Tag Archives: politics

The USA and World Health and Wellness

Posted on September 16, 2009 | Leave a comment

I have done a lot of posts on healthcare reform.  There are a lot of other topics on which I might have commented and which normaly would have gotten more of my attention. I think that health, wellness and healthcare have a lot to do with geopolitics.  I hope that as this debate goes forward there will be some real discussion of the worldwide political ramifications of our policy in health.

A lot of that thinking can be followed through under commonsense thought about the environment and nutrition and peace. I do believe that those are three huge aspect of dealing with health. But I think there is more to all of this than the simple. Deserts have advanced throughout historic times in many parts of the world and organic pollutants have overloaded and destroyed fresh watershed for centuries. We need to begin to imagine a world in which wet organic waste from around the world ends up becoming soil around the worlds growing deserts on artificial islands and on the moon.

We need to see worldwide programs supporting the local and national structures which will protect topsoil, biocorridors for wildlife and water tables. We need to determine how much of a role America can play in the future of world development of trade which promotes health and wealth objectives.

A discussion of health needs to include an understanding of making an effort to reward all employers around the world who produce:

1.Long term good health for workers and their families,

2. Healthy communities and local environments,

3. And positive contributions to world heallth.

We as a nation have a complex and important role to play in promoting health and wellness and the big health issues unite many very different people. I have not gotten specifialy into the role space industry devlopment can and should play in all of this development.  However, space is part of the big solution. We must start to seee the health implications of all policy and to keep the concern for health and wellness as a properly balanced priority.

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Some Thoughts about Science Fiction….

Posted on September 5, 2009 | 3 comments

I am writing a science fiction novel on Facebook on an account named Summers Progress. In it I feature a number of my own inventions. Perhaps none of them will see the light of day outside that fictional universe. I am not sure. I see people casually discussing what amounts to surrender to the Taliban. From a scientifc progress point of view this is quite different than delivering Iraq to the influence of an Iran which is at least eager to compete in science no matter how much else I may find reprehensible in its regime.

In recent months we have had  the new Star Trek movie introducing a new young cast and we have had the release of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra on our movie screens. I think people are hungry to believe in a new and better future. The role of Science fiction in shaping the dreams and hopes of young people is a complicated one which we cannot easily fully analyze and understand. But it does play a role. I hope that as the world struggles with all its current problems it can still make time to perfect its dreams of the future. Perhaps in some ways those are blueprints of many future policies. 

This post first appeared on my Facebook page on March 27 of this year.

This is the kind of topic that I will surely have to revisit and take in small pieces in other notes if this series is long enough. However, there is a place somewhere in the wide universe for an overstretched brief personalistic essay about the future generally. Maybe this is the time and space for such an essay I have taken the lense of science fiction and have ended up focused on really a small part of the future itself. Howver, the future itself is still my topic.

I often or even usually have a strong or weak religious and spiritual element in these Facebook Notes. I usually do not single out religious groups by name for the purpose of distinguishing them from the point of view I am taking. However, in this case I am taking the somewhat unusual course of discussing both Christianity and science fiction and how they relate to our apprehension of and planning for the future. I think that I have a decently adequate basic nonadherent’s understanding of the following three religions: The Church of Jesus Christ Scientist (Christian Scientists), The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (Mormonism) and the Scientologists. I can assure any of you that I would be happy to influence thinkers in any of these groups but that I am not taking a position which is anywhere particulary near to the orthodoxies of any of these religions. Indeed it is I believe within the range of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.

I do believe that Space is within the meaning of the heavens and heaven as are other things which Jesus indicated when he said that “The Kingdom of God is within you”. I do believethat Jesus as a fully human man was a poet, a liturgist, a prince, a lector, a rabbi and among other outstanding achievements he created a body of achievement that could be classified as science and engineering — all his human attributes do not detract from his claim to divinity. Nor do they answer the poetic ambiguity in the verse from the epistle “Though he was at one with God he did not claim equality with God as something to be grasped at…”. I do believe the Scriptures I cal the Sacred Scriptures have a call on us to care for the Earth, for our fellow man, for our families and (that at the state) we have now reached Space colonization is exigent in order to fulfill those obligations. Nonetheless, I do not intend this note to be primarily a religious or Scriptural Facebook Note.

One way in which I subject my own talents in predicting the future to public scrutiny is that I play a variety of viewable online games in which prediction is a vital skill. These games include fantasy football at NFL.com, the NCAA Bracket Challenge on Facebook and various kinds of online Texas Hold ’em Poker. I am not the very best but my play is fairly respectable. Outside of online gaming I have demonstrated other signs of function in the current technological milieu. I have earned a couple of degrees, some licenses, some commisions and certifications and they all demonstrate that I am not drawn towards futurist endeavors because I cannot find anything I am able to do anything worthy in the present. Nonetheless, I would proudlyidentify myself as a humanist rather than a scientist.

I have thought about the future a great deal. It seems that a lot of people have. We all express a certain faith in the future everytime we put milk in the refrigerator, puchase stock, go on a job interview or call someone to set up any kind of date, meeting or get-together. In fact probably nobody reading this really thinks that the known universe will cease to exist in the time it would take an ordinary person to read to the end of this note. In that sense faith in the future seems pretty universal.

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BRINGING A BABY INTO THE WORLD AND HELPING THE BABY MAKE HIS OR HER WAY IN THE WORLD IS A GREAT ACT OF FAITH IN THE FUTURE FOR A NORMAL OR BETTER THAN NORMAL PARENT.

However, beyond simply believing that life will go on for somebody or something somewhere, most of us think we ourselves have some continuity beyond this throbbing or fleeting instant we call the present. I am writing about the future in a bit more specific way than this however. I am trying to discuss the future as a kind of grand subject.

I like to think about forming the shape of the human and earthly future as well as trying to influence it myself. I am deeply unhappy about many signs of how the future may turn out. However, I am also very optimistic about what is possible. A decent number of historians and antiquarians read futuristic literature and science fiction. Certainly, I have read a great deal of history and seen a lot of antiquities. However, science fiction and futuristic writing have played a big part in the formation of my mind and the filling of the time I have had available to read. It is tru that Styar Wars is a science fiction classic franchise and big money in our time which is set long ago and is full of Biblical and royalist allusions to past societies. But it outlines launches, gravity wells, spaceships, linguistic analysis, imaging systems and countless other things which were new with seeds and roots in the time Lucas began the series andwith fruit and flower in the future as far as we are concerned. A substantial minority of science fiction is set in the past in that sense but in a cyclical sense still maps a reality technicaly set more or less in our foreseeble future. Star Wars is actually less, as some of it is not anywhere near our technical capacity.

One of the intersting things about Michael Crichton the writer of books such as Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Jurassic Park and State of Fear is that he was a medical doctor. This is why his series ER was so sound in so many ways. There is an authenticity in his imagined science because he was able to live and function in the world of real science in his time. While a devout Roman Catholic, I belong to a struggling old secret society which gives a particular double interpretation to some scripture passages as coded preservations ofsome amazing achievements of Jesus in science and engineering. For us Jesus’s lofty goals and the ideal on which he founded his church are more and not less credible because of the other ways in which he exerted leadership and showed genius in his world. In a certain minimaly similar way writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton have some increased appeal as writers of their type of imaginative fiction because they could do real science in the real world.

We often find science fiction refereshing because it is devoid of some of the reminders of religious, national and familial obligations which surround is. That is true even for those who generaly are and seem to be pushers of family, nation and religion with their incumbent obligations. People such as I am still enjoy Dune’s vacation from the Roman Catholic Church to the Orange Catholic Bible. In instances where they are similar there is still no actual Orange Catholic community that either the Protestant House of Orange or the Catholics of our own time have to actually get along with. However, to notice that sense of fictional escape is not to say that tradition, religion and hard nosed reality have nothing to contribute to both the making of science fiction and to its enjoyment by its readers.

It has been also on the promise of really remaking the future that leaders as diverse as Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zhe Dong), Vladimir Lenin, Lech Walensa and Thomas Jefferson have made their claims. Not all to the same dgree but to a greater degree than most leaders who have not lived in the last ten centuries. Contrary to the vast body of modern opinion I would argue that in many ways almost everyone born in the last thousand years shares a basic sense of desperation and insecurity that was far from being the norm prior to that time. Humanity spent a great deal of its early formative period expanding at a walking pace across and from Africa, across Europe and Asia and then across the vastly long journey of the Americas to Patagonia. Then there were crude and slow crafts and dogs and horses that brought in Australia and remote lands and mountains not safely reachable before then. Then the vikings in the tenth and eleventh century to a degree far greater than any history book will ever tell visited large and small islands in all four hemispheres (East and West, North and South) often leaving there only slaves and captives often of mixed ancestry from varied culture with whom some of their genes and technology were mingled. They also drove waves of refugees in ships from burning towns ro new islands in almost every part of the world. All of this happened before 1492 and the age of Discovery. Since about 1100 the Earth has been a fairly old and settled place as far as hunmanity goes. The mythical and infinite earth of great undiscovered creatures and lands with unknown and incaculable potential really died in about 1100. Since then all leaders of all places have sort of known that many of the happiest and most hopeful options for their descendants were foreclosed and that we all had entered a phase of negotiations (whether lethal or peaceful) with other humans. Most humans have never lived on the edge of the unknown lands but their existence did affetct allhumans at some level. Their experience did define the possible for leaders everywhere. Population control, vertical integration, oppression, xenophobia and tedium always had to compete with the whispers of the wild and undiscovered world and the vast genetic and historic cultural ties which linked all humans to the process of discovery. There have always been serious planners and as long as there were truly unpopulated lands around their plans could be different. Since then we live in a different human experience than formed us and only serious colonization of the solar system can address that basic change in a way that preserves some of the best of who we are for the future.

Both adventure and resources await our species throughout the solar system. There is little doubt in my mind that we damn ourselves quite seriously if we fail the challenge of securing access to both the adventure and the resources. Yes, I believe God has given the Moon and Mars to Earth’s people as part of our manifest destiny to colonize. It is part of becoming who we are meant to become.

If we had self sustaining and vibrant colonies on the Moon and Mars trading with Earth. Peopled by growing populations and settlers then our lives would resemble that of our human ancestors for long ages past. Most of us would not go to space and would not live their but we would know that we were living in a world of expanding possibilities. Inddeed it would be better than much of the past because almost all could see that were were bringin life where no life had been before. Being both sane and optimistic would again be really possible. The prospect of interstellar travel right now is a near impossibility. The possibility of interstellar travel in the future of a moderately badly run human society with real colonies on the Moon and Mars is substantial. The possibility of interstellar travel in the future of a society descended from us if we have a few centuries of colony driven development on the Earth, the Moon and Mars is very hight indeed. Once honest people can say to their children that our species is on its way to colonizing the worlds around as many stars as it seems right and convenient to colonize then our whole frame of reference will have changed for what the Human race is about and can expect.

We find science fiction in Dante’s Inferno and the rest of the Divina Comedia where the pilgrim with his guide takes a single path down through the center of the Earth where the pits of hell are deepest and the follows the same line past the center of gravity as down becomes up. Now he follows Beatrice through Purgatory to the high mountainous realm of heaven. The science of understanding gravity in a sphere is the central device. We find science fiction in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when Dr. Frankenstein freed from the Medieval prohibition against dismembering corpses is able to put his monster (named Adam after the man God made) together form spare parts and give him life. We find science fiction in bits and pieces in old Greek mythology.It reaches some heights in Jules Vernes fictional depths as Captain Nemo adventures in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. There is a poetic wildness to science fiction in CS Lewis’s Perelandra Trilogy named for its second book. But while I read all hese things I also read the vast body of more hard-core genre science fiction.

CS Lewis wrote of the various reasons for writing science fiction. On class of novelists and short story writers he chose to distinguish from himself were the “engineers” who tried to tell stories set around the use of potentialy useful future technology. Arthur C. Clark who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey made famous by the great Hollywood film was many things but certainly he was an engineer writer. His hard science fiction told of communications sattelites, space stations, moon landings, computers of the type we call artificial intelligence and other things before they existed. Besides deiscovering shipwrecks, at least one of which was full of treasure, he wrote many novels and short stories. His treatment of starships in 2001 is sort lost in the presence of working portals, one of which was left on the moon at the dawn of mankind. But in several of his novels he describes human s seeding the stars in ships that travel fro hugely long periods of time run by computers which retrieve crews from suspended animation and then help them rise to new function when they reach the star. He may even discuss the use of frozen embryos in providing the bulk of the population base. This is very far from Star Trek’s warp drive or Star War’s hyperdrive or Dune’s Spacefolding Guildsmen.

I have never published a novel and most of the of the ones I have written could be classified as unfinished. However, I have written several set in the period when the solar system is being colonized. A future I feel should be our focus of attention. I have set one or two in the period when human civilization well established in the whole or much of the solar system is invaded by interstellar aliens. I have written very lirrle about humans going to other stars. Partly this is because I feel science fiction ought to entice us into the right future when it is engineering science fiction and our thoughts should be on colonizing the sloar system. However, in my view of the future I have a pretty good idea of how starships ought to come into play.

The most important factor about interstellar travel initiated by the human race is that it would be by far the best if it came after about 500 years of intense development of the Solar System. When there are thousands of operatiing populated spaceships, a dozen or more space stations and large factories and ports on the Moon and Mars fed by Lunar and Martian farms and with labor and finace experienced in space then interstellar travel and starships will have a different appeal than they can as we live in a world where perhaps none of the things listed above will ever happen. I believe we can begin to envision many of the steps we have to undertake. I have included some drawings and illustrations that I have posted in the Crater Cap Concept Colony Group as milestone on that projected road.

Humanity must perfect the colonization of craters in varied situations.
Robotic ships on Mars starting the process will be a kind of simple practice for interstellar colonization as well as being the basis of much of the future economy.
Craters will become huge complexes of cities and farms in some cases. But robots can start the all-important capping process.
Eventually systems like my catapult idea would tie Earth to continuos and efficient launches into space just as imports fom space colonies and prodution for space in space will create a huge part of the economy.

What we need to do to get to be a species that lives engaged with the universe of our perception is first to dwvlope this solar system. This process will of course vastly impact our societies and culture. Not doing it is already having an impact. I believe this process can involve creation of entire Earethly eco-systems in canyons. It can be largely humane and part of a larger blossoming of human culture. One of my new Facebook friends Shaun Waterford is developing (and has largely developed) asystem of underwater habitats. I think colonizing the Moon and Mars can lead toa great synergy and cross-fertilization of ideas with those who want to explore the great potential of responsibly colonizing the pelagic ocean floor, seamounts and underwater coastal flats. Most problems will be different between spae and the sea. However, a huge number of problems will be the same, similar or have complimentary solutions. So what could life in space be like?

A view from above of a mature crater cap colony. The white sheet is the uppermost of numerous layers in the crater cap. It allows the features to be studied from space. The blue discs are solar power centers. The two railways intersect with a single airlock on the surface sheet. The colony has almost no profile, farms, towns and mines are below the surface.
If colonization is centered in craters there will still be plenty of astronomical observatories, laboratories, pipelines and spaceports which allow the colonists to have an exposure to their unearthly surroundings which over a lifetime amounts to something we can scarcely imagine. However, in the Crater Cap Concept Colonies life could be very much like earth except that it would be lived in an earthly ecosystem and by earhtly pople under conditions of one sixth or one third gravity. There is norassurance it will be well done but if it were done well life could be pretty good there. Good in the minds of ordinary folk who are not as interested in science fiction as I am — is a possibility in space colonies.
Using entranceds to mines that radiate from the crater with its central fertile fields and pure cliff dwellings that draw from traditionms such as the Anasazi and Nabateans beautifula nd functional residences with extra safety from breached caps would not use the fertile floors of the crater colonies. Each country and colony could devlope a unique architecture i each miniature world that a crater would constitute.
Many animals could adapt to life in these crater colonies. Chickens could roost high on the walls and fly though the pressurized air in low g. with their aerating feet and droppings they would help in the phese of turning the floors of regolith into real soil.
Larger crater rims would have parks around some of the more massive foundations of the cap. These parks would be outside themain warm and wet circulation of airin the colony.
This would enable a cooler driier microclimate to make for a more pleasantly diverse living environment.
Fish living in bodies of water on the moon and mars would be able to fill a normal idf assisted ecosystem. Then children vould carry emergency vaccum suits in sealed cans as a weight when venturing into this wilderness area. They would benefit from the incidentla weight training. Adults might be allowed to determin e their own risk and decide to use the suit/weight cases or not.

There is of course a lot more to the future than we can address by looking to space colonization. I am very much aware that John Hope Franklin has died this week. He was a black man and a scholar of African American History as well as being an active leader and scholarly planner
of the civil rights movement. John Hope Franklin died at ripe old age. However, the possibilites for collaboration between various groups and peoples would be much more promising if we were colnizing space and greatly increasing real and potential resources. Jesus said “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.” Frankilin spent a great deal of time trying to figure out ways for varied people to live together in a way that seemed more abundant to him. There is no guaranty that we will act wisely and fairly in a world of objective abundance but objetive abundance is part of what all people of goodwill should be working towards.

Science fiction is one of the arts of our own time and place. We are invited by it to look at what we can do and how e can do it. I do hope though that because somuch of our fiction is interstellar we are not distracted fro the great adventure in our solar system which really is calling to us and which will shape much of our destiny.

The End

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Politics and the lost cause of a woman from Alaska

Posted on September 3, 2009 | Leave a comment
I have a lot on my mind today. It seems that there are a lot of political issues on my mind and these are seen in light of a good number of other factors, influences and issues.  One thing is that I like to think of myself as having a fairly high degree of intellectual honesty. I look for occasions and opportunities to test my basic honesty and to evaluate how honestly I have assessed previous situations. In that vein of assessment there has been an obvious opportunity for me to test my instincts. That is my chance to see how long it would seem to me that President Obama had been President of the United States by the time that the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks came around. I think my feeling is not totally off base from my earlier frame of reference. However, it does seem that he has been POTUS for a while. I am icreasingly willing to blame him for the bad things that happen on any given day.
That is relevant. Because when I voted for George W. Bush for his first term as President it seemed clear to me that he had not been President long enough to be really the president principaly  responsible for the tragedy of that day. I still see that Bush inherited a mess and I still see Obama as mostly working on an inherited economic problem but I am able to see thepercentage of blame for each president increase in my own mind as regards problems which emerge in the middle of September in their first year. Not a real clear definite change in opinion but it is some of that change which Obama was talking about during the campaign.
I did not vote for George Bush for his second term because I could not get to the embassy in Beijing during the allowed time period when I was teaching in China that year. I would very probably have voted for him if I could have voted at all that year. I tend to believe that it takes a while to really formulate and put in place a program of governance.  It seems likely to me that President Obama will be most effective following his re-election if that happens in 2012. That is the structure of the American Presidency today. I would have wanted to give Bush 2 a chance to really establish Homeland Security initiatives and to see if he could come up with a working program for Faith Based Initiatives  in reaching out to communities and populations most in crisis.
I was a solid Bush supporter who had once been a Democrat voting for Dukakis. I had left the party when Clinton was trying to start a war on Catholics, was barbecuing wierd religious kids in Waco and shooting families at Ruby Ridge for wanting to be left alone. I have never wanted to rejoin.  I have friends in many parties throughout the world. Conservatives in Britain and Communists in China are among the  groups with whom I have had the most dialog in the last decade. I do not belong to either.
However, the candidacy of Governor Sarah Palin  really excited me. I think she had a lot to offer. I am reproducing below some of the thoughts I had before last year’s election.   
The post reproduced first appeared on Facebook on my page on October 15,2008.
It is a season of winning and losing. I returned from a weekend at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting and have watched Tampa Bay beating the Red Sox, NFL teams struggling to win and the prognosticators saying that Obama is likely to win the election. The election is different than the sporting events. It occurs in a political arena where we either are or should be trying to build something to make our world and nation better. Once a President is elected there will not be such clear standards as to who must be beaten. It will not be so clear what a win is and how to measure it. If you think the wrong guy won it is harder to lose gracefully becuase more than pride and one’s salary is at stake. Nobody can ever say exactly what is at stake. Even historians have trouble deciding what came of an election after the fact. The President has no magic wand for remaking the coutnry according to dreams he may have. But we know a successful President will shape the way all of us and future generations live to some real extent.

I have decided to write a note exploring both the idea of success and the idea of losing gracefully in one piece of writing. It is true that we all live within a great number of pre-set limits and conditions. Most people at least claim not to be worried by most of them. We know some insects can live in suspended animation for years at a time, sperm whales can swim unaided into deep ocean trenches to hunt the giant squid, some trees live with their neighbors and relatives in peaceful adult coexistence for venturies if they can survive the traumas and trial of youth wheteher a male or a female most of us can find other living creatures which seem to have more sexual fun and a better deal than any humans we associate with of our gender. Except for artists (in the broadest sense),shamans, a few saints and the occasional lunatic most of us don’t empathize enough with other creatures to really feel the sense of watching some animal or being and knowing the sense of not having somethng they take for granted. Beyond interspecies differences, we can be aware that Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Plato and Sun Tzu were all completely unable to win the World Series or the NASCAR trophies that we watch others compete for or avoid watching people compete for each day. The world rushes by each of us according to the age and space in which we live and there are no persons who have all human options open to them. Thus, whenever we speak of success and even of the most extreme kind of success we are speaking of a limited and relative kind of thing.

In fact, a rather well known line of poetry encourages us to see our limits in achieving the greatness we percieve in a good and happy way. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a Heaven for?” On a clear night the naked eye can see Arcturus many billions of miles away while a naked and unaided body can leap and grab an object not much over twenty feet from one’s naked resting eyeballs. Therefore, there does seem to be rather a disparity between the reachof purely physical perception and the grasp of grip. However, its hard to measure exactly how much further away is the farthest thing we can touch with our finger tips from the farthest thing we can grasp in our hands. Such a difference seems subpoetic somehow. So perhaps reach is meant in its broadest literal meaning as the underlying foundation of this metaphor. Some of us compare our actual achievements to goals analagous to those objects just at our fingertips and others of us tned to compare our achievements to goals as practically remote as Arcturus is distant. While I don’t think loftier goals always mean a less happy person they may certainly break down smugness and self satisfaction.

What about all the many how-to books of the self-help variety that tend to promote success as a goal which is relatively universal and easily identified? Can success reaslly be at all ambiguous or mysterious if so many agree on what is meant in the writing, publishing and purchase of all these books?

Perhaps one reason that sports and other games are so widely enjoyed by so many kinds of people is that in these games success can be identified more easily than in life. While in practice winning may not be the only goal that players and coaches address it is certainly one of the major goals in everygame. And even when a team or player is involved in a game or competition where winning is not a realistic goal and is not reall sought, winning remains the standard by which their efoorts are measured and assessed. This sort of game theory applies readily war. One hopes for and should seek victory but often it is best to put up a great fight and lose utterly than simply to lose utterly. The conqueror’s desire for revenge will not often cause as much harm as will be avoided by having taught them to fear renewed hostility, having reduced their forces, having proved unpredictable and having proven that one can stand strong for commitments given. The way one achieves these secondary objectives however is usually by trying to win.

In some kinds of play winning is not so clear and not so important. Often there are still victories involved but they are the victories of the type whiich actors describe in doing a scene. They are subtle kinds of plays for and calculations of dominance and position. Some forms of feminism have tried to hide the fact that in most cases and at most times women will avoid forms of direct contest in zero-sum competition with their husbands, potential husbands and potential sons-in-law. There are very good reasons for that. Nonetheless, in Greek which was so dominant over so much of culture for so long the women had their Heraklion games as a counterpart to the Olympic games and competed fiercely in athletics with one another. I think society is much richer when women speak the language of competition as men experience it. A little man to woman competiton in formal systems can add some spice as well. But men competing directly with women in hard fought games will never be the main course of a healthy society. Danika Patrick enhances INDY racing’s appeal because she is the sexy, good-looking woman who gives the guys a good run for their money. Other women come and go and she keeps the door open for them. INDY could probably handle another ten women of her caliber or better. But another 25 women like her would hurt its appeal. I watch the sport more because of her, but I enjoy watching her and the men compete in a man’s sport.

Coed soccer with little boys and girls is laying a foundation for a better future I think. Any good future will involve a lot of single sex competition. Cheerleading is a kind of sport and artform used to emphasize the really maco qualities of a given sport by accenting the fit and able females cheering for it. Male cheerleaders exist and can be important but they support and supplement the women involved. Men can also benefit from learining some female-dominated skill sets. It can be refreshing to everyone if old Widower Fred puts on a good social event as his wife once did. If men are throwing most of the dinner parties then that group of dinner parties will surely be in decline.

All of the kinds of success that I have mentioned are distinct from the big life-defining measure of overall success. Those seem different as well from the suceess measures of a society. I think that in my own life there has been a pretty good level of mixture between success and failure, winning and losing. I have had more than a few victories of various kinds. However, most of my life I have felt very aware that I could not overcome many of the difficulties that seemed most important to me. By most of the standards I value my life has been largely a failure. In may ways, things have gone mostly from bad to worse. I would describe myself as divorced, childless, unemloyed, not really solvent, physically challenged unhappy and without much rapport with people. While sincerely mean all of those things they are not the whole story. My situation is actually very complex. Even as a young child however I began to calculate that I was not likely to have a very happy life. My experiences and studies since then have mostly made me believe that as a child I was insightful rather than pessimistic or emotionally or mentally damaged. I think that the modern era has so much literal and metaphorical blood on its hands that it must take refuge in the idea of depression as mental illness. Modern society cannot begin to make ammends for all the evil it does, therefore it must say that thoses it injures have something wrong with the apparatus that records and evaluates injury. Painkillers are given when really the assault causing the pain and the wounds resulting should be the focus of attention.

The world has always been a place of great suffering and much that is wrong and evil has often happened here in every age of humankind. But I do think that as a species there are almost always fewer chances for the best tmes and structures of the human race to reassert themselves. The most squalid slums and refugee camps endure for generations now. Vast mountains of waste are produced by the rich and inflicted upon the environment. The healthiest expressions of each religion are often driven out and held out by the pincer action of secularism and fanaticism. I think a lot of things are getting worse.I favor the advance of technology and I don’t blame all problems on technological change. However, I think that it is less of an offset than some people technical advancement is probable in many scenarios. Knowledge tends to expand we should not celebrate ourselves too much as a result.

If we had a culture building sustainable seamount and undersea colonies on a big scale, turning waste into energy, colonizing mars and creating vast parks near all major megalopolises then I would say that such a technostorm was offestting most of the evils of the modern age. Instead, I see the human race as getting poorer over all.

In the coming Election I will be very glad to vote for Sarah Palin and won’t mind voting for McCain. If they lose I will see the election of Obama as a very bad thing for the futrure. I have discussed why in other notes. I believe that we will be losing some thing that cannot be quickly remedied.

However, it does not seem much worse or as bad as many other events that shaped history. I think that from a philosophical point of view I am getting more and more accustomed to losing gracefully. At a personal level I find that society exists as a place where my values are often destined to lose. When I do have a play to make I often think that I am in a situation where even a solid win will be a loss. But of course I may lose and often do. I have not been very active in this campaign season and I have not regretted not being a Republican. Yet I will be sad to see the lady from Alaska lose no matter how gracefully she does it.

 The End.
I see the Palins struggling with notoriety and am wondering how they will deal with it all. So many people have injuries in this administration. I hear that Robert Gates, Justice Alito, Jusitce Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton and many others have had injuries and I see the Governor of Alaska resigning. If I was paranoid I would see a pattern of limited mayhem marking the administration of President B. Hussein O.  Life is hard all over and I am able to see that Obama supporters have things to change. But I am still sad that the little lady from Alaska is not bringing her lovely smile to the Naval Observatory and the world stage. That is one area that has not changed within my mental framework about politics.
For now I will just muse, blog and think. Maybe one day I will do more.  But we will be in a very different place than we would have been. Where we will be standing remains to be seen.   

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Conservative Ideas in America and the Day of Obama’s Election

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 2 comments
 This blog post was firstposted in Politico when Obama was elected to the Presidency Conservatism it is worse than you think if you are one, but you probably aren’t!
Content: I feel a certain amount of sympathy for Barack Obama. I choose to start with that line because I consider myself to be one of the people most opposed to Barack Obama within the spectrum of legitimate politics. However, I don’t think that there is any doubt that we have reached the point where Conservatism can be looked at as something which has merited the term “crisis”. America is in a crisis and I believe that it will prove to be a very grave crisis. However, conservatism is in a far greater crisis. For argument’s sake let us say that the terms right and left, Democrat and Republican describe a real political dynamic which matters in this country. I would argue that on the right in this country we have lots of politicians who use the label “conservative” but actually we have a collection of Libertarians, Tax Avoiders,  Moderate Neo-Fascists , Ultra-Reformed  Protestant Theocrats, and Anglophile Antiquarians who collectively squeeze a weak and demoralized conservative group of Americans who hardly matter at all.  Some of these five never discussed groups would be Conservatives if there really was a Conservative Movement for them to be part of , on the other hand many fundamentally despise Conservatism.I voted for George Bush the first time and almost certainly would have voted for him the second time if I could have made it to Beijing’s American Embassy in time to vote. However, I missed that election. I voted for Mcain-Palin in the most recent election. I also voted for Mary Landrieu a Democrat this year. Through my life I have voted for a collection of Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  My sympathy for Barack Obama comes into play in this regard. Like Obama (and a lot of other people)  I have had to make the best choices I could at any given time. By the time I was old enough to vote I had forged a lot of bonds and relationships which included fundamentalists, communists in other countries, resentful Moslems, white supremacists, black radicals and lots of other people who don’t fall into the neat safe categories that President mills like mid century Yale Law normally produce in quantity.  If I were to have made a run at the US Presidency there would be people some folks would like as little as I like Rev. Wright and David Ayres. Despite all that colorful background I have lots of self-respect and more oddly yet, I think of myself as an authentic American Conservative. Arguably, I am one of the only American conservatives who could be optimistic abpout the Obama example. Beacuse if such an oddly positioned person of such a background as Barack Obama can be President of the United States then maybe I could at least get elected parish assessor, city dog-catcher, county councilman, water-district representative or something else somewhere in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Somehow I don’t think Obama’s election signifies anything nearly that hopeful for someone like me.  I am able to accept that there is not likely to be a government paycheck in my future. That is unless you include the kinds of fellowships and part-time job checks form school boards and universities which I have gotten in the past. I don’t hate liberalism but I know that Liberals are more likely to take a political interest in those with odd and quirky backgrounds than conservatives are. I am able to say that I have won a few elections. I won a seat on Dorm Council in College, I was elected as Outstanding Graduate in my department , college and university for that particular commencement exercise at a different school. Then In China  a few years ago I organized elections among my student for various class and subgroup offices. Then there are a couple of elections where I was elected to post that I can’t discuss here by groups that like their privacy.  None of those races seem very much related to the Presidency or even a governorship however. In most of these races my political philosophy was not a central aspect of what people were electing me for or voting against. Many people hold office for other reasons than political philosophy. People vote for friends, members of their race or class, to keep seniority in a legislature or because they are personally opposed to the candidates opposition. But in  the big leagues there are always some questions of political philosophy that become important. I would argue that Conservatism is usually not on the menu.I think that a coherent expression of American Conservative political philosophy would require at leason very long book. If someone hasn’t read any of the books which have helped to from my opinions then an article or two would not make the great sweep of ideas stand clear. Here I am going to do someting very different. I am going to propose ten unthinkable planks in a platform in an agressive conservative movement. I don’t think that conservative means passive. Some of these would even require constitutional ammendments. I believe that these planks would probably unpopular and are largely undemanded but that is because Conservatism is largely dead. I think that passing something along these lines would be essential to setting our country on a good conservative path. I believe struggling for something like this would be essential for rebuilding a conservative movement.

So here are my unthinkable Ten:

1.The Aboriginal Americans Ammendment: The Eskimos, Indians, Hawaiians, Chamorros and Samoans should be given a single grant in treaty of one or two percent of all Federal Governmnent lands (not state or private lands) . These lands should be under a perpetual and largely green treaty which would allow some activities and not others in perpetuity.  The American Indians should have several federal territories with representation in the House of Representatives and not in the Senate. The other four groups should  have one relatively contiguous teritory with representation in the House of Represnetatives but not in the Senate. Each of these Territories should award one transitional elector for each member of the House of Representatives an also one long-term elector who  would serve in at least three Presidential elections and who would have standing to join together and have several specific perogatives in the Senate. Those elgible to vote as Aboriginal Americans could choose tov ote either as Aboriginal or generic American Citizens. At the time of this creation a final trust fund should be st up and there should be included some bonds and securities maturing over time. Then there would be a final treaty settlement of all  grievances between the United States and aboriginal peoples.

2.The First Lady Ammendment: The First Lady should be recognized as a junior but joint Head of State. She should receive a perpetual constitutional earmark of revenues  for use in grants and programs for women and mothers. She should be specifically authorized to undertake purely ceremonila diplomacy any where in the scope of American diplomacy. Whenever a woman is President of the United States then the majority of the ear-marked funds should go to a trust and earn interest. A skeleton amount and skeleton tasks only be reserved for the Presidential consort husband.

3. The Defense Department should be required to allot a greater percentage than ever before to its Junior ROTC program. These programs should be able to be chartered by public and private schools. Students would take a class a day, would go to camp two weeks a year with their State or Aboriginal Territory National Guard Unit and would spend a month  with the Americorps each summer. In return for this volunteers would recieve healthcare, have a varied scholarship account and eat at a training table at school. 

4. Puerto Rico Should be made our fifty-first state and the last admitted without a constitutional ammendment. A part of Puerto Rico anda part of the US Virgin Islans should be set aside for a Fedral Carribean territory similar to but separate and less represented than the Aboriginal Territories. Those elible to vote as Old Carribean Americans would have to choose not to vote as generic Americans.

5.The State of Utah should receive a Charter rescinding the requirement that it abolish Polygamy. It should be given ten years to set up a domestic regime of polygamy that will answer for all serious concerns such as underage marriage and would recognize plural marriage responsibly in Utah without exagerated full-faith and credit elsewhere.

6. States with highly regulated casinos and a history of vigorous related law enforcement should be allowed to develop a regime for licensing the use of recreational drugs with physicians present and federally license detox-release requirements. Casinos would collect both a high state and federal tax for this drug use.

7.The Federal Racial Classification scheme should be abolished. Especially the not very popular and mostly made up Hispanic race based mostly on one’s father’s last name. There should be a recoginized Permanent Committe on Race, Ethnicity and Kinship. The US Census Bureau should be put under the direction of this body which should also have the authority draw up congressional districts. All retired Presidents generally and Vice Presidents over 70 years old would be lifetime members of this committee. Americans would all have the right to transfer one percent of their income tax witholding and four percent of all their property taxes to family associations which would be chartered by this commitee. These family associations would all share in a seireis of federal programs providing surpluses, grants and loans for them to use especially in stting up daycare, healthcare and eldercare programs.  These family’s would self identify their race and ethnicity.

8.The Navy should develop a Navy One Program . This would be a sailing longship on which the frist family would entertain and a permanent destroyer escort. This ship would also  offer high honor Junior ROTC, regular ROTC and  Naval Academy work study positions on this ship.

9. A working Federal Death penalty program should be developed and it should be applied regularly when required or clearly indicated. Piracy and Terrorism should be principal causes for its use.

10.The federal government should create a full scale set of Mother’s Incentives working with but not entirely dependent upon the First Lady’s bureaucracy. Companies, cities, towns, and States would receive generous incentives for providing small gardens, job-sharing programs, cottage industries and very flexible positions for mothers with young children. These programs would provide a further annual bonus to married mothers with young children.

Yes I am aware most of you think that thses things have nothing to do with conservatism. Unfortunately that is because most Americans no longer have any idea what Conservatism. I don’t mind so much if these things make you want o hurl ridicule or even vomit. However, if they do then maybe you should consider not calling yourself a conservative. 

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Novus Ordo Seclorum

Posted on August 19, 2009 | 3 comments
Novus Ordo Seclorum: My Views on a New World Order
This was first published by me on Facebook on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:43am. Like my first blog here it came late in a long series of notes. I have reproduced it here with no improvements or changes whatsoever. Here it appears without tone or context and crtainly a bit the worse for wear. This is a bit of bloviation on the ideas I believe are important for human survival and prosperity over time.
 
If some of you were inclined to consider me a megalomaniac but just were not quite sure then this ought to help you feel confident in that assertion. This is my boldest note in this series. I ask nobody for anything in it but obviously it would require something of almost everyone alive. It is not the most ambitious thing ever published but it is close. I think in some ways it is also faithful to my American heritage especially.

The currency of the United States of America has a seal on it. The seal shows a pyramid which does not reach its zenith. At the place where the very top of the pyramid should be there is a small space to indicate flying or floating and the an eye in a triangle that fits the profile of the pyramid. Besides these graphic portrayals there are words which form part of the seal. Those words are “Novus Ordo Seclorum”, the Latin phrase translates as New Order of the Ages. The Founding Fathers of the United States believed and hoped that they were setting up a New World Order. To some remarkably high degree they succeeded. This my own view on the Novus Ordo Seclorum which I would devise from the vantage point of 2009.

I am closing in on the June 1 anniversary of my first Facebook note. I think I will try to lay out my own views of the world’s future and my own plans for a New World Order. When Osama Bin Laden lays out his views of the future the world knows that he has done a lot and and ended many lives and has fanatical followers around the world. When President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke of the New World Order and his vision for it the speeches were credible because he was the Chief Executive Officer of the world’s largest military and financial combination and a Nation with trade relations with and citizens from almost the whole world. When Stalin or Hitler or Lenin spoke of world change they were able to provide friends and enemies with similar reasons to believe listening to them mattered. When I am about to do it it will mostly seem arrogant and perhaps a bit delusional. The Realpolitik analysis is that I am not a lawyer or the holder of some well-known public office. The Realpolitik analysis is that if one were to stretch the total number of dangerous armed men in the world who might have a speedy response to my call to arms it would fall somewhere very far short of a division. The Realpolitik analysis is that unlike Popes Paul VI and John Paul II or even the Dhalai Lama I am not the titular head of all or a large part of a major religion. However, in the spirit of getting things off my chest this year I will discuss the ideas that I have had for quite some time and how they relate to the possibilities of a future for the world and for nations and peoples that certainly will not simply evolve. Therefore although it may do no more than provide definite grounds for certifying me as a megalomaniac or convicting me of some crime or other I will write down here the basic views I have as clearly as I can which have guided a sort minimal political activity of my own and some associates over several years.

The same side of the same Great Seal of the United States that appears on the same currency not only says “Novus Ordo Seclorum”. Rather, above the pyramid but not directly above its peak are the words “Annuit Coeptis”. That means “He (She or It) has favored our undertakings” and it is known that the designers intended the He or It to be either God or Divine Providence. That more or less Masonic quotation is very much in keeping with the spirit of true Judaism or Christianity. We do what we believe to beright in keeping with the Divine Will and he may bless our undertakings. We do not do nothing and hope to be rescued.

I am setting out these things in this venue as I have not yet ever set them outs so publicly. I have a five point plan in a sense although each point breaks down into a very complex outline. I think that if this plan is followed we will have many chances to make a huge mess out of our species an both our civilization (singular) and our civilizations (plural). If we do many tragedies and bad things will happen that would never happen if we did not do it. But we will have a chance for a future worthy of animals, plants and especially humans. We will have a future in which it is possible to hope that faith and idealism need not move towards becoming an ever more perverse joke.

I. The Great Israel Treaties
II. The Reform of the United Nations
III. The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty
IV. Formation of the Great Formal Federations.

Before I get really breaking down and laying out my plan I could ask the rhetorical question, why have a plan? Are to rephrase it, has being a collective clueless idiot served the human race well up untill this point? By my rephrasing you may guess that I feel and believe the answer to be “no”. But I will try to set forth some reasons for this position later on.

1. Since about 1100 AD there have been no large suitable new lands or even realtively large new lnds to open up to human settlement. In my view this really began a new era of human history. It seems to me that this really matters a great deal more than is ever calculated by anyone with power and influence. We, as a species, have a real need to colonize seamounts, the craters on the Moon and Mars and submarine coastal flats. Whether or not we do those things will significantly affect our chances for survival as a species and will help determine in countless ways the quality of that survival if we do survive.

2. Indefinite population growth is essential for healthy and worthwhile human development. There is no doubt that we can not plan for that if we do not maximize recycling in a different way then ever conceived, colonize space and colonize the underwater environment.

3.We must strengthen ancient and vital elements of civilization like the nation, the state, the nation-state, the family and the military tradition. To do these things will require aggressive proactive planning and action which will offset trends of change in the last two centuries especially. We must do this without halting the engines of change which are vital for renewing and organizing the economies and growth into the future.

4. I and some number of other people must either devote ourselves to reforms like these or else choose some far less savory course of action. For some of us there is profound personal dissatisfaction with the world as it is. There can be no real lasting adjustment to the status quo and therefore, while alive we must struggle.

I want to go through my plan in brief here. I fully acknowledge that there are few if any elements that will be fully explained and disclosed in this note. Especialy, My own role in such a future plan is de-emphasized here compared to some other drafts. I am not sure why exactly that is the case. Perhaps because I am largely just a trapped and semi-tortured captive of circumstance disclosing secrets after a long silence. Perhaps because there are no long-term possibilities fo living out my life to a natural span which are not profoundly unattractive and so I do not give the proverbial rat’s ass. Perhaps it is becuse the ideas matter to me and so I am introducing them into the stream of geo polical dialog. More than likely all the reasons delineated in the previous sentence play a part.

I. I suggest that reparations be paid for the Holocaust ny many parties which beneiftted or inherited from beneficiaries. I suggest that a large part of these funds bepaid to purchase the Sinai from Egypt and then a separate portion be set up as a development fund. This fund would also include a fund for concessions to be paid for in which those paying in to the fund would be preferred. This Sinai would be a State of a greater Federal Great Israel. The other States would be the Principal State of the Republic of Israel, the Capital Sate of Jerusalem, and the State of Palestine. The Republic would receive slightly more land than it yielded to form the Capital State of Jerusalem in the from of five state military reservations in the Sinai. Palestine would receive a conceesion the size of Gaza which would be one of three districts in that federal state. The remainder of Sinai would be composed of several federalized districts and it would form the fourth and last state.

II. I would like to see the UN Charter and operations reformed in a number of ways.
First, I would propose that Permanent Members of the Security Council be given the titles Founding Permanent Members of the Security Council and they alone would continue to have individual vetoes. However, I further propose that a handul of countries be sent a confidential invitation based on their ecnomy, population, military capacity and cultural dominance with the understanding that no more than 5 more Permanent Members will be admitted to the Security Council ( nominees I would include would be Japan, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Brazil and Saudi Arabia). The price for admission would be 10 billion US Dollars, cession of 50 square kilometers of their own land as a permanent UN posession and diplomatic and military reservation. These funds would be placed in an endowed Security Council fund able to provide operational funds for humanitarian programs of the Security Council.
Second, I propose that their be a founding auction when the Human Habitat Expansion Treaty (which I am going to discuss next) is made. I propose that the funds from auctioning off micro-state rights go into a permanent endowed fund to become the base of operations for the United Nations Space Authority. This would be the agency governing UN reservations on the Moon and Mars.
Third, I propose that the Vatican City be admitted as a full member and a number of other entities be granted membership as highest level of observer currently enjoyed by the Vatican.
Fourth, I propose a global house as a second chamber to our world government. This is the least likely change and the hardest to justify. I will not discuss it at length here but will discuss it again a bit in context as I discuss the formation of the Great Federations as the last section of this Note.

III. The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty is possibly the very most important of of aspects of my plan for the human future. This is really the challenge on which humanity will either open the path to a new future or else fail to do so. The other three aspects greatly affect the likely success and vibrancy of this part of the plan. I also think they have other important contributions to make to the human future but this is an entirely different level of importance.

The Human Habitat Expansion Treaty would make available for development in an effective way the surfaces of the Moon and Mars as well as many of the seamounts throughout the world. TheFormation of the great federations would modify the exact nature of the HHET compared to a world in which there is no such formation of Federations. But the the basic concept will be the same either way.

First, Free Access to Space will be preserved as the legal doctrine governing all orbits, asteroids, gas giant planets and minor moons. A few heavenly bodies would be placed into a provisional status. However, The surfaces of Mars and the Moon would be divided by legal right. About 10% would be permanently reserved under the direct control of the United Nations Space Authority. About 10% would be reserved for entities that are neither the United Nations nor a Nation State, about half of this auctioned off to the highest bidder for the creation of 50 colonial microstates on Mars and the Moon with the UN Space Authority holding the proceeds in a trust fund bearing interest for support of its programs. Each nation would receive one or two cessions on each sphere of about equal size if they are two. The amount of land received would be determined based on a four part analysis:
1. 20% of the whole surface would be divided equally among all nations without any difference.
2. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations proportionate to their share of the world’s total wealth and economic output.
3. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations proprtionate to their share of the world’s population.
4. 20% of the whole surface would be divided by all nations based on a score from a formula awarding points for their contribution to space, spacefaring capacity and capacity to currently plan and execute space colonization.
These national grants should each include a crater of varying quality which can be developed as Crater Cap Colony. These lands should border on the UN reserves on at least on small side and should be made withnatural borders from surveys and unique shapes where possible. Having said all this within those rubrics they should be squared or rectilinear where possible.

Seamount Colonies should also be discussed in the HHET but I willl merely state that here. The Waterford habs and fields radiating from a series of small artificial island mad of inert waste surrounding an umbilicus of air and electricity and elevators. A small port, solar and wind plant on the top of each Island would join fish processing and recreational facilities These busy surface areas would have no permanent residences however all of which would be underwater. There would be a small submarine port at the bottom of each island.

IV. The formation of the Great Federations (of no more than Six and no less than Four with Five as the ideal) would form a Security Council for the other new global house of the UN and would be observers in the other currently existing international house. These Federations would sign the HHET. They would also receive a grant on the Moon and Mars. The goal would be for 95% or more of all the world’s nations to join a formally recognized federation. This would be a huge constituional project. Doing the wrong thing would be worse than doing nothing. But such a goal is a vital part of optimizing the other goals. However, while I have written at great length about such federations in notes of my own this is not the time to go public with details.

Should all this impossibility become reality then I think we have to hope fro about a hundred years of relative peace. The reforms would increase the likelihood that our descendants will blast eachother aprt in figthers orbiting Jupiter. They would increase the chance of warriors starving out cities on Mars. However, they would decresase the prospect of Erth’s total ruin and the obliteration of humanity.
I am very serious about all of this. I say that not at all sure that I will be able to work on making any of it happen. So I have now exposed my major delusions of grandeur and am able to face the end of this annual cycle of Facebook Notes with peace. This new order of the ages would be an undertaking that could shape and channel human energies for at least 1000 years as for as its design goes. Our species has reached the age where we must take some real responsibility for the future of our descendants.

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