The response of the people of Buffalo, NY to the recent deadly blizzard has been absolutely awesome. It is reminiscent of the response to the deadly shooting last May. People are helping each other, buying each other food and supplies, and even taking people into their homes.
This is amazing. I have never been more impressed with Buffalo. I do visits all over the world on this blog but these are my people.
Last week we visited Pakistan's two southern provinces, Sindh and Balochistan. The remaining two provinces are Punjab and the Northwest Frontier. The Northwest Frontier province has been renamed Khyber Pakhunkhwa.
I would like to express profound sympathy to Buffalo.
We know that the city of Buffalo, NY gets snow. Being at a latitude that gets cold in winter, Buffalo gets large-scale storms on the national or continental scale.
Buffalo also gets what is known as "Lake-Effect" snow. Most of the really heavy snowfalls are Lake-Effect.
The prevailing wind at this latitude is from the west. Lake Erie is an elongated member of the Great Lakes, aligned mostly east-west, and Buffalo just happens to be at the eastern end of it. What this means is that the prevailing westerly wind passes over the long length of Lake Erie before reaching Buffalo.
Water has a high heat capacity, meaning that it can hold a lot of heat and so requires time to cool. More water evaporates when the water is warm. Air can hold a certain amount of water vapor but warm air can hold more than cold air.
Lake-Effect snow usually occurs in the autumn and early winter. If it suddenly gets cold the air gets cold before the water, since water has a higher heat capacity. As the west wind crosses the length of Lake Erie the water is still warm but the cold air can't hold the water vapor for as long as warm air could. So what happens is that much of the water vapor captured from Lake Erie gets dumped on Buffalo as snow.
Aside from this Lake-Effect snow Buffalo is also vulnerable to some unique snow events. These can produce the greatest and most destructive blizzards of all.
The first that comes to mind is the one that started in late January of 1977, the fabled "Blizzard of "77" that killed nearly thirty people. What happened is that Lake Erie is shallow. It is the only one of the Great Lakes that freezes over because deeper lakes can hold more heat, remember water's high heat capacity. If it gets cold enough for Lake Erie to freeze over the Lake Effect Snow ceases because water is no longer evaporating from the lake.
In the winter of 1976-77 Lake Erie froze over early. There was heavy snow after this, not Lake-Effect snow but from a large-scale blizzard. The snow piled up on the frozen lake. What happened next is that gale-force winds from the southwest picked up the snow from the frozen lake and deposited it across western New York and southern Ontario. Not only was there this heavy snow but there was also a lot of snow already on the ground. To make it even more destructive the wind was extremely cold. Many people froze to death, or suffocated, in their cars when they were stuck and then buried by snow.
If that was all it would have been bad enough, but it wasn't. When the snow melted in the spring the excess water, hindered from running off by a highway that had been built, caused the chemicals to emerge from below ground in what became known as the Love Canal.
This week Buffalo had the "Blizzard of '22", which has killed even more people than in 1977. This was also a unique snow event. Much of the U.S. and Canada were suffering from heavy snow and frigid temperatures. What happened this time in Buffalo is that it had a large-scale storm and Lake-Effect Snow at the same time, that was why the snow was so heavily concentrated in Buffalo.
It had only just been warm in Buffalo and the water of Lake Erie was still warm, meaning that water was evaporating from it. The polar region is usually surrounded by a jet stream, which keeps the warmer and cold air separate. But global warming has weakened the jet stream so that polar air can move south. This brings a very cold spell, known as a "Polar Vortex". Meanwhile warmer air is moving into the polar region and helping to melt the ice caps.
Whenever cold air pushes warm air, or vice-versa, a cold or a warm front, there tends to be storms and precipitation. This is simply because cold air cannot hold as much water vapor as warm air and so the warm air must drop some of it's water when it comes in contact with the cold air. This is how the Polar Vortex created the large-scale storm across the U.S. and Canada.
When this storm with very cold air crossed the length of Lake Erie, with the prevailing west wind, water was still evaporating from the lake. This gave Buffalo a Lake-Effect snowstorm besides the snow that was falling in the large-scale storm system. That was why this was a unique snow event in Buffalo. It was actually two storms in one.
As for which storm was worse the "Blizzard of '22" has killed more people but in 1977, I was 16 years old, I remember the bodies of birds in the spring that had frozen in the blizzard. I don't think that "'22" had that kind of extended cold. As a general rule if birds didn't know how to survive in the cold then they wouldn't be here.
Another unique snow event in Buffalo happened in the Autumn of 2006. Snow usually doesn't start until after the leaves have fallen from the trees. What happened in 2006 is that there was heavy snow very early, when the leaves were still on the trees. This caused the trees to hold onto the snow and the weight of the snow caused the branches to break. The night was filled with the sound of branches snapping and a vast number of trees in the Buffalo area were destroyed.
I live within sight of a really tall smokestack and I habitually glance at it for an idea of what the weather will be like. Obviously when the wind is from the north it will be colder and when it is from the south it will be warmer, but usually without a great change in weather. The prevailing wind at this latitude is from the west and a west wind may bring a change in weather, although usually without a great change in temperature.
What I notice is that when there is something major and large-scale going on in the weather, it may reverse the prevailing wind. This is especially true for remnants of hurricanes along America's east coast which show up here, near Buffalo, as an east wind. Recently there was a major storm system across America's south. Although everything was calm here I noticed that it temporarily reversed the prevailing wind.
The name of Pakistan means "Land of the Pure". It is composed of four provinces. Today we will visit the southern two, Sindh and Balochistan.
There have been two visits to Pakistan on this blog. " Where India Began", August 2022, was about the Indus River Valley civilizations in ancient times. Then there was "Lahore And The Mughals", November 2022..png)
2023 will be the year that India will become the most populous nation in the world. India goes far back into ancient times. Let's have a look at possible historic connections between the West and India.
HINDUISM AND ANCIENT EGYPT
I consider Egypt to be the greatest of ancient civilizations. This is due not only to the artifacts and monuments left by the ancient Egyptians, but to the sheer longevity of the civilization. Assyria, Babylon and Persia all reached a peak that was as great as that of Egypt. But none of these lasted very long as a great power.
In later days, ancient Greece appeared suddenly as a brilliant light on the world, but then faded just as quickly. Even as widespread as Rome was, it lasted only a few centuries as a great power.
Egypt, in contrast, was a truly great kingdom for maybe two thousand years. A major part of the reason was certainly it's somewhat protected location and the reliability of the Nile River.
My belief is that Hinduism may well be a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt. The similarities, allowing for change over time, are just too close and numerous. Hinduism is a very old religion that arose in India at the time that Egypt was a thriving civilization. Unlike every other major religion, Hinduism cannot be traced to any one founder or event.
The people in Egypt in the days of the pharoahs did not seem to believe in the personal reincarnation that is so central to Hinduism. But in the clear skies of Egypt, they took note of the "death" of celestial bodies in the western sky every evening and their "rebirth" in the eastern sky. The Egyptians considered the constellations in the vicinity of the north star to be "immortal" because they never set below the horizon.
Egypt's world-famous pyramids, over a hundred of them, are always located west of the Nile River, except for one. Pyramids are tombs and west is where the sun and stars set ( or die ) every evening. It seemed natural to the early Egyptians for west to represent death.
Just as in Hinduism, astrology had great importance to the ancient Egyptians. Consider the Sphinx, for example, a huge stone carving of the head of a woman on the body of a lion. The woman represents the constellation Virgo as the beginning of the zodiac and the lion represents Leo as it's end. Both religions consist of numerous deities, the Egyptian Ra, the sun god, has a role similar to the Hindu Vishnu.
The most important physical feature of Egypt is the Nile River. Without it, all of Egypt would be a barren desert. The Nile carried fertile soil upstream and deposited it on it's banks and it's Mediterranean delta. The ancient Egyptians clearly recognized the importance of the Nile and worshipped the river itself as a god.
To Hindus, it is the Ganges which is a holy river in a very similar way. Pilgrimage to Benares, which is situated on the river, and bathing in the Ganges is a sacred Hindu ritual. In Hinduism, the Ganges is a goddess just as the Nile was a god to the ancient Egyptians.
Cows are very important to Hindus today and are actually considered as gods. In ancient Egypt cows were also very important. Gods were sometimes in the form of cows. Probably the best-known example is Hesat.
I am not the first person to think of this. You can read in detail about the many similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and Hinduism by doing a Google search for "Ancient Egypt Hinduism".
The many close similarities are there and the timeframe is right, the next question is how the religion got from Egypt to India. For one thing, there were trade routes all over the Middle East and Near East in ancient times.
In the early 1970s, there was a project and then a movie made about it called "The Ra Expedition". This was the construction of a boat from papyrus reeds, following the plan of such a boat from ancient Egypt. The boat was sailed and, on the second attempt, it made it across the Atlantic Ocean. This proved that the ancient Egyptians could definitely have accomplished such a feat, and they did indeed have a fleet of ships in the Red Sea about 2,000 BC.
If such a boat had sailed from Egypt southward on the Red Sea, the ocean currents could have carried it from there straight to the west coast of India. My claim is that the evidence presented here makes it a better than even probability that modern Hinduism is a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt, whether it was brought to India by land or by sea.
THE AMAZING STORY OF ABRAHAM
Here is something about the world that is already known, but not widely-known. Everyone should know about this.
There are, broadly speaking, two main classifications of religion in the world.
There are the western, or monotheistic, religions of Judaism, Christianity and, Islam. Monotheistic means to be based on one god. The original monotheistic religion was Judaism, and Christianity and Islam sprang from that.
Then there are the eastern religions, the major ones being Hinduism and Buddhism. Hinduism came first and Buddhism sprang from that.
These are not the only religions but the others are minor, in the number of adherents, by comparison. Jainism is another eastern religion. Sikhism is a kind of a bridge between the eastern and western religions. Confucianism is more of a philosophy than a religion.
The predominant religion greatly affects the nature of the society in which it operates. We saw in the posting on this blog, "Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East", April 2016, how the concept of the nation differs in the two halves of the world.
In the North And East, the nations have tended to stay the same since ancient times. But in the South And West, new nations have tended to come into being with new ideas.
The two halves of the world are based on their predominant religions. The South And West is based primarily on the monotheistic religions and the North And East is based primarily on the eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
The two main families of religions, the monotheistic and the eastern, are generally considered as polar opposites. The monotheistic religions focus on salvation by a personal God. The eastern religions typically focus on seeking enlightenment through a fundamental cosmic principle and reincarnation.
The Jews began with a man named Abraham. He had faith that there was only one God, not the multitude of gods typically worshipped by people of the time. Abraham's God was an almighty and all-powerful God. Abraham's God led him from a place called Haran, probably in modern Iraq, to the Jews' Promised Land, which would become the nation of Israel.
Israel was divided into twelve tribes. The Israelites became known as Jews for the tribe of Judah, which became the predominant tribe.
Before Christianity and Islam the Jews, in the nation of Israel, were first delivered from bondage by God. Later they were disciplined by two exiles from their homeland. The first exile was the permanent exile of the ten tribes of the northern nation of Israel, after the twelve tribes had split into the two nations of Israel and Judah. These ten tribes were scattered around the Assyrian Empire, and have since been known as the Ten Lost Tribes.
The second exile was the temporary exile of the remaining nation of Judah to Babylon. The Jews' original Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians and the Jews built the so-called Second Temple in it's place after they were allowed to return from Babylon, after it had been conquered by the Persian Empire.
But not all of the Jews returned to their homeland. Some were doing quite well in Babylon and chose to stay. The result was a thriving Jewish community that lasted from Babylon until modern times. Most of these Iraqi Jews were finally brought to Israel in the 1950s, but the community in Babylon, that declined to return from the exile, played a prominent role in Jewish history.
Some Jews from places like Babylon and Syria migrated eastward to Iran and India, where there were thriving Jewish communities.
There were also ancient Jewish communities, that survived into modern times, in Yemen and Ethiopia. Most were eventually brought back to the modern nation of Israel by airlift.
Judaism was the original of the western monotheistic religions. Christianity is the belief that Jesus was the Jews' long-awaited messiah. Islam acknowledges Jesus and the prophets of Judaism, but claims that Muhammad restored their true message, which had been mistranslated and distorted, and was the "seal" of the prophets.
Just as the original religion of the western, or monotheistic, religions was Judaism, the original eastern religion was Hinduism. Buddhism later sprang from Hinduism. We do not think of India today as a Buddhist country but the wheel symbol on the Indian flag is actually a Buddhist symbol, because Buddhism did originate in India.
Hinduism is polytheistic, meaning many gods, but centers on the universal cosmic principle, known as Brahman.
Hinduism, originating in India, used to be known for it's caste system. The highest caste was of Hindu priests and religious figures, and was known as the Brahmins.
The universal cosmic principle is called Brahman. It's priestly caste are called Brahmins.
There is a writing script that appeared in northern India several centuries before the time of Christ. It is known as the Brahmic Script. It is very important because almost all of the later writing scripts in India are descended from it.
According to the Wikipedia article on "Brahmic Script", it is generally believed to be of Semitic origin. Semitic means the people of the Middle East, including the Jews. We saw above that Jews had migrated eastward to India from Babylon, Syria and, Persia.
Having related words from the same root has been seen before in India. Indian civilization emerged around the Indus River, in what is now Pakistan. The predominant religion in India is Hinduism. Notice the similarity of the words "Indus", "India" and, "Hindu".
Now, what do you notice here?
The words "Brahman" and "Brahmin", which are so important to religion in India, and the word "Brahmic", which is so important to writing in India, is very similar to the name of Abraham. The Brahmic Script, which is of Semitic origin, seems to have been named for Abraham.
Abraham's God was the one all-powerful and almighty God. The western monotheistic religions begin with Abraham. Brahman is the Hindu concept of the universal cosmic principle. The eastern religions begin with Hinduism.
Doesn't it seem that Brahman was named for Abraham? The migrating Jews brought the script to India and the Jews were the people of Abraham.
I am not the first person to notice this but I do think it deserves more attention. The eastern and western religions look like polar opposites but this appears to be a fundamental link between them.
THE ILIAD AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Considering the other likely ancient connections between India and the Middle East there is one more that I can't help noticing. I wonder if there could be a connection between the Iliad, the famous epic of ancient Greece, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scriptures.
The Iliad certainly came first. Several centuries after the Iliad was written came Alexander the Great. What is interesting is that Alexander conquered as far east as India. Alexander's forces, having some learned men with them, and India had a considerable effect on each other, and Alexander's foray took place right around the time that the Bhagavad Gita is believed to have been written.
The Iliad is about a short period of time in the Trojan War. The fabled Trojan War involves the Greek siege of a city named Troy. The King of Troy is given a giant horse on wheels as a gift. But there are Greek soldiers concealed inside the horse. They emerge at night, open the gates of the city, and the city falls to the Greeks. The term "Trojan Horse" has been in use ever since, today in computer malware.
There has long been mixed opinion about whether the Trojan War actually happened. It could have literally happened, it could be the consolidation of events in other battles, or it could be pure legend. Evidence has been found that there was a city named Troy, although not that this siege of it happened.
The main epic of the Bhagavad Gita has a striking similarity to the Iliad. The Bhagavad Gita is about a relatively brief period of the main battle of a great war. Like the Iliad it contains all kinds of moral lessons and interactions with gods. Also like the Iliad it is written in the form of an epic poem.
Also very interesting is the parallel correspondence between the Odyssey, of ancient Greece, and the Ramayana, of India. The Odyssey is related to the Iliad, both believed to be written by Homer. While the Iliad is about the Trojan War the Odyssey is about the adventures of a hero, Odysseus, on his long journey home after the war.
Just as the Odyssey related to the Iliad in Greece so the Ramayana related to the Mahabharata in India, and the Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata.
Similar in tone to the Odyssey the Ramayana is also about adventures on a long journey. A prince, Rama, his wife, Sita, and his brother, Lakshmana, are exiled to the forests. While Odysseus journeys across Greece, the prince journeys across India.
The journey of Odysseus lasts ten years, the journey of Rama lasts fourteen years. Like Odysseus Rama was a king that eventually arrived home. Odysseus arrived home in Ithaca, in the far western extent of Greece. Rama arrived home in Ayodha, in the far northern extent of India.
The campaign of Alexander into India is well-known. This doesn't mean that there could not have been earlier contacts that have since been forgotten or were never so widely-known.
INDIA AND ZERO
Have you ever noticed the bizarre curve in the progress of technology in human history? A lifetime is really too short to notice but technical progress since the beginning of civilization has been somewhat like a turtle morphing into a very fast rabbit for the last 1/15 or so of a race. If we consider civilization as having begun about 7,000 years ago, almost all of our technical progress, relatively speaking, since then has been in the last 350 years.
There has been intermittent progress throughout civilization such as the development of writing, alphabets, geometry, cement and, flying buttresses. However, none of these steps had much effect on the daily life of the average person. In contrast, the last three and a half centuries have been incredibly different.
Before this, humans were adept at agriculture, building, medicine, navigation, mining, measurement, writing, calendars and, time-keeping. The one thing that was missing was machines. Anything that human beings made before 350 years ago that could be described as a machine was very rudimentary. When the Industrial Revolution came, it was based on machines and affected all other areas of progress.
But why did human history unfold like this? I believe that the Reformation opened the psychological door to the Industrial Revolution but did not provide the vehicle. The newly-invented printing press spread the Industrial Revolution and promoted mass-education but I do not believe that it was the cause of it. National rivalry spurred competition but I do not believe that it caused the such progress either.
My conclusion is that it was simple arithmetic that turned out to be revolutionary. Geometry, which is vital to the construction of complex buildings, was quite advanced in ancient times. In fact, it was much more advanced that arithmetic.
It struck me one day that there are no complex calculations discussed or mentioned in the Bible. The most complex calculation seems to be 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. In contrast, the construction of the temple is told in geometric detail and plumbs and surveying is also discussed in the Bible.
The Industrial Revolution actually began with a gradual numbers revolution and when that became embedded in our thinking, the machines naturally followed. People could count since prehistoric times either with their fingers or piles of stones. A variety of abaci (the plural of abacus is abaci) and counting boards have been in use for thousands of years.
What I have concluded that changed the course of history is the concept of zero. When the importance of zero is fully grasped, very complex calculations can be done on paper. Without using zero, we are limited to the relatively simple calculations that can be done with abaci and counting boards. It is not necessary to understand the importance of zero in order to use these simple devices but it is to do complex calculations on paper.
Geometry became advanced long before arithmetic because it did not require understanding of the importance of zero. The building of elaborate structures requires geometry but only relatively simple arithmetical calculations because buildings do not have moving parts. The planning of machines, in contrast, require complex calculations with numbers and this could not be done in ancient times.
Have you ever noticed the similarity between an addition or multiplication problem and the operation of machines involving wheels or pistons? Not only did the ability to do complex calculations make the development of machines possible, those early machines even resemble the operation of an arithmetic problem as the operation moves from one column to the next. The Arabs seem to have introduced the idea of zero to Europe but merchants brought it to them from India.
INDIA AND CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Here is something that has really got to be written, that everyone has got to know about, but that seems to have been forgotten.
Columbus Day is the holiday commemorating the landing of Christopher Columbus in the western hemisphere in 1492. This was not the first time that Europeans had landed in the western hemisphere but it was the landing of Columbus that established permanent contact between the two hemispheres.
Columbus correctly believed that the earth was spherical and was trying to reach the east by sailing westward. What happened is that he unexpectedly ran into the western hemisphere along the way.
Columbus was seeking India. He thought he had landed in India and referred to the native people where he had landed as "Indians". The native people of the western hemisphere are still called Indians today.
Columbus Day has become a controversial holiday. Whether the landing of Columbus is something to be celebrated, or to be mourned, depends on one's point of view. It opened up a new world but the native people of the western hemisphere suffered tremendously.
In all of the controversy over Columbus Day, between those of white European and native Indian backgrounds, the thing that gets almost completely forgotten about Columbus Day is that the voyage was motivated by India, and thus without India the western hemisphere would never have developed as it did.
Sooner or later some other ship would certainly have come across the western hemisphere, but the whole purpose, at the time, of finding a shorter route to the east was to reach India. The west had long known about India because of trade along the Silk Road. It may be that the rise of the Ottomans, in the eastern Mediterranean, prompted the search for another route to the east.
But the reason for this great effort to reach the east was India. Spain, having finally gained complete independence from Moorish control, commissioned Columbus to try to reach the east, specifically India, by sailing westward. Portugal took the opposite approach and sailed around southern Africa, with Vasco da Gama succeeding in reaching India.
So while it was Portugal that reached the objective of India, Spain established contact with the previously-unknown western hemisphere. Some time later, a Portuguese ship on the way around southern Africa would happen to reach the coast of Brazil, which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese today. It is not quite certain whether the Portuguese discovery of Brazil was accidental or not.
Columbus was not on a colonizing journey, even though it was his voyage that initiated the Age of Imperialism. He had only three ships and was not heavily armed. Columbus was on a mission to explore and trade.
But what could India possibly have that was so valuable, that made it so important for western Europeans to reach it? Nations commissioned voyages and sailors risked their lives to reach a nation on the opposite side of the world. The question is "why"?
It couldn't possibly be gold, or other minerals. There was gold to be found in places all over the world and India is no richer in minerals than many other places.
There is one simple and obvious answer what India had to offer that started a rush to reach the opposite side of the world, that drastically changed the world in the process. It was India's food, specifically spices.
This means that Indian food is the reason the nations of North and South America are what they are today.
The two continents could have been named for curry, North and South Curry. America could have been named for biryani the United States of Biryani.
Thanksgiving, the following month after Columbus Day, is celebrated with a feast centering around turkey. It parallels Columbus Day in that it is a harvest festival celebrating the first permanent English settlement in what is now the U.S.
But the turkey is a myth that was invented much later. I think it would make more sense to remember the reason for Columbus' voyage that so changed the world and to celebrate Columbus Day, and especially Thanksgiving, with a feast of Indian food. I celebrate Thanksgiving with chapati, rather than with turkey.
HAS INDIA ENTERED ANOTHER GOLDEN AGE?
India is an ancient country that has had it's share of past "golden ages".
The Mauryan Empire ruled in India during the Fourth and Third Centuries B.C. This was the beginning of India's periodic golden ages. The best-known emperor of the time was Chandragupta I. We don't think of India as a Buddhist country today but Buddhism actually began there and got a major boost when it was embraced by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.
The time period centered around the Fourth and Fifth Centuries was the time of the Gupta Empire in India. One of it's emperors took the name of Chandragupta II. This was a great golden age that, among other things, brought the numerals that we use today, the 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Possibly the most important invention ever is the concept of zero. You may have noticed that there are no complex calculations in ancient times involving numbers, although there is with geometry. There were abacus, and various counting devices, but complex calculations with numbers are impossible without understanding the importance of zero.
A thousand years ago, around the beginning of the Second Millennium, India had the Chola Empire. This was another golden age.
Today there are former Hindu temples across southeast Asia. The great temple of Angkor Wat, which is on the Cambodian flag, was built as a Hindu temple. We have visited My Son, the ruins of a Hindu temple in Vietnam.
Hinduism on the Indonesian island of Bali is a legacy of India's far-reaching influence during it's golden ages. The vast majority of the population of this densely-populated and much-visited island are Hindu by religion. Southeast Asia is often referred to as "Indochina" because it was influenced by both India and China.
India is a diverse country and it's golden ages are not associated with any one religion. The Mauryan Empire, although not originally Buddhist, is associated with spreading Buddhism. The Gupta and Chola Empires were Hindu. The remainder of the Second Millennium saw two more golden ages in India, first the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire. Both were Moslem and both saw India producing a very significant share of global wealth.
India's Mughal Empire produced what might be the most famous building in the world, the Taj Mahal.
Images from Google Street View
We can see that India's golden ages happen almost on a regular schedule, about every four hundred years. History is a powerful force and what that means is that the next golden age should be beginning right about now.
There is no announcement when a golden age begins. They don't start and end suddenly. Every king, emperor and politician would like to promote his reign as a golden age. A golden age may not even be recognized at the time, but by historians long after.
There is plenty of reason to believe that India has already entered another golden age. 2023 is the year that India will become the most populous nation in the world. Indians abroad often enter politics. At the time of this writing the prime ministers of both Britain and Ireland are of Indian descent. Jagmeet Singh is the leader of Canada's NDP party, and could potentially be prime minister. Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, ran for U.S. President. Nikki Haley has announced her candidacy for 2024. Part of the New Indian Empire is not conquest but politicians in other countries, even though their allegiance is not to India.
Another part of the New Indian Empire is space. Missions to Mars have a high casualty rate and India is the first nation to launch a successful Mars mission on it's first attempt. I have already suggested here that the region around the moon's south pole could be named "New India" because of the country's exploration there.
If we always seem to be hearing about India and Indians it could be because it's next golden age is arriving right on schedule.
Inflation is too high but yet there are plenty of jobs available, in fact many companies cannot find enough workers. Maybe these too facts are actually related. So much of what happens is often a matter of simple demographics.
What is happening is that the Baby Boomers are retiring, and many need medical care. The Baby Boomers are the demographic bulge in the population brought by children being born to returning veterans of the Second World War. Baby Boomers are generally defined as having been born from 1946 to 1964.
The enduring popularity of Rock Music is because it is the anthem of the Baby Boomers. The deadliness of the Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed people in their prime, can be easily seen in how we do not see a "baby boom" after the First World War, as we do after the Second World War. It is because the Spanish Flu killed so many people in their prime.
What the retirement, and increasing medical requirements as they age, of the Baby Boomers has done is to make the economy, in effect, into more of a service economy. The fundamental basis of the economy is production but as time goes on, and production becomes more efficient, fewer of the workers are actually producing anything tangible.
But yet their spending is needed to keep the economy going. So what happens is that service jobs are created. These are jobs that provide some useful service but do not manufacture anything tangible.
The basis of the economy remains actual production. So the new service jobs must be carried on the actual production jobs, in terms of wages. This is why countries with more of a service economy have higher both wages and prices that do more of actually making things.
Remember my tier of workers. Those who actually make things come first, and the others "ride" on them.
1) Those who make things
2) Those who fix things
3) Those who move things
4) Those who run things
The increase in jobs taking care of Baby Boomers is making the economy into more of a service economy, because it is not actually producing anything. But their wages have to "ride" on those that are producing things. This drives up wages and, since there is not a corresponding increase in production, it must also drive up prices.
This is the driving force behind the inflation of today. There is a more detailed explanation in "The Wage And Price Disparity", on the World and Economics Blog. Here is a link to it:
www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/08/wage-and-price-disparity_18.html?m=0
How about something especially for Toronto-area readers today? It has been five years since the mysterious murders of the very wealthy Barry and Honey Sherman, in their home. Let me present my view on it. All that I know about this is what I have read in the news.
Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered together at home in Toronto, after 9 P.M. The murder was completely bizarre. They had both been strangled and were seated, and supported by belts, on a railing by their basement swimming pool. The underwater lights in the pool were found on. All other lights in the house were off. There was no sign that the house had been burglarized or that anything had been stolen.
The first theory was that it was a murder-suicide. But no one around them had seen significant tension in their marriage, and they had all kinds of upcoming plans and travels. Barry was 75 years old and not in particularly good health. It seemed physically impossible that he could have done this to his wife, and then to himself. A murder-suicide would have been much simpler and easier with a gun.
The next theory was, of course, that the murder had to do with their wealth. Whenever a wealthy person is murdered the first suspects are anyone who had anything to gain from it. Their children had money of their own. Anyway, Barry Sherman was 75 years old and it just wouldn't make sense for anyone who was set to inherit his wealth to kill him. He would die someday anyway.
The next theory after that was any enemies that they may have had. Despite their philanthropy not everyone liked Barry and Honey Sherman. The pharmaceutical industry is litigious. Corporate rivalries, lawsuits and possible family feuds were investigated. But nothing at all came out of it that would provide a suspect in their murders.
At the time of the murders the Shermans were trying to sell their home. It was not because of financial difficulties, they were planning to build an even more extravagant home. While Barry and Honey were working at their company a realtor was showing potential buyers around the house. There had been quite a few showings but Barry Sherman had expressed disappointment with the amounts offered.
On the night of the murder, December 13, 2017, Barry Sherman, who reportedly usually stayed at the company until 11 P.M., was home by 9. Honey also arrived early at home separately. In the usually busy house there was nothing going on, and no-one else around that night.
Barry Sherman was a hard-driving and penny-pinching businessman. In the real estate industry a realtor gets a significant cut of the sale price as a commission. It is not unheard of for a potential buyer who has been shown the house to secretly contact the homeowner to make a deal, leaving out the realtor. It is not allowed but it does happen.
Could Barry and Honey have uncharacteristically gone home early, on the night that they would be murdered with no one else around, because they were doing something that they didn't want anyone to know about?
The evidence is that they were surprised when they separately entered the house. The killers were inside waiting for them. The alarm system had been turned off. The killers were clearly familiar with the house.
If the killers weren't already inside they could have been hiding by the door. But that would take the risk of being seen and they were more likely already inside.
What I find very interesting is that, when Barry Sherman was surprised by the killers at his door, he dropped some paperwork that was found later, as well as his winter gloves. The paperwork was a copy of the real estate appraisal on the value of the home.
Why would they be coming home uncharacteristically early, also uncharacteristically with no one else around, and bringing a copy of the real estate appraisal with him, when his real estate dealings had always taken place in his office at his company?
Could it be that someone who had been shown the home had secretly contacted him about making a deal, without the realtor? The real motive was to murder them. That would explain how the killers were obviously familiar with the house. While in the house with the realtor they may have managed to shut off the alarm system and set up a way to enter later.
Just a thought-while they were being shown the house someone working with the killers could have called the realtor and distracted her for several minutes while one of the killers shut off the alarm system and set up some way to enter later.
It is virtually certain that there was more than one killer in the house. That is where the anonymous but famous "Walking Man" comes in, walking with the unusual gait of kicking up his right foot as he walks. He was captured by home security cameras walking quickly along the sidewalk right around the time that Barry Sherman arrived home.
He was probably working with the killers but wasn't there when the killings took place. This was done to make the police think that it was a single killer. The gait is completely faked and done because artificial intelligence can recognize a person by the way they walk.
Another false clue, just in case the "Walking Man" didn't get noticed was a man who was captured by a security camera at the house across the street from the Sherman home. On the day of the murders, earlier in the day, this man parked in front of the Sherman home and, apparently when no one was home, walked to the house and back to his car three separate times, before driving away.
I would look carefully at all the people who were shown the home by the realtor.
The murders were done for some bizarre reason that makes no sense to anyone but the killers. Clearly they wanted the bodies to be found. Nothing was apparently stolen and no one seemed to gain anything from it. Both kept somewhat regular schedules and it would have been far easier to shoot or abduct them elsewhere.
A quick Google search would have told the killers that the couple had business rivalries, had been involved in lawsuits, and had potential enemies. Not to mention family members that would inherit their wealth. This would shield the killers from suspicion since they didn't seem to gain anything material from the murders.
Chungking is the major city on the east side of the Szechwan, or Sichuan, Basin. The major city on the west side of the basin is Chengdu. Like so many other Chinese cities that we have seen, Chengdu is a very ancient city that is today a center of science and high technology.
I see the Szechwan, or Sichuan, Basin as being analogous to Switzerland in Europe. Isolated by mountains, the people have no choice but to be smart and industrious, and end up being more prosperous than they would have been otherwise. Switzerland had to produce compact goods that could be exported over the mountains and became known for the clocks and watches and other precision instruments, and now this vast basin of far inland China is a center of high technology in a similar way. The Three Gorges Dam, which we saw in our visit to Wuhan so I won't go over it again, provides inexpensive electricity and this has made this basin into what used to be the global center of Bitcoin mining.OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Now that Covid has mostly passed millions of people are visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City. Remember what we saw in the compound posting, "The Aztec Prophecy", April 2018. That posting is about more than "The Aztec Prophecy". The first five sections are about "The Aztec Prophecy".
The Aztecs were very special to God. They had the prophecy that they would see an eagle, perched on a cactus, devouring a snake. That was where they were to build their capital city, and the result was the city of Tenochtitlan. This prophecy is on the Mexican flag.
But the Aztecs were at a lower level than they thought. They had the prophecy right but the snake in the prophecy was actually their chief god Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. The wings of the eagle resemble the sails of the ships by which the Spaniards would arrive.
The most important part of the prophecy is the cactus. The eagle is perched on the cactus but the snake isn't. The cactus represents the real God, the Spaniards had Christianity. The tilma (cloak) of Juan Diego was made of cactus fibers. It has been miraculously preserved, at the shrine, for nearly five hundred years. Plant fibers usually deteriorate fairly quickly.
This is absolutely amazing and now Our Lady of Guadalupe is by far the most visited Catholic shrine in the world, which is what God had planned all along.
CUSTODY OF LOCKERBIE BOMBER
One of the suspects in the bombing of the Pan Am jet that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 is in U.S. custody. The majority of people that were killed were American. Syracuse University, downstate from here, lost a lot of students.
A bomb, in luggage with a timer, is believed to have been put on a plane in Malta, it was transferred in Frankfurt and then onto the doomed plane in London. The bombers were eventually caught because, probably due to airline delays, the bomb exploded when the plane was over land, instead of over the ocean. This made a forensic investigation much easier.
I once went through Lockerbie on a train.
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Image from Google Street View
The bombing was purportedly done by Libyans to avenge the U.S. bombing of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in April 1986. This raid tends to get forgotten today, maybe because the catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl happened a few days later. But this 1986 U.S. air raid on Tripoli, done to avenge Moammar Gaddafi's alleged support of terrorism and the bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that was popular with U.S. military personnel, was quite interesting.
The U.S. bombed one of it's own former air bases. What is now the main airport of Tripoli was once Wheelus Air Force Base. The U.S. turned it back to Libya in 1970. When it was a U.S. Air Force base there was an entertainment crew on the base. One of it's members would later play the role of Reuben Kincaid on The Partridge Family.
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Image from Google Earth
The raid targeted the home of Moammar Gaddafi. It was long suspected that he had been forewarned shortly before the raid. It is now believed that the Prime Minister of Italy warned Gaddafi by telephone.
Much of the world condemned the U.S. air raid, although a lot of the condemnation seemed half-hearted. The vengeance sought by Moammar Gaddafi's government ultimately led to the bombing of this plane. But he also recruited an African-American street gang in Chicago to undertake terrorist activity against the U.S.
On the subject of the now-defunct airline, Pan-Am, the first public flight of the new Boeing 747 was made from New York to London early in 1970. The deadliest air accident, not including terrorism, was at Tenerife in 1977. A Pan-Am and a KLM (Dutch) plane collided at the fog-shrouded airport. Did you know that the Pan-Am plane that was involved in this collision is the same one that made the first 747 flight?
XI JINPING VISITS SAUDI ARABIA
In the recent posting, "Remembering Jimmy Carter" October 2022, we saw how international finance works. The U.S. took advantage of it's dominant position early in the postwar era to get the dollar widely accepted as the international reserve currency. The U.S. dollar still has momentum behind it.
You may notice that the currencies of countries like Britain and Canada are more subject to changes in value, relative to other currencies, than the U.S. dollar is. That is because the value of a currency, like the value of consumer goods, operates by supply and demand. Getting the U.S. dollar as the defacto reserve currency in the world ensured that there would be continuous demand for it, thus steadying it's value.
But there is nothing written in stone that the dollar has to be the reserve currency of the world. China is trying to get it's currency used more in international transactions. A step toward this was to get it's purchasing of Saudi oil in Yuan, rather than in dollars.
INDIA-CHINA BORDER CLASHES
Part of the trouble with these periodic border clashes between India and China is that the two countries don't play the same sports. India has more rivalry with Pakistan but at least the two countries play the same sports. India and Pakistan now act out their rivalry on the cricket pitch and there hasn't been another war between the two in over fifty years, after previously having three wars within 25 years.
Did anyone notice that, when Xi Jinping visited India in September 2014, India's Mars mission was arriving at it's destination at the same time as Xi Jinping was arriving in India? Maybe that wasn't a coincidence. Just a reminder of how capable India's rockets are.
But have India and China ever thought that western powers might have an interest in planting discord between them because we don't want the two most populous countries to gang up on us?
I periodically collect postings of similar subject matter together into compound postings. They are of book-length or near-book-length. Here is an index of the compound postings, and a link to the posting:
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT HISTORY AND THE WORLD
"The House Of Holy Wisdom Where The Modern World Began" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-house-of-wisdom-where-modern-world.html?m=0
"America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2015/12/america-and-modern-world-explained-by_12.html?m=0
"Economics" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/11/economics.html?m=0
"How History Repeats Itself" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-history-repeats-itself.html?m=0
"The Meaning Of Freedom" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-meaning-of-freedom_1.html?m=0
"The Western Hemisphere" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-western-hemisphere.html?m=0
"Our Language" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/08/our-language.html?m=0
"Investigations" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/12/investigations.html?m=0
"India And The West" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/12/india-and-west.html?m=0
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY
"New Insight Into Bible Prophecy" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/10/new-insight-into-bible-prophecy.html?m=0
"The Aztec Prophecy" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/04/?m=0
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT SCIENCE
"Computer Science" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/07/computer-science.html?m=0
"Atomic Science" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/12/atomic-science.html?m=0
"Measurement" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/09/measurement.html?m=0
"A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-celebration-of-inverse-square-law.html?m=0
"Our Solar System" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/10/our-solar-system.html?m=0
"Mind-Bending Cosmology" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/05/mind-bending-cosmology.html?m=0
"The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-configuration-of-solar-system-made.html?m=0
"Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts From Space" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2014/11/orbital-and-escape-velocities-and.html?m=0
"In Appreciation Of Electrons" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/01/in-appreciation-of-electrons.html?m=0
"The Science Of Human Society" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-science-of-human-society.html?m=0
"The Moon" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-moon.html?m=0
This is now the most populous city, including the metropolitan area, in the world.
The three great river valleys, the Hwang Ho, the Yangtze and the Pearl, were not the only early centers of Chinese civilization. There was another center that was far inland, the Szechwan or Sichuan Basin, which is a relatively flat area that is surrounded by mountains. This basin is also drained by the Yangtze River.
One thing that the Szechwan or Sichuan Basin area is known for is it's especially spicy food. It is also this basin that led me to the theory on the geology blog, "The Story Of Planet Earth", about how so much of the topography of the earth's surface, both land and seafloor, is the result of magma emergence caused by the spin of the earth combined with shifts in the poles caused by the impacts of Continental Asteroids.China's history goes back about five thousand years and the present government is solidly rooted in that history. It is widely considered that Imperial China, with it's successive dynasties, came to an end in 1911. But a dynastic history that has been going on for thousands of years isn't going to just end suddenly like that.
China's dynasties are usually divided into Early, Middle and, Late Imperial China, with three successive dynasties each. We might call the era that China is in now "Post-Imperial", but the same rules will apply.
The first Post-Imperial "Dynasty" was the Nationalist Dynasty, from 1911 to 1949 and led by Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-Shek. The second Post-Imperial "Dynasty" is the present Communists, ruling since 1949.
What the present leadership has going for it is that in each of the first two imperial eras, Early and Middle Imperial China, the first dynasty was a rather brief one but was important in that it reunited the country after the collapse of the previous dynasty, thus bringing in a new era.
These previous dynasties were the Qin, from Early Imperial China, and the Sui, from Middle Imperial China. In Post-Imperial China these correspond to the Nationalists, who indeed dealt with the warlords and fragmentation that occurred after the end of the Qing Dynasty, in 1911.
The good news for the present Communist "Dynasty" is that the brief Qin and Sui Dynasties were followed by two of the most glorious periods in Chinese history. These are the Han Dynasty, of Early Imperial China, and the Tang Dynasty, of Middle Imperial China. The present Communist "Dynasty" corresponds to these glorious eras of the past.
So we are expecting great things from China.
Just an idea for China. There is an Eighteenth Century scroll painting called "Prosperous Suzhou", about the city by that name near Shanghai and Hangzhou. It shows daily life across the city. A scroll painting is the long-ago version of a movie. How about making it into a modern movie?
Again the capital city of China has moved so many times, I wonder if it will ever move again. Xian was the first capital, and also served as capital at other times since then. I remember, from when I was very young, the news of the discovery of the Terra Cotta Army that had been buried with the first emperor of Imperial China. How about Xian if the capital ever moves again?
Police in Germany arrested coup plotters across the country, before they had a chance to carry out their plans. The news described it as a "far right" would-be coup but the plan was actually to bring the country back under the control of the nobility. This would essentially restore the German monarchy, the Kaisers, that ruled from 1871 to 1919.
The plotters were allegedly going to seek assistance from Russia. Although the Kaisers and the Romanovs were on opposite sides in the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas were actually related.
This is an illustration of what I explained in the posting, "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire". The Holy Roman Empire was brought to an end, very early in the Nineteenth Century, by the conquests of Napoleon. But it was an order that lasted in Europe for a thousand years, so it must have had a long-term effect.
The Kaisers began their reign over a united Germany more than sixty years after the Holy Roman Empire had come to an end. But they were from the House of Hohenzollern, which had ruled Prussia before the country had been united. The House of Hohenzollern had been part of the ruling structure of the Holy Roman Empire. An order that lasted for a thousand years isn't going to just go away.
www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-far-reaching-legacy-of-holy-roman.html?m=0
It is not widely known just how the rule of the Kaisers ended. Here is a link to "The End Of The First World War":
www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-end-of-first-world-war.html?m=0
