"...these empires rise and fall..."

 this  is where i spent my birthday this year...beginning my eighth decade

excitement this week...now we have vincent van trump to appreciate...or not...i listened to about 10 minutes of the candidates speech at the nominating circus...i was stunned by the contents of the speech...the man has not changed much..."ARGUMENTUM AD BACULUM"...old as human speech...well the democratic candidate got the sniffles and flew home and the republican candidate got part of his ear blown off and puts a bandage on it and keeps on keeping on...well as bill clinton is alleged to have said "strong and wrong beats right and weak"  

as for assassinations...since i spend much time within a stones throw of the US/Mexican border in the winter months i like to keep up with what is happening in that country...a mr. david frum who writes for the "atlantic" magazine says there is a "CRIMINAL INSURGENCY" happening in mexico...for instance...by april first this year 127 candidates for public office had been victims of political violence...24 dead candidates by the presidential election...82 candidates murdered...this country has made a serious mistake to let mexico become a narco empire...and dozens of environmental activists have been murdered...

i listened to e.musk talking about his business relationship with china...he respects the chinese for their being smart and industrious...i watch all of the "little chinese everywhere" blog...i was told it was "propaganda"...perhaps it is not showing all of the country...but that is why the VERY RESTRICTIVE government lets her produce her blog...she has a Ph,D in "geographic tourism" which she got at a university in switzerland so she  can speak with authority about much of what she shows in the various countries she visits ...i do not see any litter in the streets...maybe they pick it all up for the video...probably not..but one can see how there are people living everywhere...which is probably why she calls it what she does...i was somewhat amazed at a short encounter she had in tibet with some small children who showed her some cute songs and hand motions...she asked if they learned that in school and they said they had no school in their village...they learned it on TIC TOK...amazing!...i read that 600 million chinese citizens live on $137 a month! i also read a good article (i think in the new yorker magazine} about the chinese fishing fleet...several thousand fishing ships which pretty much scour every part of the world for fish...legal or not...using abusive treatment of their sailors...many of whom are north korean almost slaves...(i spent my 40th birthday being worked 20 hours a days on a swedish owned salmon processor in alaska)....no thanks...i looked at some crawfish tails in the walmart freezer and the chinese produced tails (called boudreaux's) were nearly half the price of the louisiana produced tails...i have done commercial crawfishing and it ain't no joke...tough work...it would be helpful if there was more tariffs on the chinese tails so the USA product could compete...

read an article in audubon magazine about a guy who could no longer hear the birds as well as when he was younger so he went to a fellow who built electronic audio devices and they made a device which would boost the notes that he could no longer hear...he was delighted to regain that lost birdsong...the engineers name was harald bode...whom i looked up...which led to john schneider who plays "micro-tonal" guitars and that led to an aussi band called "KING GIZZARD" who has a micro-tonal guitar player in their band and that led to "KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD" which was played at KEXP radio station...very good tunes

 

"...those empires rise and fall not because of anonymous social and economic forces but because of individual decisions by individual leaders..." prof. j. rufus  fears