Knots Of Time

 A Snippit About that Meme 

It was one of the  oddest cases that Dr. Philbine had ever encountered.

The patient was hysterically excited and displayed a deeply passionate conviction that the world owed him a debt of gratitude that should be boundless and immeasurable.

According to him, he had become the savior of the world by employing  a device that permitted him to travel back in time. In and itself, he was not even terribly proud of this remarkable accomplishment, which he at least, was convinced was true. 

No, he was instead obsessed with his glorious success in that he had gone back to Vienna in 1909 and there murdered a teenaged artist named Adolf Hitler.

When asked why this should be considered to be a positive accomplishment, he began to thrash about and scream, "Hitler! Hitler! Don't you understand, you  moronic jackasses!" And much more of the same.

When the staff continued to refuse to praise him for this bizarre "achievement" the patient withdrew into himself and became largely silent, only muttering  incoherently to himself from time to time.

The case took a very peculiar turn when agents of the FBI turned up and insisted upon interviewing the man.

Dr. Philbine declared that this was not possible due to the severe responses his patient had to being agitated with any reference to this mysterious artist. He demanded to know exactly why the FBI could possibly be interested in this case.

The agents indicated to him that there was in fact a device which, when activated, had returned an individual to 1909. This lead to inquiries to the Vienna police, who discovered that there had indeed been an obscure young artist named Adolf Hitler who was found shot to death in 1909.

The case had never been solved.

Sadly, subsequent attempts to determine why the patient had committed this bizarre act only served to drive him deeper into his delusional internal world. He was never charged with murder because of the unavoidable conundrum of can you charge someone with murder if the victim was murdered over a century before the killer was even born? This was a legal issue which neither the judicial system of the United States nor that of Vienna were prepared to undertake.

Repeating History

https://apple.news/AxF_akWjjSxiW6F0fwoDl2w

Is it any surprise that Trump is now dreaming of concentration camps?

Answer: No. 

We have tried it  before and it was a crime against humanity.  Trump plans to repeat the atrocity and to make it even worse.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/

Addenda to the Facebook post (above) summarizing the history.

>President Dwight Eisenhower’s notorious mass deportation program, “Operation Wetback,” that took its name from a derogatory slur against Mexican migrants. In the 1950s, federal agents conducted aggressive raids and rapidly deported hundreds of thousands of migrants by truck, train, plane and cargo ship. The enterprise was a humanitarian nightmare, as a Vox report recounting the operation explained:

Conditions for deported immigrants were horrifying. A later congressional investigation described conditions on one cargo ship as a “penal hell ship” and compared it to a slave ship on the Middle Passage. Immigrants who were dumped over the border in trucks didn’t fare any better. They were shoved into trucks “like cows,” driven 10 miles into Mexico, and unceremoniously dumped into the desert — often in punishing heat, without water. Families were torn apart.

At the time, The Los Angeles Times described the prison camps, surrounded by wire fences, as “concentration camps.” Columbia University historian Mae Ngai estimates that nearly 90 migrants died of sunstroke after being stranded in the desert.<

Historical note:   Concentration camps were first created by Spanish to be used against Cuban rebels fighting for their nation's freedom. The Spanish general in charge of Cuban operations refused to implement the plan, calling it inhumane. He was relieved of duty and a new general, who approved the idea, took charge to implement it.

Later the British used the system to fight against Boer  insurgents in South Africa.

Finally, Hitler turned the concept into outright death camps.

We don't need to add America to the list of nations using concentration camps...Oh. Too late. That is exactly what the Japanese detention centers were during World War II. 

As concentration camp go, those detention centers were on the less horrific side.  Nonetheless, they were concentration camps aimed at a racial minority.

Righting Wrongs

 Regarding the following article, I made a Facebook post which I am now expanding for more detail.

https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-willing-to-change-your-mind-216126

Facebook post:

The point this article is making is one that seems natural to me. I've actually been told, once or twice, that people are surprised to find that I am so willing to acknowledge facts and change my stance on an important issue if sufficient evidence has been offered to demonstrate that I've been wrong. To me it just seems an obvious necessity.

If you insist that you are invariably and unalterably correct then it follows that you will often be wrong. We are none of us perfect and intellectual flexibility is required.

In other words, if you want to be right, you must be willing to  admit that you're wrong. 

I want to continue this so I will make it into a blog post with more detail if anyone's interested.

Addenda:

I have known for quite some time a very commonly referred to fact about the attacks on Pearl Harbor in World War II.  It's not just that I believed it, many historians have reported it as factual  as well.  It is so commonly accepted  as a truth that you hear it in almost any analysis of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

The story is that there were three waves of attacks planned on Pearl Harbor. The first two waves were conducted as planned and we all know how successful they were. Of course, the difficulty with the whole operation was that the American aircraft carriers were not in harbor but out on maneuvers. The report goes that

Admiral Nagumo (in charge of the Pearl Harbor attacks) canceled the third strike which was to destroy the logistical facilities including the fuel supplies because he did not know where the American aircraft carriers were and felt it was more important to protect the precious assets of Japanese aircraft carriers than to conduct this third wave.

The show I was watching stated that this was a myth and that no third wave was ever planned. When I heard that my immediate response was, "What!?! Make your case!"

And the historian being interviewed promptly proceeded to do so. And he convinced me. No third wave was ever planned. 

There were three critical points in making this clear. 

The first was that all Japanese naval reports regarded the mission as a complete success with the exception of the American aircraft carriers not being in harbor. That's a pretty clear statement.

The second part is that Japanese naval doctrine throughout the entire war had a list of targets which were to be struck in order of importance. At the very last place on the list was logistical facilities, including fuel supplies.  In other words, if there had been a third wave it would have attacked all the ships that had not yet been sunk and ignored the supposed goal of such a wave.

Finally,  the third point is that the belief that there was to be a third wave was based entirely on an interview with Captain Fushida, who was the tactical commander of the airstrikes. He reported that he was stunned by the canceling of the third wave. But it should be noted that he said this some 20 to 25 years after the attack and after listening for all those years to Americans wondering why the Japanese were so foolish as to not strike at those precious supplies which would have crippled the American fleet, including the aircraft carriers, for much longer.

It is extremely significant to note that when interviewed immediately after the war, Fushida reported that the attacks on Pearl Harbor were conducted as planned and were completely effective with the exception of the absence of the American carriers. In other words there's no report of any third wave being planned until well after the events and only in the light of harsh American criticism of such a wave not being intended.

It seems clear that Fushida was remembering things the way he wanted them to have been long after the attacks and after the conclusion of the war. 

So, while I based my statements on widely accepted facts as reported by historians, the historians had it wrong and therefore so did I. 

Silly Is As Silly Philosophizes

This article irritated me on several levels, so I responded. My responses won't make much sense unless you read the article so I suggest you look at the link  first.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-married-bachelor-proves-that-unicorns-exist/

 Things can't be mutually contradictory? Then light is a wave and not particle. Unless it's a particle and not wave. Or at least it's kind of both sometimes, and also one or the other at other times and...

And Einstein's famous train thought experiment simply can't be true. Except it is. Under certain circumstances mutually exclusive concepts are both correct. To Susan on the train, both doors open at the same moment in time and that is an absolute fact. But it is also an absolute fact that to Bob standing outside the train as it passes by, the rear door opens first. Sorry, all of you who believe in classic Greek logic as an absolute  truth, but Greek logic is very limited and is not adequate for our modern level of knowledge.

The article makes a great deal of 'suppose you know one of these things is true, but how do you know they're true?'  The article makes much ado about this simple point, but why?  It's better to sum it up quickly.

 What if you're wrong? What if you're absolutely certain you're correct, but in objective reality you are not? That's all that needs to be said about it. Going on and on about it may sound erudite, but verbally beating a dead horse is a waste of words. This article is very pretentious, but it takes simple points and makes them lengthy and abstruse.  

This is a great weakness of philosophers.

To put it even more simply,  the liar paradox which has so often been presented, that is still being presented with awesome respect for the brilliance of its creator is nothing but the silly nonsense of misusing and even abusing human language. 

As for me, insofar as I find it profound, I find this article profoundly silly.

We don't need a lengthy philosophizing to demonstrate that it's silly. It is simply silly. All the philosophizing simply gives a nonsensical foolish statement the image of being profound and serious when fact it's nothing but a silly statement. Frankly, philosophers take themselves far too seriously.

Why say in a simple direct self evident statement that which is obviously true, when you can write an entire article endlessly dodging about and describing in exotic terms that which even a fool could see at first glance?

The answer is quite obvious and simple. Philosophers are paid by the word. Furthermore, lengthy words receive bonuses!

Feeling Blue

 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-quiet-revolution-of-the-sabbath

The article presents a very interesting mix of the value of keeping the sabbath both from  personal and legal viewpoints.  Strictly nostalgically, I cannot help but recall the joy of Sundays. We didn't go to church very often, which I preferred to avoid, but it was the day for the Sunday papers to arrive. It was a day for me to read through the comic pages with full page presentations instead of mere strips (and also in full color not black-and-white). Then I would go to the political pages which similarly went in depth and at length rather than the brief snippets that had been presented during the week.   Finally, I hit the arts pages, which always interested me.

It was a day when my mother used her cast-iron cookware to make Sunday breakfast. I recall it as an extensive and rather elaborate meal, although honestly I can only really remember her carefully spooning hot oil on top of the egg yolks so they could be flipped over without breaking and sitting in my favorite spot at the kitchen nook I could glance at the window at the playground surrounded by the apartments in which we lived in Germany.  

But even as a child what I really resented about Sunday was the blue laws. I did not appreciate the idea of not being able to go to the store.  

At the time it never occurred to me, but now I have to wonder, if Sunday is so utterly sacred and precious how is it that the priests, ministers, and pastors get away with working on that day? 😏

Pound Sand Or Breathe Sand?

 https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/alien-life-may-evolve-from-radically-different-elements-than-human-life-did

While the article is thought-provoking and might be useful to a science-fiction author, it's pretty thin on facts and very thick on speculation.

For example,  it's true that it is often pointed out that because it also allows for four covalent bonds, silicon might be an alternative to carbon based life.  However, the fact that silicon is extremely common here on earth and yet somehow we are carbon based, suggests it simply is not suitable.

Why not? First of all if you use oxidation in order to provide energy to your living organism, oxidized carbon yields carbon dioxide. A gas. Easy to respirate.

If you oxidize silicon, you get silicon dioxide. Sand. It's a little hard imagine a living being which will  breathe oxygen in and breathe out sand. 

(Yes, there were anoxic lifeforms before we evolved to depend on oxygen, but oxygen provides a highly efficient and effective basis for a metabolic system.)

Furthermore, the covalent bonds formed by silicon are more fragile than those of carbon. That is enough in itself to make life based upon silicon difficult to maintain, but it also means that lengthier and more complex molecules are formed with carbon which could not be formed ot maintained by the substitution of silicon. 

As for the other autocatalytic chemical systems that were studied, that's way beyond my level of knowledge, but I have some hesitations there too.

If life is so incredibly common in the universe, why is it that of the three planets which are terrestrial in nature and found in our solar system's Goldilocks zone, only earth is clearly teaming with life? One out of three makes it sound like life is actually rather rare and unlikely. 

Still, it does make for fun speculation. Hal Clement was noted for his interesting alien life forms in his science fiction novels. I think I need to go back and reread some of those; it's been a few decades.

Greedy Is As Greedy Does

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/tim-gurner-australian-ceo-unemployment-video-rcna104957

>Tim Gurner wants you to be miserable. Yes, you.

Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s “property summit,” the property developer and CEO — net worth $584 million — complained that the country’s 3.7% unemployment rate was, in fact, a problem. “We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50%,” said Gurner, because “arrogant” workers aren’t productive enough for his liking. “We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”<

He did apologize for these comments later. However, I am convinced he was only apologizing for having been foolish enough to say it publicly and being caught in  being truthful. I think he was being honest and completely sincere in his original statement rather than in his apology.

And his attitude is not a rare one among the privileged and entitled class. >According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of the wealthiest Americans believe the “poor have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”<

It is attitudes like this which are all too common among the wealthy, which drove Marx and Engels to create their poisonous manifesto. And therein lies the old teeter totter problem. An excess of wrong on one side of the teeter totter is not balanced by an excess of opposing  wrong on the other side.  Well regulated capitalism is highly beneficial to everyone in a society. Unrestricted capitalist warfare and greed are destructive.

When you think about it, it's really quite obvious. The poor are desperate and don't create a stable society in their desperation because desperate people do desperate things.  The wealthy care only about themselves and will gut and cannibalize the society they live in in order to make themselves wealthier than they already are.  The middle class is stable and mutually beneficial to society as a whole.

Aristotle was well aware of this over two millennia ago. His Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics explored this issue:

>Aristotle pointed out that if the middle class disappears, then the poor will become the majority. The poor tend to be less educated than the rich, and they tend to struggle just to make ends meet. If the poor are the majority, then in a democracy they will vote to take away the money from the rich!

So, what are the rich to do?

Well, do away with democracy of course! Democracy, at that point, becomes too much of a threat to the elite, and the elite start taking steps to limit the power of government. (Moves to limit voting by the poor, anyone?)

Therefore, as the middle class disappears, democracy disappears with it.

On the other hand, with a MAJORITY middle class, democracy works, and it works well. Why? Because the middle class tends to be educated and has just enough prosperity that members of that class can see themselves becoming rich some day, so they don’t punish the rich, and they have compassion for the poor, being that many of them came from poverty. The middle class stands between the two extremes, the poor and the rich, and you end up with a well functioning democracy.

Here Aristotle describes just that in his book Politics:

The best constitution is one controlled by a numerous middle class which stands between the rich and the poor. For those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation find it “easiest to obey the rule of reason” (Politics IV.11.1295b4–6). They are accordingly less apt than the rich or poor to act unjustly toward their fellow citizens.< -- stanford.edu

This matters to us because our middle class has been steadily shrinking since the days of Ronald Reagan. That is because the middle class is being cannibalized by the ultra wealthy who want desperately poor people who will work for incredibly low wages so that the excessively wealthy can become even more excessively wealthy.

Remember what we're supposed to be doing in this country? 

-- We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.--

This is what a middle-class can do. This is what the poor would like to do, but in their desperation cannot do.  This is what the wealthy absolutely refuse to do because only their own interests matter to them.