impose
itself over the plurality of resistance that it faces.
By Alastair Crooke
Excerpt: "One respected military observer – Maj. Gen. (Res.) Itzhak Brik, a former senior IDF commander and a former long-serving IDF ombudsman – has warned again of Israel’s looming fall: "Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi are gambling with Israel’s very existence. They never think for a moment about the day after. They are disconnected from reality and exercise no judgment. When the catastrophe strikes, it will already be too late. These three megalomaniacs imagine that they are capable of destroying both Hamas and Hizbullah and ending the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran. They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations – the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, and secondly, continuing the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long. Only a diplomatic agreement has the power to extricate us from the quagmire into which these three men have dragged us.
Israel teeters at the edge: It doesn’t have the necessary forces; it doesn’t have a culture of tolerating persistent suffering; and it will not be able to impose itself over the plurality of resistance that it faces. Reason already is cast aside, its opponents are ridiculed: a ‘heroic’ preference for self-destruction has taken hold. ‘Masada’ is being spoken of."
The Israeli Occupation Force will be crushed and obliterated,
and 50,000 missiles will turn Tel Aviv into Gaza...
Stipendium peccati mors est... the wages of sin is death, Israel.
And eternal shame and disgrace on America.
John Wilder, "More War Economics"
"More War Economics"
by John Wilder
“I had no idea that a study of nature could advance the art of naval warfare.”
– "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"
"Earlier this month I had a post about the Economics of War. This is not exactly a follow up, more of an additional exploration on the topic from a slightly different perspective. And at one time I used to worry that one of my hairs are out of place, but now, with greater perspective, I don’t care if all six are out of place. So, perspective matters.
War is about stuff. In order to fight a war, there needs to be stuff to fight with and the stuff (and men) need to be in the right place at the right time, and General Nathan B. Forrest described his winning strategy for one battle, “I just got there first with the most men.”
Of course, that wins a battle, but not a war. Unless you’re fighting against France, in which case all you have to win is the one battle if you have sufficient supplies of cigarettes, baguettes, suffragettes, and raclettes. And a recent Rand® analysis says that’s probably all the United States can win, is a battle. To quote the study, “U.S. industrial production is grossly inadequate to provide the equipment, technology, and munitions needed today, let alone given the demands of a great power conflict.” Great power conflict means Russia, and it means China, and if we continue on this path, might even include France and Tahiti.
Let’s talk first about industrial production. At the beginning of World War II, the United States had a massive untapped labor market thanks to Democratic policies. We also had the knowhow to build factories capable of mass producing, well, anything, thanks to Henry Ford. We also had amazing resources, including more oil than Geraldo Rivera’s hair. Although car production isn’t tank production, you can see it from there. And airplanes? They’re just cars with wings, like racoons are pandas that eat trash, right?
Yeah, we can make those. And with that, the American weapons manufacturing industry was ramped up in 1939 and 1940 or so in order to sell (first) lots of stuff to the British. It worked. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the war started, the industrial machine of the United States was just warming up, and soon enough farm girls from the Midwest would be welding on Liberty Ships in Alameda. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, the United States had 9 aircraft carriers of all types. At the end of 1945, the United States had 99 aircraft carriers. That’s not a misprint. 99.
In 2024, however, the United States, as far as I can see, is primarily engaged in the production of accounting irregularities, debt, corn syrup, and pizza rolls. Oh, and worthless university degrees. Can’t have enough of those.
But is it really important in the time of missiles and drones to have aircraft carriers? Perhaps not, perhaps they’re as antiquated as bombers and useful mainly against adversaries that can’t “reach out and touch someone” like the Taliban or Iraq? Perhaps not. Maybe we should look at other components of weapons.
Let’s take just one technology that’s in everything now: LED displays. They’re in phones, but also in jet fighters, tanks, headsets, and any technology meant to share information across a battlespace. A cursory examination shows that no significant production of LED displays takes place in the United States, and the two companies that I could find that were listed as “American” that produce LEDs have been bought by China.
Sure, the Taiwanese and Japanese and Koreans make this tech, but those countries are (checks map) nowhere near the United States. If there was a protracted war, I’ll leave it as a class exercise to estimate the chances that shipping between those locations and the United States might be impacted. The extended supply chains required to make our most sophisticated weapons systems are long, complex, and vulnerable.
The F-35, for instance, requires parts manufactured all around the world, and even then, there have only been 1,000 made. Is 1,000 a lot? In billions of dollars, yes. In fighter planes, no. Yet, China claims to have created an automated factory that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day. Is that a lot? Well, every day, yes, since the last data I have says that the United States has an inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles. If correct, China can produce the entire inventory of United States cruise missiles in less than a week.
Are they crappier than ours? Probably. But we’d still have to shoot down every single one if we didn’t want to get hit. How many days until we ran out of SAMs to take them down? If our production of SAMs is like our production of artillery, not long, and then it would be slingshots.
Okay, those are technologically complex systems. Surely on the old-style weapons we’re doing great, right? No. Russia is, by itself, producing three times the artillery munitions that can be produced by the United States. And by Europe. Combined. And that’s today after we’ve been attempting to ramp up production for three years.
So, there’s economic warfare, right? Many have argued in the past that China needs the markets of the United States, or they would collapse. That was a good argument, in the past. China now sells more to developing markets than to the West. When people keeping talking about China being a paper economic tiger that will soon collapse, I just have to point to that same phrase being trotted out every year for the last 30 years. China’s economy isn’t like that of the United States, and they’ve taken full advantage of the willingness of the United States to self-immolate its own manufacturing capacity.
China’s ship military ship production capacity exceeds that of the United States. Oh, strike that. Just a single Chinese shipyard exceeds the military ship production capacity of the United States. When we shipped the factories overseas, we not only lost the know-how to make many things. This is the stuff that the instruction manual doesn’t cover, the figuring out how to make the production line work, the solving of the myriad of glitches that come with a start-up. It’s almost like this unilateral deindustrialization was encouraged. Hmmm.
This isn’t to say that we’ve been defeated – far from it. But this is no longer 1990 when the United States could, with impunity, exercise military might anywhere around the world and be essentially as unchallenged as Kamala at a vodka-chugging contest. I like to think (and hope) that at least some military planners have realized the amazing hole that we’re in, and understand that the era of unilateral American military dominance somewhere between “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the formation of the 183rd Transexual Human Resources Division.
This, however, is not the end. It just means that the Russia/Ukraine war is a foreshadowing of what’s to come as Pax Americana fades into memory. We will see many more regional wars, and most of those wars will be wars we can’t impact in any meaningful way. This, of course, assumes that we don’t have a stockpile of wunderwaffe sitting around that can allow immediate battlefield dominance and intelligence. Hmmm. Not seeing that, but, again, I’m not on the list of folks that get those memos.
We can also use this time to ask ourselves what, exactly, we get out of having military bases all around the world when the single biggest threat is the open border at the south. Abraham Lincoln, more than 25 years before he was a theater enjoyer, said this at the age of 28: "Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth, our own excepted, in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years."
Yes. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese could ever take this country by force, but yet we’re bringing in millions of military age men into the country so they can eat all the ducks that swim in the Ohio. I wonder if we’ll regret letting the illegals get there first, with the most men?"
Friday, November 1, 2024
"Economy Is Going To Hell, Goodbye Middle Class, Now Comes Stagflation"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/1/24
"Economy Is Going To Hell,
Goodbye Middle Class, Now Comes Stagflation"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way.
Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”
Chet Raymo, “Retreat From Reason”
“Retreat From Reason”
by Chet Raymo
“Is there a flight from reason in the United States? Everywhere we look, science is under attack. In government. In the schools. In the churches. We are offered faith-based substitutes. The “Left Behind” series of apocalyptic novels outsells everything else on the shelves. People are more interested in astrology than astronomy. Intelligent design is championed at the highest levels of government. Alternative medicine - faith healing, homeopathy, energy therapies, New Age healing, and the like - is more popular than ever. Scripture and revelation are embraced as more reliable sources of knowledge than anything we might learn empirically. We are entering, it seems, a new Dark Age. For a substantial number of our fellow citizens, it's as if the Enlightenment never happened.
Let me take you back to the Hellenistic city of Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile River in Egypt, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Alexandria was then the seat of a magnificent flowering of mathematical and scientific thought. The city welcomed all comers - Eratosthenes from Cyrene, Aristarchus from Samos, Archimedes from Sicily, Apollonius from Rhodes, Hipparchus from Nicaea, Galen from Pergamon, and so on - the only requirement being an inquisitive mind and a bent for explaining the world in terms that made no reference to the gods. Geography and astronomy became mathematical sciences. Eratosthenes measured the size of the Earth. Aristarchus deduced the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon.
These spectacular achievements get no more than passing mention in textbooks of Western Civilization. We learn in school about the Golden Age of Greece and the glory that was Rome, Sophocles and Ovid, the Parthenon and the Pantheon, triremes and aqueducts, but very little of the invention of scientific thinking in the white city at the mouth of the Nile.
Alexandria was built on a ribbon of land between Lake Mareotis and the Mediterranean Sea. It was graced with forums, temples, marketplaces, palaces, a double harbor with a famous lighthouse, quays, warehouses, and, prominently, a museum ("place of the muses"), and the famous library over which Eratosthenes presided. The museum and library were together the equivalent of a great modern university. It was the dream of the first rulers of Alexandria - the Ptolemys - that the library would possess a copy of every book in the known world, and within a century hundreds of thousands of scrolls were collected within its walls. By the middle of the first century B.C. Diodorus of Sicily could say that Alexandria was "the first city of the civilized world, certainly far ahead of all the rest in elegance and extent and riches and luxury."
In his book "The Greeks and the Irrational", the scholar E. R. Dodds was thinking of the Greek culture of Alexandria when he wrote: "Despite its lack of political freedom, the society of the third century B.C. was in many ways the nearest approach to an 'open' society that the world had yet seen, and nearer than any that would be seen again until modern times." It was a society confident of its powers. Aristotle had asked his fellow citizens to recognize a divine spark within themselves: the intellect. Men and women who exercise reason can live like gods, he said. For Zeno, the human intellect was not merely akin to God, it is God, a portion of the divine substance. Temples are superfluous, he said; God's true temple is the human intellect.
Of this supreme confidence in rational thought, the Alexandrians created a new empirical, mathematical way of knowing. But the seeds of irrationality were also there, embedded in popular culture, or perhaps embedded in the human soul. Soon enough, supernaturalism returned. Astrology and magical healing replaced astronomy and medicine. Cults flourished, rationalists were scapegoated, and scientific culture began to decline.
The old dualisms - mind and matter, God and nature, soul and body - which the rationalists had striven to overcome, reasserted themselves with fresh vigor. Dodds calls it "the return of the irrational." He writes: "As the intellectuals withdrew further into a world of their own, the popular mind was left increasingly defenseless. . .and left without guidance, a growing number relapsed with a sigh of relief into the pleasures and comforts of the primitive. . . better the rigid determinism of the astrological Fate than the terrifying burden of daily responsibility."
Harvard historian of science Gerald Holton sees a similarity between Dodds' description of the decline of Greek culture and the resurgence of anti-science in our own time. Once again, astrology, magical healing, and other kinds of superstitious thinking are in ascendancy. Once again, cults flourish and rationalists are scapegoated.
The Greek experience shows that movements to delegitimize science are always present, says Holton, ready to bend civilization their way by the glorification of folk belief, violence, mystification, and the rabid ideologies of ethnic and nationalistic passions. Dodds calls it "the fear of freedom - the unconscious flight from the heavy burden of individual choice which an open society lays upon its members."
Science can only prosper in a free and open society, in an atmosphere of rational skepticism where traditional patterns of thought are challenged and subjected to critical scrutiny. Science will only flourish when a people have confidence in the power of the human intellect to make sense of the world."
- http://www.sciencemusings.com/
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