Zero Diplomacy

The United States has suffered from its lack of a true diplomat. The last real diplomacy to be pursued by the US happened under Nixon/Kissinger with their initiative with communist China. They realized that the US faced a menacing communist coalition between the Soviet Union and communist China, so Nixon, despite his anti-communism, did something about it. In an unprecedented and unanticipated move, he went to China and extended the olive branch to the Chinese — with the obvious intention of creating a fissure between the Soviet Union and communist China in their relations with the US.

That is called DIPLOMACY. It is a mixture of both vision and practicality — the vision to see what is indeed a better outcome than the current set of circumstances and the practicality to see how to make it happen. To be an effective diplomat — not a partisan ideologue pushing a questionable agenda — but a true diplomat, you need both. Missing either and you are spinning your wheels.

So how has diplomacy in the last 60 years or so been such an absolute failure? You merely have to look at all the current serious situations that have continued to fester without any clear resolution in sight to realize this. What are they? Not hard to identity. China/Taiwan; North Korea/South Korea; North Korea/Japan; Europe-NATO-US/Russia; Pakistan/India over Kashmir; Israel/Iran. The China/Taiwan situation has the possibility of bringing the US into a nuclear confrontation with China. North Korea/South Korea ditto. North Korea/Japan ditto. Europe-NATO-US/Russia a nuclear confrontation between the two sides. Pakistan/India colossal loss of life and economic devastation for the two countries and ultimately the world. Israel/Iran can bring the US and Russia into direct and inescapable conflict.

Very serious consequences for all of these situations. Yet there has been no diplomat worth his salt to come up with a vision and the practicality to resolve any of them, and these situations are all very long in the tooth — decades — and festering…perhaps “smoldering” is the right word here. Many of these situations, like the entangling alliances that led to World War 1, could lead to a world war that none of us could even imagine.

So where is our Metternich of the 21st century to lead the world out of its darkness and away from the abyss, away from a second Middle Ages and the destruction of our very civilization? Nowhere to be found. And the clock keeps ticking on all of these situations, like a bomb, a very big bomb.

Absence of Diplomacy

Absence of Diplomacy

NATO’s reckless expansion east to the doorstep of Russia is what has caused this war in Ukraine. Russia has been pleading with NATO since the questionable coup in 2014 for Ukraine to remain unaligned, but their pleading fell on deaf ears. So now we have war. A war that should have been avoided, had we had a single worthwhile diplomat in NATO/US. But there are none. They have ideologues, not diplomats.

A true diplomatic would have seen the far greater value in establishing congenial relations between Europe and Russia compared to further expansion of NATO — because to any reasonable person the former is much more important than the latter. Therefore, you do what needs to be done in diplomacy to ensure the better outcome. But that isn’t what our “diplomats” did.

And now the West makes the incredibly hypocritical claim that this war is Russia’s fault. Duh.

Likely Future Terrorist Targets

Nutrition’s Golden Age

This could be nutrition’s golden age, as it has become very apparent in the sciences that there’s an intricate connection between the nutrition in one’s diet and one’s health. Indeed, how could this not be so, as food is basically chemicals. When you eat, digestive enzymes break down the food into vitamins and minerals, which are then available for all the metabolic functions of the body, right down to the level of all the processes of the individual cell. Thus the very commonsense notion that nutrition and health are indisputably linked, and the obvious implication that the richer your nutrition the healthier you are likely to be.

And this golden age is given a boost as foods of all kinds in the developed world are readily available. Even out of season foods are available year round. So there is little in the way of devising a truly nutritionally dense diet that’s superior to any diets of past ages. You just have to have knowledge of nutrition — what’s good for you and what’s not.

But to what extent have the sciences taken this linkage between food and health more seriously with detailed studies about specific foods? For instance, it is a commonplace assumption in the nutrition literature that there are specific foods that are very beneficial to the health of the brain. I can think of three such foods off the top of my head: Omega 3 fats, Lion’s Mane mushrooms, and blueberries. If it were true that these three examples were indeed beneficial to brain health, wouldn’t it be instructive — and potentially rewarding — to determine exactly what chemicals in these foods produce which beneficial effects in the brain?

I think the next advancement in the science of nutrition will be at this level, where it is determined what chemicals in various foods produce what specific benefits in the body.

Diet

Diet

Put myself on a real diet for 3 weeks — new thing for me as I have never done any kind of diet before.

Idea is to have a calorie deficit from 500 to 700 calories compared to what I normally eat — each day.

So I’m on the 11th day and there has been absolutely no change in my weight, despite having serious overall calorie reduction. Strange.

Perhaps the weight loss will appear suddenly and sharply, as in, say, losing 2 pounds from one day to the next. The body has its own mind.

Canelo

Best Outcome in Ukraine

Best outcome in Ukraine would be if their military would lay down their arms and surrender. Otherwise, you have a Syria-type civil war that destroys the country with terrible casualties.

The Russian military has surrounded all the major cities, and has encircled the large contingent of the Ukrainian army that had amassed to attack Donetsk, but were beaten to the punch by the Russian invasion. This large mass of Ukrainian soldiers, estimated at 45-65k, faces annihilation. (Keep in mind Russia has tactical nuclear weapons that can take out an entire army with a single device — “tactical” in that these are much smaller nuclear weapons designed to take out a large contingency of soldiers all at once. If you are the leadership in the Russian military, do you engage this Ukrainian force near Donetsk with your own army and therefore sustain serious Russian casualties, or do simply annihilate it with this single device and therefore forego any Russian casualties? The temptation to use such a tactical nuclear device would be very compelling. That would be 45-65k soldiers gone or horrendously wounded in an instant.)

No way that Russia is not going to take back Ukraine from the clutches of NATO, as they see an unaligned Ukraine — without American missiles — as critical to the security of Russia. And, unfortunately, the Russian emphasis on “denazification” does represent reality — the current Ukrainian government is controlled by mobster-like thugs who took control after the 2014 coup. (Was that coup engineered by our CIA? It was reported at the time there were rooftop snipers who were shooting people on both sides of the street demonstrations to foment the situation. Were these snipers funded by our CIA?)

American military aid to support this corrupt government in Ukraine is making this best outcome less likely and an extended devastating civil war more likely. The ones who will suffer will be the Ukrainian people for no purpose.

As usual, thoughtless American foreign policy makes a mess of everything it touches.

American Hatred of Russia

Canelo

I was watching a video of Canelo in the gym punching the heavy bag. He was concentrating on heavy hitting hooks to the body, with both hands. Really trying to hit the bag as hard as he could. Punch after punch. What he wants to do with that body punch is plant his feet and get maximum leverage in a hook to the kidney area. That is his power punch (reminds me of Micky Ward). It is Canelo’s game winner, but also his maximum vulnerability. When he plants his feet to throw the body punch, that’s when he is most stationary, and his focus has to be on hitting the opponent’s kidney area, not on his own defense.

Keto Madness

Demonizing Fossil Fuels

People who are so very enthusiastic about solar and wind are motivated from their concerns about drastic and accelerating climate change due to greenhouse gases, so they lock onto this simple-minded would-be solution that doesn’t really solve the problem, but instead has terrible economic consequences in reducing the use of inexpensive fossil fuels, especially for the little guy in having to pay horrendous energy costs.

The real — but very difficult — answer to the climate-change issue is carbon extraction through improved soil conservation, among other extraction methods. Re-forestration on a very large scale is another significant method. The focus needs to shift from demonizing fossil fuels (because they are by far the cheapest form of energy and so will be with us for the foreeseable future) to extraction methods for achieving a zero-sum game for the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

We should also look at technologies that can provide various industries with carbon capture where carbon is now just released into the atmosphere. A carbon tax would induce various industries to move in this direction.

Free Trade Isn’t Free

Likely Future Terrorist Targets

Nuclear power plants. Not very well guarded, if at all. A nuclear-power plant melt-down would cause massive economic and political repercussions for any country.

Therefore, very practical to accomplish but with maximum and horrendous results.

Nuclear power plants were all built in an age that didn’t consider this kind of terrorist threat — that a team of terrorists would take over a nuclear power plant with the intention of causing a meltdown.

But we do. Shouldn’t the federal government provide protection for all 88 nuclear-power plants in the United States? Wouldn’t that be wise?

American Biological Weapons

American Hatred of Russia

The hatred of Russia by the US government and the American press has just had the effect of driving Russia into the arms of China. It is the polar opposite, diplomatically, of what Nixon did with his trip to communist China, which was a ploy to separate communist China from the Soviet Union or at least create a small fissure in that relationship.

And so, to any rational person, this virulent hatred is immensely counterproductive, and yet it dominates our State Department and American foreign policy. And Americans, having been drummed into their heads that Putin is this veritable anti-Christ by both our government and the press, never entertain anything that doesn’t fit this narrative — they are brainwashed.

This will not end well for the United States.

End of the World Scenario