September Surprise

I have refrained from using my perspective from the 28th century to report events to this period, but this was so monumental that I felt compelled to share the information. Don't worry too much, because Trump was just a minor blip in history who was mostly forgotten within a decade.

It was early September, and the country was getting used to the idea that Trump probably would be president for another term. We were even getting used to having a president who knew as much about the U.S. government as the typical kindergartener. Congress had determined to give up its powers to create the legislation that the president was responsible for carrying out. Trump hadn’t seemed all that unhealthy; although he was a hundred pounds over-weight. No one was really ready for his death from heart failure.

We should all take his untimely death as a warning. The cause was ventricular fibrillation that is thought to have resulted from an undiagnosed cardiomyopathy. It was the sort of thing that could go for decades without being noticed, and his annual examinations indicated that he was quite healthy for someone who got little exercise, but the myopathy could have developed even in a healthy person.

In addition to the funeral, the country and the political parties have to make some immediate changes. The Republicans need to put someone else at the top of their ticket, and the Democrat party has to decide whether their ticket is the right one for the post-Trump era.

Pence has made it clear that he would like to lead the party, and the national committee will have to make that decision, but there is question as to who would be at the top of the ticket, and the second-place person at the convention, Bill Weld, has claimed that he should be the presidential nominee, and a lot of history and custom agree with him. An even bigger problem is for all states to update their ballots. There are only two months to go, and there are many things that must be altered. The Republican Party has to decide immediately whether Mike Pence will move up to the top spot, or if it will be Bill Weld. If Pence moves, then a new VP nominee will have to be named.

If the death and changing the ballot weren't enough, some people have been claiming that Trump was actually poisoned. Like any good conspiracy theory there are questions as to whether Brernie Sanders and the Democrat Party poisoned Trump, or if it was done by government operatives from Eastern Europe

And there are others who assert this this was divine retribution for his many transgressions. And still others who point fingers at Republicans angry at Trump's abandonment of the values of Republicans.

The ballots in some states were already closed, and ones that can be changed will have to be changed by the end of September. Some people won't learn who to vote for until election day.

https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/20431

Improving Life in America

Some people were commenting on the size of the military budget of the United States of America. I simply agreed that it is rather large, but I thought a little more about it and realized that the more than six hundred billion was enough to pay attention to, and it is even enough to do something with. As we all know, the U.S.A. is more than twenty trillion in debt. The military budget isn’t enough to eliminate the debt, but it might get us on the way, but not directly. We should take half of the military budget (or maybe a little more) and give each citizen a million dollars.

A million dollars isn’t as much now as it was when John Beresford Tipton gave that much to a random person every week on the TV show, but a million could still help many people. People could pay off student debt, instead of writing that off, and they would still have enough to go out and but something. Others could payoff or buy a house, and that would be extremely handy for the homeless.

The would be a kicker in it. It would be taxable, but it would e at the new flat rate of 15% on all income. And they'd have the money, so they could and would pay the income tax, especially since it had been withheld. But with the new habit of paying income taxes, people would start to pay down the debt, and that would strengthen the U.S. economy, which would have the effect of making everyone wealthier. And it would make the government wealthier, because fifteen percent off the top would be a much larger amount that the negative income that the government is charging now. Fifteen percent is so little that even perennial scofflaws like Trump would be willing to pay some taxes, for a change.

It wouldn't take many years of collecting fifteen percent and applying it to the debt would make a major difference, and if we kept the custom of putting half of what the defense department was looking for to debt reduction the debt would decrease.

That would also make the dollar stronger and lower the Treasury Department's cost of borrowing. That wouldn't decrease the carrying cost, but it would lower the rate when the Treasury had to refund an issue.

That little fifteen percent (maybe we should make it twenty) tax would pay for everything that the feds have been doing, adjusting for the decrease in military spending, and it would make it easier for people and businesses to make money, so the economy would boom, especially after we get rid of Trump's tariffs.

The only downside would be unemployment among accountants and IRS workers, but some of them could switch to the improved tax scheme, so maybe there wouldn't be much unemployment, or maybe the accountants could do something useful instead. But with all the previously penniless people rolling in dough, they might become financial advisors.

With all the additional wealth, Americans could live the lives they only dreamed of, and life in America could truly be better.

Degenerate Generations

In Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius Niccolò Machiavelli went on at some length about how elders have been complaining about the younger generation and younger people have been complaining about the elders for thousands of years. His thought was that the degeneration was exaggerated, because humanity would have fallen into savagery long ago if the generations were progressively that degenerate. Or I might have made that up to try to make Machiavelli look even better. But even the Ancient Greeks complained about younger generations, and such complaints continue, and probably will continue into the far distant future.

My opinion is that both the younger and older generations should have a little more understanding of the other, and all people should have a better understanding of history. While older generations have had more experience, the youngers have the enthusiasm of youth that has not yet been stifled by stark reality. Those of my generation already decided that we "Won't Get Fooled Again", as The Who put it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q But everyone is fooled by someone in some way. Some of us learn to avoid listening to anyone, while others use careful analysis of data and argument before we will accept anything. And most people just go one being fooled time after time. This is another thing that has been known for thousands of years, and no one has found a cure. In Proverbs it was expressed as: "As a dog will return to its vomit, a fool will return to his folly." (Proverbs 26:11) That same idea is contained in the adage about studying history: Those who do know history are doomed to watch in horror as it is repeated.

Perhaps the most substantial difference between the generations is historical perspective. Most people think that anything that happened before their births is ancient history, irrelevant to today's world. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, we are still suffering from the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, and that is true of China, Russia, the Mideast, Europe and Central Asia. And Charlemagne's empire is still relevant to Europe. And just a short time ago, the French were sending Indians to murder, rape, and kidnap people in the British colonies of North America. Even though you may hate and repudiate the past, the present was shaped by the past; the past that you repudiate is yours. If you follow a religion, then it almost certainly has an ancient origin, but that's because we know that the recently founded religions are all frauds. Today's political and economic ideas also have their origins in ancient philosophy.

Alas, there are people who take advantage of the relative innocence of youth, and that has been going on for a long time, but in the 1960's there were songs about young people who discovered that they had been played for fools. In addition to "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who; and there was "My Backpages " by Bob Dylan. But everyone has to learn those lessons for himself, learn that the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Eventually, everyone learns that they were fooled, but for some it takes a lifetime, while others learn a little faster. It is sad that the ones doing the fooling are often the ones who were presented as the ones that you should trust. It makes me happier that I am not claiming to have any new or better ideas; I am simply presenting ideas that have been around for a long time in slightly different words. Humans have not changed greatly for a long time; there have been slow, incremental changes, but the underlying motivations and drives are the same for modern humans as they were for humans in ancient times and probably for the great apes even earlier, and I think that people should become comfortable with those earlier times and with humans having been humans even back then.

Most of the time we are fooled by marketing lies, fluff, puffery. Most of the time and most of the lies are used to sell products and services, but they are also used to sell political candidates and programs. The worst part is that I usually disagree with the candidates and programs they are pushing, but other people think that government should make all their decisions for them.

But one can tell a lot about the quality of goods, services, ideas, or whatever by the marketing given to them. Good quality things don't require much marketing, a good description is usually adequate; for example, most foods sell themselves. But low quality goods require marketing to make them appear good, and truly bad products need heavy-handed marketing to move them off the shelves.

Similarly, completely good political ideas only need description to be supported by most people, as is the case with free speech. Low quality ideas like "progressive" income taxes require some marketing to sell them to most people. And truly bad ideas such as anthropogenic climate change require heavy-handed arm twisting to sell them to most people; things along the lines of: If you don't believe this then you are opposed to science.

As has been known for a long time "There's a sucker born every minute." Some people grow out of that and learn how to avoid being taken, but others don't last that long.

Carbon Dioxide Red Herring

I find it annoying to read or hear assertions that human activity is causing climate change especially when the people making the assertions never even heard of the Milkovitch cycles and don’t even know what makes some gases "greenhouse gases" while other gases do not create the greenhouse effect. Many articles on the subject give the impression the the author does not understand what he is writing.

One item that is less prevalent now than it was a few years ago is the matter of whether the recent climate change is unprecedented, as it is sometimes called by authors. In fact, since civilization began about six thousand years ago, there have been three cycles that we can clearly see from written records. Those are the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period, and the current warm period. There were cool periods in between, the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age. There certainly have been other warm and cool periods in earlier times, but there is less information about those.

And since the last Ice Age maximum there has been even more warming and cooling, and sea level has risen by about nine hundred feet, but the level hasn't varied by much in the last three thousand years; although there was a rise during the Roman Warm Period and a drop during the Little Ice Age. The change in sea level can be seen in the location of a few cities fairly far up rivers from the mouths, but in some cases, they were located well upstream to avoid pirates, but some cities that failed as seaports because a sand bar grew across the harbor actually suffered from sea level drop. Notable examples of this problem in ancient cities include Ephesus and Pisa. Sea level change is not the only reason why harbors became useless, because subsidence and rebound from glacial periods also change the local sea level. It should be clear that there have been periods that were warmer or cooler that it is at present.

It has been claimed that greenhouse effect caused by increased carbon dioxide has been the main cause of recent warming, but carbon dioxide is not much of a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gas potential of a gas is determined by its dipole moment. Most sources point out that Carbon dioxide has no dipole moment, but some sources give a value of 0.112 for its dipole moment. For comparison, Water has a dipole moment of 1.8546, which is 16.56 times as much as concentration of carbon dioxide. In the atmosphere carbon dioxide has an average concentration of about 400 parts per million, while water vapor has a concentration of from 0.1% to 4% (call it 2% average), or about 48 times the concentration of carbon dioxide to one hundred times the concentration. This means that water vapor in the atmosphere has approximately 800 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If we apply that to the total amount of greenhouse effect on the atmosphere, and it is thought that the Earth’s atmosphere would have a temperature of about 0 F, if there were no greenhouse effects, versus the average of 59 F at present. The warming that carbon dioxide has caused is less than one tenth of a degree (<.01). Because of the small dipole moment, the concentration would have to rise to more than one half of one percent (5000 ppm) before it would become significant to the Earth’s atmosphere.

To be succinct, the matter of carbon dioxide as a factor in global warming or climate change is a red herring, at best, or a bald-faced lie, if we wish to be blunt.

For those reasons, it appears that the idea of carbon dioxide driving recent warming is extremely unlikely. Consider also that while it has been determined that the average surface temperature of Earth would be about zero degrees Fahrenheit, if there were no greenhouse effect, rather than the present average of fifty-five degrees. water vapor is responsible for about fifty-two degrees of that; carbon dioxide is responsible for about two degrees, and other greenhouse gases are responsible for the other degree.

There has been an increase in warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1750 CE, and some people assert that that warming was caused by increased burning of organic fuels, which put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but that ignores that fact that the Earth was still in the Little Ice Age at that time, and it was warming from natural events. The warming that took us out of the Little Ice Age has yet not topped out. If we compare temperatures now with the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, then we can expect additional warming.

People who assert that human activity has been the cause of warming ignore the effects of the Solar cycles and the Milkovitch cycles in the Earth's orbit and rotation. But more serious is the matter of in earlier periods there was much more atmospheric carbon dioxide during ice ages. While correlation does not show causation, counter examples usually show that there is not a cause-effect relationship. The idea of carbon dioxide causing climate change is a red herring.

If the climate change alarmists had done a good, logical presenting their argument, then the argument would be worthy of serious consideration, but there are major logical fallacies in the climate change argument, and those fallacies bring the whole concept into doubt.

Logical fallacies of climate change alarmists:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/20/the-illogic-of-climate-hysteria/

I do not think that there has been no climate change or global warming. I have no doubt that there has been continued warming as the Earth has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age, but the mechanism for warming that has been put forth would not work.

I encourage reader to read the linked websites for more information.

On the lack of relationship between CO2 levels and temperature from prehistoric evidence:

https://www.climatedepot.com/2010/08/10/peerreviewed-study-finds-ancient-earths-climate-similar-to-present-day-despite-co2-levels-5-to-over-20-times-higher-than-today/?fbclid=IwAR3OJDhhHiW4naPsYhK0T1agbm5dPvh-7L4yXD8OgP9OrceFL5MkJhnClu8

cyclical climate change

https://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12433.short

Climate cycles

https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/climate-basics/climate-primer/natural-climate-cycles

Climate cycles

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-cycle

Milankovitch Cycles

https://www.livescience.com/64813-milankovitch-cycles.html

Alcohol and Equal Rights for All

Humans have been consuming alcohol for at least as long as there have been humans, and there are good reasons to believe that the desire for more alcohol was the driving force behind the development of agriculture. Humans probably got their first tastes of alcohol from fallen fruit that naturally fermented. There's no way to tell for sure, but there are signs of ale, sort of, having been made from seeds about twenty-five thousand years ago, and it is generally accepted that agriculture developed between five and ten thousand years ago. The some of the earliest known crops were wheat and other grains that could have been used to make ale. Real grape wine appears to have been made about eight thousand years ago in Georgia, which is the homeland or vinifera grapes (see link below)

There has been along running argument about whether bread came first or whether ale did. If a batch of ale fails and stops fermenting, then it can be baked and eaten. And ale can be made from bread dough that accidentally gets soaked. Until I get the time machine running, I won't know which came first. It is also possible that bread was first in some places, while ale was first in other places.

The earliest industrial making of ale was in Mesopotamia, where it was made more than seven thousand years ago; that was before writing or bookkeeping.

We don't know exactly why any particular group of people made ale or wine, but even back then surface water was usually polluted, and it was difficult to dig useful wells, but ale could be started in water that was not good to drink, and the alcohol would end up killing bacteria and making it potable. In addition, there is a mood elevating effect that alcohol has on most people. We also know that wine was used medically in places where it was made, and it is more effective than beer at making spoiled food edible. Scavengers can eat partly spoiled food and adequate wine will prevent sickness from it (that is not something to do if you can avoid it).

Some of the positive effects of alcoholic beverages are obvious, while others are less so. Even ten thousand years ago, people would have noticed that people who drank alcohol were generally healthier than people who drank water. Alcohol drinkers also would have gotten over colds and minor diseases faster, and that would include infections. Over the long run, drinkers had longer runs; they tended to live longer.

These and other common advantages of drinking happen whether one drinks a lot or a little, but there are problems inherent in drinking to the point of inebriation, and clumsiness is just one of those. In ancient times the custom of mixing water with one's wine was practiced in some places, that had the effect of providing a delicious beverage that wouldn't make one sick with limiting the amount of alcohol consumed to avoid inebriation. There were laws against becoming drunk and disorderly, but they were as widely ignored as they are now.

It is ironic that something so healthy is also dangerous when consumed in excess. In excess even some of the positive effects of alcohol are reversed. For example, in moderation alcohol is healthy for the heart and leads to healthy blood vessels also, but in chronic alcoholics heart muscle cells can be damaged, and the same if true of blood vessels. Instead of living long, healthy lives, as moderate drinkers do, heavy drinkers. As a general rule the dividing line comes at the same level of consumption that tends to make one inebriated to the point of being unsteady on one's feet and beginning to speak less than correctly.

Here in the U.S.A. there was a period of more than decade, when alcoholic beverages were outlawed. That taught the country that prohibitions of that sort lead to crime as people evade the law. To eliminate the criminal activity, Prohibition was eliminated, but it wasn't completely eliminated. The states restricted the access of younger people to alcohol, and such an age based ban in clearly discrimination in violation to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before Prohibition children had bought bottles of liquor when they wanted to and could find the money, but it became more difficult when it was no longer legal. It had been common for parents to give their children beer or wine with meals, but that changed after Prohibition, and that led to changes in attitudes toward drinking. It used to be that drinking was an ordinary part of life, but the prohibition changed beer and wine from being beverages to being intoxicants that were used only for getting drunk. That attitude still exists, and even after they can dink legally many people binge, getting as drunk as they can, and the kind of drinking is not healthy, but the age based prohibition that still exists pushes the young to act that way, and tends to create life-long drunks, rather than people who drink reasonably.

This would be a better place, if everyone could consume alcoholic beverages legally, and if children were shown how to drink responsibly and allowed to do so from any early age, they might develop better attitudes toward alcohol. There still would be people who would drink themselves to death, but restrictions haven't eliminated that problem; they have only made life less convenient for normal people.

Let's all support this. Let's support equality for everyone.



https://www.medicaldaily.com/7-healt...alcohol-247552

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutriti...ol-full-story/

good, bad, and ugly
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition...r-bad#section2


23 benefits of drinking
https://www.eatthis.com/benefits-of-alcohol/

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...a-archaeology/

Cherry Picking

Yesterday, I noticed a post on my Facebook newsfeed about carbon dioxide in the past and climate change. It quickly became apparent that the data was incomplete, and someone had already posted a note about that. I posted links to two similar articles that had more complete information, and, of course, my comments were heartily criticized, because the original was from NASA, while I posted links by people who do make their livings backing an issue.

Since then I have been thinking about the problems that can be created by cherry-picking data. "Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. [1][2] Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.[3]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking "Rigorous science looks at all the evidence (rather than cherry picking only favorable evidence), controls for variables as to identify what is actually working, uses blinded observations so as to minimize the effects of bias, and uses internally consistent logic."[7] ibid Cherry Picking is very much like using a false premise, because with cherry picking one can tailor the data to provide that results that one wants.

It is clear that this sort of cherry picking has been used to create "big lies", and it appears that the people who call themselves climate scientists are tailoring their output so that they will keep their jobs, but most people do not have the background and critical judgement to know that. But the scientists who engage in intellectual fraud should remember that it is fraud. They are presenting something that is false in its basis, and other people may act differently as results of their fraud. There may be additional reasons for the cherry picking in this field, but financial gain is adequate.

While I started this as a result of cherry picking in the climate business, but they are not the only ones who use cherry picking to tailor their results to push a particular opinion. Cherry picking is also popular in most political debates: taxes, trade, gun control, labor issues, vaccination, education, and almost everything else. And the use of cherry picking isn't restricted to a particular political persuasion; the people who use it are people who want to twist arms into accepting their beliefs, regardless of actual facts.

In public discourse, everyone is pushing his preferred opinions (myself included), so it is valid to suspect everyone of cherry picking facts or using other logical fallacies to make their opinions look better.

We should question our sources of information and wonder whether they presented all of the facts. Even when a person or entity should be objective, there may be reasons why they do not bother with the whole truth. While we expect that from news media, it is also true of government agencies and educational institutions.

While multiple sources are necessary, one must also look at the information provided and consider whether it even makes sense, and whether it is consistent with the rest of the world. Critical judgement is essential in determining whether data could be faked or accurate.  

A few relevant articles

1

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/courses/engs43/ClimateChange.pdf

http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm

long term CO2 and temperature, this mentions the lack of any consistent relationship between CO2 and temperature

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20130096

https://www.the-scientist.com/tag/false-data

https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-published-research-findings-are-probably-false

Climate Change Is the easiest News to Fake

https://www.axios.com/climate-change-is-the-easiest-news-to-fake-1529698183-579c584b-25da-49fe-a46a-cc77e913ba1c.html

Fake journal articles epidemic

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/06/26/sciences-fake-journal-epidemic/

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20130096

Equal Before the Law

I am shocked that young people haven’t already stood up and demanded their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Young citizens of the United States of America fairly often take to the streets to demand something for someone, but I don’t recall them demonstrating to demand their own rights. I didn't even think about it when I was a young college student and drinker, but having a minimum age for buying and using alcohol is a clear violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (My bold to emphasize the relevant parts)

If people of fifty years can legally use alcohol, then so can anyone else who was born in or naturalized to the U.S.A. The concept is quite simple.

I do not especially favor eight year olds getting ploughed, but some could. If had gotten thoroughly inebriated, barfing, falling down, etc., when I was eight, I wouldn't have done that again for a very long time, if ever, and I think that the same would be true for most people, so I am not concerned with creating alcoholics. But there are some people who would regain consciousness and say to themselves: let's do that again, and such people will become alcoholics, and they would regardless of what barriers might be put between them and alcohol. Conversely, there are some people who would never touch another drop. If restrictions are created to save a few, then the majority might be harmed, and laws that benefit a few are also forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Unfortunately, the states also violate the Fourteenth by not allowing all citizens to vote. I can understand refusing to register anyone who cannot state his or her name, but most people who are of school age are quite capable of voting. Many twelve year olds are more qualified to vote than are many forty year olds, but politicians are afraid of knowledgeable voters.

One dodge for the politicians would be to require that people pass skill tests before they could vote, drive, or whatever. That dodge might work, but it might not work for long, because there are good arguments against it; arguments that might prevail in court.

Everyone should realize that making all ages equal would not make anyone immune to laws against crimes against persons and against society such as: drunk and disorderly, and age related sex crimes would not need to be changed; it could still be presumed that anyone under fourteen years was incapable of cooperating in sex acts.

If parents will be worried about their children drinking when they are not present, then they should supervise their children's drinking by serving them beer and wine at home and with meals.

Remember that the kind of beer that is commonly available was developed for drinking or breakfast and for women and children. Showing children that malt beverages and wine are beverages, rather than intoxicants might make it less likely that the children will drink in great quantities in other situations.

Some people are prone to abusing alcohol, and these people will abuse it at any age and in any circumstances.

Perhaps the biggest impact of fully implementing the Fourteenth would be to retailers, who would not longer have to check I.D.'s, and that is a significant function in bars, music venues, and sports events. But that wouldn't result in a drop in employment, because at least as many people would be needed to serve the additional clientele, and more bouncers would be needed to keep order with so many more people becoming inebriated.

Fully implementing the Fourteenth would also impact other areas; for example, making all drugs legal and available over the counter would be another area, and I am sure that readers will think of other matters that will be loosened up when we fully implement the Fourteenth.

But I do find it strange that no college rabble rouser has ever raised this issue and organized marches, petition drives and whatnot to equalize treatment before the law. But demonstration are a drag, and besides they may have been too high.