MOON From NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS, Glancing Blows?

Imagination ought to be stronger than cognition: such is human genius: invent what you don’t know (yet).

Luna, or Moon, played a crucial role in the rise of life on Earth. It is rather unlikely that advanced life could have evolved without it. Luna provided tremendous chemical mixing on Earth’s surface and otherwise unlikely stability of rotation of the planet (so nice seasons, instead of super winters and super summers, etc). Simultaneously.

Luna allows all sorts of rotations of the Earth to be close to the perfection needed for advanced life.

Other planets have unstable rotation (with up to a 40 degrees wobbling axis: Mars), or insufficient spins (Mercury, Venus), or lay completely flat on the ecliptic plane like beached whales (Uranus). The angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system is one, yet it’s spread on a huge area (about 1/6 of the Sun’s cross-section). Luna used to graze the Earth, at the Roche Limit, causing kilometer tides flushing continental margins continually (thus mixing organic materials with earth, sea and sky, as in an infernal organic materials churning reactor).

Earth-Moon From NASA’s Galileo, Heading To Jupiter

How did Luna form?

John Kennedy’s Apollo Project sent a geologist to the Moon, and brought back precious rocks that were generously divided among laboratories (and various animals) worldwide.

Exploring the Moon was a better use of money than feeding the starving in Africa. Actually there were not much starvation in Africa yet. Indeed there were no wars among the savages, yet, hence no starving in Africa, yet. Moon exploration also demonstrated that the USA does not have to be a nasty den of pirates 100% of the time.

First verdict of Moon science? Isotopic studies (2001) confirmed that Luna is made of Earth’s mantle rocks.

The surprise was considerable. Before that (isotopic) discovery, it was widely expected that Luna was a captured minor planet. Instead, the Earth and Moon came from the same body. How could that be? The obvious scenario that comes to mind is that a Mars sized object hit the Earth. Melted debris would have gathered around Earth, and coalesce, forming the Moon. George Darwin, fifth child of the most famous Darwin, himself a distinguished astronomer, suggested this in 1898.

However, closer, more modern inspection reveals that if Luna was made of Terra, it was not made from an impact… because what happened to the impactor’s material? Luna’s titanium isotope ratio (⁵⁰Ti/⁴⁷Ti) is so close to the Earth’s (within 4 parts per million), that none of the impactor’s  mass could have been part of the Moon.

Moreover there is another drastic problem with the impact hypothesis. The dynamics don’t work. A grazing impact would have resulted with debris in a highly eccentric, grazing ellipse. Such a very elongated ellipse is not observed, and impossible to imagine (the debris would have crashed back to Earth, either from air resistance, or the Roche Limit). We are left with a deeper oblique impact, where the impactor is fully absorbed. But then it’s unclear that we can get massive ejecta with a required speed of ten kilometers per second or so, plus high enough an altitude to escape the Roche Limit.

All the more as astronomical considerations lead one to believe the collision happened at low-speed (at most 4 kms/s).

Still another problem of the impact theory is that it implies that the entire planet would have melted. However, there is plenty of evidence that the planet did not entirely melt. Rocks (zircons) have been found to be 4.375 billion years old, plus or minus 6 million years! These are granite like, water rich rocks. That means the supposedly melted Earth would have become solid within 100 million years of impact (by contrast those who believe Earth Core has just residual heat, no active fission heat, claim the core cools at the rate of 100 degrees Celsius every billion years. They generally also believe in the Impact, and thus contradict themselves, thanks to the zircons!)

Thus the impact theory does not seem to work.

The basic problem is that the Moon was created from Earth. Imagine the Earth as a soup: you need to put part of the soup in orbit. You need to rocket it up.

Any brighter idea? I propose there was no magma soup (because so was the fact).

I propose the NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS THEORY (NET). Wow. It’s half tongue in cheek, it has a more serious variant. I replace the overall melting of the impact theory, by powerful local explosions that could hurtle water rich rocks in orbit (mini impacts also do this, that’s the serious variant). As I pointed out in “Life Giving Earth Nuclear Reactor”, we (probably) have below our feet the largest fission reactor in the known universe.

The Inner Core of Earth is about 70% of the size of the Moon, 2440 kilometers across. It is also around 5,800 Degrees Kelvin, the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Should the rest of the planet become transparent, it would appear to us about 35 wider than the Sun, and just as bright. That would transfer to us about 1,000 times more energy than the Sun does. We would quickly fry.

In my vision of Earth’s genesis, a lot of radioactive fission products were gathered, when Earth formed. Being denser, those fissionable nucleotides tended to sink in molten Earth, and so doing, concentrated. As they did so, their neutrons hit each other. Nuclear fission pockets formed, and violently erupted in tremendous nuclear explosions, deep inside the Earth’s mantle.

(In most so-called thermonuclear bombs’ explosions, contrarily to Communal Wisdom, most of the power actually comes from fission, by using the cheap trick that Uranium 238, the “stable” isotope of Uranium, fissions when exposed to fast neutrons; in the young Earth, there would have been plenty of Uranium 238; this subtlety no doubt escaped geophysicists, since they are unused to nuclear bomb making… In other words, tapping my nuclear know-how, I notice that there is way more fissionable nuclear fuel down below if one thinks, not as Voltaire’s proverbial watch maker, but as a nuclear bomb maker! Is not thinking fun? The reserves of U238 inside the Earth are enormous, and those reserves were more than double that, 4.5 billion years ago).

These enormous nuclear explosions, within the mantle, created plenty of ejecta, thank you Lord. Most fell back with a splash, but plenty had enough correctly directed momentum to achieve high enough orbit.

This is smarter than it looks. The Earth rotated at least once every five hours (8,000 kilometers/hour at the equator). That means ejecta thrown up at the equator would have had one-third of the energy needed for satellization. Hence only equatorial ejecta would have formed the Moon, explaining both why the Moon’s orbit is coplanar, and Luna spins the way it does.

The hot debris gathered, and formed the Moon, just beyond Édouard Roche’s (liquid) Limit. At least, so I propose. Never underestimate all things nuclear. One can combine my nuclear ejection theory with coplanar mini collisions (so not on Mars size body). The whole thing would have looked like one of these spirals generated by some stars… If a star can do it, so could the nuclear boiling Earth…

Some will object that the theory above does not explain the high angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system, that an impact provides with. They will object that I have to introduce this as an independent assumption.

It is true that, the more the independent assumptions in a theory, the weaker it is, or the more empirical.

My own Nuclear Core Theory (NCT) explains a lot of characteristics of the Earth. Could it also explain the high angular momentum? Yes. How? NCT considers that Earth formed not just in the Habitability Zone, but in a Nuclear Zone (NZ). The NZ cloud dust was full of heavy elements. Heavy nuclei can’t be held together by the nuclear force, so they fission, So the densest elements are radioactive.

As the NZ condensed, the heavy elements carried more angular momentum (angular momentum is the product of speed by mass by radius). So any planet in an NZ (which I believe necessary for long-term life evolution), once it has condensed from an NZ cloud, will have more angular momentum. The NCT implies high angular momentum.

Reality is stronger medicine than fiction, because what’s within is a pale imitation of interpreted fragments out there that it has been our good fortune to come across.

Conscience without science is only dwarfing of the soul.

Patrice Aymé

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Note 1: Angular momentum was locally augmented by explosions, be they partly of nuclear origin, or caused by mini-impacts, or a combination of both. Mini-impacts would have been automatically in the orbital plane… Something the usual macro impact theory does NOT have! (Let me repeat slowly: the usual Mars sized body impact theory is very unlikely just on the ground that the impact has little probability to be within the plane of the ecliptic. The theory above makes this automatic: non-ecliptic impacts and explosions get de-selected, as the Earth’s OWN rotation, which is basically co-planar with the ecliptic is used crucially… OK, cynics may retort that it’s not quite so, and thus evidence for an off-ecliptic massive impact, agreed… Computer modelling will decide…)

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Note 2: As I pointed out in passing, the more the independent assumptions in a theory, the weaker it is, or the more empirical? This may sound all too vague. However, it’s very practical. For example racism is logically weaker than non-racism, as it hypothesizes supplementary logics. (Which is, moreover, unobserved!) Some will say that this is just a version of the law of parsimony (lex parsimoniae, Occam razor; the idea is explicit in Aristotle: “We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses.“.)

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Note 3: Searching for my own essay on the Internet, July 8, 2018, to my somewhat dispirited surprise I stumbled on the following paper, which I never heard of, let alone read, before:

Click to access 1001.4243.pdf

Which argues the Moon formed in one big nuclear explosion, using some of the logic above (nuclear fission being the only source of power capable of lifting the material, etc…) The difference with my theory is that I don’t do it with just one big explosion, but a whole sequence of them. One big one looks completely implausible to me (the math of coalescing so much nuclear material in just one spot at one time don’t work). Many, yes… So my own idea holds its own, all the more as the mini nuke and mini impact theory go together well, in whichever proportions… Alleluia…

Animal Minds, As NATURE IS NURTURE

Descartes famously pontificated that animals were machines. Actually, Descartes was just parroting famous stoic philosophers from way back (Chrysippus, Diogenes, etc.). Not to worry. According to his own logic, Descartes, being a parrot, was a machine. (Descartes may have had an anti-theocracy agenda, but that’s another story.)

Darwin, a non-peer reviewed, non academic hyper intellectual, dared to show more subtlety in the Origin of Species when he wrote: “It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason, and the less to unlearnt instinct” (1871, Book I, page 46)

I pushed that point of view further in “Instinct Is Fast Learning”.

We Think, Therefore We Floss

Lions premeditate when hunting in the wild. They spent hours plotting under the weary eye of their potential prey. They reveal each other presence by discreetly pointing up their dark circled ears. Lions are good scientists with a knowledge of the minds of others, and excellent geography. Don’t ask me for a link, I saw it done as a child in West Africa. A few days ago, I ran below a rock where a puma was contemplating a gigantic panorama. It was not just to admire the forests tumbling in the Pacific Ocean.

Some will feebly object to my use of the word “science”. I stand ready to devour them, having long premeditated this. Science means to know, and lion knowledge has to be effective enough to feed them, it’s an excellent thing. Take much of today’s physics: differently from aerospace engineering, it could be completely wrong. Planes fly, but not necessarily the Big Bang. Lion science is much more true than much of physics. Why? The proof is in the pudding, or more exactly the buffalo lying in his own blood.

(See note.)

Lions have to be very innovative. Protecting cubs require quite a bit of knowledge about physics and the ethology of various species. Including saurian: watch this lioness protect her cubs by deliberately attacking a crocodile. I have seen a lioness use what she knew to be the knowledge of antelopes have about crocodiles to foresee what said antelopes would do (and thus follow a trajectory that would make her prey fall under her claws).

That told me lions’ hunts depend upon a theory of other minds to feed themselves.

Alexi Helligar, objecting to my vision of lions premeditating when planning dinner: … “Birds do this as well, especially corvidae. Just because an animal is able to calculate a priori means to an end does not meet my definition of premeditation.”

Tyranosopher: Call it precalculation then! Some birds plan and make tools, others speak and outperform chimps mentally. Wild animals are smart. Underestimating the mental capabilities of animals is the first order of the rawest, crudest anthropomorphism.

Brazilian scientists are discovering that wild parrots speak and name each other (work in progress).

Alexi Helligar: “Overestimating the mental capabilities of animals is the first order of anthropomorphism.”

This reflects Ivan Pavlov who in 1927, wrote that animals should be considered “without any need to resort to fantastic speculations as to the existence of any possible subjective states“. The Oxford companion to animal behaviour (1987) parroted this: “one is well advised to study the behaviour rather than attempting to get at any underlying emotion”.

Well that’s Conventional, not to say Communal, Wisdom (let me not think of other things communal). Claiming that animals are not like humans, that various tales for children with animals as if they were human, were completely wrong, is what a whole line of thinkers following a gross interpretation of mysteriously subtle statements of the Stoics, took for granted. It fit perfectly well their religions. That became the philosophical party line: animals have nothing to do with humans. Some, all too many, scientists have goose stepped behind that.

The simplest observations show that claiming that animals don’t think is completely unthinkable. To survive in the wilds, one has to outsmart animals, and it’s not easy to do. I have extensively observed animals in the wild. I still do this. Call it Ethological Watching (in analogy to Bird Watching).

Observing animals in the wild is like observing a human outside of a small cage: it’s very different. According to my theory of mind, the mind is constructed by the environment.

NATURE BECOMES NURTURE.

Experiments on rats support this: a rat in a richer cage has a richer brain. The richest cage of all is the grand wild outdoors. Hence a wild animal will have more of a mind.

I have had dozens of bear encounters, typically when I run. Once I charged two mountain lions within 15 minutes (cautiously establishing a prudent life-saving hierarchy of ferocity: charging the enemy is often most wise).

Last week, during a run, I was loudly growled at, by a mountain lion (whom I did not see it). We had a short, but complicated interaction. S/he clearly wanted to scare me off, as s/he crossed the trail I just ran on (and ran back minutes later, because my way got blocked by poisonous vegetation).

Reason for the unusual growl? There was a dog with some hikers barking in the far distance, and the lion got worried that we were together doing lion hunting, and was legitimately worried. Hence the attempt to terrify me away.

I used to follow lions on foot in Africa. Using plenty of psychology.  General psychology applies to animals. It is not anthropomorphism, it’s life-saving. It’s ethology. Paleolithic natives knew well this science. Their lives depended upon it.

The animal kingdom on Earth is a bit like the network of mind on the planet Pandora (represented in the movie Avatar). Animals communicate, and they use their common psychology to do it.

Crocodiles concur. Their flossing and tooth cleaning methods are arguably more advanced than ours (as we can’t invent tiny cleaning robots yet). They can use them only because both birds and crocs have sophisticated theories of each other’s minds. Even feeding sharks under water involves shared theories of mind. The sharks know enough to have figured out they should not eat the feeder, lest the feeding stopped, and that, if they behave cool and nice, they will be fed tuna heads.

Why to think that animals don’t think? Descartes and his fellow theocrats would have to admit that animals had souls. That would have opened a vast can of worms: do worms have souls, can I eat them? Does that make me into the Devil? (One should get carried away in attributing too much equality to animals as Peter Singer tends to do; the main danger there is that deference to the individual animal could lead to the disappearance of the species; say by forbidding the incarceration of the last remaining specimen while attempting to save species.)

However the logical thing to do is that, considering we are animals, other animals do like us, and think. It’s the most natural approach: when a reasoning, or observation, works, so should what’s not too far topologically.

This is the line of inquiry that was started in Paris in the 1950s, where Eric Kandel was told to study the neurology of Aplysia Californica. The idea was that STUDYING THINKING IS ONE. That is the exact affirmation of anthropomorphism.

And it was highly fruitful. Ever since, and ever more, the minds of animals, all the way down to the fly Drosophila, have been studied, and the result of these studies has illuminated the way humans think.

We Think, Therefore We Floss.

Patrice Aymé

Note: A French scientist just found 120 gibberish published articles written haphazardly by computer, another scandal in peer review. Much of peer reviewed published biology is irreproducible, biotech companies such as Amgen have complained. This for those who have whined that I do not publish among my non-existent peers. Let them steal instead.

Russia: Va De Retro, Satanas

The revolution in Ukraine is anti-imperialist, anti-Yalta, and anti-plutocratic. It’s also anti-Czarist.

Some people will notice that the revolution is also anti-Leninist. Watch people pulling down the giant statues of Lenin. I bet Lenin, Stalin, and Putin spin in the graves they belong to.

But I am repeating myself. In my semantics, followers of the Dark Side follow Satan, that is, Pluto, or, as He was called before in Homer’s times, Hades. Even earlier Ahura Mazda, Babylonian god of wisdom, fought against Angra Mainyu (Ahrimen), chief creator of evil.

(Yes, the Old Norse angra “to grieve, vex, distress”, the root of “anger”, and the Latin “angere” are probably related, I would dare to say! Common Indo-European root.)

Ukraine 2014. Lenin Assassinated Justice, Let Him Bite The Dust.

Lenin was a pseudo-philosopher, and real life tyrant who advocated dictatorship (of the proletariat, whatever that is). That notion definitively belonged to the Dark Side. Human beings are not made to be dictated to.

Oh, Lenin and his high command were transported in a special train from Switzerland to Russia through fascist Germany in 1917. The plutocrats in Berlin were Lenin’s intrinsic allies. Lenin was very generous to his Berlin co-conspirators, once he controlled Russia. That military alliance was pursued by Stalin later, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the division of Poland with Hitler, and the alliance against the French Republic (and Britain). France was invaded, thanks to Caucasus oil, and other resources provided by Stalin.

Here are a few quotes from Vladimir Lenin (although they sound as quotes from Vladimir Putin, they are Lenin’s!):

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel… It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed… When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward – or go back. He who now talks about the ‘freedom of the press’ goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.”

Lenin launched a fascist state, complete with concentration camps. The Tsar entire family was assassinated in a non-judicial proceeding (something that did not happen during the French Revolution, 125 years earlier). There is no justice that allows the assassination of non-adult children.

However, as he laid dying from terminal syphilis, Lenin discovered, to his horror, that Stalin an ex-seminarist who turned to professional bandit, was taking over the state. The wretch Lenin could stop the “Man-Of-Steel” (= Stalin). Stalin, helped by American plutocrats, succeeded to out-maneuver the more brainy Trotsky (who was the chief of the Red Army). Trotsky took refuge in Mexico; Stalin had an agent shove a pick through his skull.

At Yalta, a moribund plutocrat, Roosevelt, gave half of Europe to the mass murderer fellow follower of Satan, the ursine Stalin. To insure the rule of Washington and Moscow supremacists for centuries to come. Well times are changing fast.

Putin arrested a dozen more people for “dissent” inside Russia today alone. He rigged the last presidential elections, he (probably) bombed buildings in Russia to launch his war in Chechnya.

I proudly did not watch a minute of the Sochi games, although I love the Caucasus… Or is it precisely because I love the Caucasus? Some will say that it does not matter. Their co-spiritualists used to say the same in 1936, when Adolf Hitler organized the Olympic Games in Berlin.

Russia is already by far the largest country on Earth. Is not that big enough, already? Apparently not.

In recent years, Moscow more or less annexed three provinces of Georgia, one just a few kilometers from Sochi. Georgia is a tiny country, south of the Caucasus. Yet, Georgia is also a nation and a civilization older than Russia. Georgia rebounded better from momentary conquest by the Mongols than Russia did.

This leads to an interesting question: what needs to be dismantled in the Russian frame of mind that allows the likes of Putin to rule? Looking at Russian history, one can understand what happened: in the greater scheme of Russian history brutality worked and seemed to have been the only thing that could work (similarly to the case of the USA… Hence the Yalta accord was a natural!).

Russians got whole way down to California, because they were, in part, ruthless. But ruthlessness, by itself is not enough to make a well balanced civilization.

A world battle against the plutocratic principle is engaged. Ejecting egregious plutocrat Putin from the G8 would be a good start.

Patrice Aymé

Reverse Yalta, Free Ukraine

What’s the proximal genesis of the system of thought that made Ukraine a subject of Moscow? Yalta. The present events in Ukraine are echoes of a momentous, and horrendous, event, Washington’s division of the world with Stalin, in 1945.

Ukraine is a vivid demonstration that plutocracy is not just about stealing from the People. It never was. Plutocracy, in full, is a mass murdering frame of mind. Or should I say, greed of mind? In Ukraine the (“democratically” elected) plutocrats in power unleashed special forces to fire war weapons such as sniper rifles and Kalashnikovs into demonstrators. We The People had to submit, or fire back with hunting rifles. Casualties are in the hundreds.

The exploitative mentality starts with lauding greed, it ends up with extermination. It does not just exterminate nations, it can displace them. This is Roosevelt’s work:

Poland & Ukraine: Displaced West By Dying Roosevelt & Mass Murderer Stalin

With the help of (satanic?) Anglo-Saxon leaders, Stalin did to Eastern Europe what Jefferson and Jackson did to the Indians. Mass deportation to cause extermination. Or, at least the tearing off roots. No wonder the president of the USA collaborated.

All right. Everybody knows that Stalin started his career as a Christian fanatic, before turning to robbing banks. However, FDR and Churchill are often viewed as saints. Yet, the map above is their work. Large parts of Poland and Austro-Hungary became part of Stalin’s dominion. Lviv, second city of Ukraine, population 2 million, liberated a few days ago, was long part of Poland and, or the (Holly German) Roman empire. It was thrown to Stalin, like a piece of meat to a bear.

The tearing into pieces of Europe was agreed to in what Churchill called the “Naughty Document”. It’s also known by the euphemism of “Percentage Agreement”. Here is the proof of the plot between American, English, and Soviet plutocrats:

Dividing Europe As If It Were A Pie

Ukraine is a nation of 46 million. Ukraine is older than Russia. It has its own language, Ukrainian. Ukraine founded Russia, but was abused by its creation. Yalta is a place in Crimea where a conspiracy between a moribund plutocrat, an exhausted statesman, and a mass murdering, ursine gangster sealed the fate of the world for the next 69 years.

The usage of the word “plutocrat” is fully justified in Ukraine. Killing people is the plutocrats’ highest calling. The leaders of Ukraine are not just satanic, although that would justify calling them plutocrats. They are also filthy rich… the  28 nations of the European Union have frozen their assets, blocked their visas (that followed sanctions against Switzerland for discriminating against EU’s Croatia). The EU explicitly accused Ukrainian leaders to be drenched in blood.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland were sent to Kiev to negotiate with the Ukrainian dictator/president on behalf of the EU. Shots could be heard as the foreign ministers went here and there.

Eastern Ukraine was long part of the Russian empire, where Ukrainian was outlawed, so that only Moscow’s language would rule. Western and Central Ukraine speaks Ukrainian. It was long more or less part of Poland. Ukrainian is closer to Polish (70% in common) than to Russian (62%).

Systems of thoughts and moods are highly persistent, they have a life of their own.

Russia’s childhood was tortured in the fire and monstrosity of the Mongol conquest and tyrannical three centuries long occupation. However, yesterday’s traumas can’t live on in tomorrow’s world.

YALTA’ LONG LASTING PAIN:

Yalta was a conference in Crimea organized by Stalin in February 1945. The “Soviet” dictator had refused to travel outside of the USSR for organizing the post- World War Two world. Three men, none of them a continental Western European, divided Western Europe, as if it were a prey. Which it was.

Unbelievably, the dying Roosevelt travelled all the way to Yalta, so that he could surrender half of Europe to Stalin. Including, of course, Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics. That horrendous betrayal was rendered possible by excluding France’s combative general and president Charles De Gaulle from the conference.

The war against Nazism started in 1939 when Poland, backed up by France, refused to surrender its territory to Hitler. Hitler was backed up by Stalin, American plutocrats (and, to its shame, until excuses are finally proffered, Washington).

For the perverse, it made sense that neither Poland nor France were invited at Yalta. After all, it was French and Polish resistance to Nazism had caused World War Two. At least, so the subconscious of Stalin, part of British higher society, American racists, and Washington had it. The French and the Poles had spoiled a good thing.

De Gaulle was both a politician, a minister of war and a combat general during desperate 1940. His niece, who resisted Nazism, was sent to the Ravensbrück extermination camp. De Gaulle would not have surrendered to Stalin; at the time France had an expert one million man army that had played a crucial “Spitze”, point, role on the Western front in 1944. One of the main ideas of De Gaulle as president of France in 1958-1969 was that “Yalta” was one of the main trauma of the world. (Although I have solid personal reasons to hate De Gaulle,  I recognize that he was very right on some points, including that one.)

Yalta displaced entire countries to the west, to make more room for the Kremlin’s subjects. Poland was displaced to extinguish German provinces such as Pomerania and Silesia. But then, so that Poland could not become a problem, it was amputated of much of its territory. The eastern half of Poland was made “Ukrainian”. (Right now the largest city there, in ex-Poland, has been “freed”, after arresting the government police.)

What is the meaning of all this?

Simple. Yalta, by cutting the world in two, established the American Century and the, even shorter, Soviet Century. Now the USA and the USSR Russia are back to their old trick, fossil combustibles. The USSR (aka Russia) blackmails Europe with its energy supply. Yet Czar Vladimir I is terrified by other people’s minds, and thus cracks down on the highest added value, brain work. Hence Vladimir’s petrostate becomes ever more so every year.

Meanwhile the USA is busy making a fortune from the building greenhouse (by methane leaking fracking, and selling the coal to German anti-nuclear fanatics). The USA has a much more diversified economy, and more than twice the population. The USA also enjoy a much more sophisticated oligarchic propaganda. The USA does not crack down on computer usage, which is central to the 21C economy. Instead it has made it an integral part of the surveillance state.

What’s the progressive thing to do? Obviously support the anti-plutocratic revolution in Ukraine. The same day that more than 60 people were killed by gunfire in Ukraine, Libyans were voting for a Constituent Assembly (the USA took 13 years between Independence in 1776 and a Constitutional Assembly in 1789).

The story of Ukraine is about correcting some wrongs that developed in the last millennium. In Libya it’s more like correcting wrongs that developed in the last two millennia (thanks to horrors visited mostly by rabid Christianity and its Islamist poodle; earlier Libya had given the Severian dynasty to Rome, so non Christianized Romans were not too nasty to Libya ).

I have my eye on Venezuela too, where a famous beauty queen taking part in an anti-government demonstration was shot to death this week. Venezuela is another petrostate (with colossal reserves).

The anti-plutocratic revolution has to spread around the planet until we change from a short-termist, murderously exploitative model to a gentler, more sustainable, more democratic, and that means more intelligent, model.

If Ukraine becomes as good as, say, the present France or the USA, the latter two will be encouraged to morph into the more advanced forms we need. This is what happened in Switzerland, where direct democracy has blossomed out only in the last two decades, and brought enormous riches (spiritual and economic).

Patrice Aymé

Bamboozling Power

Carl Sagan viewed the Confidence Trick, or Bamboozling, as an important concept. It is. And not just because it explains why people goose step behind dictators, superstition and other insane ideas. The basic mechanisms behind bamboozling also explain not just the problem of Free Will, but how the mind itself arises.

Paraphrasing Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:

One of the most alarming meta-lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, or spectacularly enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth, we can’t even find the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. It’s best to ignore it, to reduce our pain. So we ignore it. Once you give in to a charlatan, or to madness, it’s very hard to get common sense back.

Bamboozling: An Enemy Of Rationality

In practice, it’s even worse. Charlatans reign through institutions. If the institutions have been themselves bamboozled, the effect is much amplified. This is what happens in places such as North Korea. Hitler is a famous case. Again and again, in history, obvious charlatans bamboozled their subjects into extinction.

Other cases are closer at hand: the much celebrated North American educational system is still trusted. Yet, it is the Trojan Horse of plutocracy unleashed. Higher education is so expensive that only a small percentage of the population can afford it for their children, without crushing debt (tuition in the top universities is above pre-tax median family income: $54,000 at Harvard). It’s bamboozling on an Academic scale.

Recently the Wall Street Journal revealed that, after spending more than six figures paying for an education, learning to fly, “airline pilots face a new danger: minimum wage”. Great bamboozling at work here.

Don’t worry: the owners of the airlines are making a fortune, and a galaxy of profiteers make good money from the so called private universities, be it by just exploiting their sport franchises.

Why do we react to bamboozling with denial?

It’s in the nature of neurology. It’s a case of colossal mental inertia, intrinsic to the nature of minds.

Neurology, whatever its details, is something built from the outside. The environment determines its nature. However, once a neurology is built, it’s built. The environment, in the past (that’s where the connection with Free Will is) has built it. In the past.

A neurology is not build like a software program. An incarnated neurology is built like a dam: once it’s built, it’s built. If rain does not fall anymore, and the lake dries up, the dam is still there.

Neurology is not just very hard to change. It is made for this environment that built it. If the environment changes, the changed environment cannot rebuilt it from scratch, for the simple reason that it already exists.

A mind is as a sand castle. Once it has been built, and the builder, the environment, changes, or moves away, it stays behind, and decays. It’s the simplest observation, it has momentous consequences.

Intellectuals, paradoxically, tend to be bamboozled, because they are often too busy with the mental task at hand, to become more than a cog in the machine (some have revolted: the most famous example was Sakharov, a great Soviet physicist who helped built the H Bomb, but then turned against his masters with devastating efficiency.)

I have been bamboozled personally more than once, big time, typically by large, honorable scale institutions, and the small critters that serve them inside, like bacteria in termites’ guts.

Once we have been taken by some confidence trick, can we rebuild our minds enough to reject it?

True, one has demonstrated in experiments on mice, that neurogenesis is necessary for learning, and happens at all ages. So neurogenesis, the fabrication of neurons is always active. Maybe we could use that to rebuild our minds?

No. Most of the brain has been established long ago, during youth. One may be able to change the details, it’s much harder to rebuild a functioning machine, than to make it from scratch.

Is there a way to mitigate the ease with which one can get bamboozled? Yes. To learn to take one’s knowledge and certainty, with a grain of salt. To practice the “WHAT IFS”, systematically. To teach the mind the yoga of doubt. Any sure thing that can be bent, should be bent, with “What Ifs”.

It’s not easy to learn this meta-learning. Systematically not just what is true, but why it is true (why the alternatives have been ruled out) ought to be taught. (Some say there is no time for this, but then children are taught only half a day, and often in too boring a fashion. Exposing children to “What Ifs” makes it much less boring, because that’s what our neurologies are made for.)

Thinking Is Most Human, & Thus, The Hardest Thing

The yoga of doubt can even be extended to the realms of emotions. Emotional geometrodynamics is actually one of the interests of sports. Many sports involve states when one is at war. Even somebody who dives in apnea has to fight. Against her, or his self, when they desperately want to breathe. Going to war in normal society is not just abnormal, but discouraged. In sports, it’s encouraged.

However, some of the most pervasive Confidence Tricks are not just made possible by denial, as Carl Sagan says. Denial is what they sell. Take Christianity (or Islam). What the Christian institutions sell is an unbelievable story, yet, if one believes in it, it’s most comfortable. All we have to do is be good, and believe (that the Confidence Men and their sacred texts tell the truth). Then we will be rewarded.

There is no more struggle: submission is the key to heaven, and if we die, alleluia!

Thus life can be experienced as a happy dream, or torpor (as Marx noticed). However the Con Men (= Confidence Men”), in particular the Plutocrats, can rarely find a balance of exploitation. So at some point, the dream turns into a nightmare. The dam breaks, the sand castle is wiped out by a tsunami, and the great passion of revolution sweeps the land.

We can’t just cultivate our garden (whatever Voltaire said). When the wave comes, all gardens get washed away; we have to run. Given enough time, the wave always comes, and washes civilization away. Right now it’s just washing the biosphere.

Although the destiny of humanity is not clear. However, passion, in practice, is all the destiny we need. Yet not all passions are good. Passion for violence has to be diverted (hence the obsession with watching team sports, war by proxies). But passion for truth ought to be indulged in ever more. Be it just to save the biosphere.

Patrice Aymé

Speciation Math; Why It’s Crucial

Believing in Christianity and its Dog God barking in the sky is a fundamental element of the subjugation of the masses in the USA. In Europe, it’s natural to be an atheist (except if one is a Muslim or a Pole, and even then…). In the USA, atheism is impolite. That’s why the president ends all his homilies with an appeal to Dog God. God the Dog is watching over you, its son, the NSA, also, and bless be the United States of America.

It’s unlikely a honest to goodness American will be prone to revolution, as this would implicitly recognize the primacy of man over the creation of Pluto Dog God. So no wonder creations of man such as science (a form of anti-Plutocratic revolution from excessive usage of the nervous system) are attacked at every turn.

Mammoths were very clever. Science was well started when Neanderthals made mammoth hunting plans on the plains:

Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis: Same Species, Us.

[The colored eyes of Neanderthals are a proven thing, so are the facial features; the hairline is probably too low… The will to make Neanderthals beastly is obdurate…]

Such were the idle thoughts brought to me by a rant against evolution on so called “Big Think”. The conclusion struck me, with the issues it brought:

…” [Evolution Theory is] also terrible at explaining the speed at which speciation occurs. (Of course, The Origin of Species is entirely silent on the subject of how life arose from abiotic conditions in the first place.) It doesn’t explain the Cambrian Explosion, for example, sudden appearance of intelligence in hominids, or the rapid recovery (and net expansion) of the biosphere in the wake of at least five super-massive extinction events in the most recent 15% of Earth’s existence.”

This is all false or misleading, but still it’s interesting to answer.

OK, I will let pass the fact that Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species was published in 1859, about a century before laboratory experiments enabled to create organic chemistry in the lab from the sort of atmosphere, water and lightning Earth enjoyed for billions of years. 1859: that was two years before Lincoln became president. Slavery was lawful in the USA.

Reducing Evolution to Darwinism is silly: Darwin himself was an enthusiastic Lamarckist. Lamarck established biological (Lamarck’s neologism) evolution by studying the changes in fossilized mollusks over millions of years (the order of mollusks had been scientifically determined by Cuvier, Lamarck’s predecessor) . Lamarck was banned with rage and consummate fury by the very Christian universities that dominated England (Oxbridge, etc.). This explains why neither Wallace, nor Darwin, nor Spencer were university professors. The former two were not just great expositors of the (French) Theory of Evolution, but pushed it further with discoveries, from the Wallace Line, to Patagonia or the Galapagos.

Let’s go back to the stupid quote on top (excellent lemonade can be made from old lemons, though).

One statement is clearly false: Contrarily to that misleading quote, supreme intelligence took millions of years to appear in hominids. Supreme intelligence, as evidenced, more exactly, by brain size, followed the evolution of bipedalism (and, thus, attendant change of in behavior, diet and environment). We know it took at least 5 million years, from bipedalism to the apparition of brainy Homo Erectus.

What this means is that bipedalism opened a new ecological niche. Bipedalism allowed a number of related species of primates, the hominids, to roam around, and literally, dominate the landscape. As they roamed around, the opportunity for even more sophisticated behaviors arose, and caused a sort of evolutionary sucking: nature abhors a vacuum, and biological evolution, like the Quantum (and it’s probably related) tends to occupy all the space it can occupy (this is why the math of the Quantum are represented by Hilbert Spaces spanned by Quantum States; the exact equivalent in evolution are ecological niches… the complication with life is that life itself creates the niches. The same happens with renormalization in QFT!).

Thus the hominids evolved an increasing number of environmentally disruptive and manipulative behaviors, which, in turn, favored mutations favoring them. That evolutionary phenomenon is thus non-linear, a sort of exponential, it can go fast.

A new function, bipedalism, allows to bear arms, using one’s… arms. That in turn, makes bellicose and predatory behavior, let alone good eyesight, more profitable, and so on.

Actually, a similar type of mathematics is at play after mass extinction, explaining that life’s diversity tends to augment with them.

After life got wiped out of billions of ecological niches in a major extinction event, those get reoccupied quickly by maladapted species. Maladapted to said niches, that is. Thus billions of speciations will tend to occur. These speciations cannot happen in steady state, because the environment of the steady state includes a fine balance of the physical environment with the existing, entangled species. If an event wipes those out, the old steady state cannot be recreated, and each niche acts like a throw of the dice.

Thus massive extinction tends to lead to massive speciation. It’s purely mathematical.

A lot of complicated mathematics and physics underlays Evolution Theory. I presented my own to help explain the apparent disappearance of Neanderthals. My theory rests on subtle mathematics, physiological, and environmental considerations. It’s actually not a theory of Neanderthal disappearance, rather than a theory of the disappearance of a Neanderthal appearance. So it would in particular predict that Europeans are much more Neanderthal than one thought.

Why? Neanderthal had evolved into a superior species (hilarious: Nazism is coming back, but instead of being Aryan, it’s Neanderthal… The Thal of Neander is on the Dussel, basically in the Ruhr…). Neanderthal has had to have evolved in a superior species, or she would not have rules the freezing North (a related species, the Denivosan, ruled the North-East, and evolved into Chinese, or, at least Australian bushmen).

If Neanderthal was that superior, he could not be wiped out. So, instead, one needed a more subtle explanation, which I provided: “Mathematics “Extinguished” Neanderthals”. Two very recent (end January 2014) DNA computational studies support my point of view. (See note.)

Oh, by the way, mathematics is not just about equations. It’s first of all, about ideas. Anybody who had Euclidean geometry or Mathematical Logic will confirm this. The phenomenon of occupying the entire space is the essence of Quantum Physics (Me, myself and I say). It’s the math of Hilbert Space. It’s also the math of evolution.

All these mathematics of evolution are no idle pursuit. Right now, the planet is at a fulminant stage of evolution, thanks to us. Understanding what the laws that will command our destiny, are, is the quintessence of humanity.

Patrice Aymé

Note: With up to 30% Neanderthal genome, it is found that some Neanderthal traits survived very well (say about skin), while other disappeared. Take the lack of waist of Neanderthal: an advantage in very cold climate, but not anymore after clothing became good enough; and probably a disadvantage for running and combat.

 

TEA: Ending Complicit Naivety.

Let’s start with an example of crafty duplicity. Krugman in “Monoposony Begets Monopoly, And Vice Versa.

“Nothing to see here, folks, says Comcast. The cable giant’s defenders insist that its already awesome market power won’t be increased if it acquires Time Warner… we see clear evidence that this is nonsense. Comcast’s size gives it monopsony as well as monopoly power — it is able to extract far more favorable deals from content providers than smaller rivals. And if it’s allowed to acquire Time Warner, it will be even more advantaged… should Comcast succeed in acquiring Time Warner Cable, it will use its enlarged scale to its advantage, potentially negotiating to pay lower fees to cable and broadcast networks.

This would, in turn, make it even harder for potential competitors to enter markets served by ComcastTimeWarner, strengthening its monopoly position.” Astoundingly, Krugman naively concludes with:

“What possible justification could there be for approving this scheme?”

Is Paul Krugman deliberately stupid? Is he really that dumb, or just playing one on TV? To try to enlighten him I sent, with my characteristic generosity, the following comment:

Your question at the end is rhetorical: why media manipulation? For the same reason that makes the New York Times practices censorship. Although I have had a full subscription at The Times for more than 30 years, at the same address, I get very heavily censored.

The rise of giant media monopolies is all about controlling the minds of We The People so that the plutocracy can be served in the appropriate frame of mind, ever more. However the arrangement is unstable, and We The People are getting irritated. Thus, the molding of the minds, with ever more censorship and disinformation, has to get ever stronger.

I sent the preceding comment to Krugman, and, of course, he censored it. The New York Times has censored ALL my comments for weeks, including some in the supposedly philosophical section. Apparently I am philosophically dangerous.

The New York Times is (mostly) owned and controlled by the same family of plutocrats since the Nineteenth Century. The company’s chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896. The plutocratic order is articulated around vast, very old families, discreetly controlling the essence of the system, thanks to tax free foundations.

There are the new men, the likes of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, flamboyant and outrageous. But that’s new money. To some extent, they are decoys: if one accuses Ellison or Jobs, or Brin, or the Facebook guy to be rich, plutophiles reply that they are job creators, and product creators. The same cannot be said of families who paid no tax for centuries, and control everything, behind the scenes.

Clearly someone up high at the New York Times decided my theories about plutocracy were impolite, a form of political pornography, and that, even if I talk about purely philosophical issues, I should be unpublished. (High level employees of the New York Times I talked to denied this, but, of course, they lied. When a person’s salary depends upon telling lies, generally, they will. Same for Krugman.)

Above the new technologies creators, there are the intermediate men, such the Gates, rich and influential, even before Bill was old enough to attend a few months at Harvard. (Founders of locally dominant law firms, such as Gates Senior, used to be rich and influential, although, since the Clinton financial deregulation, they are nothing relative to financial types.)

And then there is the old money, dispersed all over in vast families, foundations, and political organizations, attending the Ivy League and other plutocratic universities.

That plutocratic network is colossally influential: they hold the fort. Run in the Grand Tetons National Park and, in one of the most scenic locales, wedged between the Grand Teton ski resort and the soaring national park, fall on the giant walled estate of the Rockefellers. It goes mountain to mountain, complete with lake. Contemplate that immensity and you will get a feeling for how immense USA based plutocracy is.

Especially if the experience is renewed again and again throughout the USA: go to wild places, and stumble on the barbed wire of plutocratic estates, horizon to horizon (Senator Baucus, leader of Obamacare in the Senate owns such a property). Europeans would never stand for it.

That immense, mostly invisible network of power controls the CEO class (and, in particular, the boards of corporations). Just like the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, they pay less tax, and are racially different from the plebs, being taller.

That old, ingrained aristocracy explains much of the timidity of president Obama. He was awed when he became someone important for the masters of the plutocratic estate. At the same time, he felt cautious: the fate of JFK is clear of all to see, an unexplained, and unexplainable death.

In general, when in a society an order entangled with the Dark Side arises, fake naivety helps those who want to partake in it, without feeling culprit. It’s a form of lying, and, as all good lying, it works better if one really believes in it.

This is how Germans who viewed themselves as morally upright learned to tolerate and, finally, appreciate Nazism.

Nazism came to an unhappy end because the French Republic next door declared war, and attacked. The case of plutocracy in its present state is different. It’s truly a continuation of the old one that produced Nazism, among other things. However, it thoroughly infects for all to see, not just the USA but the planetary order, as it extends all the way to China and Moscow.

Chinese plutocrats are part of the Republic Of Offshore, so are the Russian ones, and, as one can see in Ukraine, the American masters have been cooperating with the Russian masters (an echo of Yalta!)  to deny We The People full control of its destiny.

Hence what we are facing now cannot be confronted with straightforward military force. It’s a metastatic cancer.

That’s why I propose having TEA instead. That Transatlantic Economic Area ought to be irresistible to the greedy. But, like a Trojan Horse, it will allow the Reconquista by administrative law of the economic sphere.

I say Reconquista, because the USA used to be very heavily regulated, until Nixon-Reagan-Clinton corroded and perverted the regulatory machinery. When the USA was heavily regulated, the economy worked very well. (That was the real difference between Hoover and FDR; Hoover was also into public works; Roosevelt cracked down on finance with an astounding ferocity: nobody now, even on the extreme left, even proposes such correct measures.)

The EU has an enormous administration which is much less corrupt than the beleaguered one in the USA. The former can help the latter, especially if the change is fast paced (the plutocratically gangrenous Congress will not be able to intervene nefariously).

Most of the law applied every day is regulatory law. In the USA, the rise of plutocracy has been mostly effected by short-circuiting and outpacing regulatory law (thanks to the succession of the corrupt executive administrations). A TEA (Transatlantic Economic Area) would reestablish the dominance of law, and the right wing could be bought as I said, by the prospect of greater wealth.

How will it do that? Because the Europeans protest more readily, both the plebs and the educated professionals. As it is, the plutocratic process has progressed in Europe, but, mostly, under cover. For example the European Commission is right wing plutophile (Olli Rehn, the commissar of economic policy being the best representative of this quasi fascist policy, which, for instance, has cost Portugal about 10% of its population in 5 years). But this is not widely known. Things are coming overboard after the European elections, in a few months.

(The population of the USA is much more subdued, because, in part, universal, republican education was all too much displaced by the cult of “god”, and the anxiety of “peer pressure” (that is to be politically correct in all ways).)

More regulations will allow the wealth to be shared more than it presently is. Indeed, in the global system we have the place with the lowest regulations imposes its deregulation on everybody else. Right now, that place is the USA, and it imposes its system on Europe. By making its imposition clear and obvious for all to see, TEA negotiations will augment effective regulations in Europe.

A TEA Party in reverse…

Patrice Aymé

President Obalande?

One of the best evolution for civilization would be for France and the USA to get ever closer. France, hence Europe, as the latter is the latest ruse for an amplification of the former.

Well, and that’s very good, Barack Obama, differently from his dumb predecessors since the clever Kennedy (“Ich bin ein Berliner”… das ist, ich bin französisch…) has understood that France and the USA ought to be as close as possible.

After all, with a France-USA union of minds, there would have been no Iraq war, no Afghanistan war (Carter’s war against Afghanistan of 1979 was oriented against France, not just the USSR), no Hitler (FDR would have obeyed France in 1934, and cracked down against the Anglo-Saxon supports of Hitler), and no First World War (because, with the early and immediate help of the USA, either the Kaiser would not have attacked, or been quickly defeated by blockade).

The enlightened Obama (not to be confused with the drone rabid version) is turning things around. I saw the French president this week, in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, of all places. I will relate the two things that astounded me most.

But first a bit of background:

The war between France and other colonists of the Americas, has been one of the longest: it is well in its fifth century. With Spain it was won, long ago: the Spanish king, more than three centuries ago, chose a Bourbon to succeed him (that started the world War of the Spanish Succession, and Louis XIV won it only by losing pieces of France… never recovered since.)

A generation earlier, after more than a century of war, the French army, having insured the creation and independence of the Netherlands (itself an 80 year long war) against fascist theocratic Spain, had defeated the (so far undefeated) “Spanish Squares”.

As I explained in the preceding essay, Jefferson, although a Francophile, was himself a philosophical battleground between the Liberty-Equality-Fraternity notion, the most human notion, and the Exploitative Principle, part of the Dark Side (which is to grab all what one can grab; recent experimental studies in human ethology have shown that the EP is extremely contagious.)

In all these conflicts, it’s all a matter of relative positions. France was more for Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, because that’s how the Franks established the successor regime of the pure Roman (-Catholic) state.

Spain was reconquered from a difference mentality, that of intolerance and revenge: the Reconquista. It applied not just to Muslims, but, less excusably, to Jews. At the same time some Jihad characteristics, such as Holy War, torture and slavery were kept as if they were precious gifts. Hence the clash with France (all the more as imperial Spain, having conquered all of Europe but for tiny England and large France, fed, as much as possible, seven religious civil wars in France, in the period 1550-1600 CE!)

So wars, contrarily to what clueless and lazy pacifists affect to believe, do not just arise from the badness of human nature, or making too many knives, but, all too often, deep down inside, wars arise from, and reflect, genuine philosophical differences… That can be settled only by war: think of the conflict between tiny Athens and the fascist plutocratic imperial Persian hyperpower.

Such wars, if the best philosophical side win, contribute positively to civilization.

The war of Athens against Persia was fundamentally a conflict between direct democracy and representative plutocracy (the Persian empire was an empire of nations).

So there I was. Listening to Hollande, the French Resident of the Élysée, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My first astonishment was that all he said part of my own program. There was absolutely nothing I disagreed with. (That, of course, does not mean that Hollande’s vast world vision reduces to my much more cosmic grasp. Far from it!)

I had no disagreement with what he said, whatsoever, from Ukraine, to Syria, to using English (= Anglo-Normand, as I put it) in French education, to duplicating the successful techno-industrial-financial recipes of Silicon Valley (including “corporate venturing”, when a giant corporation, such as Cisco, Google or Microsoft  invest in start-ups).

I was pleasantly surprised when the French president, a socialist, breezingly stated that the making of what I call the Transatlantic Economic Area between the USA and the EU ought to be accelerated.

On this later point Hollande said the forces of opposition to the USA-EU union ought to be given no time to organize.

I believe that Obama desires to leave a more positive legacy than the two Bushes. He still has a chance: he can heavily reform Obamacare towards Medicare For All, he can find ways to decrease the greenhouse emissions of the USA (using the EPA)… and China (though customs threats), and he can cooperate with Europe.

A Transatlantic Economic Area would be a good occasion to ram positive reforms on both sides of the Atlantic, by arguing one has to duplicate the best, and throw away the bad, on each side of the pond.

A small example: In exchange for the anticipation of juicier profits, from a larger (USA-EU) market, Republicans may be willing to concede that poisoning Monarch Butterflies and bees is something that we could do without.

That union of unions would require that the cultural exception survives (lest the USA, or rather its army of Hollywood and its phalanx of plutocratic corporations, swallow everything). As Hollande pointed out, the cultural exception is not just about France.

Indeed France is big enough demographically and civilizationally to survive culturally… but not so most others (and that is basically nearly all other European countries; once one removes the six most populous countries of the EU; the average demographic size of the remainder is less than ten million, each of them a nation, with its own culture, history and civilization.)

The Transatlantic Economic Area (TEA) ought to go all the way to a free circulation of individuals and professions (extend Schengen!). Not to do so makes no sense, at least no sense between France (thus Germany!) and the USA.

What is the meaning of all this?

As I have explained countless times, France and the USA are two SISTER republics, THE sister republics. Those sister republics were born entangled together in 1789. Try as it may, the UK is not yet a republic. Try as he could, Bliar Blair left us with a Chamber of Lords.

Hollande reminded everybody in sight what I say all the time, namely that the United Nation Charter is a direct amplification of the 1789 Franco-American constitutional adventure (yes, France first, because the Franks’ Freedom obsession is from 17 centuries back).

The second thing that astonished me was the extravagant security. Secret Services, US Marshalls, local police and even “Federal Reserve Police “, with dogs, were there. And then there was French security. No less than 20 French Secret Service bodyguards were in full evidence around Hollande, but more were hidden as regular attendees (male and female). Twice apparent civilians showed me a badge discreetly and asked me to stop taking pictures of… security personel.

Most telling was the smart French military officer, complete with peaked white cap and cute gold ribbons. He was carrying the thick black computer case with the nuclear codes.

Imagine the French president ordering nuclear strikes from the Silicon Valley.

Well, this is actually a good sign. If America and France cooperate, it’s back to what it was 450 years ago, and where it ought to have always be.

Neither uncommon thoughts, nor uncommon individuals, arise from common situations. Fully integrating the American and European civilizations will bring us out of what has been all too common for centuries. From this higher point of view, greater conceptions will blossom.

Patrice Aymé

Note: What of Britain in all this? Well, it’s a psychiatric case. PM Cameron wants to ask the Brits if they want to part of the EU in a referendum. This shows that Britain is falling back in mental childhood. Not a serious partner. Proof? Well, Britain is experiencing the wettest winter in 250 years. What to do? Well, use the Princes (Harry Hairy, etc.), the army, but also, ask the European Union for a 200 million dollar emergency help…

H Fusion Or Bust

We are quickly running out of resources. This is what the economics of fracking means. Fracking is profitable, precisely because we are past peak conventional oil and gas (there is nothing conventional about high Arctic gas, tar sands, and extracting deep oil below kilometers of ocean as off Brazil).

The problem with peak oil is general. We are past peak zillions of crucial materials, including copper and fertilizers (most fertilizer reserves, worldwide are in Morocco, under the determined French nuclear imperial umbrella, with Washington back-up).

This collapse of all resources has a solution, a dramatic solution, and only one, the solution the Romans were incapable, unwilling to conceive. For the good and simple reason they did not even understand that one could understand why the “world was getting old” as they used to moan.

Fusing Ideas To Progress Always Saves Civilization As Resources Die

Our situation is the same, but it’s degenerating even faster, as we enjoy a planetary demographic boom without precedent, and a splurge of waste also never imaginable before. For their vacations, a few days, people jet around the world. Just because they can. Is that the call for self destruction? An appeal to the mysterious god of war and apocalypse?

Yet. Energy is the one and only solution. Ever more energy. (Ever more Absolute Worth Energy, more exactly.)

Solar is useful (yada yada), and will work very well in areas not controlled by Al Qaeda (like North Africa, once it has been thoroughly cleansed).

Wind works, sort of, but the giant investment may turn out silly in the long run (although winds are augmenting now that the melting of the poles is gathering speed, in the very long run, if the poles warm up enormously, winds will die down).

That leaves us with conservation. Yet, as the climate belts switch north, many regions that have now plenty of water will go dry, and require desalination and, or long distance transportation of water, thus augmenting energy spending. An example? The South-West of the USA.

Geothermal will not work on a massive scale. Just as fracking, it causes earthquakes. Oh, and fracking at this point in the USA releases enormous quantities of methane, accelerating the greenhouse.

Coal kills directly two millions a year already (without counting how much it kills indirectly through climate change). Chinese coal is filling California’s Napa Valley vineyards with mercury (I guess Californian excess goes around and comes around as a fine mist of Hg…).

However, coal is used more and more: look at nuclearly correct Germany. Or coal is used obdurately: look at Denmark. Denmark is a paragon of ecological correctness… yet is building a new giant coal plant.

To save the planet, one is left with nuclear. Either new fission technologies (say Thorium techs), or… thermonuclear fusion.

The old joke about fusion is that it’s the fuel of the future, and always will be. However, that’s making fun of the scientific process itself. Understanding is progressing ever more, and results are following.

After decades of unexpected discoveries that were blocking the way to controlled thermonuclear fusion, it is entirely possible that only details may have to be figured out pretty soon.

For example a purely theoretical mathematical breakthrough, a few years back, allowed the existing French thermonuclear device at Cadarache to achieve confinement of the thermonuclear plasma for more than 6 minutes.

Next to that machine is now build the giant International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER is expected to produce ten times the energy put in.

The Joint European Torus (JET) in England has been rebuilt, in ITER style, and the preliminary results are allowing to build ITER directly in (what was supposed to be) stage 2.

In 1997 the Joint European Torus (JET) released 16 megawatts of power from fusion, from using 24 megawatts-worth of heat.

ITER is involved with building new materials, to resist thermonuclear fire. If those work, they may profit the Korean national program, which, although part of ITER is also planning a production style reactor very soon after ITER turns on.

Thus it’s entirely possible that magnetic confinement fusion could become energy profitable within 15 years or so.

Meanwhile the proudly called NIL (National Ignition Laboratory) has succeeded to get in November 2013, twice more thermonuclear fusion energy out of one pellet of Deuterium-Tritium fuel than was put in (by lasers).

The NIL lasers compressed the thermonuclear fuel at three times the pressure and five times what exists (we think) at the center of the sun (where thermonuclear fusion is raging). They improved the efficiency by spending more energy heating up the fuel before compressing.

In a thermonuclear bomb, the thermonuclear fuel is compressed similarly with X rays from a fission-fusion “pit”. Who said nukes were useless.

And yes we need to colonize Mars (be it only because we mess up Earth, and always need to go “meta”). But we will do this only with fusion (there is a scheme to make fusion propulsion by using a technique half way between magnetic clinching, and the ITER and NIL styles.

Who need this?… will whine those who want to feed the poor and build their roofs. Do they know how much energy is needed to feed, quench the thirst, bathe, and shelter eight billions? Lots. We still don’t know how to reproduce Roman cement, but that will save a huge amount of energy.

No way out, but science, ever more science.

That’s the old fashion way, the most human way.

Because, of course, as the old resources run out, just like the Romans did not do, we need, having used lots of brains, to replace the old with the new born. Born from our minds.

This is exactly what happened with Rome. The economy of the empire of the Franks, the Imperium Francorum, rested on new engineering: wind mills, water mills, heavy ploughs (capable of digging deep into the fat land of the wet north), new energy (draft collars), and hundreds of new bioengineered species (horses, oxen, hundreds of species of new vegetable, especially protein rich beans). It was an amazing tech revolution. By 1000 CE, the Franks had surpassed Rome, and had the highest energy usage, per capita.

The Frankish tech revolution was paralleled, nearly as spectacularly  in the Far East. New rice cultivars allowed the population to boom. (Originating in Vietnam, they quickly spread-out). China introduced new technologies, such as paper money (having not enough precious metals).

Our similar situation knows an urgency not found before, though. It’s not a question of imperial collapse, or not, but of planetary collapse, or not. So go fusion, go.

Otherwise, well, even older gods will come to dominate. Those presiding the arena of evolution. The survivors incarnate the epigenetics. But there again, fusion will come in handy.

Patrice Aymé

Jefferson: Bountiful Barbarity

Jefferson was an abominable human being. That helped make him an irreplaceable Founding Father, and great American president.

Obama got the bright idea to celebrate the Francophile, long time Paris resident, and Franco-inspired Jefferson with Hollande, to celebrate their love and partnership. I want to thank him for giving me the occasion of firing a broadside at another celebrity, mounted on a colossal amount of darkness.

Civilizations are defined by, and articulated around, master ideas, and the celebrities that incarnated them. Jefferson became one of the greatest American presidents, because he was so abominable. Let me explain.

Why The USA Really Got Rid Of The Brits: To Invade Indian Lands

Sorry to break the spell: the USA did not revolt just because of taxation without representation, but because of a frontier with limitations. (Details in past and future essays.)

The president of the USA showed the president of France the neo-classical palace where Jefferson, the third president of the USA, held his slaves. They both admired whatever they were supposed to admire. Ironical.

Jefferson turned into a great enemy of both France and people of African descent. Jefferson’s purchase of gigantic Louisiana (1803) was the result of his massive CIA-NSA like secret support of the black rebellion in Haiti, to weaken France. In spite of his fear that “the blacks are out to murder us”. But, for Jefferson, greed proved stronger than fear.

Jefferson was twice part of the crack diplomatic team in Paris coordinating crucial help from Louis XVI. The French police visited his residence and ordered him to pay his servants a living wage, and to free them, because slavery was unlawful in France. (Slavery had been unlawful for eleven centuries.) Jefferson is the nexus of the American Dark Side, the quintessential horror of winner take all exploitation.

When the time came to go home to fight the war, Jefferson’s slaves wanted to stay in Paris. However Jefferson promised them freedom. He lied. In his lifetime, Jefferson freed just two slaves.

Jefferson, one of the wealthiest plutocrats in Virginia, held more than 200 slaves. When Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence wrote: “He has excited domestic insurrections among us,” he was actually condemning the English King for “inciting American Negroes to rise in arms against their masters.”

While governor of Virginia for years during the Revolution, Jefferson promoted military enlistment by offering white men “a healthy sound Negro…or £60 in gold or silver”. Hey boys, let’s boogie.

The cult of Jefferson is strong in Washington. Jefferson has his own memorial, much more interesting and beautiful than the massive, Nuremberg bunker like Lincoln Memorial. Inside engraved on the walls, soaring writings of Jefferson.

As president, Jefferson massacred Indians and stole their land. That was, of course, horrific. Only an abominable person could do such a thing. Jefferson was that abominable person. He had carefully trained by mistreating his slaves and raping children. (Sally Hemming, who he bedded when she was at most 14, was three quarter Caucasian.)

The Dark Side of Jefferson was strong. A friend of his, an idealistic Polish Count, who had fought in the American War of Independence, left Jefferson, in his will, a considerable amount of money, so that Jefferson could free his own slaves. Jefferson pocketed the money, and did not free his slaves.

Patriotic Americans, most of them more or less descendants of European immigrants to America (yes, even Michelle Obama) are supposed, implicitly, to be grateful to the child rapist, slave master, holocauster Jefferson. How do I know this? Well, that’s what the cult of Jefferson is all about. Or actually the cult of the USA, as the USA owes so much to Jefferson.

Let Jefferson speak in his own words:

… our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians… it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi , as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation….this strategy would “get rid of this pest, without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians”.

In cases where Native tribes resisted assimilation, Jefferson believed that they should be forcefully sent west. Jefferson in a letter to no less than Alexander von Humboldt, 1813:

“You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. … On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.”

Jefferson ordered his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (top government official responsible for Indian affairs): “…we will never lay [the hatchet against any tribe] down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi”

Obama did good to celebrate Jefferson with Hollande in their presidential field trip. Jefferson, ultimately, celebrated the Enlightenment. But the road to light led through darkness.

And what if France and Britain, instead of fighting with each other, had kept control of North America? Well, the place would have got more civilized, much earlier, and Prussian anti-semitic racial fascism, and thus the USSR, would never have arisen. The USA may not have become as strong. But then, there would have been no need…

Last, but not least. Jefferson implemented further what I call the “exploitative mentality“. That’s the mood attending, but not reserved, to foundation of the English North American colony (think of the “Virginia Company and her sisters, properties of bloodied plutocrats, the West Country Men). Some, in their naivety, will smart that this is the past. Not so.

The dominant economist system of thought claims markets ought to decide all.

That system is called “Austrian” (because of Hayek and company). That anachronistic name cover-ups its sinister nature. The exploitative mentality is how the USA was founded. “Markets” loved slavery & Indian holocausts, and thus implemented them. Markets sell everything, even civilization.

Patrice Aymé