Never Forget . . .

never forget the (extremely) complex Cold War (et cetera) context of the 9/11 attacks:

• the Soviet-Afghan War (which lasted from December 1979 to February 1989 and had between 850,000–2 million civilian Afghan casualties and caused millions more to flee the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War


• which shaped Osama bin Laden (who grew up in the resistance to the Soviet-Afghan War)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden

• who became a part of Al-Qaeda, a jihadist organization that grew out of the latter part of the Soviet-Afghan War and goes from being regarded as a hero to a terrorist as the Taliban takes control (and a lot of complicated stuff in the 1990s, including the Afghan Civil War).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1992%E2%80%9396)

and watch a slide show for a pretty good overall wrap-up.  slideshow http://slideplayer.com/slide/10620708/

End of Sabbatical

Sometimes i like to think of myself of having been on a sabbatical leave ... for the last twenty-five years.

Maybe it seems like a long time.  But that's how long it took me to work through some stuff, how long it took me to be able to move onto the next stage of my academic career.

Sure, it's not traditional — not much of what i've ever done followed any specific tradition; it's mostly been my own way.

During my sabbatical, i read ... a lot.  I studied many different things.  I took classes — in Philosophy (Symbolic Logic 1 & 2), Folklore, English, Weight Training, Critical Theory, Linguistics, more English, more Linguistics (Syntax), Creative Writing, Computer Science (Intro to CS in Java 1 & 2), and more Philosophy (Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science) — at different schools (UNC Chapel Hill, ASU Tempe, Framingham State, Tufts University) after my undergrad degree at Cornell University.

So what if i went from undergraduate straight into an extended sabbatical leave?  No law against it.  It's what i needed.

Now i'm ready to go back to work (on my own terms, of course), ready to make my contribution to society.

Establishing a 'Maximum Wage' in the United States

If we (in the United States) have a Minimum Wage, perhaps we should also have a Maximum Wage.

How much is enough for one person to earn?

Perhaps 10 million dollars per year.  A starting point for a conversation, at least.

Why should (or shouldn’t) there be a limit?

If we established an upper limit (above which all income would go into a general tax fund, so that low-earners wouldn’t have to pay any taxes, depending on how much was in the fund), what would be the general economic effects?

Imagine if anyone making under $50k per year (or whatever $ amount, depending on the Maximum Wage tax fund) didn’t have to PAY taxes — imagine how much more they would have to spend!

Worth considering!

Trump's Presidential Campaign Is Mostly About Making Money

I believe that Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign is primarily about him making more money.  Trump is no politician, and has no real interest in politics beyond the bottom line of his corporations.  Sure, maybe he wanted to shake up the Republican Party and politics in general, and he certainly has done so in showing that a rich person can basically *pay* to become a party nominee, if they have the funds.

Even though Trump will very likely lose the general election, his commercial brand will have been revitalized.  And let's face it, he hasn't had many good ideas since he hired a ghost-writer for THE ART OF THE DEAL and coming up with the slogan "You're fired!".

Trump has no interest in wrangling with Congress over legislation, trying to gain the respect of world leaders, or in being a leader himself.  He's mostly interested in business; he worships the dollar, not any other god.  He likes being famous, and he likes "winning" whatever game he's playing -- and politics is the game he's currently playing.

Personally i think he's *afraid* of actually winning the Presidency -- afraid that he'd be assassinated by a true conservative Republican so that Mike Pence would become President -- and so he guarantees his un-electability by systematically insulting and alienating groups, tapping into the sadly still-prevalent prejudices of U.S. citizens (which, with protest votes, ensures that he'll get 40 or 45% of the vote).

Give it four months, and we'll see!  (And i'm betting Trump expands his TV empire by his dalliance in politics.)

http://fusion.net/story/302013/trump-troll-army-facebook-money/

Appreciate Police, Yes; But Police Should Apologize For Extra-Judicial Killings

Two messages seem to come out of the spate of tragic killings, both by police and of police:

1)  The police do a really tough job, every day, and with not a lot of thanks.  So yes, everyone should make an effort to express their appreciation of and for police and the important job they do in the United States.  And people should express that appreciation frequently, routinely.

2) At the same time, police departments also need to be held accountable for the actions of their officers.  When there ARE extra-judicial killings -- when suspects are "accidentally" killed during confrontation and/or arrest, then the police department should apologize to the public WHOM THEY WORK FOR, and they should apologize QUICKLY and they should apologize TRANSPARENTLY.  And of course then those crimes should be prosecuted appropriately.

When Philando Castile was brutally killed in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, there WAS NO such public apology by the police department, despite Governor Mark Dayton's reaction to the killing:

At a press conference Thursday, Dayton called the shooting "totally unacceptable." He said he found both the shooting and the aftermath "absolutely appalling at all levels," noting in particular that no first aid was provided to Castile, while other police officers did attend to the officer who fired the shots. Dayton also criticized the "stark treatment" of [his girlfriend, Diamond] Reynolds by police.

"Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don't think it would have."

Gov. Mark Dayton

[NPR  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/07/]

I heard no publicly broadcast apology by the St Paul police department in the days that followed.

Earlier that same week, white police officers shot and killed a black suspect (Alton Sterling) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- his "crime"?  Selling CDs outside a convenience store, where he was a regular.

Did the Baton Rouge police department issue a rapid, heartfelt apology for this outrage?  They did not.

[NPR  http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138681/justice-department-continues-probe]

Then came the tragic killings of police in Dallas.  And then the killings of police in Baton Rouge this past weekend.  Inexcusable, but perhaps preventable ... if only the police departments had reached out to their communities and asked for forgiveness for their mistakes.  But they didn't.  They just let the pressure build in the community.

Maybe it's an effect of having powerful guns in the hands of citizens -- instant retaliation for wrongs of the state.  Think of it in the context of 245 years of slavery in the United States; if the backlash takes as long as the offense (i.e., slavery) took, don't expect it to end until the year 2110.

(1865 + 245 = 2110.  But maybe the end of slavery shouldn't be placed in 1865, but closer to 1965 with the Voting Rights Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965) and more the end of Jim Crow laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws), especially in the South.  Then the math is even more discouraging:  1965 + 245 = 2210.  Maybe somewhere in between:  2110 + 2210 / 2 = 2160, which is still ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR YEARS away ! ! !)

Any way you look at it, it's an interesting turn to so-called Second Amendment Rights -- the rights of the oppressed to retaliate against tyranny.  Assault weapons used to retaliate against extra-judicial killings by police.  Hold on for the next 144 years.

No Joke Anymore

OK, now we've seen the kind of violence that hateful rhetoric can inspire.

When a presidential candidate promotes a national paranoia about people from a particular religion, it may indeed push some nut-case hater to act out (like the unspeakable horror done in Orlando).

The shooter was no Muslim; instead, he was flat-out crazy.  (Ask anyone who knows about Islam; it's not a religion about violence, any more than Christianity is supposed to be.)

The FBI dropped the ball, after interviewing the shooter two or three times because of his predilection to radicalization, and he was permitted to buy weapons just days before the shooting anyway.

Maybe more guns is not the answer; maybe it is the problem.

Why didn't background checks catch the shooter?  Because they were too weak; it's time to strengthen background checks!

The answer is certainly not to turn our backs on the values upon which the United States of America were built -- religious freedom and tolerance -- but to *embrace* those values again and act to stamp out hate!

Treat guns like automobiles -- require insurance and record-keeping and health checks for users, don't just hand them out willy-nilly and hope that things will be OK.

Donald Trump & Benny Hill -- Forever ! ! !

I am 100% behind the Donald Trump & Benny Hill 2016 campaign.

I think this is the perfect reflection of where the conservative party in the United States has moved in 2016, and i think that the addition of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Joe Besser, Shemp Howard, and Joe DeRita for the cabinet positions would round things off nicely.