normal routine, the watch, a quantum thing and eye stuff

Life here is never what people would consider simple.

I cam imagine someone saying: "Well, what do you expect. When you live with a highly energetic woman who might be the most intelligent woman on earth, in a house where totem poles pop up of their own accord in the back yard, ten minutes from downtown DC, do you expect a quiet life?" In some ways it is very quiet. But in others...

In ohers, I do need to censor a whole lot, even if it sounds as if I am letting it all hang out. I wonder whether Dnald Trump feels like that, as he lets it all hang out but knows a bit more about economics than a lot of the folks in his political circles? But then again, real economics turns out to be a VERY tricky subject, and even his economic circle might be missing a few key details, or not - I suppose I don't know.

A woman at the local Quaker Meeting asked two weeks ago: "What did Jesus mean in asking a few of his disciplines to join him in the watch?" A Catholic Quaker offered to trace it back to the Greek sources, and try to impute a Hebrew original... and I said: "Why don't I just ask someone who knows the original Aramaic and the cultural context?" It's a family, not an Irish/LowCountry family like what Dan Brown talks about (like my own family!); it's a Jewish family.

So... OK... think of an active meditation, similar in a way to good old Cosmic Consciousness,
but more mature and real.

For two weeks I am restricted to avoid eye strain, to prepare and recover from my final cataract surgery next Thursday (Oct 22).  My unrepaired left eye may be spiritually more powerful than the right, but it became downright bloodshot as it tried to keep up and fuse with my now more active repaired right eye, at all distance ranges. And so, yesterday... after lots of listening to world news (mainly just listening)...  I combined high quality new $10 earphones (fully covering the ear) with
my new galaxy Tab and music downloaded form my desktop... and spent hours just lying down,
and letting really high quality music "carry me away"... and participate more, as requested, in the watch.

But oh what an INCREDIBLE mess there is to watch out there on this planet at this time!

There was George Bush senior in the backwash: "What are you doing to my little boy Jeb?
What is your motive?"

Of course, right now, people are asking Trumpwhat he meant by reminding us that the Twin Towers came down under "W's" administration. "What are you saying?"

Well, in the previous Republican debate, I was really overwhelmed when Jeb said it was such a great thing to invade Iraq, so good for US national security now. I understand the desire to be loyal to his father... but when loyalty creates a kind of blindness which could even destroy the US (it is not exaggeration to say that US Mideast policies which are at once naive and destructive could result in the end of this entire species in the end)... it is not a personal matter, it is not a matter of personal bad vibes, but a matter of calm recognition of a threat to our survival to recognize a serious threat. I do not have any basis for evaluating how much of that reality influenced Trump's statement, but it is sad when the press thinks of the interaction as just a personal food fight.  It is understandable that they live at that level... just as it was understandable than most viewers were not instantly horrified during that debate... but in time,   reality may sink in.  I hope so.

But life is not simple. Extremely important things are happening as well in Russian circles, in Turkey,
in Israel, in Syria.....

It is very promising to get a feeling that Trump really would be prepared to engage Putin in serious discussion of a deal-making kind, and not of the shrill repetitive routines of the past. Yet are Putin's problems any better than Bush's in the end? It is a question, but it is good that we d not really make a yes or no judgment. I pose the question only because it is a tricky situation, and some of us really need to remember how tricky it is.

So many people are accusing Bernie Sanders of being a Communist. I find that charge extremely offensive, and utterly unAmerican. That kind of lie or extreme psychopathology bodes very poorly for our hope of  recovering core ideals from Jefferson, Washington, Quakers, Locke, John Stuart Mills, Francis Bacon... which have made the US an important unique treasure for all of humanity in the past, but are now extremely endangered.   The goal of honest, free dialogue including all minds and souls of this nation.... is at risk, when anyone succumbs to the temptation to break fundamental rules much more important than those which power-minded local apparatchiks pay attention to.

Bernbhie Sanders i certainly not a Communist. It is clear that he is quite sincere about his vision of Social Democracy, and that he does include democracy in there as a core value (unlike some of the authoritarian opposition). In truth, the Koch brothers empire does much more to foster true Communism now than Sanders does, even though they know not what they do. Will they ever have the humility to admit, for example, that a guy like Trump might understand the banking system better than they do,     and cut some slack in their usual practice of wanting to ordain every detail in life themselves, the same way Stalin did?  Will they ever understand that defending the unique freedom which made the US different form the place where their family grew up requires tactics a bit more enlightened than what they got in wrestling games in another culture? Will they allow us Americans to defend our own culture?

I worry. I worry when I see a Trump supporter form the Tea Party gushing and saying.. "He will get rid of all that unnecessary spending... for example, immediately abolishing the EPA and the Federal Reserve."  In some kind of ivory tower that might sound nice, but on the real planet earth... I really hate the whiff of real, fatal brimstone and deadly radiation which one can almost smell in real possible futures. If Trump should be elected, will he be stuck with the kind of lunatic Congress
mindlessly obeying orders from one certain oligarch, which puts the US at risk no matter who is President?

The obvious answer to such worries is just to vote for Hillary or Biden, without giving serious attention to the alternatives. And maybe it will come to that in the end. But if Republicans control the
Congress, and the Republican Congressfolk are in turn controlled by either of two collections of oligarchs (something Putin might understand!), Koch versus old style corporate welfare and royalism
(in the shadow of Cheney's ongoing conspiracies) becoming ever less productive.... what can anyone do? Is Trump "the new Teddy Roosevelt: as Icahn says, what we need to break the greatest internal threat the US has ever faced? If we really need two viable political parties, not just one, is Trump simply necessary to have any hope of salvaging what was once a Grand Old Party, and saving the real elephants? Or would it be safer to have a Democratic landslide as much as possible (after the recent gerrymandering) and hope for a Supreme Court which would recognize that "people" in the Constitution means "humans" and that our founding principles need to operate at a higher level than canon law? We will see.

As part of avoiding eye strain for a few days... I listened today to CNN, to Bloomberg, to France 24 and even to RT.  It was a positive eye-opener to see RT's coverage of the efforts to save Alawites to Sunni shariac murders who tried to kill them and forced them form their homes... (I almost want to vomit when US spokesmen talk about "the risk of possible sectarian violence if we do anything," as if certain folks were not already murdering all minorities from Shia to Alawite to Christian to others!).
THAT PART of Russian efforts which save the lives of those people, and create a more decent life again, need to be respected, and even broadened with our help, even as we add a few reasonable humanitarian strings to such an offer. Yet at the same time, RT is still paying people to work actively for a violent Communist overthrow of the US government. Yes, that's also true, and a bit scary.
And who is really behind the increase in murder attempts in Easter Jerusalem?

In fact, there is an important quiet power struggle now at the higher levels in Iran, just as there is in Washington.  The analogy between Cheney's network and the Kuds force is quite apt, trying to create trouble... but will the clergy in IRan recognize the threat which this implies as much as the Koch Brothers... at least recognize SOME of the Cheney allies as problematic? Aspirations to empire still lurk in human minds all over the world, as terrible as we should all know the outcome would be.
If anyone thinks of the US OR Iran as monolithic, they are in trouble.

And in the meantime... there are incredible sleeping risks in the EU right now. Will Slovenia force the issue, and revive those aspects which people in Bavaria have been trying to forget or let lie for
more than half a century? Deep dilemmas may be brought to a head.
But now I must censor...

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There is a whole lot new stuff I could talk about in the realm of physics as well,
but it is probably best that I simply wait until I can post the clean copy from the journal of the latest paper, and hold off on discussing extensions such as key details needed to implement things like MQED correctly, and the fascinating work of Alfred Leitenstorfer recently published in Science.