Watch A Woman Get Pregnant By Music On Youtube - She's Wasn't Ready...,

Curiously Satisfying...,

To return to Hebrews, the writer goes on to say: ' ... it is impossible to please God without faith' (xi.6). That is, it is impossible without the basis or foundation of faith, which makes it possible for a man to think beyond the evidence of his senses and realise the existence of invisible scale and understand psychological meaning. To realise scale means to realise that there are different levels of meaning. Literal meaning is one thing, psychological or spiritual meaning is another thing - although the words used are the same. For example, we saw that the word yeast used in the incident quoted indicated two levels of meaning. The disciples took it on the lower level and were told it was because their faith was little. Their thinking was sensual.

They had difficulty in thinking in a new way on another level. And their psychological thinking was so weak just because they were based on sense and not on faith. Thus sense and faith describe two ways of thinking, not opposites, not antagonistic, but on different levels. For without the perception of scale and levels, things are made to be opposite when they are not so, and Man's mind is split into 'either - or', which leads to endless confusions and mental wrangles and miseries. The writer goes on to say: 'Nobody reaches God's presence until he has learned to believe that God exists and that He rewards those that try to find Him' (xi.6). It is apparent that if scale is behind all things, if order is scale, and if to set in order is to set in scale then what is higher and what is lower must exist. To everything there must be an above and a below. A man who cannot perceive scale, visible and invisible, as did that centurion by means of his psychological understanding due to his great faith, will be shut to the intuitions that only faith opens out to every mind that hitherto has been asleep in the senses and the limited world revealed by them.

The chief preliminary voluntary act - and it needs to be lifelong in its voluntaryness - towards the inner spirit, the source and conveyor of meaning, is that of affirmation. Only by this act does all that is outward, external and dead become connected with what is internal and alive. This is the chief of all psychological acts. It is the preliminary and at the same time the continually renewable act whereby psychology, in the deepest sense - (that is, the science of personal evolution) begins. The final goal of it, far ahead, is the unity of oneself. Man becomes gradually united through himself with himself and not merely with what he accidentally has become and believes himself to be. Affirmation is not by argument but by understanding. Negation leads always to an inner deprivation and so to an increasing superficiality, impatience, loss of meaning, and violence. One can always deny. What is easier? One can always follow the path of negation, if one evades all acts of understand-
ing as sentimental or as scientifically and commercially valueless.

For St. Augustine and many more before and after him, the sick, the deaf, and the dead in the Gospels are the sick and deaf,  and the dead within. And in speaking of the two blind men who, sitting by the way side as Jesus was passing, cried out and asked that their eyes might be opened, he asks if we can really suppose that this is merely an account of a miraculous event concerning two physically blind men? Why does it say that the crowd try to restrain them, and that they fight against it and insist on attracting the attention of Jesus? 'They overcame the crowd, who kept them back, by the great perseverance of their cry, that their voice might reach the Lord's ears. . . . The Lord was passing by and they cried out. The Lord stood still and they were healed. For the Lord Jesus stood still and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? They said unto him, That our eyes may be opened.' (Matthew xx.30-34) The blind here are those who cannot see but wish to see. Augustine says they are those who are blind in their hearts and realise it. Like the deaf, like the sick and the dead, the blind are a certain kind of people. They are, in this case, people in a certain inner state, knowing they are blind, and wishing to see clearly. 'Cry out among the very crowds', he says, 'and do not despair.' Who are these two blind men who know they cannot see but who recognise the spiritual meaning typified in the person of Jesus - what individual functions of the soul are shewn here that struggle with the crowd of commonplace meanings and thoughts and finally, by their own determination, receive their power of vision? 'If two or three are gathered together in my name . . . ' said Christ (Matthew xviii.20). What two sides of ourselves must first take part that our eyes may be opened - that is, our understanding? Why two, to make it effective?  Nicoll The Mark

DISC: Why Black Holes Instead Of Dark Energy Stars?

consciousnessanduniverse |  A recent study has suggested that dark energy stars may be an alternative to black holes. The term “dark energy star” was coined by George Chapline when he proposed that gravitational collapse of objects with masses greater than a few solar masses should lead to the formation of a compact object called dark energy star with a much larger vacuum energy. The study may be viewed in the context of another paper which states that the important question concerns whether dark energy is a completely new physical entity or one which we already know, namely a gravitational energy within the vacuum of a closed gravitating system that has long been known to be a negative energy. It remains to be seen whether scientists currently analyzing the data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will provide evidence that dark energy stars exist. EHT is a virtual Earth-sized telescope aimed to measure the size of the emission regions of two supermassive black holes, Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way and M87 in the center of the Virgo A galaxy.

 We know that dark energy is embedded in space, counteracting gravity. The way gravity and antigravity are interacting in my mind is somehow related to time. With the understanding that time’s arrow is perspectival,   I  picture the negative-energy particles of the dark sector traveling backwards from the future somehow meeting at the intersection of past and future those positive-energy particles traveling forward in time as if they both were traveling the same distance in their determination to meet. That is how I see a cosmic coincidence unfolding, with matter and dark energy densities being of precisely the same order in the present times. Lastly, I imagine a phantom energy to be something that appears to have no physical reality and still is ultimately real. Raising the concept of a divide begs the question of what lies on the other side and what circumstances enable its crossing. The modified gravity approach as an alternative to dark energy is the focus of research and may be the 

key to unifying both components of the dark sector, a path to solving the coincidence problem.

DISC: Why No Science Of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena?

Vox |  The Pentagon recently released three videos of UFOs recorded by the Navy — one taken in 2004 and the other two in 2015. The videos, which first leaked a couple of years ago, show … well, it’s not exactly clear. 

There are various objects — two of which look like aircraft — spinning through the sky and moving in ways that defy easy explanation. As the images bop across the screen, you can hear the pilots’ excitement and confusion in real time as they track whatever it is they’re seeing. 

I’m not what you would call a UFO enthusiast, but the videos are the most compelling I’ve ever seen. They seem to confirm, at the very least, that UFOs are real — not that aliens exist, but that there are unidentified objects buzzing around the sky.

Now, do I think aliens are real? Yeah, probably. Are they flying spaceships into our atmosphere? Who the hell knows?

The best anyone can say is that there’s a non-zero chance that some of these UFOs were made by non-human hands, and that, I’d argue, is reason enough to talk about them. But it’s barely cracked the news cycle. Even in a pandemic, you’d think we’d have a little time for UFO talk. 

So in an attempt to force a UFO conversation into the public discourse, I contacted Alexander Wendt, a professor of international relations at Ohio State University. Wendt is a giant in his field of IR theory, but in the past 15 years or so, he’s become an amateur ufologist. He wrote an academic article about the political implications of UFOs in 2008, and, more recently, he gave a TEDx talk calling out the “taboo” against studying UFOs.

Wendt is about the closest thing you’ll find to a UFO expert in a world in which ufology isn’t a real science. Like other enthusiasts, he’s spent a lot of time looking at the evidence, thinking about the stakes, and theorizing about why extraterrestrials would visit Earth in the first place.

In this conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, we discuss why scientists refuse to take UFOs seriously, why he thinks there’s a good chance ETs are behind the aircraft in those videos, and why he believes the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the most significant event in human history.

Once Thought Impossible Rotating Detonation Rocket Engines A Fait'Accompli

eurekalert |  A University of Central Florida researcher and his team have developed an advanced new rocket-propulsion system once thought to be impossible.

The system, known as a rotating detonation rocket engine, will allow upper stage rockets for space missions to become lighter, travel farther, and burn more cleanly.

The result were published this month in the journal Combustion and Flame.

"The study presents, for the first time, experimental evidence of a safe and functioning hydrogen and oxygen propellant detonation in a rotating detonation rocket engine," said Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in UCF's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering who led the research. 

The rotating detonations are continuous, Mach 5 explosions that rotate around the inside of a rocket engine, and the explosions are sustained by feeding hydrogen and oxygen propellant into the system at just the right amounts. 

This system improves rocket-engine efficiency so that more power is generated while using less fuel than traditional rocket energies, thus lightening the rocket's load and reducing its costs and emissions.

Mach 5 explosions create bursts of energy that travel 4,500 to 5,600 miles per hour, which is more than five times the speed of sound. They are contained within a durable engine body constructed of copper and brass. 

The technology has been studied since the 1960s but had not been successful due to the chemical propellants used or the ways they were mixed.

Ahmed's group made it work by carefully balancing the rate of the propellants, hydrogen and oxygen, released into the engine.

"We have to tune the sizes of the jets releasing the propellants to enhance the mixing for a local hydrogen-oxygen mixture," Ahmed said. "So, when the rotating explosion comes by for this fresh mixture, it's still sustained. Because if you have your composition mixture slightly off, it will tend to deflagrate, or burn slowly instead of detonating." 

Ahmed's team also had to capture evidence of their finding. They did this by injecting a tracer in the hydrogen fuel flow and quantifying the detonation waves using a high-speed camera.

"You need the tracer to actually see that explosion that is happening inside and track its motion," he said. "Developing this method to characterize the detonation wave dynamics is another contribution of this article."

New Method For Fabricating Single Atom Transistors A Shortcut To Quantum Computing Hardware?

scitechdaily |  To fabricate single-atom and few-atom transistors, the team relied on a known technique in which a silicon chip is covered with a layer of hydrogen atoms, which readily bind to silicon. The fine tip of a scanning tunneling microscope then removed hydrogen atoms at selected sites. The remaining hydrogen acted as a barrier so that when the team directed phosphine gas (PH₃) at the silicon surface, individual PH₃ molecules attached only to the locations where the hydrogen had been removed (see animation). The researchers then heated the silicon surface. The heat ejected hydrogen atoms from the PH₃ and caused the phosphorus atom that was left behind to embed itself in the surface. With additional processing, bound phosphorous atoms created the foundation of a series of highly stable single- or few-atom devices that have the potential to serve as qubits.

Two of the steps in the method devised by the NIST teams — sealing the phosphorus atoms with protective layers of silicon and then making electrical contact with the embedded atoms — appear to have been essential to reliably fabricate many copies of atomically precise devices, NIST researcher Richard Silver said.

In the past, researchers have typically applied heat as all the silicon layers are grown, in order to remove defects and ensure that the silicon has the pure crystalline structure required to integrate the single-atom devices with conventional silicon-chip electrical components. But the NIST scientists found that such heating could dislodge the bound phosphorus atoms and potentially disrupt the structure of the atomic-scale devices. Instead, the team deposited the first several silicon layers at room temperature, allowing the phosphorus atoms to stay put. Only when subsequent layers were deposited did the team apply heat.

“We believe our method of applying the layers provides more stable and precise atomic-scale devices,” said Silver. Having even a single atom out of place can alter the conductivity and other properties of electrical components that feature single or small clusters of atoms.

The team also developed a novel technique for the crucial step of making electrical contact with the buried atoms so that they can operate as part of a circuit. The NIST scientists gently heated a layer of palladium metal applied to specific regions on the silicon surface that resided directly above selected components of the silicon-embedded device. The heated palladium reacted with the silicon to form an electrically conducting alloy called palladium silicide, which naturally penetrated through the silicon and made contact with the phosphorus atoms.

In a recent edition of Advanced Functional Materials, Silver and his colleagues, who include Xiqiao Wang, Jonathan Wyrick, Michael Stewart Jr. and Curt Richter, emphasized that their contact method has a nearly 100% success rate. That’s a key achievement, noted Wyrick. “You can have the best single-atom-transistor device in the world, but if you can’t make contact with it, it’s useless,” he said.

Fabricating single-atom transistors “is a difficult and complicated process that maybe everyone has to cut their teeth on, but we’ve laid out the steps so that other teams don’t have to proceed by trial and error,” said Richter.

With The DNI Declassifications - Even Coffee-Boy Papadopoulos Gets The Final Two Of His Fifteen Minutes...,

greatgameindia |  According to a secret transcript that was just declassified, one of the spies the FBI deployed against George Papadopoulos said that Israelis and U.S. Jews are “all f—ing spies,” referred to them as “f—ing c—suckers,” and said they should all be executed. The declassified transcript published on Tuesday revealed a “confidential human source” (CHS) from the FBI quoted as saying that Israeli Mossad spies need to be fucking kicked out of USA.

The 206-page transcript captured conversation between Papadopoulos and an unidentified CHS, seemingly across one continuous episode on November 26, 2016. George Demetrios Papadopoulos is a former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Donald Trump presidential campaign. He served twelve days in federal prison, then was placed on a 12-month supervised release.

The FBI claimed to have begun surveillance of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos told the Daily Caller that the CHS is named Jeffrey Wiseman.

Last year, one of the most high-profile Israeli spy network in the US was brought down by American intelligence. This secret high-society elite group was recently exposed on the global stage with the arrest of the sex-trafficking kingpin Jeffrey Epstein.

Although, Epstein is portrayed as just another billionaire pedophile, he was actually a high-class Israeli spy. He used perverted sexual desires as a cover to corrupt and infiltrate higher echelons of power in government and businesses (including in India). This is the source of political sex-scandals and video-tapes which surface now and then when someone refuses to obey orders.

Flynn Was Not Unmasked - He Was The Target Of The Investigation

Dailymail |  President Trump's acting chief of national intelligence has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials said to be involved in the 'unmasking' of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Richard Grenell, the acting Director of National Intelligence, paid a visit to the Justice Department headquarters last week in Washington, DC, and brought a list of former Obama aides with him, ABC News is reporting. They remain a secret from the general public. 

'Unmasking' is the procedure to name - to those with high-level security clearances  -an American citizen whose name appears in intelligence gathering such as eavesdropping or wiretaps that are initially aimed at suspected foreign agents.

U.S. citizens' names are obscured in such intelligence gathering, unless there is specific permission from the FISA court to eavesdrop on them over concerns they are working for or influenced by foreign intelligence agencies.

Supporters of Trump allege that members of the Obama administration improperly sought to investigate Flynn over contacts he had with the ambassador to Russia, Sergei Kislyak, during the transition to the Trump administration.

The FBI and then the Mueller probe focused on Flynn telling Kislyak that sanctions put in place on Russia at the end of December 2016 by Obama would be reviewed - which he then denied telling Kislyak to both Mike Pence and then the FBI. 

It is alleged that Flynn's identity was unmasked during the course of the federal investigation into contacts held between Russian figures and the Trump presidential campaign.

Flynn's calls with Kislyak were routinely intercepted because all the diplomat's communications were the subject of eavesdropping.

Flynn's name would have been redacted in intelligence reports but some top officials were then able to ask for the name to be 'unmasked.'

The heads of all intelligence agencies and members of the national security council have such power - as does the president.

Under the Obama administration, membership of the national security council included Joe Biden, as vice president, Susan Rice, the national security adviser, Ash Carter, the defense secretary, Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary, Jacob Lew, the Treasury secretary, and Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations.

All were legally empowered to ask for unmasking but leaking an unmasked identity would be a felony.

Human Behaviour Or Pressurized Flush Toilets And Closed Loop Air Conditioning?

nature |  Human behaviour is central to transmission of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and changing behaviour is crucial to preventing transmission in the absence of pharmaceutical interventions. Isolation and social distancing measures, including edicts to stay at home, have been brought into place across the globe to reduce transmission of the virus, but at a huge cost to individuals and society. In addition to these measures, we urgently need effective interventions to increase adherence to behaviours that individuals in communities can enact to protect themselves and others: use of tissues to catch expelled droplets from coughs or sneezes, use of face masks as appropriate, hand-washing on all occasions when required, disinfecting objects and surfaces, physical distancing, and not touching one’s eyes, nose or mouth. There is an urgent need for direct evidence to inform development of such interventions, but it is possible to make a start by applying behavioural science methods and models.

In addition to industrial aerosolizing flush toilets https://waterandhealth.org/disinfect/preventing-infection/can-coronavirus-spread-through-defective-bathroom-sewage-pipes/ do you know whether your office building or apartment complex has electrostatic filters and outside fresh air exchangers?

Here is a study on an early transmission site in China, where incidents of infection seem to correlate to ventilated air flow in a restaurant: COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

This illustration helps to visualize this: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764-f1  Here is a not-yet-reviewed preprint of a study of two buses transporting attendees to and from an event in China. One bus (#2) had a suspected “index patient” (IP), the other didn’t.  https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1255579524047220741

From the article: “In both buses and conference rooms, central air-conditioners were in indoor re-circulation mode.”   Untreated recirculated air bearing virus-laden droplets may lead to repeated exposure and increase concentration of virions in individuals.

66% of hospitalized New Yorkers had no travel or contact with external 3^rd parties, i.e., they were self-quarantined. What they had in common was that they were apartment dwellers living in comparatively high density with shared spaces and a shared plumbing system. 

Their behavior was of no consequence WHATSOEVER when it came to mitigating or limiting their exposure to the SARS-Cov2 pathogen, aerosolized via plumbing and concentrated and recirculated via air conditioning.

What Did Obama Know And When Did He Know It?

Foxnews |  Former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn's lead attorney accused top officials of orchestrating a plot to frame her client, insisting that former President Barack Obama himself was in on it.

Flynn had initially pleaded guilty to providing a false statement to the FBI regarding his contact with a Russian ambassador, but later changed his story and pushed back by questioning the FBI's tactics.

OBAMA KNEW DETAILS OF WIRETAPPED FLYNN PHONE CALLS, SURPRISING TOP DOJ OFFICIAL IN MEETING WITH BIDEN, DECLASSIFIED DOCS SHOW

"These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that he was even the person being investigated," Powell told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," pointing to evidence that FBI agents took a casual approach with Flynn, not telling him they were investigating him and not warning him that it would be a federal crime to lie during their conversation.

"So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him up and frame him," Powell said.

According to recently released testimony, President Obama revealed during an Oval Office meeting weeks before the interview that he knew about Flynn's phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

After the meeting, Obama asked Yates and then-FBI Director James Comey to "stay behind." Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information."

Wayminnit..., This Seems Like A Particularly Uncharacteristic Obama Moment

washingtonexaminer |  Obama “started by saying that he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes. “Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently.” 

Yates told investigators that “at that point,” she “had no idea what the President was talking about.” She “recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act” but could not remember if Comey specifically said there was an “investigation.” 

"It was not clear ... where the President first received the information," Yates said, adding that she “did not recall Comey’s response to the President’s question about how to treat Flynn.” Yates told Mueller's team, “She was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time," the notes said. 

The Justice Department’s Thursday court filing described the ensuing clash between Comey and Yates on the question of whether to tell the incoming Trump administration that the recording of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador did not entirely square up with what Flynn had apparently told incoming Vice President Mike Pence. Comey “took the position that the FBI would not notify the incoming Trump administration of the Flynn-Kislyak communications." Yates and other senior DOJ officials “took the contrary view and believed that the incoming administration should be notified.” 

Yates told Mueller’s team about a pre-inauguration conversation about notifying the Trump team either with Comey or now-fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and “recalled that the FBI was resistant to the idea.” She also “recalled Comey’s view was that no one really knew if the Vice President was aware of the calls,” but “the DOJ response was that they shouldn’t assume the Vice President was aware and had knowingly lied.” The FBI notes state that “in the days immediately leading up to inauguration, Yates was really pushing to notify, while Comey was still very resistant.”

Yates, who noted it was "not always clear what the FBI was doing to investigate Flynn" and whose team noted the case appeared to vacillate between being a counterintelligence investigation and a criminal investigation, told investigators she decided “enough was enough” and would tell the White House a few days after President Trump’s inauguration. On Jan. 24, 2017, Yates and her team agreed that she would inform the Trump White House about the Flynn recordings, and Yates called Comey to let him know. But when Yates spoke with Comey later that day, he “informed her that two agents were on their way to interview Mike Flynn at the White House.”

Andrew Cuomo - Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

theintercept |  For a few fleeting moments during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, the somber grimace that has filled our screens for weeks was briefly replaced by something resembling a smile.

“We are ready, we’re all-in,” the governor gushed. “We are New Yorkers, so we’re aggressive about it, we’re ambitious about it. … We realize that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way.”

The inspiration for these uncharacteristically good vibes was a video visit from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined the governor’s briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state’s post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.

“The first priorities of what we’re trying to do,” Schmidt said, “are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband. … We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better.” Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair’s goals were purely benevolent, his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings.

Just one day earlier, Cuomo had announced a similar partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop “a smarter education system.” Calling Gates a “visionary,” Cuomo said the pandemic has created “a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’s] ideas … all these buildings, all these physical classrooms — why with all the technology you have?” he asked, apparently rhetorically.

It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the “Screen New Deal.” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent — and highly profitable — no-touch future.

The Corporate Fascist Nanny State Is A Hypocritical Virtue Signaling Beast

theamericanconservative |  People and governments always invoke the safety and security of the majority when they are taking away rights for “our own good,” just like the Patriot Act did. It’s an old playbook, joined in this century by our First Amendment nannies on social media, who electronically block efforts to organize. If you’re screeching about how rights don’t matter when lives are at stake, you’ve got company. The KKK used that argument to block black people from marching, claiming it was a safety issue. Yet California will no longer issue permits for anti-lockdown protests at any state properties, including the Capitol.

Agree? Just remember what you’re saying now about these redneck inbred gun nuts the next time someone claims a march permit can’t be issued in the interest of public safety to a group you support. It’s the same thing, rights are rights. Because you know what else can spread rapidly if “left unchecked?” Tyranny. Justice Louis Brandeis held free speech is not an abstract virtue but a key element of a democratic society. He ruled even speech likely to result in “violence or in destruction of property is not enough to justify its suppression.” In braver times when Americans challenged the safety vs. liberty argument, the Supreme Court consistently ruled in favor of free speech, reminding us democracy comes with risk. But that was another world ago, before we measured human worth in RTs.

There is science which should be informing decisions. But while claiming a small rally in Denver will cost lives, or Florida will kill people by opening its beaches, the same voices remain silent as NYC keeps its subway running 24/7. The public beach versus public transportation debate came as a new study showed that NYC’s “multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator—if not the principal transmission vehicle—of coronavirus infection,” seeding the virus throughout the city. Without a superspreader like the subway it can be contained locally. It is tragic when the virus rips through a nursing home or meatpacking plant (it is a virus after all, it will go viral), but all of those together barely touch a week’s body count in New York. Shut down mass transport.

We can put most people back to work with limited risk; the protesters are right. The virus kills a very specific patient. About half the dead are over age 65. Less than one percent of deaths are under age 44. Almost 94 percent of the dead in any age group had serious underlying medical issues (about half had hypertension and/or were obese, a third had lung problems). The death toll in NY/NJ under total lockdown: over 27,000. Death toll in much more densely populated Tokyo with “smart” lockdown: 98.

About 22 percent of New Yorkers already have the virus antibody and thus expected immunity. One logical implication of this—that large numbers already have or had the virus, and that it is harmless to them—is simply ignored. Quarantine/social distancing should be for those most vulnerable so we can stop wrecking all of society with cruder measures. Hospitals should separate patients by age. No need to keep kids from school, especially if that means isolating them inside a multigenerational household. Let them wear soggy paper masks to class, even tin foil on their heads, if it makes things easier. Online classes are lame and America doesn’t need a new generation dumber than the current one.

The New York-New Jersey area, with roughly half the dead for the entire nation, practices full-on social distancing while Georgia was one of the last states to implement a weaker stay-at-home policy. Yet as Georgia re-opens, the NY/NJ death count is over 27,000. Georgia is 892. NYC alone continues adding around 500 bodies to the pile every day, even with its bowling alleys closed.

Democrat Party Racism - Black And Brown Quarantine Violation Beatdowns

dailymail |  New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo have been pushing for enforcement instead of education, leading to heavy-handedness and a 'business as usual' attitude within the NYPD which has long been accused of marginalizing communities of color.  

'We were told we were getting a mayor who was going to change this,' Williams said. 'That's what makes some of this so difficult to swallow.' 

The mayor claims that police have actually shown restraint during the lockdown period.

'We do not accept disparity, period,' de Blasio said during a coronavirus briefing. 'On the arrests and summonses, the thing to focus on first, is the sheer fact that we're looking at numbers across a city of 8.6 million people and across a time span I believe is six weeks, the numbers of arrests and summonses are extraordinarily low.

'So, I don't, for a moment, misunderstand folks who raise alarms and concerns, or project forward concerns,' said de Blasio. 'But I say, "Hey, start with these sheer facts, that we're talking about very few people have been arrested and very few people have been summonsed." 

'And there's been a huge amount of restraint by the NYPD. That's just factually obvious from the numbers, and we intend to keep it that way only using summons and arrest when needed.

'We're dealing with something absolutely unprecedented, and there's no way in hell we are going to be able to keep people safe if we don't use the strongest, best public safety organization in this country.' 

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea also stressed that arrests are down 50 percent  across the city and believes overall social distancing enforcement has gone smoothly.

'We have been doing it with an extremely light touch,' he said. 

'We have been interacting with millions of people and given out only a handful of violations, summonses and arrests, and that's the way it should be,' Shea said. 'I don't want the NYPD to be the morality police.' 

The viral videos of black people and other people of color getting violently arrested across the city stand in sharp contrast to photos and video tweeted by the NYPD showing friendly officers handing out face masks and gently reminding people to stay 6 feet apart.

I've Never Started A Fight But Every Fight I've Ever Been In Resulted From Deficient Vice Signaling

independent |  The right's embrace of vice-signaling, and indeed of vice, is how we got Trump. It's also why his administration has been so unable to deal with a crisis requiring collective civic virtue.

Conservatives have long embraced a kind of tough-love, individualistic ethos which trumpets callousness as a good in itself. They have attacked "bleeding heart" liberals for decades for the moral sin of caring about people who are suffering, and for thinking that collectively we should try to address injustice and inequality, rather than submitting to economic Darwinism.

Little wonder, then, that the right weaponized the term “virtue-signaling" over the past few years. The phrase is now used to sneer at anyone who expresses public concern about sexism, racism, homophobia, poverty, or bigotry of any sort. If you ask someone not to use a racial slur, or not to misgender someone, you are supposedly engaged in “virtue-signaling”— which is to say, that you are only objecting to cruelty because you want other people to like you or admire you. The term “virtue-signaling" assumes that anyone who speaks about the value of virtue is hypocritical and self-aggrandizing. 

But virtue is about how you treat other people. To create virtuous communities, you need to talk about what it means to be good. Labeling virtue talk as bad means you're rejecting the pursuit of virtue as a goal. 

The right has in fact in many ways rejected the pursuit of virtue. Instead, they have chosen to create communities tied together with virtue's opposite. Conservative thinkers and pundits today frequently insist that reality does not have any place for communal and collective good, and instead call on people to admit, or even revel in, openly callous and bloodthirsty expressions of hatred or immorality. 

The most extreme example of this comes, as usual, from radio show conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.  Jones recently said that if there were coronavirus food shortages, he would eat his neighbors in order to feed his children. 

But the vice-signaler-in-chief is, of course, Donald Trump. When the 45th president initially refused to condemn neo-Nazis rioting in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017, treating the request to condemn evil as some sort of trick, he earned that title.

An NBC reporter named Peter Alexander in a press briefing in March practically begged Trump to virtue-signal, asking him if he could offer people reassurance during the crisis: "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now, who are scared?” he asked. Trump refused the opportunity to utter some words of comfort, instead launching into a tirade in which he said the journalist was a "terrible reporter" and that it was a "very nasty question." Rather than talk about virtue, and encourage people to be virtuous, Trump invariably urges people to be callous, angry and afraid. 

A public health crisis requires public, collective action for good. To survive Covid-19, we need people to join together and make sacrifices for a collective good. We need a government willing to acknowledge those sacrifices and enact policies to make them less onerous. We need, in short, a vision of, and a commitment to, communal good.

Consciousness Does Not Compute

nautil |  This past March, when I called Penrose in Oxford, he explained that his interest in consciousness goes back to his discovery of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem while he was a graduate student at Cambridge. Gödel’s theorem, you may recall, shows that certain claims in mathematics are true but cannot be proven. “This, to me, was an absolutely stunning revelation,” he said. “It told me that whatever is going on in our understanding is not computational.”

He was also jolted by a series of lectures on quantum mechanics by the great physicist Paul Dirac. Like many others, Penrose struggled with the weirdness of quantum theory. “As Schrödinger clearly pointed out with his poor cat, which was dead and alive at the same time, he made this point deliberately to show why his own equation can’t be the whole truth. He was more or less saying, ‘That’s nonsense.’ ” To Penrose, the takeaway was that something didn’t add up in quantum theory: “Schrödinger was very upset by this, as were Dirac and Einstein. Some of the major figures in quantum mechanics were probably more upset than I was.”

But what, I asked, does any of this have to do with consciousness? “You see, my argument is very roundabout. I think this is why people don’t tend to follow me. They’ll pick up on it later, or they reject it later, but they don’t follow argument.” Penrose then launched into his critique of why computers, for all their brute calculating power, lack any understanding of what they’re doing. “What I’m saying—and this is my leap of imagination which people boggle at—I’m saying what’s going on in the brain must be taking advantage not just of quantum mechanics, but where it goes wrong,” he said. “It’s where quantum mechanics needs to be superseded.” So we need a new science that doesn’t yet exist? “That’s right. Exactly.”

After we’d talked for 20 minutes, I pointed out that he still hadn’t mentioned biology or the widely held belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. “I know, I know,” he chuckled, and then told me why he felt compelled to write his first book on consciousness, The Emperor’s New Mind, published in 1989. It was after he heard a BBC interview with Marvin Minsky, a founding father of artificial intelligence, who had famously pronounced that the human brain is “just a computer made of meat.” Minsky’s claims compelled Penrose to write The Emperor’s New Mind, arguing that human thinking will never be emulated by a machine. The book had the feel of an extended thought experiment on the non-algorithmic nature of consciousness and why it can only be understood in relation to Gödel’s theorem and quantum physics.

Minsky, who died last year, represents a striking contrast to Penrose’s quest to uncover the roots of consciousness. “I can understand exactly how a computer works, although I’m very fuzzy on how the transistors work,” Minsky told me during an interview years ago. Minsky called consciousness a “suitcase word” that lacks the rigor of a scientific concept. “We have to replace it by ‘reflection’ and ‘decisions’ and about a dozen other things,” he said. “So instead of talking about the mystery of consciousness, let’s talk about the 20 or 30 really important mental processes that are involved. And when you’re all done, somebody says, ‘Well, what about consciousness?’ and you say, ‘Oh, that’s what people wasted their time on in the 20th century.’ ”

Is Sir Roger Penrose's Science of Consciousness Spooky?

medium |  Thus could Roger Penrose’s position be entirely motivated by scientific anti-reductionism? Doctor Susan Blackmore certainly thinks that this is an important motivation. Or at least the programme maker in the following quote does. She writes:

“Finally they got to consciousness. With clever computer graphics and Horizonesque hype they explained that brave scientists, going against the reductionist grain, can now explain the power of the mind to transcend death. It all comes down to quantum coherence in the microtubules. And to make sure the viewer knows that this is ‘real science’ the ponderous voice-over declared ‘Their theory is based on a well established field of science; the laws of general relativity, as discovered by Einstein.’…”

Sure, Blackmore’s talking here about “near-death experiences” (NDEs). Yet those who believe in this — or at least some of them — have found succor in “quantum coherence in the microtubules”. Now don’t those things sound very scientific? Of course we’ll now need to know what quantum coherence is. (Or is it really a case of needing to know whether or not the believers in NDEs actually have any idea of what quantum coherence is?)

Of course Penrose and Stuart Hameroff can’t personally be blamed for spook-lovers quoting their work. However, a psychologist or philosopher may tell us that these two fellows — both scientists — are motivated by very similar things. After all, Hameroff himself has talked about NDEs.

Specifically, Hameroff has said that when the brain dies (or stops functioning), the information within that brain’s microtubules remains alive (as it were) or intact. Moreover, the information of the microtubules leaks out into the world (or, well, into the universe). Not only that: this microtubular information remains intact and bound together because of the power of quantum coherence.

Hameroff goes even further. He’s stated that this phenomenon explains why the subject can experience — see? — himself hovering over his own body. That is, Hameroff seems to endorse near-death experiences. Yet even if “information” (P.M.S. Hacker would have a field day with this word — see here) did leak out into the universe, how would that make it the case that the body which hovers above also has a body and sensory experiences? Microtubular information in the air doesn’t a physical person make. And without a physical body, there are no sensory experiences or anything else for that matter. Thus this is like claiming that if you turn the computer off and then smash it up so violently that its material structure shatters into dust, then the “information” inside would still be intact and would simply float in the air above it. In other words, the soul of the computer would still exist. Unless Hameroff is simply telling us about what he thinks people imagine (or hallucinate) when they’re having a NDE. Though if that’s the case, why all this stuff about microtubular information leaking into the air or even into the universe?

This spooky anti-reductionist motivation is further explained by the philosopher and materialist Patricia Churchland and also the philosopher Rick Grush. According to Blackmore,

“they suggest, it is because some people find the idea of explaining consciousness by neuronal activity somehow degrading or scary, whereas ‘explaining’ it by quantum effects retains some of the mystery”.

Churchland is even more dismissive when she says (as quoted by Blackmore):

“Quantum coherence in the microtubules is about as explanatorily powerful as pixie dust in the synapses.”

To put it more philosophically and simply, Penrose and Hameroff’s position appears to be a defence of traditional dualism. Or, at the very least, the belief in NDEs certainly backs up traditional dualism. And, as we’ve just seen, Hameroff has defended NDEs.

Dualism, Intuition and Free Will

Traditional philosophical dualism has just been mentioned. Here again we can tie Hameroff and Penrose to the concerns (or obsessions) of traditional philosophy. That is, Hameroff hints that his and Penrose’s positions may solve the traditional problems of free will, “the unitary sense of self” and the source and nature of intuition/insight. More specifically, all these philosophical conundrums can be explained by quantum coherence in the microtubules. In terms of simply-put examples, free will is down to quantum indeterminacy; non-locality is responsible for “the unity of consciousness”; and non-algorithmic processing is the baby of “quantum superposition”.

In the technical terms of mind-brain interaction, and as a result of accepting mind-body dualism, the brain and mind can be mutually involved in quantum “entanglement” which is “non-local”. Thus, put simply, we can have mind-to-brain causation. Though this would of course depend on seeing the mind as not being the brain or not even being physical (in a strict or even a non-strict sense). This would put both the mind and brain in the same holistic package and that would help all of us explain…. just about everything!

Quantum Consciousness: Orch-OR Is Better Supported Experimentally Than Any Other Theory Of Consciousness

oxford |  The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’) theory suggests consciousness arises from ‘orchestrated’ quantum superpositioned oscillations in microtubules inside brain neurons. These evolve to reach threshold for Penrose ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) by E=h/t (E is the gravitational self-energy of the superposition/separation, h is the Planck-Dirac constant, and at the time at which Orch OR occurs) to give moments of conscious experience. Sequences, interference and resonance of entangled moments govern neurophysiology and provide our ‘stream’ of consciousness. Anesthetic gases selectively block consciousness, sparing non-conscious brain activities, binding by quantum coupling with aromatic amino acid rings inside brain proteins. Genomic, proteomic and optogenetic evidence indicate the microtubule protein tubulin as the site of anesthetic action. We (Craddock et al, Scientific Reports 7,9877, 2017) modelled couplings among all 86 aromatic amino acid rings in tubulin, and found a spectrum of terahertz (‘THz’) quantum oscillations including a common mode peak at 613 THz. Simulated presence of 8 different anesthetics each abolished the peak, and dampened the spectrum proportional to anesthetic potency. Non-anesthetic gases which bind in the same regions, but do not cause anesthesia, did not abolish or dampen the THz activity. Orch OR is better supported experimentally than any other theory of consciousness.

Not Sanguine About Common Citizens Fathoming The Unadvertised Behavior Of Their Elites

reuters |  An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters. 

The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said. 

As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter. 

The report was drawn up by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence body. 

Reuters has not seen the briefing paper, but it was described by people who had direct knowledge of its findings. 

The report described to Reuters warned that anti-China sentiment sparked by the coronavirus could fuel resistance to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure investment projects, and that Washington could step up financial and military support for regional allies, making the security situation in Asia more volatile.

Three decades ago, in the aftermath of Tiananmen, the United States and many Western governments imposed sanctions against China including banning or restricting arms sales and technology transfers. 

One of those with knowledge of the report said it was regarded by some in the Chinese intelligence community as China’s version of the “Novikov Telegram”, a 1946 dispatch by the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, that stressed the dangers of U.S. economic and military ambition in the wake of World War Two. 

Novikov’s missive was a response to U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” from Moscow that said the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for peaceful coexistence with the West, and that containment was the best long-term strategy. 

The two documents helped set the stage for the strategic thinking that defined both sides of the Cold War.

Tibetan Common Citizens May Not Agree With The Tibetan Elites In Exile

historicly.substack |  The American position on Tibet's sovereignty changed depending on how they felt about the current government of China. During World War II, the US government claimed China held sovereignty over Tibet. In 1948, when Tibetans claimed autonomy, the US state department accused them of having "ill-faith." Tibetan officials even possessed Chinese passports.

However, all of this changed in 1949 after the Communists took control of China. The State Department wrestled with the question of whether or not they should strategically recognize an independent Tibet. They reasoned that it would be advantageous because “Tibet will be one of the few remaining non-Communist bastions in Continental Asia." As the People’s Liberation Army victory became imminent, the US government decided that they supported an “independent Tibet.”

 In August 1950, the PLA crossed over into Tibet. Within the first few months, nearly 20,000 Tibetans joined the PLA to fight against the local ruling class. As the PLA marched further into Tibet, they started distributing free food to the hungry serfs, which earned them popular support and aid.  

The PLA could have invaded Lhasa in October 1950, but they stopped their advancing troops and sent an envoy to the Dalai Lama asking him to negotiate an agreement. The Dalai Lama, with the advice and consent of the British, agreed to send delegates to negotiate. The PLA soldiers were redeployed to build a road from Beijing to the capital city of Lhasa, Tibet. 

In May 1951, the Tibetan delegates did end up signing an agreement that was quite favorable to the aristocrats. Point 4 of the agreement said, "The central authorities will not alter the existing political system in Tibet. The central authorities also will not alter the established status, functions, and powers of the Dalai Lama. Officials of various ranks shall hold office as usual." 

While the rest of China had immediate land redistributions, Chairman Mao made a concession, and the agreement said, “In matters relating to various reforms in Tibet, there will be no compulsion on the part of the central authorities. The local government of Tibet shall carry out reforms of its own accord, and, when the people raise demands for reform, they shall be settled by means of consultation with the leading personnel of Tibet."  

In the next few years, CCP's government did, indeed, build infrastructure projects. The PLA built roads that allowed trucks to travel within the interior. One vehicle, in two days, could carry what sixty yaks took twelve days to transport. Tibetans received more food, and the price of goods dropped by two-thirds in two years. Tibet got electricity. As the New York Times reported, Tibet got its first radio broadcasts. The CCP government also set up a state-bank in Tibet. Peasants received non-usurious loans and very low-interest rates, which made them less dependent on the feudal estates. According to the CIA, PLA also canceled the extremely onerous taxes for the peasants for three years.  

They built new schools. According to Dawa Norbu, serfs were given $1 to $1.50 to have their children attend schools, giving serfs more leverage to bargain against the elite class.