Correspondence Between Trumpist and Progressive

Trumpist:

Interestingly, now that the economy is moving beyond the service model economy (which I remember you writing about many years ago as unworkable - just to boil it down into a single word) back to more a more broadly based model (energy, manufacturing, and building with American materials and components), the economy is booming.  There are now more job openings that people to fill them (there's a lot of overtime being worked out there now).  The respective unemployment rates separately for blacks, Hispanics, and high school dropouts are at never before lows (I suspect you could get a job again using your electronics skill sets if you wanted to).  Banks are starting to make loans again.  The working class is excited (Trump won their vote by a 38% margin - that's a helluva spread).  And that was based on promises.  Now the working class has seen the results.  Trump is changing the Republican base.  We are living to see the Republican party as the party of the working class.  And Trump's support among blacks and Hispanics is growing by the day (29% among blacks - which if it carries over the election day will doom the Dems).  

During the campaign and since, he never said a bad word about unions and at meetings at steel and aluminum companies he would always invite the union reps (wearing their USW jackets) up on stage with the workers and execs.   Working guys show up at Trump's massive rallies wearing their hard hats.  It is a thing to behold.

Target, Walmart, Home Depot and Lowes are all seeing the best sales in many years.  The stock market too is going up, but there's value and earnings now to support it (not just banks parking money from the Fed in the stock market).  401Ks are exploding.  There is a nine month wait if you want to buy a big rig truck!!!  

As for a trade war, Trump is using the tariffs to move our trade partners away from their tariffs and barriers against us.  As Trump said during the campaign, the trade war happened a generation ago - and we lost.  Already the EU is coming around to Trump's idea of getting rid of tariffs and barriers.  Mexico and the US have just agreed to a great deal that will increase wages and heavy manufacture in both of our countries.  Canada is still intent on using NAFTA to pass through Chinese parts and steel as well as protecting their others sectors through tariffs and barriers.  They will lose their auto plants which will move back to the US, but they seem happy to trade that for their other protections.  Trump is willing to take that.  Getting car plants back in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana will be huge for the union and working class vote as well as for our economy.

Often missed too is the point that tariffs paid to the treasury pay down the debt.  It's a lot of revenue coming in.  

I know we disagree on politics, but I see all this as way way better than Bush and Obama.  There's a big new walk-away movement (started by a gay hair dresser in New York!) of Dems and libs walking away from the Democrat Party.  These folks are not embracing old style Republican politics but the new Trump populism and disdain for political correctness.  In any event, I don't want a war with you -- I just wanted to share the way I am seeing it on the ground.  With love in my heart.

Progressive:  

Yes, the country has reached what is the lowest rate of unemployment that we have had in decades, however, the devil is in the details.  Let’s take a look.

 A lot of that employment is what they call “involuntary part time” where people take part time work, at the low wages we could expect from part time work, because they can’t get full time work.  Note that part time work does not come with ‘benefits’.  Oh, part time work used to be thought of as for kids and seniors, but now it is dominated by middle aged people… even in the Fast Food Joints – most ‘burger flippers’ now are adults.

 Also, there is a lot of what they call “gig” work and temporary work.  We can think of all those Uber Drivers who are working for nothing.   If they had good jobs then why would they need to do demeaning crap like that?   Again, Gig Work and Temp Work is off and on, the pay is low, and temp and gig workers do not get benefits. 

Then certainly you have heard about all those Small Businesses.  Small Businesses get tax breaks and they do not have to comply with the Benefits Policies that Big Businesses are required to adhere to.  So there are a lot of Small Businesses.  Indeed, some huge corporations make it a business to create and spin off Small Businesses.  Such Small Businesses meet all the legal requirements of being a Small Business, but they are physically in reality ‘offices’ or ‘departments’ (typically located in the same skyscraper) within the shadow Larger Corporation (for instance, I worked for Yulista, a Small Business, where all the Company Officers formerly worked for Calista, and when Yulista went belly up after losing the Contract, they probably went back to working for Calista again until they could again be placed in whatever new Small Business they spin up. Oh, when I worked for Raytheon, the Company threatened that they could ‘spin off’ the Calibration Lab into a Small Business, where we could keep our same jobs but get none of our prior benefits.  Well, since then the Economy in general as made good on that threat.     

Next, we have to wonder about the quality of the Full Time Jobs that do exist.  There is little manufacturing in America, and where there is, most production is being done by automated technologies, and then we can factor in the collapse of the Labor Unions.  Most jobs don’t pay what they used to.  But, yeah, there still are a few good jobs?  They are in Defense Work.  America’s last thriving industry is the Weapons Trade, which is a kind of Welfare, isn’t it?  The Defense Industry is just “Make Work”.   A F-35 Jet does not help anybody or make our infrastructure any better.   If we wanted to Make Work, why not plough the money into Health Care, Public Transportation, Roads, Bridges, and the Schools and Colleges.

Oh, another factor behind low wages and salaries are all of the “Do Not Compete” contracts that people have to sign in order to get a job.  People have to promise never to work for anybody else in the same industry.  Basically this establishes Slavery by Option.  A company can lay off workers with the assurance that the workers must sit and wait next to the telephone to be called back, since they can’t apply for work anywhere else.  Also the DNC contracts makes it difficult to negotiate raises.  The Boss can just say “Where else are you going to go?”     

Also, there is the issue of “discouraged Workers”, that is workers who are no longer seeking jobs.  Apparently the quality of the jobs being offered are not worth their time.  Then there are the early retirements, such as myself, of people who would rather struggle by then get a job where they still had to struggle by but work a miserable job too.

Also, if the American People were really thriving, then retail stores would be thriving, but they are not.  Malls are shutting down.  Restaurants, and Amusement Parks and Movie Theatres are not doing significantly better than they were at the bottom of the Great Recession.  Why is this avenue for discretionary spending so choked off?  People don’t have the extra money that we would expect if they were “doing well”.  Even Walmarts are shutting down in some regions because apparently people do not have money to spend. 

This is reflected in the inflation statistics.  Yes, the inflation statistics are kept artificially low (with formula corrections such as “chicken is the same as steak”, and “a Toyota Corolla is the same as a BMW 3 Series”) but we don’t see the same level of consumption that we saw back in the 1980s or we would be seeing double digit commodity inflation.  But Energy and Gas Prices are going up.  Typically it is Energy Prices that trigger Recessions.  About a decade back I used to argue that America is in a Structural Recession linked to Energy Costs (that the American Economy could only afford to operate when at the bottom of a Recession, and that any significant ‘recovery’ would trigger a fall back to the bottom), an idea that got derailed when Saudi Arabia and others decided to Pump To the Hilt before the International Community got serious about Carbon Emissions and Global Warming.  But after about 6 or 8 years of full out production, the ‘low hanging fruit’ liquid crude in accessible locations is mostly plucked out, and Gas Prices are going up again.  That has always meant a recession before, right?

Also, we can see in the Millennial Generation a kind of a litmus test for the Economy.  They are the best educated Generation ever in the History of America, and this is largely because when they get their Bachelor Degrees they can’t find work, and so they go on to get their Masters Degrees, and when they can’t find work, etc, or they go back for 2^nd degrees.  When they do get jobs, they are jobs like jerking out coffees at Starbucks. 

Student Debt is at crisis proportions because the Work is not out there that can pay for the Schooling.  Oh, in addition to Student Debt, there is also the bubble of Consumer Debt.   In lieu of good wages people are getting by on Plastic.

The inverse of the Consumer and Student Debt Crises, if the very low Savings Rate in America. It should be obvious that if people are struggling with debt in the primes of their working careers that there will be an issue down the road with retirements.  Nobody gets pensions anymore and 401K’s tend to fluctuate wildly with the Market.  Another reason why nobody saves is because, well, with the FED printing all that money at very low rates, the Banks really don’t have to offer much interest on deposit accounts.  Yes, people are talking about Trillions of dollars of both Public and Private Debt, but still a Deposit Account pays less than 2%, and so obviously the FED is paying off the Debt by creating more Debt, that is, printing money.  This is okay only until the World gets glutted with dollar, but we have spoken of this before.  Oh, but, yes, the FED would not need to print so much money if people were willing to save, but printing seems to be the way that Banks make up for the dearth in the Savings Rate.    

 Also, if everything is really going so well, then why is there still so much political dissatisfaction.  We see Populism on both the Right and the Left.  As you mentioned, Traditional Conservatism has been largely discredited (though the Politicians are still in place, and Trump has not set forth a Populous Program but signs what the Conservatives put before him and calls it a “win”), and the Left is going after Corporate Democrats.  Why?  If we were all living the American Dream, then why all the fuss? Where there is smoke there must be fire.

Then we need to appreciate the factor of the Opioid Epidemic where I have the intuition that we are not looking at a lot of “drug overdoses” but really these are suicides.  In a happy economy why are middle aged white people suddenly turning to drugs and dying at their own hands?  

Also, why are so many minority people in America incarcerated for non-violent crimes and crimes that do not involve property theft and fraud and stuff like that.  They are jailed for what amounts to Life Style Crimes.  Is it cynical to suppose that putting them in jail keeps them off the Unemployment Rosters?  Also, when we look at the contraband drug trade (which is now being replaced by the legal drug trade) we can interpret that as a kind of inner city entrepreneurship phenomena, where it is perceived by many that the only way to make a living wage is through establishing a successful Street Corner Franchise. 

Oh, the Military also takes a great many people out of the Labor Force (which artificially shrinks the Rate of Unemployment), and, again, it is largely just a drain on the rest of the economy.  Really, as long as we can fight off Canada and Mexico, then shouldn’t we leave the World to its own Collective Security Arrangements.  Let the U.N. worry about policing the World.  

Oh, then there is Home Ownership.  Yes, houses are being sold, but much of the churning in the Real Estate Markets is from people who are diversifying out of Equities, that is, a lot of houses are being bought up by speculators, and rented out or just being held empty as ‘money holders’, like physical bank accounts (a lot of dollars are coming out of China that just buys up houses.  Apparently the property taxes are not high enough to discourage speculative buying).   So, where the economy is ostensibly doing so well, we have a housing crisis and a lot of homelessness.  Then there are our schools, which are primarily paid for from Property Taxes.  If Schools are not doing well, and they aren’t, then it is because the Property Taxes have dropped off which sort of indicates that houses in these districts have gone vacant.

So, yeah, the Statistics that are issued by the Government look good and a narrative can be created that tells us that we have never had it better, but once you scratch the surface… well, ‘scratch and sniff’.   You know, even if you are right, then that only means that the economy will heat up and it will trigger that “structural recession” I was talking about.  Also there are issues in regards to the economy that are close in the horizon, particularly in regards to the amount of Research and Development money being poured into Artificial Intelligence Robotics and Information Technologies.  This will place most jobs, even Professional and White Collar, at risk. Capitalism will be able to almost fully divorce from Labor.  They are already talking about Driverless Trucks.  It has already started with Information Workers, where the first rudimentary AI Systems are able to find the answers faster better cheaper than full time workers with benefits.  Oh, I just read that one Company came up with a Virtual Negotiator for business contracts and purchases.  The Thing would get on the phone and arrange deals.  Understand, that this thing is Primitive compared to what we will see in just another 18 months (kind of like Moore’s Law, that every 18 months computer speeds double, which eventually saturated and hit its wall, but in a Tech Field like AI it may begin to apply again), but this Virtual Negotiator did as well as Human Negotiators, and nobody on the taped calls indicated that they realized they were talking to a machine (which means that a Primitive AI System was able to pass the “Turing Test”… pass for human).   So, what that means that if you don’t think we are screwed now, then just wait for a few more cycles of 18 mo.   Oh, especially since we are at Full Employment.  If they can’t hire people, they will buy machines to fill the slots, won’t they?  And we know how the price of Technology drops like a rock (smart phones in this decade, laptops in the last, and PCs before that).  Employment in today’s economy is protected by low wages and salaries, but that will erode as the price of AI goes down.  We already have one harbinger of that:  the Factory in China that makes Multipurpose AI Robotics for Assembly Lines recently laid off  16,000 of its workers, replacing them with its own product.  And those were dirt cheap Chinese Workers.  So, it’s already happening.   I can’t imagine that you won’t eventually notice something.

The Piccolo Bass, 4 String, 5 String, String Setups, Update

This is an update on an old Blog.   Yes, apparently the Piccolo Bass concept is catching on.  It seems that Ibanez is making a 5-String Bass.  Yes, they string it with regular strings, but it is perfect for setting up as a Piccolo.  Here is a Review I wrote for it, followed by that Blog from years ago.

 

Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro 5-String Strung For Piccolo Duty

About 3 years ago I was doing a lot of practice with my 5 String Fender Marcus Miller (if you don’t know what that is, it is like an active Fender Jazz Bass but with a 7.25 inch radius neck), and it was a lot of fun, but I wish I had something with a higher voice.  Guitars aren’t the answer because only a Bass, with its 16.5 mm clearance between strings lets you get in between strings for some serious finger picking, where guitars have only 10mm of clearance which would keep you on the surface top of the strings you were attacking and you’d always be buzzing the other strings unintentionally.   Well, I got lucky when the sales guy at my local guitar shop, a friend of mine, gave me a heads up that there was such a thing as “piccolo” bass strings (about half the diameter of regular bass strings that are meant to be tuned an octave higher).  So I bought a fender Mustang 30 inch scale 4 string to prove in the concept.  They have “sets” of piccolo strings in round wound, but you can order single strings in flat wound.   So I went with flats.  With flats, if you oil them with olive oil, then after a few days the olive oil will congeal in the micro spacings between the winds and the strings will become almost perfectly smooth, which has a great feel, and you can slide between notes without unpleasant ‘winde screaching’ while retaining a more pure actual 'slide' between the tones.   But 4 string basses are limited, and I liked 5 String.  So I decided to convert my Signature Marcus Miller to Piccolo (the guys at the local Music Shop thought it was sacrilege) by removing the fat B and E strings, and them moving the A D and G strings to the 3 fattest slots, and for the two thin slots I bought a .032 flat chrome and a .020 plain bass string.   So that gave me a sort of “Piccolo 5 String” but it was tuned a bit low to A D G C F (on a 30 inch scale Bass the strings were already very very tight for a B E A D G tuning, which would have been impossible for a 34 inch scale, where those extra 4 inches is worth the two top frets -- a full tone lower).  The Marcus Miller Jazz Bass conversion  proved in great and I have been playing it that way for the last 3 years now.   But, yeah, that thing is heavy (scales at 11 pounds with my nice leather strap).  

Anyway, that same salesman recently spotted the Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro 5-String.  My local shop did not have one in stock, and Ibanez was currently waiting for its next production run and so my shop couldn't order one in, but the Mikro was in stock at Musician’s Friend.  So I got one.   I was curious as to what a really high voice would be like with my style of playing and so at first I strung it with regular guitar strings (had I had to run small finishing nails through the small guitar string retainer buttons because the guitar buttons were so small that they would just slip through the little bass's bridge string retainer holes.  Oh, if 'you' should decide to try out playing a Mikro with guitar strings,  remember to bend the nail into a loop and trim with wire cutters so that the gagged ends of the nails don’t scratch your shiny brand new bass).  I got the Mikro intonated and set up the truss rod adjust just right, but, well, those very thin strings are very grabby on my old calloused finger tips, and, well, the voice was too high.  Experiment over!  So I decided to string it for Piccolo duty.  I peeled off the strings from my Fender 5 String and put them on this 28.5 Scale Micro.  The only problem I had was when  I was beginning to wind the .080 “A” string (which can tune to B in the Mikro because of the much shorter scale) when the central core of the string broke (you know the core breaks because the string just buckles to a sharp angle, still hanging on by the windings).  I figured trying to wrap such big windings around the tuners had something to do with it with the break, and so because I still had enough string to connect to the tuner, I peeled down the chrome windings (you just ‘unwind’ it), and it strung on just fine).  Then I put a fresh set of strings  on my Fender MM, that is, I used a set of 4 Regular Bass Strings, Chrome Flats, and a .032 Chrome Flat so that the Bass would be tuned to E A D G C.   I have the little Ibanez tuned like a 5 String Picollo should be tuned , that is B E A D G (.080, .065, .045, 032, .020P) .   The little Ibanez is passive which sounds thin after having played an Active Marcus Miller, which is why I also bought the BOSS Equalizer GE7 Pedal, which in addition to having 7 slide pots for equalization is also a pretty good pre-amp.   Well, the package sounds great.  The Truss Rod adjust works.  It intonated along the full length of the neck.  I was able to play the songs that I had been playing with my 34 inch scale Marcus Miller and the sound quality was, well, it seemed just as good.  And it is light as a feather (7 pounds with big leather strap.  It seems less than half as heavy as a big standard 5 string which is 11 pounds which is only 4 pounds heavier, and I think that is because while 'weight' is 'weight', lifting requires 'force and work' which are 'square functions', that is, as weight doubles, the lifting effort squares to 4 times.  In that sense, we can think of the Mikro's 7 pounds as requiring 7 squared or 49 'Grunt Units' while the Standard 5 String at 11 pounds lifts up at 11 squared or 121 Grunt Units, which is just how it feels.)   Oh, by the way, I had assumed that the string spacing was standard for a Bass at 16.5mm, but when I was looking into the possibility of swapping out the saddles for a more traditional look, I actually measured the saddle widths of the Mikro and they were 16mm even (the saddles I was measuring them against were 18.5mm). You know, I thought the string gap was a little close when I was playing it, but since I wasn't catching my fingers, I thought I had been delusional.  But, as it works out the strings being half a millimeter closer caused no harm.  But perhaps the reach to the fattest string is a little bit easier now.  So maybe the none-standard bridge and string spacing is a blessing in this case.    

........

I was delighted when I learned there was such a thing as the Piccolo Bass.  I play a number of stringed instruments, especially instruments in the Guitar Family.  But the Stringed Instruments that I can Play most expressively are the Basses (… but of course there are the Violins, but I’m always afraid that I will poke somebody’s eye out with those pointy little bows…).   The primary Reason accounting for this more-than-ordinary ‘Expressiveness’ in the Basses is that they have Way More Clearance between their Stings.  One can really get one’s fingers in There without fear of bumping into the wrong strings, and this really helps with regulating the Feel and Intensity of one’s Playing – one can go from a mere whisper by just gently rubbing the side of a string to the ‘bullet shot’ of hooking a finger under the string and giving it a good hard pull, and all without touching the Volume Knob.   That kind of Expressiveness needs a bit of ‘elbow room’.   With Guitars, well, the strings are so close together that one is tempted to always use Picks, and since it’s so difficult to isolate individual strings, well, nearly all playing is done in chords and intervals, which Sounds Great… when that is what you want, but sometimes wouldn’t we rather enjoy Finger Picking out some lovely little lilting melody or some subtle and intriguing Arpeggio?   So for some Songs, some Styles and some Sounds, well, the Guitar is simply Not exactly the Right Instrument, though we must all admit that a great many Guitar Players manage to do rather well against those Limitations.    But the Bass is not exactly perfect by any means either, is it?... and it’s kind of obvious what Its Biggest Problem is – it’s simply Too Low.  What good is having an Instrument with sufficient Clearance between the Strings to be Melodically Beautiful if all the Notes come out sounding like a distant thunder? 

But, let me start my Story -- there I was, practicing the Bass, doing the best I could, but knowing that nearly everything I could do on the Bass was too darn Low from where it ought to have been.   So I kept wondering what I could do about it…

I was almost ready to buy a Seven String Guitar, so I could install just 4 Strings, leaving every other String Slot empty, and that would have given me Twice as much Clearance between Strings as any normal Electric Guitar.   But that seemed like a bit Too Much Clearance (Electric Guitar strings are spaced about 10mm apart, while Basses are 15mm or 16mm).  Then one day I got lucky when a Salesman at the local guitar shop had heard about something that he thought I would be interested in and he researched it out for me – he told me of existence of the Piccolo Bass.  Wow!... For me, the Piccolo Bass Idea represented an Instrument in the Bass & Guitar Family with close to Optimum Tonal Range AND with plenty of clearance between strings.

The only Piccolo Basses I have heard of so far are the Short Scale (30”) 4 String Piccolos.  Their Strings are the SAME Notes as the 4 thickest Strings on the Guitar – E A D G.   I would suppose that Many a Musical Sceptic would suggest that a Piccolo Bass is “Just Like a Guitar, only Two Strings Less”.  So why not just get a guitar!?  Well, that Objection is certainly True Enough, if taken solely in view of its own tightly focused Logic.  With that being the case, well, if there is any justification for the Existence of the Piccolo Bass at all, it has to be because of its more Optimum String Spacing. 

The Piccolo Basses I have heard about are converted Fender (or Squire) Mustang 4-String Basses.  They come as regular ‘Low-Note’ Basses, and so you have to swap out the strings to make the ‘Piccolo Conversion’.  D’Addario sells  a Set of Strings for the Piccolo 4 String – the Skinny G (.020) string is a Plain Wire String (sounds Great!) and the other three strings are Round Wound (.052, .042, .032)– which is not so great if you like Flat Wound.  But if you don’t mind ordering strings singly, you can get Flat Wounds in .050, .040, and .032 (Ernie Ball and D’Addario sell them) – I strung my own Mustang Piccolo with Flats (Ernie Ball .050 and .040, and a D’Addario .032) and I am quite pleased with how it worked out. 

Oh, there is a kind of a Lucky Peculiarity with the Set of Strings that D’Addario sells for the Piccolo Bass – that while the String Set is designed to have the correct Tension on a 30 inch Scale (to be tuned to E A D G), the strings are actually “Long” Enough to be installed on a 34 inch Long Scale Bass… which is most Fender Basses.  But those Strings are REALLY Tight even on the shorter 30’ Scale, and so I would be afraid to tune them to E A D G on a Long Scale Bass – either the Strings would Snap or your Poor Finger Tips would go raw and bloody trying to pluck at the rigidly stiff things.  I read over the Famous D’Addario String Tension Chart PDF for several hours trying to see if I could identify any suitable strings for a Long Scale Piccolo Bass (tuned to B E A D G)… well the Deal Stoppers there are the two thinnest Strings, the D and G, as there are no Long Scale Strings about ‘a half notch’ lighter than the .032 and the .020P.  So if you wanted to Convert  Long Scale Bass to Piccolo duty it seems that one would have no choice but to drop the Tuning a full Note (two Frets) lower.   Such a Drop Tuning would give you a 4-String Long-Scale Piccolo Bass tuned to D G C F*.  If you had a 5-String Bass, it would become an A D G C F.   The Splendid Coincidence about A D G C F Tuning is that a Standard Bass ALREADY has an A D and G Strings… you just have to move them from One Side of the Neck to the Other.  I already converted my 5-String Fender Jazz Bass – it works and sounds great.

*Note:   After playing the Fender 5 String 34 Inch Scale Piccolo Bass turned to A D G C F with the string tension feeling about medium to tight , going back to the 30 Inch Scale tuned to E A D G where the string tension is Really Tight and Stiff, I retuned the Short Four String Piccolo down to D G C F.  I lost a bit of Top Range, but I gained in comfort.   

Oh, I sort of accidentally stumbled upon Something that maybe not everybody knows already.  You see, because I am now practicing with both a 4-String Short Scale E A D G Piccolo, and a 5-String Long Scale A D G C F Piccolo (two frets Lower than  a “E A D G”), I was a bit surprised when I found that I could jump between the two different Tunings and Scales with such ease, and I was unwilling to just suppose that it was because I was somehow ‘that good’.  You see, incidentally, I have been studying Math  (can’t play music All the Time), and it occurred to me to compare the Two Different Tunings and Scales with some precise Exponential Mathematics… and then a straight edge ruler just to Make Sure.   It turns out that while the Tuning of Each Piccolo Bass is one Full Note apart (two frets), the Fret Sizes for the SAME ACTUAL Notes are practically identical (for instance, the 12^th ‘Double Dot’ Fret on the 30” Scale Piccolo is a ‘G’, and that fret is virtually the same size as the ‘G’ Fret on the Long Scale Piccolo which is played two frets further down).   What we can Infer from that is that IF you plan to have both a Short Scale Piccolo and a Long Scale Piccolo, well, you shouldn’t worry that you may have to drop the Tuning of the Long Scale Bass down a couple of notches, since such tuning actually Preserves the Same Spacing between the ‘Fret Notes’ from One Bass to the Other… you just have to slide up or down the neck depending on which Piccolo you pick up to play.  

Oh, by the way, that Same Note-to-Fret close similarity exists for the other Common Guitar and Bass Scales – Using the Long Scale 34” Bass as our reference, the next Scale down is the 32” Medium Scale Bass (a Half Step or One Fret Higher),  then comes the 30” Short Scale Bass (2 Frets Higher), the 28 ½” Baritone Guitar Scale (3 Frets Higher), the new 27” Electric Baritone Guitar Scale (4 Frets Higher), and of course the Guitar at 25” which is 5 Frets or a ‘full String’ higher.  Theoretically you should be able to use the Same Strings on every one of those Scales, just tuning to the Higher Note made possible by the Shorter Scale (But on the Practical Level, Strings in the 25” ‘Guitar Scale come in a greater variety and are far more affordable).

So, with all that being said, I am relatively Happy with my Piccolo Basses – the 5-String Jazz Bass and the Little 4-String Mustang Conversions,  But What If I Could have Anything I Want…and if it did not already Exist, I could just snap my fingers to make it magically appear ?   Well, such a Thought makes me wonder whether the Piccolo IDEA is really the best of All Possible Ideas, for an instrument intended to be played in its Intended Style?   Yes, the Piccolo Bass is a great deal better than Nothing.   BUT if I could design the Optimum Instrument for that ‘Kind of Thing’, well, and it would be on the same 25” Scale as ordinary Electric Guitars and it would use 5 regular scale Guitar Strings.  Well, I suppose there should be a 4-String Version for the people who find the Narrower 4-String Neck ‘Faster’ and more ‘User Friendly’.  The 4-String application would not require a wider neck to permit 16.6mm of Clearance between Strings, but a 5-String would need a Neck the same Width as a 5-String Bass.   Also, Such an Instrument could be tuned ‘One String’ or even ‘Two Strings’ higher than the Piccolo Bass.  It would certainly be more versatile in its tuning options and possibilities.   With the Wide String Spacing, such an Instrument would be Expressive in a Whole Different Way than the usual Electric Guitar.  The World could use an Instrument like that!   Just look at how the Music Industry works now… nobody wonders that a Lead Guitar Player is playing essentially the SAME Instrument as the guy playing Rhythm.  The Lead Guitar Player must necessarily be cramped inside the Limitations of his Instrument.  Really Creative and Expressive Music, when it IS done nowadays, well, it has to be done with all that Acoustic Stuff, because the Acoustic People have a larger choice of Instrumentation, but, well, then you lose the Electric Sound… and Everything you can DO with Electric Sound.   So, anyway, I think there is a Gap in the Potential for Electric Music, and that a 4 or 5-String  Instrument with Wide String Spacing but on the Same Scale as the good ol’ Standard  Guitar could jump into that Breach. Hmmm… what to call such an Instrument?   With the String Spacing of a Bass but being of the same size and appearance as a Guitar, well, such a Cross Breed could be called a ‘Bass-tar’ – wouldn’t That be a catchy enough Name?

Well, to conclude… since Anything Better does not seem to Exist yet, I DO Hope the Piccolo Phenomena Catches On so that People can begin to see the Stylistic Possibilities for That Kind of Instrument.

The West Framing Syrian Chemical Attack

I was watching the News.  Hours before an independent commission was to investigate the most recent alleged Chemical Attack by the Syrian Government, the West preemptively launched a missile attack.  I suppose any suggestion by Investigators on the Ground against the American assertion that the Chemical Attack was from the Syrian Government would have complicated matters, and America wanted their War against Syria, Russia and Iran to be as simple as possible, for, after all, America is still a Democracy and so everything must be made easy to explain, especially for Americans who have the worst education in the Developed World (and why does America still insist upon being considered a Developed Nation?  At what point in America’s decline will it be considered as having returned to being Undeveloped?  Or when will it finally be realized that China, Korea, Southeast Asia and Japan have set new standards for what we need to consider as being “Developed” and that America falls way below the new accepted Standard?)

Of course many people treat it as a foregone conclusion that Syria is indeed responsible for these Chemical Attacks.  But I don’t think it is obvious at all.   I think it would be healthy to look to dispute the matter.   So, now, to get started, why should we suppose it obvious that Syria is being framed for this and all the other Chemical Attacks that America has been attributing to them.   First, Syria denies it.   Secondly, Syria would and probably has investigated these attacks, which is admittedly difficult because the attacks always occur where the American Supported Rebels control the ground and therefore can control the Investigation.  Yes, Syria and Russia have opposed U.N. Resolutions put forward by America which demands an Investigation, but America always comes into these Investigations with a preselected Team of Investigators who come with a pre-prepared truckload of evidence.  And America, or at least its Industrial Military Complex (America’s Last Thriving Industry), has a well-established agenda for wishing to escalate the SyrianWar, and so Syria and Russia naturally would prefer a truly independent Investigation and not just a Prefab American Frame Job.  And, yes, even if there were Independent Investigations, would anybody in the West ever hear about them?  The News Media and even the Entertainment Media seem to be all aboard the Propaganda Train.  The American Military Industrial Complex asserts that Assad Did It, and so it goes without question that he must have done it.  Even the Irreverent Glib and Cynical Late-Night Comedians seem to suppose this to be the first Righteous War they’ve seen in their careers.   Perhaps the Comedians can only be funny after the fact, but don’t seem to see the humor when the Joke is on them and being played out in real time.  Remember back during the Iraq War when Jay Leno got played for a fool and was Court Jester to Baby Bush.  None of them learned.  Now they are all silent while the Joke is being played on them.  

The third reason we must suspect a Frame is that these attacks are always extremely convenient for the Rebels and entirely at the disservice of the Regime.  Whenever the Rebels are cornered and are looking for renewed commitment from America’s Military Industrial Complex, then the Red Line is again crossed.    But crossed on a militarily miniscule scale.  You know, we KNOW from History what a Chemical Attack looks like.  We know from Military Training Manuals what a Chemical Attack should look like.  A Chemical Attack should be launched up and down the Front to incapacitate the enemy or to throw them into confusion and disorder.  And the Chemical Attack should immediately be followed up by an Offensive Push along the entire Front, by Troops in Chemical Resistant Gear, in order to achieve any benefit from the Chemical Attack and change the Facts on the Ground.   One must “strike while the iron is hot”.   But the way these Alleged Attacks have been occurring, it is the Syrian Government that seems taken most by surprise.  There has never as yet been a Set of Coordinated Chemical Attacks against pockets of active Rebel Resistance, that cause significant causalities among Rebel Fighters.  And there has yet been no Follow Up Offensives by the Syrian Regime’s Military.  Instead, only neighborhoods in the rear are attacked and the casualties have been primarily mothers and their babies (great Photo Ops!).   Really, since the World seems so willing to believe that Syria is Doing This, then the Rebels are not pressed to even try to Stage any kind of Realistic Attack, where they would have to sacrifice at least one feasibly threatening pocket of their own Rebel Resistance, killing off perhaps half of a Battalion of their own Men.  Instead they just have to target some women and children that they don’t know and don’t care about.

And, yes, it needs to be pointed out that the Rebels have consistently chosen to run to the Cities where they can fight and take shelter behind Mother’s Skirts and Baby Cribs.  When they lose one City, they scurry off and move swiftly into another, so as not be caught out in the open where they would have to, well, fight.  This Civil War has gone on for years now.  So what Rebel doesn’t realize that he has been personally responsible for bringing on the deaths of tens or even hundreds (maybe thousands) of Women and Children.   These Rebels use women and children like Sandbags.   I’d be surprised if the Rebels were not on occasions roasting and eating them (and when some Mystery Meat ends up in the Soldier’s Stew, I suppose they are only concerned that it not be Pork, as THAT would be against their Religion, but their Book says nothing against eating up a martyr or two or three that just happens to fall in the pot).  Yes, the Rebels do try to choose Ethnic and Religious Enclaves that are sympathetic to them.  But certainly there can be no doubt that once the Rebels take a Town, that Democracy and Civil Rule is over and that the strictest Martial Law applies and all resources in the community become the property of the Resistance, or which ever Faction is presently pillaging the Neighborhood.  These Rebels have grown callous to Civilians who insist on being fed when the Rebels feel they are the only ones who really need what little food there is, since it gives them strength to fight, and that is all that matters.  So what if several hundred Civilians are selected for sacrifice in order to galvanize American Support for the Rebel Cause.  The Resistance would think that at least the annoying Civilians can finally make themselves useful to the Cause. They were useless or even in the way as Alive, but dead they are Blessed Martyrs in a corner of the World where many people seem to think it a Goal of Life to die as Martyr.

Oh, and about the Propaganda about how Assad is waging War against ‘his own people’.  This is actually silly talk, but in a most dreadfully serious way.  In a Civil War there is no longer a Unified People.  That is what makes it a “Civil” War.  In the American Revolution, was King George waging a War against His Own People, or were they George Washington’s Rebels Traitors and Terrorists?  In America’s own Civil War was Abraham Lincoln waging war against His Own People or against Jefferson Davis’s Rebels, Traitors and Terrorists?   And, yes, whatever the feelings and political beliefs of a particular Civilian is, when caught in a Civil War, that Civilian becomes an Asset to whichever side is controlling his Territory – being effectively pressed into their Service.  That is why there are always So Many Refugees when any such conflict breaks out!  Assad knows who His Own People are – they are the ones who seek the Government’s protection and offer the Government their Support, especially if they have to relocate to do so.       

Next, we need to consider how easy it would be for America to Stage a Framed Up Chemical Attack.   Just look at the kind of money America has been putting into Chemical Warfare Research and Development over the decades.   Certainly we can wonder what amazing potentialities such money can buy.  Could America synthesize a copy of any known Chemical Agent?  Well, if you give a Lab a budget of billions of dollars then that should be easy, right?  Its ONLY Science, and Science is as good as what you are willing to pay for (just ask any Scientist out begging for a Research Grant).   Now, how about Staging an Attack?  That is also easy.  America can do anything while cloaked in Secrecy.  Not only are all the Official Channels silenced by Secrecy, Top Secrecy and The Need to Know, but there are also the Unofficial Channels, or Black Ops, and Private Contractors, who perform an Operation and then Burn All Records.  After it Happens, It Never Happened.   And, again, they have unlimited Money and therefore unlimited Resources.   What about Witnesses?  Well, they are Looking to Make Dead Bodies.  They can use advanced Infra-Red Scans and Sonar Scans to pinpoint any warm breathing body larger than a rat, and so any witness can be added to the Body Count which can be blamed on Assad. 

Oh, but it is not necessarily America staging these attacks.  The Rebels could be doing it in Amateur Hour style.  This Last Attack actually used Chlorine Gas.   You know what Chlorine Gas is, right?  Chlorine Bleach mixed with Ammonia.   You drive one chemical tanker truck down the road dumping bleach, and then follow it with a second chemical tanker truck dumping ammonia.  And do it right before a rain storm and you have yourself a Chemical Attack with all the evidence washed away.   So, yes, if the American’s did Stage their own Attack, they would be likely to welcome an impartial and objective Investigation, which is what they prepared for.   But if the Resistance is doing Self Help, well, certainly the American Industrial Complex would do its very utmost to capitalize on it.  And in this regards I would imagine that Due Diligence Contingency Planning already has a number of “Investigations” prepared and in the ready (such as Fragments of Exploded Shells with Chemical Residue that are stamped “Made in Damascus”).  You know, with a Budget of 600 Billion a year, what CAN’T the American’s do?   As I mentioned earlier, the Industrial Military Complex is America’s last Thriving Enterprise.  Everything else is just empty immaterial numbers swirling in the Stock Market, and once people stop believing in their value (ownership certificates of None-Physical Assets bought with printed money), well, their value will vanish in a snap.  Then Guns, Tanks and Jet Bomber Planes will REALLY start to have Value).

So, yes, Syria would have everything to lose and nothing to gain from these chemical attacks, and the American Oligarchs would have everything to gain and nothing to lose from the Staged Chemical Attacks.   So, it therefore seems extremely strange that nearly everyone in the West is thinking and believing exactly the opposite of what common sense would dictate.  I wonder if Orwell guessed it would be this easy.  

Women Population and Living In the Future

I was reading “Capital in the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Piketty (when it first came out I did not have the capital to buy it and had to wait for the prices to fall to paperback level), and I became fascinated with Piketty’s discussion concerning trends in population growth.  He says that it is difficult to gage future trends in population because so much depends on the decision making processes of the women involved, and men to a lesser degree.  What was refreshing was that, at least so far in the chapter I am reading, he did not mention what all the other Experts seem to invariably mention – that Population Growth Declines Wherever Women Are Educated.   I had recently commented on such an assertion on some YouTube video.  I am almost completely certain that the Mechanism involved here that influences women to abstain from,  postpone, or limit their Child Bearing is involved with their concerns for their Incomes and Careers.  Yes, we are told that Standards of Living are going up in the Developing World, but how much of this is due to the fact that now it has become the New Normal for each Family to have Two Breadwinners.   To be cynical about it, where Traditionally each family only had to sacrifice One Slave, the Man, to the God Mammon, now they must sacrifice two.   Now, with all it must take in order for a Household to pay its bills and make its way in a Consumer World, the idea of taking the time off from Work and budgeting for the expense of having, raising, and educating children… well, we can see how any practical and economical woman would hesitate to have as many babies as her mother had before her… a Mother who may have been very well educated but who didn’t Have To Go To Work.   So it is not about Education.  It is about Women having been Coopted by Capitalism.  Ironically, Women have been Enslaved by their “Liberation” – Orwell would have loved this one.

But, yes, for all of us who are worried about the Health of Planet Earth and Sustainability, it may have been reassuring to somehow believe that Well Educated Woman would somehow develop a repugnance for babies, and think of becoming mothers with a level of distaste.   But once we wake up to the nonsensical sound of such a proposition, then it occurs to us that IF we can somehow break our chains and struggle free of Capitalism and establish an Equitable World in which we can all modestly prosper, and where neither Men nor Women are any longer Enslaved and forced to make desperate survival choices, well, we could probably expect the Birthrate to Skyrocket.  The fact is that, generally speaking, Women Like Babies. 

I think it would become  unavoidable that some Institutional Limit would have to be placed on the number of Babies being output.   But we would still have to address the Issue of Satisfying Women’s Needs for Maternal Fulfillment.  So, let’s think about that for a while.    I have heard that in Wolf Packs, only the Dominant Female Wolf is allowed to have litters, but that All Adult Female Wolves are invited to participate in the Family.  Each Pup has a number of loving and caring ‘Aunts’.   Now, for an example involving Humans – not many people know, but the Nuclear Family as the Primary Social Unit has not always been the case.  Before, and in many parts of the World still, the Extended Family was the Primary Social Unit.  Husbands and Wives were not isolated together and forced to live apart from Society.  The broader Extended Family must have been Great for the Children, since they had so many Role Models to choose from, for, in the instances that their own Mothers were nervous wrecks or something, or their fathers mean hopeless drunks or whatever, then the Children could focus on those in their Family Compound that were obviously Better Respected and had higher appraised Social Status, and then grow up to be just like Them.  Oh, I had heard in regards to Biblical Translations that it is very misleading to suppose that Jesus had so many ‘brothers’, since in Aramaic the word “brother” is the same as for the word “cousin” which tends to signify that at one time the Social Unit was indeed the broad Extended Family – where children were so mixed together that it was considered insignificant as to exactly which of them came from the same mother.  Oh, and in primitive tribal groups and small bands, the Men lived apart in their own huts and tents (smoking, drinking, gambling and cussing to their hearts content) while the Women took up their own quarters, and, again, where the children of all the Women were largely mixed together.  Remember the saying that comes from somewhere “It takes a Village to raise a child”.

Well, in our Bright and Sunny Future World we might have to replicate what had been so successful in our past, along with what we can learn from the Wolves.  We can re-organize the way in which we take up Residence.  Honestly, Men are not happy living with Women, and Women are not Happy living with Men.  The Decline of the Family is mostly the fault of its inherently flawed assumption that Men and Women SHOULD find each other agreeable on a long term basis.   Yes, of course there is Love.  But Love between Men and Women flourishes on their being Separated for the better part of the time.  Love is Best during the Time of Dating – when Men and Women could see each other when both were most calculating to present the best manners and appearance.  Remember the adage that “familiarity breeds contempt”.  How many marriages crumble because of words said while absently irritable and grumpy, which never would have been said during the 4 or 5 hours dedicated to Being On One’s Best Behavior for a Date. 

Oh, I remember a somewhat amusing tale from my college days – we were studying the Spartans and how they had separate quarters for Men and Women, and one of the students wondered “How could they have Babies?”  Well, most of us just laughed, since, even as young as we were, we already knew, or suspected, how relatively easy it is to ‘sneak sex’.  But in a household, where over familiarity has somewhat poisoned the well of Good Feelings, then couples who Live Together can often go months without having sex, or so I have read and friends have told me, etc.

So, yes, even if the number of Children are limited in the Future, well, we would have to arrange that All women who would like to could participate in the Maternal Fun – that Babies become an integral part of the Residential Schematic for these Women…. And that Men can visit only when they are presentably dressed and on their best behavior – in order to be the Best Possible Role Models – little boys, and the little girls who think they are little boys, should not know about smoking, drinking, cussing and gambling before they know algebra and world geography.  At least in their formative years, children should positioned in a way so that they are lead to have respect for men, as that might go a long way towards assuring that they almost automatically grow up to be Respectable.  As it is today, in order to be Respectable many of us have to largely deconstruct out Childhoods.  As a Society we should be able to do better than that.                                  

War In Heaven and the Demons Win Chapter Two

Back on February 7^th 2018 I wrote a blog “War In Heaven and the Demons Win”.   Well, apparently I am not the only one who is being pushed towards such a conclusion.  I was just talking online and was told of a recent Dream experience by somebody where he or she heard a voice coming from the middle of their head which said “We Waged War on them and We Won”.  Of course such a phrase is vague with its none-signifying pronouns.   But if we look around at the World today, could we have possibly missed the Triumph of Good over Evil?  But what if we suppose that Evil had won out, would we be as able to as easily find any counterindications?  Yes, there are still some instances of Goodness, but that may be of the same order as scattered refugees after a Lost War leaving their Blasted City and just trying to find a new corner to settle in – yes there is still some Goodness but it is a defeated Goodness in a World and even a Spiritual Realm that Glories like the Vampires at Sunset and celebrate the Dawn of Darkness. 

Anyway, this new suggestion of Defeat got me to thinking about what I had said before, just last February, about the Warnings of the Marian Apparitions, and then it occurred to me that there are some details about the Fatima Apparitions that may apply to our situation here.  It seems that the Six Months that spanned the Fatima Apparitions almost completely overlap the Russian Revolution, and that Our Lady seemed very concerned with Russia.  Of course the intuitive understanding of Catholics would be that Our Lady was absolutely shocked and appalled at some Godless Russian Revolution, but it may have been more complicated than that.   You see, the Russian Revolution presents a Moral Paradox – Communism as an Ideology was about relieving the Suffering Masses from the Exploitations and Unbounded Inequalities inherent in an ostensibly Evil Capitalism.  For Our Lady What’s Not To Like about Communism?  Well, it seems that the Bolsheviks retained from the Bourgeois French Revolution the virulent idea that Religion would be invariably Reactionary, and so they set themselves as stone cold Materialists.  Well, the problem with Materialism with its Pure and Sterile Science, is that there can be no possible Explanation or Justification for Morality.  Morality must either come from a Religious Based Mythology, or it must come from a sense of Aesthetics, but Scientific Materialism would be hostile to Morality from either source.  So we could expect that Our Lady of Heaven would have a kind of Love-Hate Relationship to the Russian Revolution.

She promised the World that there would be Peace if Russia could be Consecrated to Her.  This was one of Prophecies that had been entrusted to Lucy, the one Child at Fatima who had survived the World Wide Epidemic of the Spanish Flu that had swept the Globe in 1919.  One of the other Prophecies that Lucy had passed on to the Vatican was in regards to World War II which apparently already been inevitable at that point  (indeed, I believe that future generations of Historians will eventually merge the two World Wars together).  Anyway, when the Second War occurred just as per the details that Lucy provided, well it made the Vatican much more cognizant of the Russian Prophecy.  Note, that Russia only needed to be Consecrated or Converted, and nothing was said regarding enshrining Capitalism, making Greed a Virtue and withdrawing the ancient religious proscriptions against Usury, which are the bedrock of Capitalism.  Indeed, when we look back at the History of the Marian Apparitions of Warning, are they not in parallel to the rise of Capitalism and the growth and development of both Industrialization and the purely Financial Markets (where Money is made simply by trading Ownership Certificates, but no Goods or Services are Produced, Bought or Sold).   As Capitalism grew there was of course the accompanying avalanche of misery on the common people? It must be more than a coincidence that the ever darker view Mary held for the prospects for Humanity were in direct proportion to the rise in the Inequality of Wealth – a sure sign that the World was encouraging and rewarding Selfishness over Charity and Compassion.    

Well, the Vatican got so nervous about the prospects for Nuclear War that they went ahead without the Soviet Union’s permission and Consecrated it, ceremonially, to Our Lady.  Well, there was no Nuclear War, but there would also be no “Peace”.   It seems that the Soviet Union’s Problem with Materialism’s rejection of any basis for Morality would come back and kill them.    You see, we remember Stalin for all his Gulags, and the popular propaganda is that Stalin just sent Political Dissidents to them, but the truth is that far more Upper, Mid and Lower Level Party Officials had been sent to the Gulags for Corruption (bribes and Black Market involvements).  When Stalin died in 1953, there was a Reform and all of these Corrupt Officials were set free, and they were either pulled back into the Party Apparatus or they were allowed to unofficially partner up with Party Managers of Production and Distribution to build up a Black Market.   After a few decades the Black Market vied with the Official Economy in size and breadth.  What finally brought the whole structure tumbling down was that the Last Premier, Gorbachev announced that that he would put an end to Corruption.  Well, Gorbachev was brand new in office, and he had not yet consolidated his Power, that is, establish a network of mutual Loyalties throughout the Party with Officials who would support him and obey his orders (he must have taken it for granted that he had dictatorial powers, but it never works like that).   Well, fearing a crackdown on Corruption and a return to the Gulags, the mostly corrupt Party Apparatus panicked and  went  into instant revolt, and they handed the Keys to the Nation over to the Black Marketeers.   So, the Soviet Union did not collapse because of any inherent problem with Communism, but because of its Materialistic Moral Failure – Party Officials had no compelling reason, after the Death of Stalin, to not engage in corruption – theft and appropriation of Public Goods for their own Profit … really, a kind of Unofficial Capitalism is what screwed over the Soviet Union.

Well, it seems that all the while that the Soviet Union existed, the Capitalist World was nervous in regards to the Revolution spreading.  So they operated on two tracks – violent suppression of any overt socialist or communist movement, but the allowance of certain concessions to the People – Unions were allowed to exist and the Capitalists did not violently overthrow the Governments when Social Programs were put in place.  Capitalism, for propaganda reasons and to win “hearts and minds”, put on a Smiley Face.  Also, with World War II, nearly the entire World effectively Nationalized their Economies, which greatly reduced Capitalist Inequality, and so the Silver Lining around the Dark Cloud of the War had been a generalized Post War Prosperity… not because of Capitalism but because it had been suppressed.

But with the 1990’s, with the Defeat of World Communism, and because the People know longer had an Ideological Choice, well, Capitalism no longer had to hide its Teeth and Claws, and off came the Smiley Face.   Under the name of Globalization, the Conquest of Capital over People went forward. 

Of course, this is All Political, but certainly we can see the Spiritual Parallels.  The New Age Movement is composed of either Capitalist Publishing Houses or small predatory entrepreneurial capitalists who equate Spiritual Connectedness with relative wealth and success in exploiting others. Both the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church are mostly bastions of Capitalist Privilege.   Yes, Pope Francis is a nice guy, but he has not yet been able to Consolidate his Leadership – he is a Dictator that nobody will listen to (I suppose he is afraid to push the issue of his Authority – he could Fire every Bishop that opposed him, and their only recourse would be to take the Position that the Roman Pope is not the Head of the Church, but that would be the effective End of Roman Catholicism.  Would the Selfish Capitalist Bishops go that far?  Yes!, apparently that is what Pope Francis honestly believes and fears.  But, Heck! Prophecy says that Pope Francis is the Last Pope.  Let the Church die with a Bang and not a just a Whimper.)

But, yes, if Goodness has already been defeated in Heaven and on Earth, well, what choices do the remaining Good People have?  We could regroup and resist and hold out for some Miracle that could turn the Public Consciousness around, or we could all start signing up for seminars about how to swindle little old ladies in the Real Estate Market. You know, Capitalism has an appeal for a lot of people because it promotes the dream that Everyone could possibly get rich, given the right circumstances.   But that Dream is eventually bound to collapse.  The Economy will be dominated more and more by Inherited Wealth – It will be like Aristocratic Privilege returned.  And then even among the New Aristocrats, competition and accumulation of Wealth will continue on.   Capitalism is like the Game of “King of the Mountain”, and eventually there can only be One Winner, and everyone else knocked down to abject poverty. Sooner or Later the Mass of People has got to see that Satan, that One Final Winner in the Selfishness Game, is Evil and that Evil is no longer the ‘Good Thing’ that they had believed it was while they were voting Red Red Red…  

Is Fasting Good or Bad An Overall Look

From a Letter to a Friend    

It seems that your pre-occupation with Fasting, especially Dry Fasting, has worked me into a similar pre-occupation with evaluating the Pros and Cons of such Fasting.  You know, while I never dry fasted, back around 10 or 14 years ago I used to do 3 to 5-day fasts.  At the time I was trying to lose weight.  You see, before that I used to be an avid amateur runner – 10ks and Marathons and all of that, but most of it was just doing the Training.  Back then I was living in a desert community that was pocketed in mountains on all sides, and many of the mountains were cross-hatched with trails, and there were detailed geo-graphical relief maps for the entire territory, and the soil was dry and sandy and so even when wet the trails didn’t become slippery, and so it was natural to train as a Trail Runner.  I was in such good condition that I could run none stop up mountains, and then down again.  Running Down a mountain is kind of like Poor Man’s Skiing – the idea is to carry as much speed as possible, so on sections where the sides of the trail rose on both sides, one could carry speed by going back forth off the trail – traversing – one would really have to be ‘in the zone’ for that kind of rough terrain fancy footwork.   But you can imagine how many calories I was burning up doing all of that.  Then I relocated to where the trails were dull and slippery, and besides, that is when my hips began to disintegrate (osteoarthritis) and so I could take much less exercise, and so I fattened up.  Fasting was a good way to lose weight fast but still be able to eat to satisfaction on none fast days.  But since then I gradually learned to be satisfied with smaller portions. Fasting no longer seemed necessary. 

When I was fasting I did notice that it was easy to become light headed.  Almost any exercise that would cause an increase in the breathing rate would cause one to get light-headed to the point where there was a real risk of going feint or swooning (losing consciousness and falling down, and then coming to only so you could count your remaining teeth).  So you would have to be careful in taking any exercise or doing any Yogic Breathing Exercises.  I have a feeling that what a lot of Yogis attribute to Fasting in regards to Spirituality is just the ‘High’ of being that close to Passing Out.

Also, I can’t believe there is much reliable science based research on Fasting (mostly because the Universities won’t fund their own Research anymore but wait for Interested Sponsors, but since Fasting can’t be bought or sold there are no Interested Sponsors who would be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for controlled studies).   So what we know about Fasting comes from people who may have either some indirect financial interest (New Age Hype) or an emotional interest (Fasting is my Last Hope).  And a lot of the Pro-Fasting Narrative may be propaganda from the Past.  You see, Fasting developed within Ascetic Communities and Monasteries and among individual Ascetics.  With the Individual Ascetics, their primary Work for each day would have been to go out Begging for Food.  Of course, they would meet with resistance and often be chased and teased by the village children.  So, there would be the tendency to ‘skip a day’ and relax, and since they needed to Save Energy, that would naturally blend into the idea of doing Still Meditation (all this stuff works together, you will notice).  Also, if one eats regularly every day, then one will look well fed, which makes it harder to get food from begging.  I myself often encounter Homeless People who are holding up signs that solicit for money, and I have a natural tendency to scoff at any homeless person who is fatter than I am,  since it looks as though they are actually thriving on it.  But I dig into my wallet when I see somebody who was careful enough to cultivate that “skin and bones” look.  So, the Individual Ascetics may have actually been fasting in order to create the right “look” for themselves – the ‘Look’ of an Ascetic.  Who would give money or food to anybody who did not ‘look’ the part they were playing?  Even their own self esteem would require that Lean and Hungry Look, as it might be the only thing they ever manage to accomplish in the ‘Spiritual Realm’.   

Then we come to the Ascetic Communities and the Monastic Institutions.  Anytime we have a number of people gathered together it is likely that eventually Somebody will take charge.  Especially this is true of the Monastic Institutions.  In many Societies the Monasteries, whether they at first wanted to or not, became the dumping ground for Illegitimate Babies (a young maiden would have an ‘accident’ with the stable boy and it would be decided to keep her under wraps until her baby arrived and then she could go back to being a Virgin again, but something would have to be done with the baby.  Poorer people would simply ‘nose pinch’ it and toss the body into the river, but well to do people would find placing the baby in a monastery with a modest endowment would be less traumatizing for the young girl involved).  So many Monasteries turned into Warehouses for people.  In these times and economies the Orphans were orphans for life – without extended family connections there would be nowhere to go and nothing to do.  The Cities were as yet not the dumping grounds for extraneous Humanity that they have become in our Era, and vagabonds would likely be enslaved.  So child Orphans would become Adult Monks and Nuns.  This also applies to many of the Monastic Institutions across Asia.   Well, the Administrators of these Monastery Orphanages were necessarily on tight budgets.  And food must have been one of the scarcities.  So of course it would be discovered that people could actually go for days at a time without food without it killing them right there and then.  And then, if these Inmates were perpetually malnourished, then they would endeavor to save their energy, whereby they would make much less trouble.  Again, we would have the development of Still Mediation, which must have started as just staring at the walls in a state of blank lethargy, but from that it evolved into being a positive Virtue, much like it’s original cause – the Fasting.

Yes, of course Fasting was not honestly presented as a Fiscal Necessity (or a Fiscal Convenience for Administers who might have thought of skimming the savings into their own pockets).  The Narrative was created that supposed that Fasting had Spiritual Benefits.  That Narrative has since been adjusted to fit with Today’s more secular thinking by saying that Malnutrition is somehow the Healthy Choice.  But that is easy enough to refute.   We can suspect that the historical Slave Owners and the Early Industrial Factory Owners experimented with Money Saving Fasting but it obviously proved to be detrimental to their “Human Capital” and so feeding schedules were set up to maximize productive potential and longevity in their ‘assets’.   That meant that Slaves and Workers were assured of eating several times day.  So it seems that the only Interested Groups in History that think that Fasting is good are those who are in the business of warehousing people from cradle to the grave, and who would actually tally up benefits if the Life Expectancy of their charges could be significantly reduced.

Oh, but, yes, apparently there is some anecdotal ‘evidence’ that Fasting can be “cleansing”, particularly ‘Dry’ Fasting where water is withheld.  Dry Fasting is obviously a fad of new creation.   Water has never historically had the price or scarcity of Food and so there could not possibly have been any interested incentive for making people unnecessarily thirsty.   But I have heard it said that depriving the body of water somehow reduces Inflammation.  Now it makes me wonder whether this reduction in the Body’s tendency towards Inflammation isn’t what is meant by the vague term “cleansing” or appearing to have been “cleansed”.  Well, Inflammation is not necessarily a Bad Thing.  Indeed, Inflammation has its beneficial purposes.  Inflammations fight off the vectors of Disease, and often inflammations at imperceptible levels will swoop in and destroy nascent Cancer Cells – as soon as a Cell’s chromosome structure distorts enough to make it appear to be more Foe than Friend, then an Inflammation will set upon it like a pack of hounds and destroy it, accompanied by only the slightest of fevers.  Oh, and I read of studies that said that people who go six years without complaining of getting the Cold or the Flu are twice as likely to come down with a Cancer.  So it seems paradoxically that Only Healthy People Get Sick!  The Body has to have Healthy Reserves in order to retain a Working Immune System that is capable of putting up Intense Fights every now and then.  They used to say that one of the first Symptoms of AIDS (an immune deficiency disease) would be a long spell of extraordinary ‘Good Health’, and only when Foreign Pathogens had made severe and unchallenged inroads into the Body would the ‘Illness’ begin to show, but still with no ‘Fever’.  The Patients would die from being too Healthy.

Also, of course there have been no studies about this, but when we just think about it, haven’t a great many of the Ascetic Saints died of Cancer.  Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Sai Baba of Shirdi.  But yes, the Fat Spoiled Predator Gurus (the Smirking Buddhas!) are mostly smitten with Diabetes (There is a God!).

Now, particularly about Dry Fasts, well, the Kidneys tend to clog if there is no positive fluid flow through them, and these ‘clogs’ constitute ‘damage’ and more times than not I have heard the doctors say that “Kidney Damage is Irreversible”.   Of course I am not a Doctor, but we only have to look around to see how relatively common it is for people to somehow end up on Dialysis Machines for the rest if their lives.  But even if you do not outright blow out a kidney or two, there is the real danger that by restricting your fluids that you will be inviting Kidney Stones, which I have heard is the closest thing to the pains of Giving Birth that a man can experience, but then Kidney Stones don’t come with any much awaited happy ending… except for the relief to be back to the same normal condition they were at before they stopped drinking enough water.  

Free the Wage Slaves with Universal Basic Income

I had just been reading an opinion piece published by the Federalist and written by Brad Polumbo.  The gist of it was that the crisis regarding the avalanching level of defaults with Student Loans, was all the fault of the Students for not having all majored in some valuable work related vocational kinds of Studies.  In short, he argues that Education should be focused on its Value to the Capitalist Ruling Class and that the actual students should repress any sentimental urge to study anything for the mere sake of some selfish notions about Personal Development, or, God Forbid, the Pursuit of their own worthless Happiness.    Okay, now it’s all out in the open – that the Ruling Classes now, and probably have always felt, that the Public involvement in Education has been about cultivating more productive Wage Slaves.  The Common Masses exist for one reason only and that is to make the Rich richer.

The problem for the Greater Society is that if the Ruling Classes should be able to find Faster, Better, Cheaper replacements for the Wage Slaves which they now recruit from out of the Common Masses, then it is likely they would then let the Common Masses all waste away and starve.  They would use the same basic argument as Mr. Polumbo used, that it is the Common People’s own fault that they are poor and starving because their Great Great Great Grandparents didn’t get rich when they all had the same opportunity that their own Great Great Great Grandparents had.  

Yes, on the practical level, since we are all starving and must eat, I can see why we all should be scrambling to fight over any crumbs that fall from the Rich Man’s Table, that is, every student in the World should major in whatever the Capitalists say they need Today… which, if Mr. Polumbo would have thought about it, would simply glut the field.  I am sure that more than a few Students in recent decades have picked a burgeoning field of Enterprise and then studied 7 years to become Masters in it, only to find that the Fields of Gold had long since gone over to some new Fad Specialty.   We all learn how to Pick Cotton just as they invent Polyester.  But in the present day we are now looking at a darkening horizon that portends a greater evil then just all of us simply fighting each other for the same few jobs, for now we are facing the rise of Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Robots and an All Knowing and All Learning Net Intelligence.   Not just Blue-Collar Labor will be replaced, but also Career Professionals – the Luxury Car Crowd!  Whatever needs to be Done, robots can do it.  Whatever needs to be Thought and Decided, Net Intelligence can do that.  The only thing we are waiting for is for costs to come down.  How long will that take?  The first commercial calculator in 1972 cost $150, but in ten years they were all under $20.  We’ve seen the same curve over and over again with the cost of Black and White TVs, and then Color TVs, Mobile Phones, Home and Office Computers, then Laptops, and then Smart Phones.   It makes me wonder why we aren’t already replaced.  Maybe we are all just lucky that the Human Resources (“H.R.”) Departments are dragging their feet because they know that it would simply make sense that they should be the first to go.

So, anyway, what are all of us Common Masses waiting for?  Do we need Capitalism and a Ruling Class?   Remember that the Owners are only sucking money out of the System, and that all the Work, both in terms of Management and the Execution of the Corporate Business, is done by Salaried People – from the highest to the lowest.  The Owners do nothing but Own, and the People could do that!  My God!  Even I am as qualified as anybody on Earth could be to be an Owner and then just sit back and enjoy watching the Wealth grow up from under my feet and between my lazy toes.   

If it is inevitable that the Robots will take over all the Work, and the Networks take over all the Thinking, then We the People should move Now to assure that these Machines are Working for Us, and not for Them.  We know that if we miss our chance, then we will simply be turned out to starve.  Look at History!  Can we believe that the Misery of the Dark Ages can’t be repeated?... especially since all of these basically Ignorant Owners and Vocationally Trained Capitalists honestly believe that their Wealth – in the Billions of Dollars – is sufficient to get them through any ‘rainy day’.  If we leave it all up to Them, then we are certainly Doomed.

But if we can all get lucky, that is All of us from all around the Globe, for the Multi-National Corporations and Global Capitalists and Banks must not be allowed any corner for escape where their vast purchasing power could be used to put the rest of us all under siege, but, yes, if we can manage to wrestle away the reins to the Means of Production, then we could stipulate some Universal Basic Income for us all.  And then we could set up a New Model for Public Education which goes beyond being Vocational Schools for Slaves, but would instead aim towards Educating up our Humanity with the view of lifting every possibility in the Arts, Media, Literature and Culture… and, yes, Science too, since I suppose the Nerds will always be with us no matter how much the rest of us tease them for it.