A Few Philosophical Concepts

What is the meaning of life? What are good and evil? What is justice? These are some of the questions that philosophers have been asking for centuries. Philosophy is a complex and fascinating field of study that can sometimes seem daunting to beginners. And while there’s no one answer that everyone will agree on, it’s still important to know some of the most fundamental ideas in philosophy. Here are ten common philosophical concepts everyone should be familiar with, regardless of educational background.

Plato's Theory of Ideas
Plato was the first to separate the “world of things” from the “world of ideas.” According to Plato, the idea (eidos) is the source of a thing, its prototype, the underlying reality of any particular object. For example, the “idea of a table” can either coincide with a particular table in reality or not match. But the “idea of the table” and the “concrete table” will continue to exist separately.

A vivid illustration of the division of the world into the world of ideas and the world of objects is the famous Platonic myth of the cave, in which people see not objects and other people but only their shadows on the wall of the cave. In this metaphor, the shadows projected on the wall of the cave correspond to the individual objects in the world, while the objects whose shadows are on the wall correspond to the ideas – which are more fundamental and real, in Plato’s view.

The cave for Plato is an allegory of our world, where people live, believing that the shadows on the walls of the caves are the only way to know reality. However, in reality, the shadows are just an illusion. Still, because of this illusion, it is difficult for people to pose critical questions about the existence of reality and overcome their “false consciousness.”  READ MORE...

Update on Medical

 It has been a while since I've updated you about my medical condition.  Several months ago instead of having a separate blog for medical, I decided to incorporate those posts on this blog.

My medical situation revolves around the follow:

1. Age
2. Cancers
3. Heart
4. Back

Age 

This category is relatively simple...  as we get older, on average, our bodies tend to lose their physical abilities...  this can be offset by exercise but even that only slows down the process...  at 75 years of age, my physical abilities have become curtailed to a large extent by my age, even though I exercise regularly, eat healthy, quit smoking cigarettes 35 years old, don't drink alcohol, or use drugs.  Eating healthy is no red meat, fish, chicken, turkey, lamb, fish, beans, and veges.  My fish intake is typically tuna, cod, and salmon, flounder, and orange ruffy.

Cancers

As you may or may not recall, I am in my 15 year of fighting non-Hodgskin's Lymphoma and in my 11 year of fighting Melanoma.  I have experienced surgery, radiation, chemo infusions, immunotherapy infusions, and am currently taking pills that alter the cancer cell's protein so that it cannot reproduce.

My treatments have included the following:

• Rituxan
• Triandra
• Cytoxin
• Fludara
• Opdivo
• Yervoy
• Imbruvica - pill - $1,000/month out of pocket
• Calquence - pill - $700/month out of pocket

I get infusion of drugs every four weeks and a CT Scan every 3 months and if something serious is detected, there is a follow-up PET Scan.

My Lymphoma is considered SLL and is treated in the same manner as CLL is treated which is Leukemia...  it sound odd, but that is what my Oncologist has been telling me.

All my chemo has damaged my Thyroid and has left me anemic, a platelet count under 100,000,  and a very low white blood cell count.  I am constantly fatigued and have to force myself to exercise (walking), diarrhea, shortness of breath, all sorts of surface of the skin carcinomas, and frequent nausea.

My last CT Scan (this month) showed an increase in Lymphoma of about 1 cm in two areas which is why my pill meds were immediately changed from Imbruvica to Calquence.

Heart

About 15 years ago I had a heart attack while walking on the treadmill.  It was serious enough that the doctors wanted to do a triple bypass.  My LAD was blocked 100% and the other 2 arteries on the left side were both blocked 90%.  Because I was so damn healthy, my body created its own bypass with dozens of arteries it had created.  I got my arteries cleaned out at NY Presbyterian Hospital in NYC and today, my stents are still pristene as a result of an angioplasty 6 months ago ordered by my Cardiologist.  My eating and exercise has helped.  My cholesterol both good and bad combined is 84.

Back

Seven month ago, I had lower back surgery to fuse together L2-L3-L4-L5-S1.  I felt hardly any pain the next day and took no pain killers.  However, the last 7 months, I have been walking 5 out of 7 days to help me learn to walk again.  I am much better but my walking seems forced and not natural and I have a really hard time trying to walk fast.  I am told that it may take another 12 months before I am completely restored but that will never be like I was.  My movements and bending will be restricted.  I still cannot put on my socks because I cannot bend that far over, so when I walk, I walk without socks.

I was born with an excellent body and I have always treate my body with respect regarding my exercise and eating habits.  However, my body is not just being tested but it being gradually taken away from me.  The fact that I have endured all of this and can still do more than most males my age can, impresses the hell out of me...

My goal is to live longer than my mother did.  She passed away just shy of her 96 birthday.

I've got a little more to do with my body for me to get there by losing another 15-20 pounds.  I have already lost 30 of the 50 pounds that all my steroids had put on me.  These last 20 are not so easy.

Well now...  there you have it...  consider yourself caught up with MY HEALTH...  Not arrogant nor egotistical...  just wanting to share what is going on with me, so that you might learn something from my experiences...

TAKE CARE AND KEEP THE FAITH...

Long Neck Crane

 

Extreme Bending

 

Strictly Political

 

Biden's Leadership

It turns out that going from America First to America Last has real world consequences.

President Joe Biden’s rejection of President Donald Trump’s approach to national security and foreign policy has created devastating harm to American interests abroad and our security at home.

Trump’s main goal was to prioritize our interests, thereby leveraging American power to deliver greater global stability, certainty and relative peace. Biden prioritizes multilateralism and globalism, reversing Trump-era gains and introducing increasing chaos, instability, uncertainty and conflict.

President Trump’s critics often complained his America First policies were damaging our alliances and rewarding our enemies. The exact opposite was true: like President Ronald Reagan before him, Trump delivered peace through strength. Biden has diluted American power, and as a result, our allies no longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us. American weakness always invites the wolves, and the wolves have returned.

Let’s recall where we were just one year ago.

• The Trump administration had provided unwavering support to Israel and achieved historic peace agreements in the Middle East, agreements which cultivated economic and other cooperation that, in turn, is delivering enduring peace.
• It had successfully pushed back on China’s economic aggression, human rights abuses, and geopolitical adventurism in the South China Sea and Pacific Rim.
• It had successfully contained Russia’s expansionism and slowed the progress of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
• It had productive diplomacy underway to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
• It had withdrawn from the catastrophic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and was using its extensive sanctions authority to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
• It had negotiated a plan for a managed, conditional exit from Afghanistan that would have secured us a continuing intelligence capability.
• It had realigned our relationship with our NATO allies, holding them to their promises of the alliance.
• It had successfully negotiated fairer, more reciprocal trade deals with China, Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Japan, among others.
• It had begun to modernize and rebuild our military, left hollowed out by the Obama-Biden administration.
• It had largely solved the immigration issue through a more secure border and commonsense diplomatic agreements.

The Biden administration is hell-bent on reversing many of President Trump’s stunning achievements.  READ MORE...

Cruelty

 

Frequencies

 

Too Short

 

Unintended Consequences of "All Things Racist"

I am not an expert on anything except not being an expert...

I am a senior citizen

a veteran

a parent

retired

well educated

well experienced

a conservative liberal

riddled with cancer

opinionated

sarcastic

clean shaven

All of which put me in a perfect position to make the following statement...

OUR FOCUS ON WHITE SUPREMACY, WHITE PRIVILEGE, AND RACIST AMERICA...  IS ACHIEVING NOTHING EXCEPT CREATING MORE RACISM IN AMERICA...

This may sound a little odd but I believe that it is more correct than it is incorrect.

There will always be a few whites who automatically feel guilty about slavery and want to do something about it because it was so horrific and devastating...  but, a vast majority of whites, see slavery in our past, and there is really nothing that can be done about our past except not to repeat it in the future.

Anything more is overkill... and turns into resentment...

Black Lives Matter...  in an of itself is racist because it ignores all the other lives that are in the US of A.  So, until that slogan changes into something like ALL LIVES MATTER...  then at least 50% of whites, maybe more, are going to ignore it, and disregard the message.

Critical Race Theory...  in and of itself is also racist because it does not accept the changes that have taken place in the US of A and it is teaching a THEORY rather than a fact of life in America several hundred years ago to the present.

ALL BLACK CHURCHES...   in an of itself could easily be seen as racist since it offers little to no encouragement to ask whites to join and participate in their brand of faith...   it is almost like black churches practice a different faith than white churches...  and, the blacks do not want the white to participate with them...  by definition, that means black churches are racist.

AFRICAN AMERICAN CUTURAL CENTERS on college campuses...  in an of itself are racist because they refuse to be perceived as simply American Cultural Centers.  In a way these centers are saying the two races are and should be MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE....  again, the very definition of racism.

Creating Categories between white and black underscores separation and perpetuates RACISM...

What is going happen to the US of A, if:

• Asians want the spotlight
• Hispanics want the spotlight
• Jews want the spotlight
• Russians want the spotlight
• Irish want the spotlight
• Mexicans want the spotlight

The whole point of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is that we are UNITED...

Buckle Up

 

Ego

 

Exercise

 

America is Unreccogizable

Is America dying before our eyes?

All societies eventually collapse – from the classical civilizations of Ancient Rome and Greece to the ever-alarming decline of modern America, could the past be hinting at what's in store?

With skyrocketing inflation, political division, social unrest and a relentless effort to wipe away the fundamental principles of the nation, historians and scholars in Fox Nation's "American Requiem" series offer an elegy for what the country used to be and warn of what it has become.

"The America of the 1980s has pretty much vanished," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo said. "We're now entering a new period of unprecedented economic, social and cultural change."

"We're in a very bizarre and unprecedented situation in our civilization today, which is – we are turning on our own legacy and declaring it evil, oppressive, without any redeeming characteristics…" Manhattan Institute senior fellow Heather MacDonald said in the special.

"There's [sic] some days I wake up and read the news and look around me and say, ‘I don’t recognize this country anymore.'" Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at the University of California, Berkley added.

The three-part series dissects America's cultural fabric and the tears that it has suffered, picking out the pivotal changes that signal the nation's exponential decline in the last 30 years that created the country we see today.  READ MORE...

Dog Wash

 

Wind Blown Dog

 

Nanotechnology

Physicist Richard Feynman, the father of nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers.

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across all the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering.

How It Started
The ideas and concepts behind nanoscience and nanotechnology started with a talk entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) on December 29, 1959, long before the term nanotechnology was used. In his talk, Feynman described a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules. Over a decade later, in his explorations of ultraprecision machining, Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology. It wasn't until 1981, with the development of the scanning tunneling microscope that could "see" individual atoms, that modern nanotechnology began.


Fundamental Concepts in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
It’s hard to imagine just how small nanotechnology is. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or 10-9 of a meter. Here are a few illustrative examples:There are 25,400,000 nanometers in an inch
A sheet of newspaper is about 100,000 nanometers thick
On a comparative scale, if a marble were a nanometer, then one meter would be the size of the Earth

Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve the ability to see and to control individual atoms and molecules. Everything on Earth is made up of atoms—the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and houses we live in, and our own bodies.

But something as small as an atom is impossible to see with the naked eye. In fact, it’s impossible to see with the microscopes typically used in a high school science classes. The microscopes needed to see things at the nanoscale were invented in the early 1980s.  READ MORE...

Gossip

 

Your Enemies

 

The Show Is Over

 

In Terms of a Quantum

What is a quantum?

A quantum (plural: quanta) is the smallest discrete unit of a phenomenon. For example, a quantum of light is a photon, and a quantum of electricity is an electron. Quantum comes from Latin, meaning "an amount" or "how much?" If something is quantifiable, then it can be measured.

So, we use qubits instead of binary bits when we talk about computers and if we link these qubits together our processing speed is increased.  Right now, there is no end in sight as to how fast computers might eventually become...   and/or what that eventual speed might lead us to next.

When we look at quantum from a physics point of view, we see subatomic particles that are further broken down into smaller components called strings or fibrating filaments of pure energy.  Like qubits, strings are the foundation of all matter.

As mentioned earlier, the movement of strings is what many physicists believe cause our various dimensions to exist, although none of the theory has actually been proven.

BUT, from a computer's point of view, nothing has to be explained as it is just there and functions based upon the programs that have been loaded.  

Quantum computers are faster than classical computers because classical computers computer every single option, one at a time whereas, quantum computers simply calculate the answer with the highest probability.  

Additionally, as each highest probability is calculated, it is stored and remembered, which then becomes the foundation for the concept of machine learning.

The drawback with quantum computers is that they cannot control any realtime deviices because they do not have an operating system.

On Racism

A thought-provoking passage written by an Englishman about the current situation in HIS homeland - this is thought provoking and is equally relevant in any other (once) white country.

I have been wondering about why whites are racists, and no other race is? There are British Africans, British Chinese, British Asian, British Turks, etc, etc, etc. And then there are just British. You know what I mean, plain ole English people that were born here. You can include the Welsh, the Scottish and the people who live off our shores of Great Britain.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you. So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live? You have the Muslim Council of Great Britain. You have Black History Month. You have swimming pools for Asian women. You have Islamic banks for Muslims only. You have year of the dragon day for Chinese people. If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists. If we had White History Month, we'd be racists. If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR lives, we'd be racists.

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black Britain or Miss Asia, but any colour can be in the Miss UK. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we'd be racists. There are over 200 openly proclaimed Muslim only schools in England. Yet if there were 'White schools only', that would be racist! In the Bradford riots and Toxteth riots, you believed that you were standing-up for your race and rights. If we stood-up for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

We fly our flag, we are racists. If we celebrate St George's day we are racists You can fly your flag and it’s called diversity. You celebrate your cultures and it’s called multiculturalism. You rob us, carjack us, and rape our daughters. But, when a white police officer arrests a black gang member or beats up an

Asian drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist. I am proud... but you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists?? There is nothing improper about this e-mail. Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

I sadly don't think many will. That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won't stand up for ourselves!

BEING PROUD TO BE WHITE! It's not a crime, YET.. but its getting very close!

A Dose of Reality

The cart before the horse! And many years ago GM built about 100 electric cars and was paid to destroy them.

Toyota isn't saying none of this can be done. They are saying that conversations are not anywhere near serious and will not produce meaningful results.

Japan's Toyota -- is currently the world's largest automaker. Toyota and Volkswagen vie for that title each year -- each taking the crown from the other -- as the market moves.GM -- America's largest automaker -- is about half Toyota's size --thanks to its 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring.

Actually -- Toyota is a major car manufacturer in the U.S. In 2016 about 81% of the cars it sold in the U.S. came off American assembly lines.

Toyota was among the first to introduce gas/electric hybrid cars with the Prius twenty years ago. The company hasn't been afraid to change the car game.

All of this is to point out that Toyota understands both the car market and the infrastructure that supports the car market.Probably understands better than any other manufacturer on the planet.

Toyota hasn't grown through acquisitions as Volkswagen has, and it hasn't undergone bankruptcy and bailout as GM has. Toyota has grown by building reliable cars and trucks for decades.

When Toyota offers an opinion on the car market it's probably worth listening to.

This week Toyota reiterated -- The world is not yet ready to support a fully electric auto fleet.

Toyota's Robert Wimmer (head of energy & environmental research) said this week in testimony before the U.S. Senate, "If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification it will require overcoming tremendous challenges - challenges including : refuelling infrastructure/battery availability /consumer acceptance / and affordability.

Wimmer’s remarks come on the heels of GM's announcement that it will phase out all gas internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2035.

Tellingly, both Toyota and Honda have so far declined to make any such promises. Honda is the world's largest engine manufacturer (when you include : boats / motorcycles / lawnmowers / etc) Honda competes with Briggs & Stratton in those markets amid increased electrification of [traditionally gas powered] lawnmowers / weed trimmers /etc.

While manufacturers have announced ambitious goals just 2% of the world's cars are electric at this point.

Buyers continue to choose ICE over electric because of: price /range / infrastructure /affordability / etc. Only a small percentage of people would choose an electric car unless forced to buy.

There are 289.5 million cars just on U.S. roads as of 2021. About 98 percent of them are gas-powered.

Toyota's RAV4 took the top spot for purchases in the 2019 U.S market -- Honda's CR-V is second and GM's top seller (Equinox) comes in at #4 behind the Nissan Rogue. GM only has one entry in the U.S.top 15. Toyota and Honda dominate - each with a handful in the top 15.

Toyota warns: the US electrical grid and infrastructure simply aren't there to support the electrification of the private car fleet.

A 2017 U.S. government study found we would need about 8,500 strategically-placed charging stations to support a fleet of just 7 million electric cars. That's about six times the current number of electric cars.

But no one should be talking about supporting just 7 million cars. We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years if all manufacturers follow GM and stop making ICE cars.

We are going to need a bigger energy boat to deal with connecting all those cars to the power grids - a WHOLE LOT bigger boat But instead of building a bigger boat we may be shrinking our boat. Power outages in California and Texas have exposed issues with power supplies even at current usage levels.

Increasing usage of wind and solar, -- both of which prove unreliable -- has driven some coal and natural gas generators offline.

We will need much more generation capacity to power about 300 million cars if we're all going to be forced to drive electric cars, and we will be charging them frequently. Every roadside gas station must be wired to charge electric cars and charging speeds must increase greatly.

Current technology allows charges in "as little as 30 minutes" - but that best-case fast charging cannot be done on home power.Charging at home (on alternating current) takes a few hours to overnight and will increase the home power bill.

That power, like all electricity in the United States, comes from generators using: natural gas /petroleum/coal/nuclear/wind/solar/or hydroelectric sources.

Even half an hour is an unacceptably long time to spend charging. It's about 5 to 10 times longer than a gas pump takes. Imagine big rigs with much larger tanks. Imagine the charging lines that would form every day if charge time isn't reduced by 70 to 80 percent.

We can expect improvements but those won't come without cost. Electrifying the auto fleet requires massive overhaul of the power grid and an enormous increase in power generation.

Toyota has publicly warned about this twice while its smaller rival GM is pushing to go electric. GM may be trying to win favour with those in power in California/ Washington / and in the media.

Toyota's addressing reality, and they know what they are talking about.

Toyota isn't saying none of this can be done. They are saying that conversations are not anywhere near serious and will not produce meaningful results.

Today's Lesson is IRONY

Once in a while, we just have to stand back in awe of our government:

The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is proud to be distributing the greatest number of free meals and food stamps ever - to 46 million people.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Dept. of Interior, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed the Animals." Their stated reason for the policy is that "the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Thus, this ends today's lesson. Thank you.

 

Quantum Computing Chips

Australian engineers have discovered a new way of precisely controlling single electrons nestled in quantum dots that run logic gates. What’s more, the new mechanism is less bulky and requires fewer parts, which could prove essential to making large-scale silicon quantum computers a reality.

The serendipitous discovery, made by engineers at the quantum computing start-up Diraq and UNSW Sydney, is detailed on January 12 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“This was a completely new effect we’d never seen before, which we didn’t quite understand at first,” said lead author Dr. Will Gilbert, a quantum processor engineer at Diraq, a UNSW spin-off company based at its Sydney campus. “But it quickly became clear that this was a powerful new way of controlling spins in a quantum dot. And that was super exciting.”

Logic gates are the basic building block of all computation; they allow ‘bits’ – or binary digits (0s and 1s) – to work together to process information. However, a quantum bit (or qubit) exists in both of these states at once, a condition known as a ‘superposition’. This allows a multitude of computation strategies – some exponentially faster, some operating simultaneously – that are beyond classical computers. Qubits themselves are made up of ‘quantum dots’, tiny nanodevices which can trap one or a few electrons. Precise control of the electrons is necessary for computation to occur.  READ MORE...

Kitty Playtime

 

Saving Animal on Ice

 

Why DId Quantum Entanglement Win a Nobel Prize?

 

Someone

 

Attraction