in general, hindu eschatology resembles the big bang/crunch. the cycle of expansion from a single point only to collapse to another single point and another expansion. these cycles are billions of years apart. (also some idea - that's too fuzzy to recall in detail - about matter changing and slipping into an alternative dimension might be a model of the great beyond)

will use Russell Bertrand - although not a poet, have read poetry that echos this thought (not gonna search) almost verbatim - when he said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” this was pretty much summed up the Dunning-Kruger Effect. (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/355363-one-of-the-painful-things-about-our-time-is-that)

the other you noted. meditation is healthy. of note, Sufism tends to focus on intense focusing, in music and song...and some of the musicians are peachy keen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRivHR0c28

and the poetry is beautiful (EX: Rumi). so religion has spawned some good things, too.

in short, religion is no more destructive than the person implementing it. do believe in ideas. whether it comes from a white cassock or lab coat. such is the freedom to keep a mind free.

or take it up w/René Descartes*. he seemed to be better at it than I.

*Descartes died when he was run over by a horse-drawn coach. This is where the saying "Don't put Descartes in front of the horse."

BTW: Earle song?

Yep, the answer to any problem from you, cut taxes. Military underfunded, cut taxes. Can't afford universal health care, cut taxes. Debt and deficit are bigger than GDP, cut taxes. Infrastructure crumbling, cut taxes. Daddy Trump's businesses are struggling, cut taxes, especially theirs.

How many trillions more do they need? How much of that goes directly into Trump's families pockets? They already took dozens, up to hundreds of millions last round despite being specifically banned from the program.

Democrats want higher taxes because we like America being a sovereign nation, and bankrupting us into third world status could change that. When the final numbers for 2020 come out, I bet you that dinner you still owe me it will be double the deficit of any other year in history or worse, $6 trillion+ in spending and another trillion+ in lost taxes from lost production thanks to not shutting down in March-May....on top of the trillion+ deficit built into the budget.....and we're heading into a global depression with this deep debt, making borrowing money near impossible.

2021 is going to be a disaster too, no matter who's elected. Trump has ensured it. Any company that can afford to leave is leaving already, bud. They took the handouts from Trump and in pure Trump fashion took the cash and ignored what it was for, many using that money for expansions outside America, companies like Harley Davidson.

Trump claims the first stimulus package was for up to $6 trillion, not just two....and expects two more will be needed, making the bill for his inaction near $18-19 trillion by his estimates. That means all the outrage over Sanders plans to spend trillions on healthcare and education was utter bullshit (which we knew) or that the problem was we would get something for our money. Trump's just handing it out, largely without strings attached or getting any equity or concessions for it like Obama's bailouts did. Now THAT'S some serious socialism, meaning in just over 3 years his mismanagement would have more than doubled the national debt during an economic expansion (he added >$5 trillion without the pandemic, well over $1 trillion per year deficit before the economic collapse)....Conman Don, Don the Con, that's what they call him, I'm hearing people call him that, Don the Con.

It's all but guaranteed that he's going to just grab the Covid19 funds to build his wall, which is quickly becoming the wall America paid for FOR MEXICO who handled the pandemic infinitely better with only .3% of the cases America has and is stopping Americans from going to Mexico now.
(Side note, with immigrant harvesters staying home and crops rotting in the fields, expect food prices to skyrocket while unemployment also continues to skyrocket.)
@bobknight33 , comments?

Yes, but my understanding is that the point isn't to starve the virus for hosts until it's dead, it's to slow the spread enough that hospitals aren't overrun. When they are, death rates explode, logically from 3-3.5% up to 15-20%. Of course, this plan relies on the hope that immunity is relatively full and permanent, something we don't know yet.

If people weren't morons, I would agree about parks and beaches....but they are. Even those smart enough to try and social distance in public often forget and hug goodbye, and most aren't being that smart.

The problem with sending people back is we don't have a single study on immunity. We don't know if you have full immunity after recovering from being infected, or if so how long it might last. Many other coronaviruses mutate enough that immunity is for one season at best. We need to study the virus in detail before making assumptions on life and death issues, and it's smart to err on one side of caution with stakes this high until we know. Opening up before we know is a pure gamble....the odds might be good, but the stakes are sky high.

In a near worst case scenario, it's possible that Covid19 is going to remain as dangerous as it is today for some time with reinfection possible, and that any future vaccines will need yearly changes and booster shots to be effective, like the flu shot but hopefully more effective. In that case, the best we can really do is be prepared for a constant flow of large numbers of patients and deaths. That's going to require a complete retooling and expansion of the medical system, but silver lining, it's hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs that robots can't do...yet.

That depends on which bible you mean....there are many.

Really? Lost to history?! Hardly....lost to the ignorant and uneducated maybe, but even atheists like me know full well Jesus the man was a Jew, and definitely not a European or "white". Roman/Italian artists knew this, but worked for a Roman church so portrayed him in their image.

Genetic purity?! Lol. I guess that means no one has EVER become Jewish, you're either born one by two pure Jewish parents or not. Hardly reality, and would reject nearly every person in Israel (or elsewhere). Just because there is a long standing religious/cultural taboo against marriage outside the culture, it still happens, as does conversion. Racial/genetic purity is a fallacy debunked by genetic testing.

Prophecy is a leap. No prophecy has been correctly interpreted until AFTER the events supposedly prophesied occurred. It's ridiculous to go back after the fact and claim "see, now that I know exactly how to interpret the unclear prophecy I couldn't decipher before, it's a 100% perfect prediction" but never be able to predict the future. That's the same nonsensical logic mediums use.

The second temple was also the third, since the true second temple was originally a rather modest structure constructed by a number of Jewish exile groups returning to the Levant from Babylon under the Achaemenid-appointed governor Zerubbabel. However, during the reign of Herod the Great, the Second Temple was completely refurbished, and the original structure was totally overhauled into the large and magnificent edifices and facades that are more recognizable. Logically, the third temple was the one destroyed by Romans, the second replaced by Herod but the new one was still called the second temple anyway. (To avoid contradicting prophecy? ;-) )

If the dome of the rock, the second most holy place in Islam, is destroyed, expect Jerusalem to follow soon after, as that will definitely start a religious war between nuclear powers.

Herodotus is credited with using the term Palestinian first, in the 5th century BCE as an ethnonym, making no distinction between Arabs, Jews, or other cultures inhabiting of the area. Romans adopted the term as the official administrative name for the region in the 2nd century CE, "Palestine" as a stand-alone term then came into widespread use, printed on coins, in inscriptions and even in rabbinic texts.

I think you are confused about the history, here's a primer...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Land_of_Israel

The area was populated by various people's including Jews until the Jewish–Roman wars of 66–136 CE, during which the Romans expelled most of the Jews from the area (well, really they arguably left voluntarily because they refused to be second class citizens barred from practicing their religion freely) and replaced it with the Roman province of Syria Palaestina, the Arabs were already there, not invaders or immigrants. When Assyrians (Mesopotamians) invaded in circa 722 BCE, they ruled empirically, meaning only the Jewish ruling elite left, returning in 538 BCE under Cyrus the Great....so no, the Arabs didn't just settle after the Jews were dispersed.

It's patently ridiculous to say the Arab nations were unprovoked, Jewish illegal immigration led to a hostile takeover of the region by illegal immigrants with rapid expansion of their territories into their neighbors continuing through today. The Jews defeated the Arabs thanks to American backing and exponentially better hardware. It was only their right if might makes right, and the Arab nations are under no obligation to let them keep what they stole any more than the Jews were obligated to let the Arab nations retain control in the first place. If Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or any combination can take it, by your logic they have every right to do so.

I do agree, in the end there will be more conflict until the area becomes uninhabitable....largely because every religion's prophecies end with them in control, and no one wants to admit it's all nonsensical iron age tribalism at work.

I expect nothing less from a [redacted] like yourself. Cranial rectosis is cureable, but you would miss the savory fecal flavor.

In the last 3 years Trump's mismanagement has added >$4 trillion to the debt during an inherited economic expansion, with a current deficit of well over $1 trillion per year and rising. Yes, the economy seems relatively strong, but my bank account would look great too if I put 1/3 of GDP on credit and didn't pay any off. America is turning around alright, problem is it was headed in the right direction before the turn. *facepalm

Hate to tell you, but Trump loses handily to all remaining candidates in polls, and not within the margin of error like with Clinton.

Great, yeah, they're still counting the lies, and the calculators are smoking from the effort. Presidential medal of freedom to an obese, racist, uncivil, uneducated, divisive drug abuser. Way to devalue our nation's highest honor to less than a happy meal prize. Only an America hater would call that great, Bobski.

This makes me think of "The Expanse"--the science fiction series ...Cool.

Eventually. My brother was online before there was an internet, trading programs for his Apple 2 over the phone lines, and the web existed for years before the possibility of profit, and much longer before any profit was realised. The nerds (myself included) drove the expansion for quite a while, but I don't deny commerce has made it ubiquitous and fast. Companies want you to enjoy the experience of buying from them so you come back, so they have an incentive to continue funding advancements that benefit the market, making more potential customers.
There are many incentives not based on profit too, as you mentioned. I don't think it's an either/or equation.

Didn't iPhones basically create the smartphone market?

@ant
Nice retrospective, I had gone back and replayed the original and it's two expansions a little while back. I had totally forgotten that there even was a 2 and 3, so I snatched 2 on GOG for pocket change and I can only get 3 on Steam, so maybe later.

MDK2
Neverwinter Nights and expansions
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Jade Empire PC
Mass Effect PC
Mass Effect 2-3
Dragon Age 1-3
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Anthem

No sir.

I'm addressing his comment about the invasion of Iraq happening because of "Saddam's campaign of genocide against his own people and his conquest of Kuwait." when that's absolutely not how the invasion was sold to us by W. That's only partially how Desert Shield was sold by Sr. (Keeping in mind the gassing had happened years earlier), but that didn't remove or even target Saddam and barely went into Iraq, so clearly wasn't designed to remove him from power or stop his atrocities, just to stop his expansion into our allies territories.

The invasion of Iraq and direct targeting of Saddam was by W, not Sr. and are what led to the current state of the region far more than any result of Desert Storm...what I thought he meant by "blaming Sr. for Iraq"....I read that as 'blaming Sr. for the current state of Iraq and the region'.
I may have misunderstood what he meant by "blaming Sr for Iraq", but I can tell the difference between bushes.

Everything I've read about the SR-71 in the past seems to support the idea of expansion gaps being designed into the panels due to the amount of heat created from flying 3x the speed of sound.

Israel is not, and never has been our ally.
Our support of their racist, genocidal regime is baffling in the extreme.

Nobody asked why? I think it's likely because they didn't want anyone recording their other war crimes. Blaming someone else with hopes of bringing us into their war on their side was probably a secondary motive.

And two days ago Israel restarted it's illegal expansion by once again breaking international law and the Geneva convention by renewing efforts to forcefully 'evict' the native Bedouin living in Khan al-Ahmar since before Israel existed and leveling the township.
This sparks the beginning of another genocidal round of expansion and military bluster from Israel, another one we will undoubtedly turn a blind eye to, or perhaps we'll blame the displaced natives like we do the Palestinians.
The UN has previously warned that international humanitarian law requires an occupying power to protect the population of the territory that it occupies, ensure its welfare and wellbeing, as well as the respect for its human rights. Any destruction of property by the occupying power is prohibited, except when rendered absolutely necessary by military operations, the UN says. The extensive demolition of property is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and may amount to a war crime, it adds.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45420915

I agree there has been a F load of change in personnel. The real question is does this turnover occur in in business life?

If so then one could consider Trump as some kind of dickhead to work for .

If not then what is the reason for the difference?


I think there is much more going on behind the scenes. Why would one have a military General as your chief of staff?

With Obama's top level FBI as example --
Comey -- fired
McCabe- Fired
James Baker, general counsel -- Fired
James Rybicki Chief of staff -- Fired
Perter Strozk -- Fired
Lisa Page -- ???

If Hillary was elected not of their wrong doings would have come to light. All gunning to get Trump. Still that is just the FBI.


No wonder Trump is cleaning house so much. Some bad guys found? Some paranoia?
There isn't a day goes by without something big occurring.

There is still 3 big reports to come out.
Mullers findings.
The 2nd OIG report and Huber's findings

AG Jeff Sessions appointed John Huber will be the ‘top federal prosecutor’ who will be investigating FISA abuses . Huber's staff is over 400.


Also Guantanamo Bay, Cuba-- Expanding like mad...

$14 million to expand the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This is a "strategically critical time-sensitive expansion project". DOD justification states the "current trial support facilities are incapable of handling the large number of personnel .
https://insidedefense.com/insider/pentagon-expand-gitmo-after-trump-orders-it-remain-open

The place can hold some 2300 prisoners, currently Gitmo is currently holding 41 prisoners.. Also the 137th, 428th, and 514th was deployed this month to Gitmo for a year . Rotating people out - possible, but some 500 troops for 41 prisoners?

What is so time sensitive for to handle trial support facilities are incapable of handling the large number of personnel .-- Where are these people coming from? What is coming down the pike?

Like I said above:
I think there is much more going on behind the scenes. Why would one have a military General as your chief of staff?