Housekeeping

Good day, dear reader!

This post is a quick note about some 'housekeeping' issues for this blog.

First, you may have noticed that, since I started posting again, my missives have been longer than my previous posts. Early in the life of this blog, an old friend of mine who'd had a business blog for several years advised me that a good blog post should be no more than 1,000 words in length, so I started applying that guideline to my posts. I have since been advised by other experienced bloggers that, as long as you're not "writing a book," a blog post should be as long as it needs to be to convey the idea you're presenting. Therefore, I have stopped limiting my posts and breaking up topics into muliple posts.

Second, because of my previous format, ther were a couple of topics I failed to complete. I plan in the near future to tie up those loose ends.

Finally, I want to once again encourage everyone to comment on and share my posts. I welcome questions and civil discussion and debate about all the topics I present.

Be well, Dear Ones! Until next time...

The Truth About Palestine and the Terrorist Attack On Israel

Good day, Dear Reader,

Today, I am saddened, disheartened, and angry. This past Saturday, 7 October 2023, The Islamic terrorist organization, Hamas, premeditatively planned and executed, with no military or other specific objective, a barbaric attack on Israel on multiple fronts, indiscriminately butchering, raping, and massacring civilians from the border of the Gaza Strip to Tel Aviv. As of this morning, the death toll is over 1200 souls, mostly civilians, and includes 260 attendees at a musical festival celebrating the Jewish Holy Day of Simchat Torah, as well as 30 Americans. There were also over 2200 people wounded and, at last count, over 160 people of all ages kidnapped whom Hamas has hinted would be executed during live broadcasts. These actions rise to the legal definition of War Crimes.

The attack began with Hamas randomly launching thousands of rockets into various areas of Israel in an attempt to overwhelm the Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, striking civilian targets that included hospitals and apartment buildings as far as 50 miles away from Gaza. While raining destruction down from the sky, Hamas’ shock troopers invaded Israel by land, sea, and air. They swarmed into Kibbitzes (small rural communities) and breeched security checkpoints by force and by dressing in stolen Israeli Defense Force uniforms. They flew over the border security walls using motorized paragliders. They used military-grade Zodiacs to invade seaside communities from the Mediterranean. They used motorcycles and armored cars to crash through border checkpoints. They used the stolen uniforms to infiltrate IDF border security bases, killing soldiers, creating confusion, and hampering Israeli attempts to protect civilians.

Once inside Israel, the terrorists indiscriminately raped and butchered women, children, and men, often in front of their families. They burned homes with people still inside them. They murdered every man and older boy they saw. Then, as they began their retreat, they grabbed women and children and dragged them off to be hostages, often after raping them.

None of this is speculation or hearsay. Because of the inveterate presence of smartphones, hundreds of videos were made of the atrocities as they happened, many by the terrorists themselves, most of which were posted to the various social media sites. The videos clearly show the members of Hamas laughing with unholy glee as they rape, maim, dismember, and kill the terrified civilians.

Israel, in an attempt to reduce the terrorists’ military capability and minimize the possibility of a follow-up attack, blockaded the Gaza Strip, the location of Hamas’ headquarters, and launched rockets at the terrorists’ military and administrative facilities. Unfortunately, being the cowards they are, Hamas routinely places all their facilities in the middle of dense urban areas. In fact, their main administrative headquarters was in a 17 story apartment building. However, not being the pathetic cowards the terrorists are, and wanting to only harm Hamas and not the civilians living in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Force provided advanced warning of their attacks, urging the civilians around and among the targets to evacuate quickly before the IDF began their counterattack. After giving the civilians time to evacuate, they reduced their targets to rubble.

Then, to add insult to injury, Islamic immigrants and refugees…as well as many Progressive/Liberal Marxists…in cities around the world took to the streets to celebrate the rape, dismemberment, and murder of the women, children, and men of Israel. Pro-Hamas celebrants took to the steps of the Sydney Opera Hall in Australia and chanted, “gas the Jews.” Here in the United States, traditionally Israel’s staunchest ally, four members of the House of Representatives refused to condemn the actions of Hamas and instead bemoaned what they considered to be Israel’s “overreaction” to some “civil unrest” displayed by Hamas. Thirty-five different student organizations at Harvard University, one of America’s most revered educational institutions, issued statements expressing support for the ‘Palestinians’ and declaring that the attacks were Israel’s own fault. Every disgusting one of them have openly and cheerfully expressed support for vicious animals who raped and murdered children.

Aside from the abominable actions by the terrorists, these fools are actually expressing support for a lie: THERE IS AND NEVER HAS BEEN A NATION CALLED PALESTINE NOR A PALESTINIAN PEOPLE! What many people call “Palestine” was originally a sparsely populated southern region of Canaan. Ethnically, the area has primarily been populated by Canaanites, Akkadians, Semitic Hyksosians, the nomadic Philistines, outcast Egyptians and Arabs (known regionally as the Habiru), and remnants of the various empires who conquered and controlled the area throughout the millennia. The first recorded mention of the name, “Palestine,” came from the Romans when they moved into the area in 63 BC and established the ‘Administrative District of Palestina’ in Judea, based in the market village of Palestine. Some historians believe that the name came from the Greek name for the Philistines.

In 31 AD, during the reign of Augustus, the Romans put their puppet king Herod the Great in power and renamed the region that included the ‘Administrative District of Palestina’ to the ‘Province of Roman Judea’ and moved the administrative and military headquarters to Jerusalem. A hundred years later, after the Bar-Kochba Revolt, Emperor Hadrian renamed the region, ‘Syria Palestina,’ after the Syrians and the Philistines (the two traditional enemies of the Israelites) and banished all Jews from the region as a way to punish them for revolting against the empire. Even in the 7th Century, the Muslims who conquered the Levant renamed the region ‘Jund Filistin,’ (Military District of Filistin).

The region changed hands numerous times over the next thirteen centuries. Then, in World War I, the British won most of the central part of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, making them a Protectorate within the British Empire. After the war, the British Foreign Minister issued the Balfour Declaration that promised to create a Jewish National Home in the historically Canaanite portion of the Protectorate, in addition to the Arab State promised in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence. The newly formed League of Nations initially issued the British and French Mandates, splitting control of the region between the two nations, but toward the end of WWI, British forces captured Jerusalem and solidified their control of the Central Levant by defeating the Turkish forces at the Battle of Megiddo.

Under the authority of the British Mandate, the United Kingdom administered the southern and western portion of what before the Great War had been known as “Ottoman Syria,” which included the Emirate of Transjordan on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, the State of Iraq to the east and south of Transjordan, and the southern region adjacent to the Egyptian border which was given the English designation ‘Palestine,’ derived from the Arabic ‘filastin’ and the Hebrew ‘palestina’. The entire British Mandate was administered from the city of Jerusalem. North of the British Mandate lands were the Kingdom of Syria and Lebanon, both of which were part of the French Mandate.

From 1920 AD to 1948 AD, the British dealt with rising nationalism in both the Arab and Jewish communities, working to keep the peace between the two cultures through the Arab riots and revolts before World War II, and the influx of Jewish refugees during and after the war. The very first historically documented reference to ‘Palestinians’ without qualifying them as Arabs was in a series of formal complaints submitted by the Permanent Executive Committee (composed of Christians and Muslims) to the British authorities on 28 July 1928.

When the United Nations was created to replace the League of Nations, the devastated nations of France and the United Kingdom worked with the new UN to create the Partition Plan as a means to resolve regional unrest in several British Colonies and protectorates, and return all of the Mandatory lands to local, autonomous governance. The Partitioning of the British and French Mandate lands in the Middle East resulted in the creation of the separate, autonomous nations of the Kingdom of Iraq, the Republic of Syria, the Republic of Lebanon, and the Emirate of Transjordan. The region of Palestine was to be divided evenly…shared by an unnamed Arab state in the north, and the State of Israel in the south, with the City of Jerusalem to be made a neutral international city, or ‘Corpus Separatum,’ because of its importance to the adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The majority of the Arabian Peninsula, to the east across the Gulf of Aqaba, was ceded to the powerful House of Saud and became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, the Arab world categorically rejected the compromise for the region of Palestine, declaring that they wanted all Jews exiled from the region, and violence broke out as soon as the UN resolution was announced. The sectarian violence soon escalated to a full civil war between the Arab and Jewish residents of the region, with the independent Arab states creating an all-volunteer Arab Liberation Army that entered the region to fight for the Palestinian Arabs. For three months, the Yishuv (Jewish community) was constantly defending itself, occasionally pushing the aggressors back, until they mounted a counter-offensive in April 1948 AD that completely defeated the Arab forces. Without the support of the Arab Liberation Army the Arab society in the Palestine region collapsed. On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion announced the official birth of the State of Israel.

Again, the Arabs in the region were offered an Arab state separate from Israel, but they refused to accept anything but the entire region, free of Jews. Transjordan took advantage of the confusion after the conflict to grab and annex land on the west side of the Jordan that was meant to be part of the proposed independent Arab state, creating the contested West Bank region that included the eastern part of Jerusalem. Egypt also took advantage of the confusion to occupy and claim the Gaza Strip. Syria and Iraq also tried to take advantage of the turmoil and sent a combined expeditionary force to attack Israel in what was to become known as the Arab-Israeli War, but it was a failure. The most intense fighting took place between Transjordanian forces and the Israelis over control of Jerusalem.

On the same day that Ben-Gurion made his announcement, the Arab League announced that it would establish a single Arab administration for all of the region of Palestine. The All-Palestine Government was established by the Arab League on 22 September 1948, during the Arab-Israeli War, and was soon recognized by all the members of the Arab League except Transjordan. While this new government claimed jurisdiction over the entire Palestinian region, it really only had power in Gaza, under Egyptian protection, and only for a short time. By the end of 1948, the All-Palestine Government had fled to Cairo where it remained until absorbed by the United Arab Republic in 1959 AD.

In 1949 AD, the neighboring Arab nations grudgingly signed an Armistice Agreement with the State of Israel, but publicly continued to state that there can never be an independent Arab state in Palestine as long as Israel exists. That same year, King Abdullah I of Transjordan, as part of a program to gain control of all of Jerusalem and the northern portion of the Mandate lands all the way to the Mediterranean, changed Transjordan’s name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, outlawed the terms “Palestinian” and “Transjordanian,” and granted Jordanian citizenship to all Arab land holders of the Palestinian region of the British Mandate.

In June 1967 AD, the neighboring Arab states (primarily Egypt, Jordan, and Syria) tried to attack Israel once again, initiated when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli shipping and placed a major military force along the border with Israel. Within six days, the Israeli forces had driven the invaders back to their respective borders. When the ceasefire was signed on 11 June 1967, Israel had Syria’s Golan Heights (the location of Syrian artillery shelling civilian settlements around the Sea of Galilee), the Jordanian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. Israel chose to keep the captured territories so as to create a strategic buffer between themselves and the belligerent Arab states.

After the Six Day War, in September 1967, the Khartoum Arab Summit convened. The eight participating Arab states…Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, and Sudan…passed a unanimous resolution that there would be no peace, no recognition, and no negotiation with the State of Israel. This ultimately led to a coalition of Arab states…led by Egypt and Syria…attacking Israel yet again on 6 October 1973, the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur. Israel handily drove the Syrians back to their border, but the Egyptians, supplied by the Soviet Union, proved to be more difficult. It wasn’t until the Israelis drove the Egyptians back to within 65 miles of Cairo and the Suez Canal that Egypt agreed to a ceasefire. The Yom Kippur War ended on 25 October.

As with every other Arab aggression against Israel, the Arabs were offered their own autonomous state in the region of Palestine as proposed in the original UN Partition Resolution and in UN Resolution 242. Even after the Camp David Accords of 1978 and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, where Egypt became the first Arab nation to officially recognize the existence of the State of Israel, the other Arab nations continued to maintain that there would be no peace as long as one Jew resided in the region. The rhetoric was even intensified by Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in the late 1980s and through the 1990s as they all declared that there would be no rest until “Israel is driven into the sea.”

In the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to self-rule for the Palestinian Arabs in the territories they captured during the Six Day War. The Palestinian Authority was created, which was openly accepted and recognized by Israel. However, terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLO), Hezbollah, and Hamas began to infiltrate the Palestinian Authority, as well as the commuters traveling between the areas under the jurisdiction of the Authority and the Israeli-controlled areas. Once again, the flames of a jihad (holy war) against the “Zionist infidels” began to be fanned. Palestinian suicide bombers indiscriminately murdered countless civilians in attacks on restaurants, markets, hotels, and concerts, which inspired Israel to create secure borders around the Palestinian regions with limited secure access points in order to protect its citizens and visitors.

As we saw this past weekend, the terrorist violence has continued into the Twenty-first Century, in spite of the attempts by the UN and multiple nations around the world to mediate and stop the violence between the Israelis and the Arab Palestinians. In 2002 AD, the UN, United States, European Union, and Russia came together to jointly propose the Israeli-Palestinian Road Map to Peace which proposed an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. Israel embraced it and, in 2004 AD, unilaterally began to implement it by removing Jewish settlements from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, relocating the inhabitants into the main body of Israel. However, in January 2006, the terrorist organization Hamas managed to win control of the Palestinian Authority Legislature in the general elections and drove the moderate Fatah party out of Gaza and to the West Bank. When the President of Palestine (a member of Fatah) tried to dismiss the Hamas-controlled legislature and call for a new election, Hamas turned on their own and attacked all Fatah supporters in Gaza, ultimately winning. Now, there are two Palestines: Gaza Palestine controlled by the terrorist organization Hamas, and West Bank Palestine controlled by the moderate Fatah.

In the last 16 years, terrorist attacks upon Israel from Gaza have only gotten worse. Hamas primarily targets civilian facilities such as schools, apartment buildings, hospitals, hotels, and entertainment venues, rarely going after military targets. They have constructed a network of tunnels running under the Israeli security wall from Gaza into Israel for the sole purpose of killing Jews. Since 1948, every action by the Israelis has been in self-defense, while every action by the Arabs in the Palestinian region has been an attempt at eradicating the Jews.

The pro-Palestinian activists claim that the Jewish citizens of Israel are ‘colonizers’ who took the land from the Palestinian Arabs. The truth is that the area was the Kingdom of Israel and Judah centuries before any of the Arabs lived there. If they really want to go after ‘colonizers,’ they should go after the descendants of the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Aram-Damascans, and the Philistines…all who occupied the area before the Israelites; not to mention the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Hellenic Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mamluks, and even the Mongols…all who conquered and occupied the region after the fall of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

These activists also maintain that there is ‘ethnic cleansing’ occurring in this region. In this, they are correct, but it is not Israel who is perpetrating this heinous act. Rather, it is Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Middle East who are determined to ‘cleanse’ the region of every last Jew. Basically, these terrorists are not Human Beings. The actions of these terrorists are clearly inhumane and depraved. These terrorists are nothing but rabid, cowardly animals who should be treated as all rabid animals are treated…they need to be eradicated.

I know this post is longer than my usual posts, but I feel it is too necessary to edit or expurgate this topic. If you read to this point, thank you for staying with me.

Be well, Dear Ones! Until next time…

The True Origins of GPS Technology

Good day, dear reader!

Ok, so contrary to what I declared in my last post, I didn’t ‘do better’ about posting to my blog as it has been three and a half years since that post.

In any event, I have several things on my mind that I plan to post here, the first of which is the concerted effort by the organized Progressive movement over the last seven decades to rewrite…or, as they call it in their own literature, “revise”…history in an effort to remold America and the world into the format they desire. I suspect that that this is an example of that plan.

On the 31st of August 2023, "The Federalist" published an article on its website by G. W. Thielman entitled, "How American Soldiers Invented GPS On Labor Day Weekend In 1973." Regrettably, even though Mr. Thielman has earned a Master’s Degree in Engineering and is employed as a Patent Attorney, his article is woefully lacking in the true details of the actual origin of the concepts and systems that would eventually be called GPS.

The first documented case of this concept being presented and promoted to the general public was in the February 1945 issue of "Wireless World" when a letter to the editor from astronomer, inventor, futurist, and author, Arthur C. Clarke was published. In the letter that he called, "Peaceful Uses for V2," he described how the scientific concepts that made the German V2 rocket program successful could be used to launch communication satellites into geostationary orbits. He explained that using a minimum of three evenly spaced satellites would provide ideal telecommunications relays. In May 1945, Clarke wrote a paper he entitled, "The Space Station: Its Radio Application," which he privately circulated among scientists and engineers. This paper expanded upon the concepts in the earlier letter and provided detailed analysis of how it would work. It was reprinted in the March 1968 issues of "Spaceflight" (Vol. 10, No. 3) and "Ascent to Orbit". There is currently a copy of this 1945 paper in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

In June 1945, he wrote "The Future of World Communications," a detailed technical article on the subject, and submitted it to the RAF censor on the 7th of July. Once it was approved, Clarke submitted it to "Wireless World". The article was published in the October 1945 issue, though the publisher renamed it, "Extra-Terrestrial Relays – Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?".

From late 1945 through the middle of 1946, Clarke and other scientists had several meetings with representatives of the governments of Great Britain and the United States, promoting his concept and explaining that by triangulating the orbital radio relays, they could also be used as navigational aids and course guides for cargo trucks on land and ships at sea. Unfortunately, the post-war governments did not believe they could invest funds into an ‘experimental technology’.

In a 1954 speech, John R. Pierce, one of the engineers on Bell Labs’ Echo and Telstar satellite projects, stated that he and his team were using ideas that were “in the air”, but that he had never seen and was unaware of any of Clarke’s articles or papers. In an interview he gave shortly before his death in March 1988 (Final Thoughts from Sir Arthur C. Clarke), Clarke was asked if he ever thought that one day his concept would become so important. His response was, “I’m often asked why I didn’t try to patent the idea of communication satellites. My answer is always, ‘A patent is really a license to be sued.’ “ As part of his legacy, though, the geosynchronous orbit used by all communications and GPS satellites is known by scientists and engineers worldwide, and particularly by NASA and the Royal Astronomical Society, as the ‘Clarke Orbit’.

As you can see, the concept that would be eventually called the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System was conceptualized, designed, published, and promoted 12 years before the launch of Sputnik 1, and 21 years before the U.S. Air Force’s Proposal 621B. This, however, is not the only shortfall of Mr. Thielman’s article.

In 1956, a civilian programmer by the name of Mrs. Grace West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground (now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center). Mrs. West was only the second black woman ever hired at that facility, and one of only four black people working there. After the Sputnik launch, she was moved to the Dahlgren Division and became a satellite data analyst. In the early 1960’s, she was part of an award-winning team that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to that of Neptune, and was subsequently assigned to analyze altimeter data from NASA’s Geodetic Earth Orbiting satellite program. Her superlative work earned her a promotion to Project Manager of the SEASAT Radar Altimetry project where the process improvements she implemented cut her team’s processing time in half and she was recommended for a commendation.

From the early 1970’s through the 1980’s, Mrs. West kept improving the computer programs used to analyze satellite data, allowing for more and more precise calculations of the shape of the Earth. Her efforts enabled her to prove that the Earth, rather than a sphere, was in fact an ellipsoid with geoid undulations. She created complex algorithms to allow for variations in gravitational, tidal, and geoidal forces that distort the Earth’s shape, allowing for exponentially more accurate topographic mapping. Culminating with her technical report, "Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter," published by the Naval Surface Weapons Center in 1986, Mrs. West created all of the computer programing that allowed Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s vision to be fully realized and made the modern Global Positioning System accurate to within less than 50’ of an object’s true location.

While I have the utmost respect for the members of all branches of the U.S. military, I am a pragmatist and firmly believe that ”Lügen haben kurze Beine“, i.e., the Truth will out. The Truth is that Col. Parkinson’s focus group of Air Force officers invented nothing over Labor Day Weekend in 1973. All they did was identify the then-modern technologies that would allow them to implement a prototype version of the system originally invented, first documented, and repeatedly proposed in 1945 by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Furthermore, the Truth is that their ‘beta‘ version would never have gone any further than plotting the location of objects within an area of 2 – 3 square miles of their true location if not for the original programing work of Mrs. Grace West. While Mr. Thielman did give a ‘hat tip‘ to Kepler, Faraday, Maxwell, Planck and Einstein for doing the work and making the foundational discoveries that allow Humanity to understand the science necessary for the GPS system, he, or possibly the source of his research, has completely ignored the two people who are the foundation of the technology, without whom Global Positioning wouldn’t be much more than a ‘best guess‘.

Be well, Dear Ones! Until next time...

Today's Most Common Subject of Conversation

Good afternoon, family and friends!

I know, I know, it's been almost a year since my last post. I'm going to try to do better, but today, I thought I'd address the elephant currently in the room. Whether you call it the Coronavirus, Wuhan Flu, COVID-19, or by it's medical designation, SARS CoV-2, the currently-declared pandemic is affecting everyone. The problem is that it isn't the virus itself that is having the greatest impact on our society at every level, it is the ensuing panic surrounding the pandemic.

Before I go any further, I want to clearly stipulate that there are definitely people who should take special precautions because of COVID-19, particularly those with compromised immune systems, the very young, the elderly, and anyone who is regularly in contact with people who are ill.

Having said that, my own research into this topic has led me to one conclusion: the fear, anxiety, and panic surrounding this pandemic is, except for the people previously mentioned, completely unnecessary and unwarranted. Furthermore, it has been entirely created by the politicians on both sides of the aisle and the accompanying corporate media that acts as their propaganda distributors for the purpose of command and control. Or, as Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and Mayor of Chicago, once said, "never let a good crisis go to waste."

Why have I developed this conclusion? It's simple: the science and statistics that are out there for anyone to see. Let's get into the 'speeds and feeds' of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By the way, the source of all the health-related numbers are the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The world population figures are 2019 estimates from the United Nations, and U.S. population figures are the 2019 estimates from the United States Bureau of the Census.

As of 11:00 AM on 23 March 2020, there have been 373,885 confirmed cases of infection worldwide. Of those infected, 16,328 have died from the virus. That gives the Wuhan Flu a mortality rate of 4.37%. However, of the total world population of approximately 7,400,000,000 (7.4 Billion), only 0.005053% have been infected. That's 5,053 Millionths of one percent! The number of people who have died worldwide represents only 0.000221%, or 221 Millionths of one percent, of the population. Keep in mind two things: first, that these figures represent nations that cover a spectrum from Third World nations with little to no healthcare infrastructure, to nations with the best healthcare in the world; and second, that even the CDC and the WHO have conceded that the number of infected individuals is probably not completely accurate due to an inadequate number of testing kits, an incomplete count of infected individuals in some lesser-developed countries, and outright false reporting by some totalitarian regimes.

Now, if you think those numbers are low, let's take a look at the U.S. and specifically Texas. Nationwide, there have been 42,439 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection with 574 deaths. This means that the mortality rate in America is 1.35%. When figured against the estimated national population of 328,240,000, only 0.012929% (12,929 Millionths of one percent) of the population have been infected, and 0.000175% (175 Millionths of one percent) of the population has died from the Coronavirus. In Texas, there have been 719 confirmed infections and 7 deaths from COVID-19. To put it into perspective, with a statewide population of 29,996,000, 0.002397% (2,397 Millionths of one percent) have been infected, and 0.000023% (23 Millionths of one percent) have died.

But how does all this compare to 'normal' infections and illnesses. At the end of 2019, the CDC issued a report entitled Pneumonia and Influenza Associated Mortality (I have no idea why they decided to lump these two infections together). In that report, they stated that, "Nationally, mortality attributed to pneumonia and influenza peaked two times at 7.7% during the weeks ending February 23rd and March 16th." In other words, in spite of vaccines and treatments we have had for decades, as well as public awareness...all things we did not have for COVID-19...during those two weeks last year 7.7% of our population who contracted the flu and pneumonia tragically died. Furthermore, the CDC estimated that during the 2018 - 2019 flu season, 65,000,000 Americans, or 19.8% of our population, were afflicted with the flu. In other words, the number of people who got the flu during the eight months of the traditional flu season of 1 October 2018 to 1 May 2019 was over 1,531 times greater than the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection. In spite of this, there was never any widespread panic or anxiety, no calls from politicians or the media to 'flatten the curve,' no draconian plans to quarantine large swaths of our population and shut down our country en masse. In fact, the week before the politicians began to issue their chicken little proclamations to shelter in place and severely limit the size of gatherings, the week of 7 March 2020, the NCHS reported that 7.1% of ALL deaths in the U.S. were due to flu and pneumonia. This is the sort of information the media and our politicians should be distributing in order to keep everyone calm, but aren't.

As I mentioned earlier, those who themselves or who have loved ones in the at-risk categories should and need to take all due precautions. For the rest of us who make up the vast majority of the population, there are a few simple things you can do, that you should honestly already be doing in your everyday lives, to come as close to guaranteeing your safety as possible:

Ø  Wash your hands frequently, especially after you use the restroom, before handling food, after you cough, sneeze, or blow your nose (even if caused by allergies), and after touching public fixtures such as doorknobs and hand rails. Also, don't just wash the palms of your hands. Wash the entire hand, front and back, from your wrist to the tips of your fingers, including between your fingers. By the way, hand sanitizers are a waste of money because they work for at most 90 seconds after application. This is why health departments nationwide do not allow hand sanitizers to be used in place of frequent hand-washing in restaurants.

Ø  Do not allow anyone to cough or sneeze on you. Be aware of your surroundings and avoid people who appear to be having sinus or respiratory issues.

Ø  If you do not feel well, stay home. No one is so critical at work that they need to risk their own health or that of their co-workers. If you need to have errands run, reach out to your family and friends. We will help you!

Ø  Do not share food or drink with anyone. ANYONE!

By making these 4 habits part of your daily routine, you reduce your odds of contracting the Coronavirus to virtually Zero.

It is time to stop letting blind fear generated by people with an agenda to change the way we live our lives. Ignore the crap coming out of the corporate media outlets, especially CNN, Fox News, and all NBC properties (including MSNBC and the MSN News Feed). Get your COVID-19 updates and info from independent news sources, and directly from the websites for the CDC and the WHO. Stop fanning the fires of hysteria and help spread the truth about this pandemic.

Above all, be well, Dear Ones!

Until next time...

Simply Me (Continued)

Topic #1 - Philosophy (continued)

Chapter 2 (continued)

The God of Abraham: Judaism (continued)

Welcome back! Let's get back to Jacob, the third of the Three Patriarchs in Judaism.

Jacob dwelt in Harran for 20 years: Laban had tricked Jacob into working for him for 14 years for the hand of his youngest daughter, then Jacob worked for another 6 years to build up his flocks. Finally, God told Jacob that it was time to return to the land of his father. Taking his wives, children, servants, and flocks, Jacob left without warning, prompting Laban to pursue him. On his way to the land of Seir in Canaan, where Esau dwelt, Jacob got into a wrestling match with a mysterious being at the ford of the Jabbok. They wrestled all night and, at dawn, when he couldn’t defeat Jacob, the being touched Jacob on the sinew of the thigh, leaving Jacob with a limp. Realizing that the being was some sort of divinity (an angel of God, or maybe even God Himself), Jacob agreed to release him only if he blessed Jacob. The being replied, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” (Genesis 32:28)

During his sojourn in Harran, Israel acquired four wives and twelve children; eleven sons and one daughter. His wives were: Rachel (the woman for whom he worked 14 years); Leah (Rachael’s older sister); Bilha (Rachel’s servant); and Zilpah (Leah’s servant). Jacob ‘s children were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Dinah, and Joseph. (Genesis 29:31 - 30:24) It is possible that Israel had mor daughters, but Dinah is the only one mentioned in Genesis. Once they returned to Canaan, Rachel became pregnant again. As Israel was moving all of his people and flocks to Ephrath (modern day Bethlehem), Rachel went into labor and died as she gave birth to Israel’s twelfth son, Benjamin. (Genesis 35:16-20) To this day, Rachel’s Tomb outside of Bethlehem is a popular site for pilgrimages and prayers.

Israel continued his journey, eventually reuniting with his father, Isaac, at Elonei Mamre, an important market fair north of Hebron in Judea. Isaac lived to 180. When he died, Israel and Esau buried him in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, alongside Abraham. Talmudic researchers believe that, at this meeting, Esau gave the genealogical records of his House to Israel, who incorporated them into his own family records. Moses would eventually augment and publish Esau’s records, and they would become Chapter 36 of the Book of Genesis.

Of all his sons, Israel’s favorite was Rachel’s firstborn, Joseph. Because of their father’s favoritism, Joseph’s half-brothers were jealous of him and often taunted him. When he was 17, Israel gave Joseph an ornate robe or coat as a reward for relating the misdeeds of his brothers to his father. Upon seeing this, the jealousy felt by the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah turned to hate. When Joseph began to have dreams that seemed to indicate that his brothers would all bow before him, they began to conspire against him. When Israel heard of the dreams, he chastised Joseph saying, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” However, Israel continued to consider Joseph’s dreams. (Genesis 37:1-11)

Sometime later, all of Joseph’s brothers, except Benjamin, were tending Israel’s flocks near Shenchem, and Israel decided to send Joseph down to check their progress and report back. When Joseph arrived, he discovered that they had moved the flocks several miles away to Dothan, so he followed them. As Joseph approached, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah saw him and decided to kill him. Reuben, Israel’s firstborn by Leah, heard this and tried to rescue Joseph saying, “Let us not take his life!” He went on to suggest that they throw him into a nearby dry cistern with the thought of later returning Joseph to their father. When Joseph arrived, his brothers grabbed him, stripped off his ornate robe, and threw him into the cistern. As they were eating, a caravan of Ishmaelites arrived from Gilead on their way to Egypt. Judah had the idea to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites, so they did and received twenty shekels of silver. When the caravan arrived in Egypt, Joseph was sold to the Captain of the Pharaoh’s Guard.

When Reuben returned and discovered that Joseph was gone, he became distraught. They all then decided to slaughter a goat and cover Joseph’s robe with the goat’s blood. Returning to Hebron, they brought the bloody robe to Israel and told him that Joseph had been devoured be some ferocious beast. Israel became extremely upset and mourned Joseph for many days, refusing to be comforted. (Genesis 37:12-36)

That's all for now. Nexgt time, we'll finish up with Jacob/Israel and discuss the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Until then, be well!