Greed, College Tuition, and Student Debt

The student loan industry is predatory and outrageously greedy, no doubt. The industry has lobbied effectively against government support for higher education driving up both costs and the need to borrow money to cover those costs. Despicable, while charging outrageous interest rates on loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. 

At the same time university administrations have become redundant, inefficient, and massively self-overpaid - further adding to the costs of attending college.

Combined the effect has been massive increases in the cost of obtaining higher degrees with little or no choice but to borrow huge amounts of money to pay for it - encumbering an entire generation with crippling debt before they have even gotten started in life and severely hurting this country in the process.

However, a one time cancellation of student debt accomplishes little and does not address the problem. What is needed instead is a major overhaul of the student loan industry, the reeling in of the unbridled greed of college administrators, and an increase in government tuition subsidies with rules attached to effect a leaner, more efficient, university system. These measures are necessary and are in fact way overdue. They would serve to lower the cost of higher education by tamping greed and increasing efficiency, decreasing the need to borrow to get ahead, helping both students and the country to a brighter future, permanently. 

Governent Sanctioned Racism

Now that the Department of Energy has told us the covid virus may have leaked from a lab in China (with low certainty) racists are likely to go murder a few more people of oriental descent. 

Good news is the next time someone asks you if you did something you were supposed to have done but didnt just say - I think I may have (with low certainty). 

A Pious Clan of Pedophiles

 

Big city churches. Beautiful, magnificent. Sweeping arches, spires, stained glass, alters and artwork, almost magical acoustics. All of this at the bargain price of starving children, the poor, the homeless, the suffering humanity. Daunting megaliths devoid of anything truly spiritual or even humane - religious bling. Doors locked except when the collection trays are out. Architectural wonders of divisiveness and hypocrisy. Multimillion dollar monstrosities so grotesque in the face of starving children or the homeless mentally ill not even allowed to sleep in their allies.

Religious bling for the soulless masses who require the grandeur to feel anything close to spiritual. Mindless Christian zombies dutifully marching to their shiny soulless centers of ‘worship’ - dressed up in Sunday’s best to cover their dull lifeless eyes. Trays out - paying for fleeting moments of awe to interrupt their squirming and impatience to get back out there and sin.

The entire racket run by the Pious Clan of Pedophiles, raking it in, spreading the lies - tax free baby. I just knew there had to be a reason for all boy choirs.
Sure the buildings are beautiful - but they sicken me. Organized religion sickens me.

We Must Look up

We live in a physical universe. As we go about our daily lives we’ve replaced that one reality with our self-made worlds and human constructs and really haven’t the time to try to understand the universe we actually live in. Rather than calling it truth and reality we call it science, we poke fun at it, and then get back to our self-made worlds - money, wealth, religion, ‘power’, prestige, nation - all of it human construct, none of it real.

Most of us do not understand our actual reality even at a most basic level - the planet we live on, where we are at in the solar system, our nearest neighbors in space, even just a rudimentary understanding of our climate, our world. What in the world does that have to do with your relationship with your boss, your annual salary, Taylor Swift, sport teams, position and rank, country and/or religion? Most of us drive cars we have almost no understanding of - so why do we need to understand our universe, our climate, our actual reality?

Well - because we don’t live in medieval Europe or on the plains of Africa scavenging for food anymore. We live in a world of nuclear weapons, climate change, international interdependence, and complete and total dependence on technology that we have almost no understanding of. Just as important we live in a universe of incredible beauty - a beauty just beginning to reveal itself to us through scientific endeavor that we rob ourselves of knowing and experiencing in our purposeful childish self-imposed ignorance.

The world is going to shit. Its time we wake up and grow up. We cannot permit ourselves to live in make believe, magic, and ignorance anymore - or we will perish. Climate change is real - most of us while acknowledging it do not understand it and do very little about it. It is going to wreak havoc on civilization and soon - we need to get out of our own heads and come to realize how small and fragile our planet really is, and do something, now.

Nuclear weapons are real. What is not real is nation - cant see it from space because it only exists in our heads. Furthermore it’s fantasy - all the nations of the world are now and have for quite some time been completely dependent on each other - there really is no longer us and them. The idea of nations is fantasy. Most of your American car was not made in America. Why is this important? Because as long as we insist on living in fantasy and isolation, a we vs. them mindset, we are incredibly susceptible to full scale nuclear war.

It is one world. Educating yourself about how it actually works is not really a choice anymore. It’s the only path to getting out of our own heads and make believe worlds and doing something about our reality.

If we ‘don’t look up’ and do so now - we perish. 

A Letter To Our Future Care Providers

Certainty in medicine is a systemic illness fueled by an inflated self-regard and arrogance of many medical providers and their educators. It is born of a need to know - at all times - and to be always right - because that’s how it has always been for thousands of years. Just look at the genius of Hippocrates, Galen, Pasteur, on and on as advances in medicine marched forward!

In the glare of these rare superstars it becomes easy to ignore the relentless and unnecessary harm caused to millions by average clinicians over the ages. Everyday medicine for thousands of years has been based in large part in quackery and historical certainty. If this fact wasn’t ignored, if the focus of medical history was based more on our mistakes and less in historical fantasy, physicians today would be less prone to certainty and the harm it can cause.

Certainty over the ages in medicine has in great part been fostered by deference to a false history that focuses more on the giants in medicine and their incredible feats. Thus blood letting wasn’t just a last ditch effort to save - it was a therapy wrapped in historical certainty - despite it not working for thousands of years. Galen was quite certain it worked, and so am I said the average physician for 2,000 years. Never mind the millions it harmed.

It is the lessons we can learn from the millions we have killed or injured over the ages from our certainty in the face of ignorance that can teach us and humble us the most, dash our certainty, limiting the harm we cause. It is the lessons we can learn from their deaths and needless suffering that can make us better doctors - better people.

To hell with your Hippocratic oath and its allegiance to false gods, the forbidding of abortions, and a reminder to pay your teachers - but instead swear to never succumb to certainty, false heroes, prestige, arrogance, and historical fantasy.

Remember that patient care is really no longer even the point in our academic centers, our teachers focused instead on grants, publications, and certainty, all draped in robes of arrogance and pageantry stemming from their make believe past - esteemed, grand and glorious. Can you imagine physicians who feel patient care - limiting suffering and death - beneath them? Academics are lost, and all for a sense of their own self-importance and imagined prestige, even at the price of unnecessary suffering and death and the loss of our collective humanity as providers.

Perverse, dehumanizing - this is how we train our future doctors.

I urge you, students of medicine, to focus on the harm and quackery of our past so you may feel the humility and understand the harm you may otherwise cause. Focus on the potential for harm to be caused by you and/or your teachers - and learn.

Reject certainty.

Reject prestige.

Reject false narratives and historical fantasy.

And always, always, strive to remain humble, and humane.

God Thinks He's a Doctor

                                  Wait, wait, don't tell me. Uhhh, uhhh, backbone!!

Saying a brain surgeon must be smart because he/she operates on brains is sort of like saying the guy who prints the answer key to an IQ test is a genius. 

Does neurosurgery require extraordinary intelligence? No 

Magic hands? No 

Gifted technique only the rarest of the rare can be taught? No

There is one thing that most neurosurgeons do possess that most of us don't. 

A severe personality disorder. 

Because the job is so stressful and they are so gifted they are just weird? No 

Because most of them are colossal assholes who thought becoming a neurosurgeon would make them godlike. 

I mean how bright could you be to go into a field where a very high percentage of your patients suffer permanent brain injury at your hands and yet you still believe yourself godlike? 

Portrait of an Extremist

According to Sarah Huckabee Sanders systemic racism no longer exists in the US.

Only a lily white, self-entitled debutante and proven liar from Arkansas, born into privilege with all the trappings and advantages, would tell us on international television coverage, that America is no longer racist. What better way to promote racism than to declare it over. 

During her response to Biden's State of the Union speech she stated "100,000 Americans a year are now killed from drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl pouring across our southern border."

Whereas it is true that Mexico is the US's primary source of illegal fentanyl, most of the drug is  smuggled through official ports of entry in the US in large trucks or cars, according to the Congressional Research Service. And most is smuggled in by U.S. citizens, the libertarian Cato Institute said. She knows this - she is trying to terrify you about the brown hoard pouring across our border to drug your children, rape your spouse, and steel from you. Why?  - because she's a racist using racism and fear to garner political support. 

This women is a proven liar. She lies with ease - stunningly so. When questioned under oath she admitted to lying repeatedly to the international media as Trump's press secretary. She said Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border and locking them in detention facilities was “very biblical” instead of condemning it as the crime against humanity it was/.

She admitted to lying during a press conference about former FBI director James Comey when she claimed “countless” FBI agents told her they were happy Trump fired him. 

She falsely claimed that Trump’s border wall had stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. In reality, the wall ― for which Trump was demanding $5.7 billion in federal funds to build ― had only stopped six people on the No Fly List. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a sociopathic liar - the ease of which she lies is a sickness. I'd classify that as a major character defect and a non-starter for any future presidential aspirations she may have. But this is who the Republicans chose to give an opposing speech to Biden's  State of The Union. A racist liar. 

Racism is over, says the racist liar. 

Tell that to the babies and children separated from their mothers at the border during her time as press secretary despite them having legally entered the country asking for asylum.

Tell that to muslims, people of oriental descent, to native Americans, and to blacks in this country that the Trump administration persecuted while cuddling up to white supremacist.

Tell that to the law enforcement system where: 

    1. A Black person is five times more likely to be stopped without just cause than a white person.

    2. 65% of Black adults have felt targeted because of their race. Similarly, approximately 35% of Latino and Asian adults have felt targeted because of race.

    3. 84% of Black adults say white people are treated better than black people by police; 63% of white adults agree based on 2019 research on police relations.

    4. 87% of Black adults say the U.S. criminal justice system is more unjust towards Black people; 61% of white adults agree.

    5. There are 3 million people in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime. Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people incarcerated increased from roughly 500,000 to 2.2. million. Despite making up close to 5% of the global population, the U.S. has nearly 25% of the world's prison population. In 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population.

    6. 32% of the US population is represented by African Americans and Hispanics, compared to 56% of the US incarcerated population being represented by African Americans and Hispanics.

    7. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, 42% of children who are detained, and 52% of children whose cases are judicially waived to criminal court. African American children represent 14% of the population.

Well poor people commit more crimes, and there are more poor blacks - say the racists - a lie. 

Moving on from law enforcement let's examine the financial sector. 

A Brookings institute report, published November 2, 2021 by Kristen Broady, Mac McComas, and Amine Ouazad finds that at a local level, '..there are stark contrasts in access to credit for African Americans: Interest rates on business loans, bank branch density, local banking concentration in the residential mortgage market, and the growth of local businesses are markedly different in majority Black neighborhoods. Most houses are bought with a mortgage and most businesses rely on credit to fund their expansion. A lack of credit hinders investments in better homes, better schools, better local infrastructure such as roads and public transport, better amenities, and better health care.'  

The report goes on to find 'In 2019, the median net worth of a typical white household, $188,200, was 7.8 times greater than that of a typical Black household, $24,100.' 

Let's try education: 

Another Brookings report in 2020 by Jon Valant Thursday, June 4, 2020 found that..

 'There are exclusionary zoning policies that keep families that can’t afford single-family homes out of high-performing school districts; tax policies that prevent Black wealth accumulation (and corresponding spending on educational resources); and mass-incarceration practices that remove parents from children’s homes and strain those left behind.

....'Other manifestations are direct matters of education policy and practice. Some are subtle decisions that happen largely out of sight, day after day, like missed opportunities to assign students of color to advanced coursework and excessive discipline practices that send misguided messages. Others are there for us to see: funding levels that leave many high-poverty schools inadequately resourced; attendance boundaries that erect barriers to desirable schools; and test-based accountability measures that stack the deck against high-poverty schools by emphasizing student proficiency over growth.'

My child while nervous if the police pull her over is just nervous, but not terrified. Blacks and Hispanics cannot same the same. 

Of course this country still suffers from systemic racism. Sarah Huckabee is a cold calculated liar and racist. She is an extremist as her speech in response to Biden's clearly revealed. Do not listen to her poison. Do not succumb to her sociopathy. 

Rubio Pubio

All last week Marco Rubio, the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, expressed outrage and indignation over Biden's 'weak' response to a Chinese balloon floating over US territory.

Never mind he knew the same thing had happen during Trump's administration and that Trump had done nothing about it - on three separate occasions.

And never mind that Rubio, as the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, is fully aware we fly our balloons over China - regularly. In fact 10 times in just the last year.

Rubio thinks you are that stupid. He lies to you, gaslights, and uses you, all the while assuming you are a complete moron.

Marco Rubio is a sneaky, unimaginative, sociopathic, weasel of a little man - sorry weasels.

Takes One To Know One

Is there intelligent alien life in the universe?

We now estimate that there are billions of planets where complex life could have evolved just in our galaxy alone.

Life began on earth almost as soon as conditions settled down enough to permit it. Assuming it wasn't transplanted from elsewhere, it is likely then that life - given half a chance - can come to exist relatively easily - everywhere. It then took about another 4.5 billion years, or about 1/3 of the age of the universe, for intelligent life capable of technological advancement to evolve here on earth.

If this has occurred somewhere else in our galaxy just a few million years before us - they should by now be ubiquitous in our galaxy. One would think any technological intelligence would disturb its surroundings in ways we should be able to detect. And yet all we have experienced, in all our searching, is silence.

The silence is ominous, baffling, and quite dramatic. It does not make sense or as Enrico Fermi put it - where is everybody? We should be inundated with intelligent signal and have made first contact by now. Instead, silence.

Where is everybody? The question speaks to the nature of intelligent life, it's beginnings, its evolution, and to our possible future. Do all advanced civilizations destroy themselves? Is that our future?

I have noticed whenever scientists discuss this, that there is a tendency to linear thinking. We evolve, a few hundred thousands years later we invent rockets and then begin to explore space. We invent powerful electronic computers to help us along the way. These are things one could reasonably expect of any higher order intelligence.

But then the picture takes on a pretty unimaginative trajectory involving methodical linear advances in communication, rockets and space travel, even when allowing for the possibility of worm holes and interstellar travel. We envision a straight path of slow but steady progress - maybe hundreds of years, or even thousands of years from now when we will finally climb into space ships and begin to explore interstellar space as a species relatively unchanged. We project that sort of thinking onto alien lifeforms and their civilization's trajectory - and so cannot come up with reasons to explain the current day’s silence - all of this should have happened thousands of times already, just in our galaxy alone - millions of years ago - and aliens and their signals should be everywhere. So - where is everybody?

Technological growth is not linear. I suspect that in 100 years, or for the doubters, even a thousand years from now, we will have created an intelligence hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times, more intelligent than our current selves. From radio to super computer in less than 1,000 years - a blink of the eye. Along the way to getting there, in order to remain relevant and to simply keep up with the concomitant information explosion, we will alter ourselves to become that intelligence. In doing so it is highly likely we will no longer remain human and most likely not even biologic. Our current selves would likely not recognize our future selves ways of communicating, our even be able to experience them in ways that would have meaning.

This is likely the fate of all advance intelligences to include ourselves and our aliens.

There are fundamental truths as regards the nature of our universe yet to be discovered that when our future selves discover them could change everything, to include how we experience space-time itself. It is entirely possible that our future selves and our more advanced aliens, will reside in a different reality - one that we cannot experience.

Wild speculation? Well here's what I know. There are no theoretical bounds to the growth of intelligence - save perhaps heat dissipation. All intelligent life capable of building computers will eventually construct intelligences far beyond anything we can currently imagine. We then, are unlikely to know the answer to - Where Is Everybody? - until we do so as well.

Let's Start With Reality

Despite our deepening understanding of our universe, it's Big Bang, and the laws of physics set at the moment it began, we are still left having to deal with Aristotle's unmoved mover. 

Who or what caused the big bang? If the big bang represents the other side of a black hole - where did the black hole come from?

If we live in a multiverse how did it get started? Who or what started it?

If it's a multiverse within a multiverse - well you get the idea. 

I've noticed that when using the scientific method if you go down a pathway that seems unanswerable it is almost always because your line of inquiry is defective. 

How did the universe begin I suspect is the wrong question. It implies a linearity to time that may not exist. The question itself describes an interpretation of reality that may not actually exist.  

The Fatal Side of Greed

The loss of life and the destruction from the recent earthquake in Turkey is beyond tragic. There are no words really. I am deeply saddened and have a deep, deep sorrow for its victims. There have been devastating earthquakes throughout the region’s history, but this never gets any easier.

In modern times, where we have the technology to limit the destruction and death with better construction and retrofitting reinforcement, tragic morphs to criminal when we realize how little was done to prepare for this earthquake since the last time when in 1999 a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Kocaeli Province of Turkey, killing between 17,127–18,373. It happened again when the Van earthquakes struck in eastern Turkey in 2011. These disasters prompted changes in Turkey’s building codes that contractors, inspectors, and politicians have nearly completely ignored - for money - despite pleas to change.

This is not just a natural disaster. This is wholesale slaughter, fueled by greed.

Your Republican Party

 

Violating hundreds of years of decorum this ignorant, poorly raised, ill mannered, piece of trash, repeatedly heckled the office of the president of the United States last night. Children watching the state of the union address got the impression that's ok to do. 

And not to be too rude - but what in god’s name is going on with the guy to her right? Get a room guy. 

Marjorie Greene is the same person that stalked, harassed, and yelled at David Hogg, a high school victim of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in the Miami suburban town of Parkland, Florida, where 17 children and teachers were murdered and 17 others were injured.  David had lost friends to the violence, but that did not stop her from yelling at him and accusing him of being bought and paid for by antigun lobby while she stalked him on the streets - all for the camera.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a disgrace. But republican leadership will do nothing about her or the other pieces of trash in their midsts - except perhaps as to climb into the bin with them. 

This - THIS - is what has become of the republican party.  

Corporations, Banks, and Other Sociopaths

Have you noticed large corporations are very good at taking your money, almost instantaneously, but somehow just cant seem to refund you your money with the same speed and efficiency?

Starbucks allows you to order items on their app that the stores are out of without telling you they are out of them. They take your money instantly with almost no effort on your part. You then drive to the store only to be told the item is not available - would you like something else? The ole bait and switch scam - illegal in most states. If you want your money back - well now that could take 24 hours and only after you stand in line and sign the receipt - not quite as easy as when they took it.

Banks will withdraw your money from one account to pay a loan at the same bank. Your money comes out of your account instantly but does not apply to your loan for up to four days - despite it all being done electronically.

What's up? Well in both cases - Starbucks and banks - they delay giving your money back in order to use it to make money - for free.

Oh what's the big deal it's only a few dollars. Well, multiply that by the 1 million times a day across the globe they do this, and you start to get the idea why they do this. Both Starbucks and banks are capable of giving you a refund or applying your money to your loan instantaneously. But then they'd miss out on the millions in

interest they make on your and others money - for free.

Why is this legal? Because major corporations to include banks and Starbucks influence politicians unfairly - and you get to pay the price. 

Oh and one last thing. 'Loading' your Starbucks card prior to purchasing anything is you handing your money over days or even weeks before you purchase anything. Why would you do that? They use your money to invest and make money and then pay you back at the time of purchase - minus the interest and money they made on your money. Nice, hey? 

The Beauty to Come

As science discovers truth it becomes possible to stack new knowledge on old, allowing us to gaze upon our universe from new heights - grand, new, vistas that allow us to peer deeper and give us an even greater perspective and understanding of this incredibly beautiful universe.

With greater perspective comes even greater discovery. 

It is the questions we do not yet know to ask, questions that come only with ever and ever greater heights of scientific discovery, that excite me the most. 

Imagine what we don't know, and what scientific endeavor has yet to reveal.

Lies to Live By

1. Jesus wasn't white. Jesus was brown.

2. According to christians, god created man in his image. So is god brown, red, yellow, black, or white? I know, I know - he is all colors at once - whatever in the hell that means - all in keeping with the magic show. Nevertheless most christians think he's white - the all colors thing is just to cover their asses. In fact most christians in the US think the people here are god's favorites - but only if you're white, and only if you're christian, and only if you are a US citizen.

3. Columbus did not discover North America, nor did anyone with an education at his time think the world flat. His ideas were universally rejected by Spain, Portugal, England. His estimate of the distance to the Spice Islands - 2000 miles traveling west - was off by a factor of five from accepted estimates of the time of 8 -10,000 miles, estimates that turned out to be roughly correct. He finally received his funding from Spain, but not because of his persuasive arguments - in fact he was laughed at by most for his ignorance and poor rationale - but due to the political rivalry and greed of Spain against Portugal. 

4. In the US slaves ate out of a trough just outside the kitchen, even at the most 'humane' plantations. They slept on dirt floors, were commonly raped - even by national leaders. Husband and wives and their children were routinely separated, sold off, or traded. They were not treated as family from their masters and for the most part they did not love their masters. 

5. Americans stole native American and Hawaiian lands - killing them off with guns or disease in the process. Interpret that as you may, to include rolling your eyes - your response does not change that it happened.  

6. Pearl Harbor. An aggressive action by Japan against the US was expected. We just weren't sure where and when it would occur. Japan was a supreme colonizer, ruthless, cruel. We enacted an embargo against them and took other measures that made it nearly impossible for them to continue their hegemonistic agenda that they thought was ordained by god. They considered our actions akin to war, and we knew that. I'm not saying we should have not done what we did. I'm saying we knew it would provoke the Japanese, we knew they were likely to retaliate. And so this idea that Pearl Harbor was completely out of the blue, completely unprovoked, and 'sneaky', is simply not true. 

7. There were not 58,220 deaths in Vietnam. That is US military deaths. Our actions killed between 2.5 to 4 million people - most of whom were civilians on both sides.  You will still see estimates published of 35 - 64,000, which is a ridiculous lie. We bombed North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968 almost continuously - that alone is estimated to have killed 1.5 million civilians. Most estimates from third party sources since the war are between 1- 4 million. And we killed most of them, innocents - babies, children, women, old men - and we lost. 

8. Even after discovering Germany's WWII death camps, and coming to grips with the unbelievable atrocities done to Jews by Hitler, the US denied them immigration to the US - as did most of the Allies to their respective countries. Not wanting them in their neighborhoods the world found them one that couldn't fight back - Palestine. And hence the birth of Israel, as a place to put them all, deliberately robbing the Palestinian's of their land - people who had lived there for thousands of years. 

The allies's and Israel's oppressive rule against these people subsequently prompted a mass exodus and the permanent displacement of an entire people. Pain, born of pain, born of pain.

Israel was a direct result of Hitler's evil, then subsequently the Allies's evil, and then even Israel's evil. Today it is the only country in the middle east allowed to stockpile nuclear weapons, has been and continues to be involved in terrorism and illegal acts abroad, to include the murder of civilians. It continues to take land away from the Palestinian people illegally, and continues to oppress them, too frequently using violence to do so. 

While it is true that this entire subject is much more complicated - Israel is in fact not all to blame and is not all evil - nevertheless, what I have said here is true, and almost never spoken of, and needs to be. 

9. To be continued....