God and State: King Henry VIII and Napoleon

In 1947, the highest court in our land, the Supreme Court, interpreted the 1st Amendment of the Constitution as creating a: "… wall of separation between church and state."  While this inexplicable decision has had mostly negative consequences within America, there is one bright side to the forced and legal separation of Church and State in our country, which is, when State power and Church power are combined into one solidified entity, the people are for a certainty, under the thumb of total despotism, with no recourse to either State or God for relief, as the State as God, holds not only all physical power over the servants of the State, but absolute spiritual power as well.

In history, there have been numerous empires, combining the power of Church and State as one, to which, two of the most intriguing examples are Napoleon Bonaparte and King Henry VIII.  In regards to France, the country's religion was Catholic, however, the power of the Pope was contained within the Papal State located in Italy, so that for any Emperor, in any country, there was going to be, as there was, an uneasiness between Church and State, especially when that Church has influence over the subjects of your empire, and in addition to that influence, that Church has representatives within your sovereign nation, and, as part of Church policy and purpose, was able to extract what could be considered to be "tribute" to the Church's coffers as well as having control of valued properties within France.  Thereby, when it came time for the coronation of Napoleon, at the Notre Dame Cathedral, Napoleon himself, conferred the crown upon himself, as opposed to the Pope doing so, signifying, that this Emperor, did not need bow to the spiritual authority of the Papal State.  Additionally, to drive home further the point, that Napoleon, as opposed to the Pope, had the force and military might to do as he wished, Napoleon, held Pope Pius VII prisoner for nearly five years.  This imprisoning of the Pope was not done so as to destroy Catholicism, or to abolish Catholicism, but to bend Catholicism to the purposes of the Emperor, so that in effect, the Papacy would be enthralled to Napoleon.

As for King Henry VIII, being unable to sire a male born child with his wife, Caroline, he desired to annul his marriage, but in order to do so, as a loyal subject and Defender of the Faith of the Holy Roman Church, he would have to get authorization for this annulment via the Pope, which did not occur.  This decision by the Pope, led to King Henry VIII in conjunction with his court, coming to a determination, that the ouster of Catholicism from England, would not only permit the King to divorce, but also would allow the redistribution of lands and properties owned and/or managed by the Catholic church and its representatives, to being replaced by favored court representatives.   Thereupon, King Henry VIII formally broke from the Catholic Church, declared himself instead to be head of the newly created Church of England, and thereby combined both Kingly as well as priestly powers into one hand. 

The lure of both earthly as well as being the authorized representative of Godly power is the type of combination that tyrants have turned to again and again, so that they, as opposed to the people, control both the physical, as well as the spiritual, and hence, leave no respite or sanctuary for their people to oppose their avarice.

Choices in Mortgages

The purchasing of a home and the mortgage financing that is part of this purchase, is for many people, the most important financial obligation that they will sign up for, ever.  This would imply quite strongly that whatever time that you devote to pursuing the purchase of a home and the financing that comes with it, should be extensive, comprehensive, and the terms of the deal should be carefully read, noted, and looked at.  The bottom line is when you are making a financial commitment for thirty years, for a home to which its value is often greater than your current net worth; you should really want to make sure that you know what you are doing.

The first issue, that many people have in buying a house, is that often the people that you are dealing with, don't actually have your best interests in mind, this doesn't necessarily mean that they are trying to rip you off, deceive you, or make for an overall miserable experience, but typically it is more that their interest is in seeing that the deal is done so that they can make their commission, or fee, or quota, and that pretty much this trumps all.  This means, that despite whatever sweet words that are spoken, ultimately the only person that really cares about your decision and commitment is you, because at the end of the day, you are the one that will have to live with the debt obligation, that could have severe negative consequences if things end up going horribly wrong.

In today's market while there are very straightforward loan packages, such as the 30-year fixed mortgage, and 15-year fixed mortgage, there are also many Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) that are offered too.  The good thing about a fixed mortgage is as the name implies, the rate is fixed for the duration of the mortgage, and therefore the payment amount each month is fixed for the duration of the loan, which is probably the best way to go for most people, especially with today's low rates.  However, banks like to offer ARMs, for a lot of reasons, one being that banks are in the business of making money, and if they guess wrong about mortgage rates, to which those rates go up appreciably, but have previously issued a lot of mortgages that are fixed and are now below current interest rates, than their portfolio will be devalued and they will lose money and perhaps be in significant financial difficulties.  One way, for banks to protect themselves from this is to offer an ARM mortgage, which typically readjusts once a year, after a set period of time, which allows the bank to raise your interest rate on your mortgage, if the index the mortgage is tied to, goes up. 

The real reason, though, that banks offer hybrid ARMs (a blending of fixed and adjustable) and ARMs and anything else which is "adjustable" or a "hybrid" is two-fold, one is that for some applicants it is the only way that they will be able to financially qualify to buy their house, meaning, that without a "below market" interest rate to begin with, you as a buyer, aren't qualified to purchase the home, which normally might be seen as a prudent warning flag.  Instead,  banks are good at easing any concern you might have of future payments, by trying to convince you that everything will be just fine, especially if you are only going to occupy the home for a few years, or, if not, that your income will surely go up over time, and so forth.  The second reason which really trumps all, is that an ARM is more profitable for a bank, particularly in regards to its fees, closing costs, loan origination, and points, to which the banks' overarching objective is to encourage you to ignore all the numbers that you see, except for that first initial payment, as if, that payment amount is permanently low and fixed, which it most assuredly is not.

Are we Soul or Body?

In America, we are fortunate, that we are given the freedom to believe or not to believe in any particular religious profession that we wish and this is the way that it should be.  Each of us should have the right to follow the faith or non-faith of our desires and that right is important to have, because the paths that each of us take of faith or not, are different, because we are each our own person.  Having said that, there is a fundamental world of difference between someone that believes that he is an immortal soul encased temporarily in a physical body on an earthly plane as compared to a person that doesn't believe he is anything other than a physical body that happens to have a mind that is able to think.

The issue with believing that you are only a physical being and nothing else is that if your belief is only in the physical, than your outlook specifically on life, your life, the meaning of life, and life and death, will, because of this belief, be diametrically different from he who believes that he is, above all, a soul.  The fact of the matter is, if your belief is that the physical is all that matters, than it is hard to find a reasonable justification for wasting both precious time and energy on matters that are not tangible to a physical being.  This means, as a body with a mind, you would be much more inclined to care specifically about physical pleasure and ego gratification, to the exclusion of most everything else. 

For those that believe only in the physical, when dear friends die, and they all die physical deaths, there are often tears of despair, as well as of love, of seeing one that once was so vibrant and whole, being laid to rest.  The death of a love one is very real, and should never be discounted, yet, if one understands that we are all souls, and not bodies, and that the very person that we loved and cared for so much still very much exists, but not in a material form, it makes for a dramatically different experience.   The physical body is mortal, that is its nature, and that nature, no matter how many surgeries, no matter how many pills, no matter how many machines are hooked up to that body, will, at the end of the day, expire.  The soul, which is what we really are, is immortal, which means there was never a time when it didn't exist, and there will never be a time when it will no longer exist. 

The conscious recognition that each of us is a soul enables one to have a different perspective on physical life, and subsequently to face physical death, with the courage, faith, and knowledge that we are not this body.  Additionally, those that recognize their immortality understand implicitly that their decisions matter, that the death of the physical body, does not stop the process that each of us has to make, which is that we do not die and go to heaven, but rather instead, that our life on earth is a proving ground in which through our actions, and through our choices, we grow our way to heaven.

American Road Rage

Most everyone while driving have at one time or another seen someone just totally lose it on the road, in which the driver perhaps rolled down their window to unleash a torrent of the most vindictive obscenities, or raised their fist in anger, or perhaps lifted up their middle finger in that notorious symbol of utter contempt, or even worse.  There are, in fact, some drivers that if they perceive that you have cut them off, or done something or other that triggers their wrath, will proceed to stalk your car down the road, perhaps even weaving in and out of traffic just to confront you, come side-to-side with you, or suddenly maneuver their car right in front of yours, so that you have to slam on the brakes.

The thing about driving is besides the fact that the vehicle that you are driving weighs on average about 4,000 pounds is that in any reasonably large city, once you get behind the wheel and outside of your place of residence, pretty much you as well as the other people that are driving around you are effectively, anonymous.  That is to say, you really don't know who is driving the car in front of you, to your side, behind you, and so forth, and you really typically don't actually care.  Additionally, there are the rules of the road, implicit and explicit, that you as a driver may feel must be obeyed, whereas someone else's interpretation may be diametrically quite different from yours and this can easily cause conflict, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.  Also, of course, there is the fear factor contained within driving, the actual knowledge that each and every day that people die or are seriously injured while driving, so that when you are cut off on the road, that fight or flight survival response is activated.  So too, there are people that step behind the wheel that are impatient to get to their destination, or have had a bad day, or need medication, or are lacking in good judgment, to which all of these may be valid contributing factors to their road skills or lack thereof.  That said, though, by far the biggest factor of road anger of them all, is the fact that you are unnamed, unknown, unknowable, and thereby effectively entitled to the most outrageous actions possible, since no one will ever be the wiser to them.

The thing about driving which is totally different than something like walking is that when you accidently bump into someone in the street, you  typically don't overreact, but normally apologies are offered by both sides, because you can see one another as fellow humans; so too, it's why people don't get especially bent out of shape when someone cuts into the line or appears to do so, at a given store, because you may not be sure for a certainty that what you believe has occurred, actually did occur and even if fairly certain, your reaction typically ranges from perhaps a few choice words, often muttered, or perhaps a polite and fair inquiry about what you saw, but almost never do you begin with absolute rage.  The difference between people to people, as opposed to car to car, is that there are societal expectations and rules that prevents us from going at each other's throat, especially when we really don’t know the other person, whereas inside our 4,000 pound behemoth of a car, we feel invincible, inviolable, never to be crossed, and ready to unleash our inner beast, knowing that if push comes to shove, that we can just drive ourselves out of trouble.

In short, road rage occurs because the circumstances of anonymity, the temporariness of the situation, and our ability to speed off into the night, makes it rather easy to have our say, to demonstratively display contempt, and feel triumphant in a certain, twisted way.

America: Surrounded by Peace but Always at War

America is a fortunate country, with the great expanse of the Atlantic ocean separating it far from England, which was a proximate reason as to why America was able to not only declare its independence from Great Britain, but also was victorious in its cause.  So too is the West Coast of America, protected from Asian machinations, to which the Pacific Ocean's great expanse, precluded Japan from attacking our mainland during World War II.  America shares its border on two sides, with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south, of which, America's relationship with each neighbor is not only very close and cordial, but beneficial to all parties.

America was last at war with Canada during the War of 1812, to which Canada at that time, acted as a proxy of Great Britain.  The war is generally considered to have ended in a draw, to which, neither side gained or lost any land with the upshot of the war being ultimately the demilitarization of the Canadian and the United States border skirmishes and the beginning of normalization for these two English speaking nations.  In regards to Mexico, the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 was a war in which defeated Mexico ultimately ceded to America huge swaths of its land, which ultimately made up all or part of the States of: Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, along with Mexico conceding Texas' independence and annexation to America, an independent war first begun in 1835.  Later, during Mexico's revolutionary period of 1910-1919, there were many skirmishes along the American and Mexico borders, and subsequently small battles between the two countries, before a lasting peace between these nations was initiated.

Yet, despite over two centuries of peace with Canada, and one century of peace with Mexico, the United States has a Defense budget of nearly $600 billion, to which the next closest nation in expenditures for Defense is China, a nation of more than one billion more people than America, and whose defense budget is still under $200 billion.  Neither nation contiguous to America is a threat to America, in fact, it can be stated, unequivocally, that American relations with its neighbors are about as good as they possibly could be, yet America spends billions upon billions of dollars on Defense, not really to protect itself domestically, but essentially to assert itself internationally and to be the sole dominant military power in the world. 

All of this Defense spending and constant military international presence throughout the world has meant that the United States has become endlessly engaged in skirmishes, battles, and wars, of one form or another, year after year after year.  President Washington in his Farewell Address of 1796, warned us to: "…steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…" and further that: "Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side….", yet these prescient warnings from the Founding Father of our nation are completely ignored today to the overall detriment of this great nation.

America is not Europe, America is not the Middle East, America is not the Far East, and further to the point, America is not located in Europe or the Middle East or the Far East, yet America behaves as if it does.  In actual fact, almost all of the war that America insists on involving itself in isn't really necessary, yet it is done as a matter of course, as a matter of policy, and sold to the public as if it is our patriotic duty to do so.  It isn't, it never was, it isn't right, and it's fundamentally at odds to what this great republic was meant to stand for, which is liberty and justice for all, and not for the establishment of an imperial empire.

To Serve and Protect--Private Police Force

Depending upon your race, creed, age, place of residence, and many other factors, your opinion or experience with police in all of their many functions may be diametrically different than someone else's.  The thing about police is that your interaction with them, voluntary or involuntary, can dramatically change your life within seconds, so that it is fair to say, all things being equal, your basic preference would be that in an interaction with a police officer, you would prefer that the officer demonstrated strength under pressure, respect, discretion, and calmness, as opposed to someone having a distinct proclivity to take serious action first, and then to maybe ask questions later.

The best police officers are officers that actually have taken the time to know the people on their beat, from all walks of life, and are fair, as well as reasonable and rational, but unfortunately, that type of service does not exist in most communities, which is unfortunate.  There are communities, though, typically very exclusive communities, often homogenous in racial characteristics, without apartment dwellings, rich, well off, educated, and isolated, that have set up covenants within their community for the security of their community.  These covenants allow the community to hire directly a "patrol" that is neither your basic security flunky patrol, nor police officers, sheriffs, nor other officers of the law.  Instead, the patrol of that community is typically made up of ex-law enforcement officers, retired or not, and possibly others that have a law enforcement background with all having the type of personality that works well with people of known privileged.

These patrols within the covenant laws have specific things that they are set up to do, which typically would be to handle he basic stuff: such as being first responders to resident calls, handling burglaries, collisions, housing alarm calls, other property crimes, and security checks.  Because the patrol is physically within the community, available 24/7, even if a resident was to call the sheriff, the patrol would respond first, with the sheriff coordinating with the patrol as need be, although no doubt, the covenant probably has written deep within its bylaws that the patrol works as a first responder for the sheriff, with the sheriff holding all legal and arresting authority.

The advantage of any community having its own patrol force that essentially behaves as its own resident police force is that that force will most definitely make it their duty and obligation to keep their constituents both happy as well as safe.  This means, that as a resident, if you have an issue or concern about a crime, potential crime, or incident, the patrol will both listen to you and respond well to you.  Additionally, and not too surprisingly, this also means that people that do not live within that community but are traveling through the community, will be monitored very closely, and those that don't have a valid reason to be in the community based on prima facie evidence such as having the wrong vehicle, or not a landscaper or construction worker or delivery person, and further that visual information of the occupants of suspected vehicle seem non-congruent to the community will not be given a free pass throughout the community without either formal contact or documented note of such a vehicle.

The upshot is that when the police or patrol that acts as the de facto police, are in essence employed as agents of the community as contrasted to being agents of the State, the community will get far better, far more exhaustive and complete protection from outside elements, and further to the point, the residents of such community will be in the position to which the police essentially really do serve, protect, and answer to them.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was passed in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 and has both a preamble as well as thirty separate attendant Articles, to which this document is purported to apply to "all members of the human family,"  and to which further we read in the Articles statements such as the following: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," (Article 5), and "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy…" (Article 12) and the list goes on and on and on.  While each one of the Articles is sensible, thoughtful, constructive, caring, coherent, universal, democratic, and makes one proud to be a human being having such noble rights, there is also a fundamental disconnect with this Declaration, which has been In existence for nearly seventy years, and that is, there isn't a government on earth, a nation on earth, or any people or human beings on earth, that actually live in a world in which these Articles pledged on the behalf of all humansare upheld whatsoever.

In fact, since this Human Rights Declaration, it has been pretty much business as usual for all nations in their repression of basic human rights to which every single nation has fallen short of adhering to these declared human rights.  It would be one thing, if progress had actually been made, is being made, and continues to be made, but in reality, the world is the same world that it always has been, to which, the strong and those that are in power, oppress, abuse, exploit, and conquer those that are weak and without power.  As for actual human rights, virtually every country follows the same template, some, of course much more diabolical than others, some much more considerate than others, which is that the government, as a matter of course, will give its citizens the human rights that they deem to be of value and/or of necessity, and no more. 

The problem with governments, laws, rights, and so forth, is that the more power and "justice" that is ceded to this government, legitimate or illegitimate, the less freedom, free will, liberty, life, and pursuit of happiness the subject citizen will have.  The reason that this is so is because government is force, and when force meets human rights, force almost always prevails against those rights.  In point of fact, the bigger and more intrusive that governments are, the less freedom and free will that people will have.

While it's nice to have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a pleasure to contemplate about how wonderful it would be to live in a world such as this, that world doesn't exist, isn't close to existing, and this particular declaration does nothing to bring any of this about.  This whole talk about basic human rights that we hear or read about so often is really nonsensical, as you don't need to hear "talking heads" state that we all have the right to free education, free healthcare, full employment, and so forth, when in actuality none of this free stuff is free to begin with, as all that we have, comes from effort, knowledge, unity, and throughput. 

Those that truly believe in real Human Rights need to only know and live these two basic truths: give proper respect to our Creator, and to treat our fellow man as a brother and as our equal in the eyes of our Supreme Giver of life, liberty, free will, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Semantics of Non-Renewable and Renewable Energy Sources

The mainstream American media follows the traditional mantra of if you repeat a lie or a deception often enough, the public will buy it.  Unfortunately, this is a particular shame when it comes to something as fundamental as the forms of energy utilized in Americathat have a direct and material effect upon our quality of life, for without consistent and reliable energy, the America that we know of, would simply not exist.  To put it in practical terms, most everyone has experienced an electrical "blackout" for at least some period of time, to which unless one is so foresighted as to have an alternate generator, no electricity is generated whatsoever in the dwelling that you are inhabiting, which means that you now have no lights, no power, no cell phone service, no air conditioning, and no heat.  So too, many people have suffered through oil shortages to which gasoline which is normally plentiful in its availability is basically unavailable because of a natural disaster, transportation disaster, or similar, so for a period of time, you are without gasoline, and no matter how fine your car is, if it runs on gasoline, it will no longer be an option for transportation.

The  semantics as noted above, signals basically to the common man that a "non-renewable" energy source sounds like a really good thing, since implied within that name is both that it's more natural, since it's renewable, and that its availability appears to be robust.  On the other hand, "non-renewable" sounds like something that we shouldn't be using at all, since it can't be replenished, so that hardly seems fair to future generations, that we are permitted to selfishly to use it all up.  The thing is though, these terms are incorrectly applied, that is to say, solar and wind are considered to be renewable; whereas oil is considered to be a fossil fuel and non-renewable and those classifications are unfair.

While it is true that the sun shines 24/7 and the wind blows all of the time, at least somewhere, these elements, in order to be utilized as consistent and reliable energy, have to be first harnessed and further they have to have special non-renewable equipment to properly harness this energy.  That is to say, there is very little solar energy generated reliably without installed panels containing numerous photovoltaic cells capturing the sunlight which are in turn tied to a control panel and then to a breaker panel.  In regards to wind power, this necessitates several non-renewal wind turbines, with its non-renewable connected transformer, substation, and transmission lines in order for electricity to be generated.

Most people have been told again and again that oil is a fossil fuel -- that is oil originates from many eons ago and represents the fossils of long since dead and decaying plants and animals and hence is therefore non-renewable.   The above is considered to be fact, but there are other scientists that dispute this "fact" and have proposed a different theory which is that oil is abiotic, which as defined, means that oil is derived not from biological matter but from non-biological matter, that is primarily a mixture of carbon and hydrogen occurring naturally within the earth's crust, creating what we know as oil. 

In actuality, the main reason why the media feels compelled to divide energy sources into so-called non-renewable and renewable categories is the fact that the media is part and parcel of promoting a certain, specific agenda which is attempting to advocate certain specific energy sources over other energy sources so as to enrich certain specific players at the expense of others.  As always, follow the money.

The Middle Class Health Insurance Squeeze

The Affordable Care Act was enacted into American law in 2014, and like most things that have certain specific intentions, there are always going to be in a country such as America certain unexpected outcomes, to which the Affordable Care Act suffers from greatly.  For instance, the middle class carries America, because they are the only class in America that carries the full weight of being an American, with no special privileges granted to them, and no special subsidies provided for them.  Not too surprisingly, the Affordable Care Act, has been particularly pernicious to the middle class, as for single people the phase out of subsidy for health care rests at $45,960 and for families of four it's at $94,200; and because the Affordable Care Act phase out does not take into account whether you live in a community with a high cost of living or not, this phase out is especially troubling for those that do.

The thing about employers is that they are in almost every instant in the business of making a profit, and therefore make it policy to pay especial attention to all phases of their ledger book, which would include expenses, and healthcare premium expenses that are paid for by the employer is one of those expenses that makes a material difference to a company's bottom line.  This means, when health care premiums rise, and they always seem to rise, those costs either have to be shared between employer and employee, absorbed by the employer, or just passed on to the employee.  The real world upshot of all this is that the employee in many companies is suffering the dual problem of having their premium responsibility that is deducted from their paycheck for healthcare increased, while on the other hand, their health coverage has gotten vastly skimpier, unless they opt in to a more comprehensive coverage, if offered, which will cost the employee considerably more in expense. This means in a nutshell, that the affordability of healthcare for the middle class has gotten appreciably worse since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The problem with mandates and regulations that go on for pages and pages and pages, and further that the legislators don't even bother reading, is that America has a multitude of highly trained lawyers, accountants, and special interest groups that do pay close attention to words and their meaning, and consequently make sure that in one form or another, employers will come out alright, as opposed to the real payers into the system, the middle class employees.   The sad thing is many employees do not know even how bad or how weak their company health insurance is, till they go on to utilize it for an emergency, something unexpected, or whatever, whereupon they find out that their coverage for necessary treatment is something far less than ideal. 

The way our healthcare system works currently is a federal law is passed, the employer receives a new mandate, figures out how to manage and manipulate that mandate so that it is business pretty much as usual for them, and passes onto the employee the real impact of such legislation, which, for the middle class, means lower net pay, higher deductibles, and the shouldering of the burden of taking on more responsibility for their healthcare as well as footing the bill for it.

Subjects, Citizens, and the Declaration of Independence

At the time that those involved in the construction of and the execution of our Declaration of independence, each one of these future signees were subjects to the crown of England, and therefore were not citizens, of the British crown, but rather its subjects.  A careful reading though of the Declaration of independence demonstrates that the final Authorized and signed Version as written by Thomas Jefferson uses the word people ten times to refer to the peoples that made up the "thirteen united states of America" and once was used the word, citizens, when referring to the present King of Great Britain, with: "He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas."  These words of "people" as well as "citizens" are words that we as a people, and we as citizens of this great nation, take for granted at the present time, but at the time of the Declaration of Independence, these words were, in fact, revolutionary.

The fact of the matter is that this momentous shift in thinking, as to what type of people that we were to become, did not even come immediately to the incomparable Thomas Jefferson, for as reported by the washingtonpost.com, in an earlier Declaration of Independence draft Thomas Jefferson as discovered by research chemist Dr. Fanella France reported that: "It's quite amazing how he morphed 'subjects' into 'citizens'".   Not only is this decisive change from subjects to citizens, from subjects to a people, the critical part of the very foundation of what became the greatest republic in the annals of all history, but it also set the stage so that our governing document, our present Constitution, was not a document, that created yet another king, and thereby a monarchy, but a President and a republic, with three separate and distinct branches of governance, rather than the European model of monarchies which our independence broke us free from.

To be a subject is to be under the thumb and domain of a power that is sovereign unto itself and thereby has the power to dictate to its subjects what they can or cannot do, in conjunction with parliamentary protocol along with the inevitable political give and take.  On the other hand, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a nation of citizens that have a voice, and with that voice they can freely assemble, so too they can petition their representatives and their government, they have enumerated rights, a government of both checks and balances, and a government that is responsive to and must answer to its citizenry. 

There can never be equality under the law, in a country to which you are a subject, but equality under the law is a fundamental tenet of citizens in a free country to which all are entitled to take part in the beneficence of its collective wealth and productivity.  America is great because it has responsive citizens, and each of those citizens are gifted with the same inalienable rights, and not one of these citizens will ever be compelled to bow or genuflect to any domestic earthly king.

Sharing an Internet Connection with a Neighbor

The first idea that you might be able to share an internet connection with a neighbor is the fact that when you first setup your Wi-Fi system inside your house, you will often see that there are several networks of varying signal strength all listed on your computer.  These networks listed are your neighbors, and quite logically when you notice that the signal strength of a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection is strong, it is fair to conclude that you probably could connect to their network, if you had their password, and hence be able to access the internet by piggybacking onto their network.

The way housing is structured in America, is that you have situations in which the housing is quite dense, such as apartments, condos, and townhomes, along with single family homes, to which typically the more windows a given dwelling has and the closer in proximity you are to each other, the easier it is to access your neighbor's internet and the more reliable and speedier that internet connection will be.  While it is almost always true that a wired internet connection will be both more reliable and faster than wireless, a wireless connection is often acceptable for most people in their typical internet activities. 

The main reason to consider sharing an internet connection with a neighbor is the fact that the cost of internet service can range from $30 to $70 a month, so the sharing of such, would equal to some considerable savings over a period of year, which as they say, "a penny saved is a penny earned".  If you are fortunate and have a good relationship with a particular neighbor to begin with, it's certainly a reasonable subject to bring up, to which the objective should be to test out the theory first, without the need for anyone to get any additional equipment, by simply having one party providing to the other party, their password to their Wi-Fi and then taking it for a ride.  Assuming that the test runs successfully, it then can be further discussed  based on the results whether a Wi-Fi extender is something worth getting, or even installing a Wi-Fi antenna on your roof to make the signal much more powerful, all depending on the commitment neighbors have to one another.

Obviously, when there is sharing between neighbors of anything, there has to be general rules and responsibilities that each party must live up to, especially if your internet provider has a data limit, so that as long as there is a good understanding between neighbors, the savings for each neighbor more than makes up for any small inconveniences that must be overcome. 

The bottom line is that there are many items that can successfully be shared neighbor to neighbor, and internet sharing is one of the more straightforward things to share of them all, as in most cases, you are simply sharing a password, and possibly equally the one-time expense of the modem/router and that is pretty much it.  Remember that anytime that you log onto a public Wi-Fi network such as at a Starbucks or similar, you are sharing an internet connection, so in fact, internet sharing is done all the time; why not consider saving some dollars and doing the same thing at home.

Public Schools, Teachers, and the Bible

No country on earth has as many lawyers as America, and the problem with too many lawyers, is that in order to stay busy and to make money lawyers like to stir up mischief, to which this mischief making can have quite negative consequences.  For instance, in today's America, there are all sorts of legal cases in regards to religious liberties, permissions, and prohibitions that are so convoluted, twisted, contradictory, and troubling that it isn't really clear what teachers can or cannot teach or permit within their classrooms in regards to religious expression or the teaching of such.

The most fundamental error that has been permitted into American jurisprudence like a virus that cannot be eradicated, is that somehow, somewhere, within our Constitution, or Declaration of Independence, there is some clearly delineated statement to the effect that this American government has mandated that there is to be a separation of State and religion, and that this specific separation must have an unbreachable wall between State and church.  The effect of this sort of misguided interpretation of Constitutional law and the policy forthwith that follows is that by forcefully eliminating the Bible, religious thought, religious interpretation, and religious interrelation with great literature and their interrelationship from the very foundations of this country's schools you have effectively torn down the very edifice that this great country rests upon.   

Most teachers in public schools, whether religious or not, want to be not only good teachers, but also want to obey the law, to which today's law puts any teacher who is religious or a respecter of such, under severe pressure to eliminate religion and all aspects of religious thinking from the classroom at all costs.  This means, in absence of religion, in absence of an admittance of a Creator, that students are compelled to believe that their existence itself is material only, and without purpose or morals or anything other than happenstance. 

The fact of the matter is, if a teacher cannot affirm the importance and influence of any Biblical passages whatsoever; that she cannot site in class specific Biblical passages, or their meaning, or anything touching upon religion, even unable to write a scriptural passage into a student's yearbook, than whatever is being taught to students is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but is, in essence, a grand deception foisted upon these impressionable students.

While it is one thing to say that Christianity cannot be held to be the established religion of America and be right about that; it is an entirely different thing to say that the teacher's rights or the student's rights at a public school, paid for by the taxes of the people, cannot thereby exercise their Constitutional right to have religious expression when they enter onto public school grounds. 

The Bible is the most important and the most influential book in the history of Western mankind, so then to eliminate this good book, to pretend that this book violates within school premises Constitutional law, is wrong and the doing of such, is the very ruin of Western civilization.  If schools are not about truth, or the search for truth, than they are effectively propaganda machines of the State, and this godless State, and all those that support such, are in the process of and have re-birthed a new America: enslaved, lifeless, suppressed, despairing, and without liberty.

Mortgage Leverage on Housing is Way too high

The most expensive material asset that the typical American will ever buy is the home that they purchase and live in.  The buying of such a home usually is considered to be part of the American dream, not only does it represent the family's castle, so to speak, but also is a positive indication that this family has put down roots within their community, and a family that is committed to their community, makes for a better community.  Not too surprisingly, the Federal Government believes that Americans should own homes and have constructed policies to make housing more accessible for citizens by providing the guarantees behind the banking mortgage loans and valuable tax breaks for the buyers of homes.

The thing is, while the governmental desire for more Americans to own homes seems to be the right thing to do, the structure and pricing of housing today is out of sync with the realities of family size, savings, income, and leverage.  For instance, the average size of families has declined from 3.67 persons in 1960 to 3.14 persons in 2015; additionally the average size of households (all persons living under one roof) has declined from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.54 persons in 2015, yet despite these changes the average size of a house in square footage as reported by Trulia.com was approximately 1,540 sq ft in 1960, as compared to 2.370 sq ft in 2010.  Additionally, the savings rate for Americans was about 8% in 1960, whereas it's 5.4% as of February, 2016.  In regards to income, as reported by davemanual.com, the median income inflation adjusted income was $53,657 in 2014 as compared to $44,284 in 1967, or a modest increase of just over 21%; all this despite the fact that the labor participation rate by females has grown considerably since that time, and to which there has been a near doubling or more of married families in which both parents are working.

A careful look at the facts of the situation, would imply, that housing rather than getting bigger in size and hence more expensive to buy, own, and maintain, should, in fact, be getting smaller in size as a fair reflection of near-income stagnation,  general  job insecurity, smaller household sizes, and a significantly less savings rate of monetary savings.  Instead, despite the housing meltdown of 2007-2009 of overpriced, under qualified and highly leveraged housing collapsing upon itself, America and its policies have not learned or changed much in the interim, with the exception of basically eliminating the most egregious errors such as "liar loans".  The fact of the matter is that the more highly leveraged any investment is, the more volatile and hence the less secure that investment will be, and housing is, obviously, no exception to this rule.  Housing is the only investment, to which it is typical that payments will extend out for thirty years, to which your employment years might only be some forty-odd years, signifying that for most people, a mortgage payment will coincide with a paycheck for the vast majority of their working life.

The bottom line is that the housing market in general has far too many houses for sale that are larger than really needed, for more money than is necessary, for less down payment than what is prudent, and for a longer period of payment time than is sensible.  All of this combined, means Americans are insensibly paying for more house than they really need, and often purchasing such homes, before establishing a 20% down payment, a proven savings as well as earnings record, while also lacking an appropriate debt-to-income ratio.  It then follows, since housing is overall highly leveraged, that housing prices reflect this leverage by being higher than what they need to be, and therefore the consumer is paying more for a home than necessary; whereas more prudent and sensible standards for loans in the first place, would actually make housing both more affordable as well as more practical.

Clothing is Incredibly Inexpensive

There isn't a day in your life, when you aren't in one form of another wearing clothes, sometimes, in fact, making several clothing changes throughout your day, and almost always without exception, the origin of the clothes that you are blithely wearing are not from America, and haven't been made in America for over a generation, as they are predominantly made overseas in Asian countries, such as China, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam.  Offhand, there isn't a thing wrong with wearing and purchasing clothes manufactured from overseas, as first of all, your consumer choice in regards to this issue is rather limited, since pretty much all of these various pieces of apparel are predominantly being sold to you from big box stores such as TJ Maxx, or Forever 21, or Marshalls, or WalMart, and so forth, so it isn’t like you are buying your clothes in some underhanded manner.

In fact, clothing appears to be on the surface one of those delightful win-win situations, as it most definitely is a win for the big box retailers, as their cost for product has remained flat for twenty-five years, meaning that they have been able to pass on these savings to consumers throughout America by maintaining insanely low clothing prices on behalf of a nation that loves to shop for clothes.  In actuality, the Consumer Price Index for Apparel was at 127.5 in April 1991 and as of FEB 2016 it was at 127.5.  This means, that for twenty-five years there has been no inflation in apparel whatsoever, yet there has been inflation in America, as demonstrated by the fact that Consumer Price Index itself was at 135.2 in April 1991 and now rests as of FEB 2016 at 237.11, or an increase of 75%.

This points out again, that it isn't your imagination that the pricing of clothes has remained flat for twenty-five years, a boon to consumers as well as to stores, with consumers able to consistently take advantage of either "everyday low pricing" or the invariable discounted specials which seem to occur at just about every day in some store in America.  However, all of this good stuff for cheap has a hidden cost to it, and that is the fact that the clothes being manufactured for our utilization and benefit are being done overseas, and while most Americans pretty much follow the policy of "out of sight, out of mind", there most definitely are human hands in impoverished countries that produce our clothes for cheap, that were these workers in America, would be considered to be exploited.

While on the one hand you can make a strong argument on behalf of the garment manufacturers that their employees are better off in a factory rather than in the outside world of poor rural communities, without real or good access to education, modern amenities, healthcare, or clean water; that argument though is countered by the conditions of these factories which are centered primarily on treating humans as pretty much cheap and replaceable cartel, to which their only true worth is what they can produce and make via quota, period. 

The bottom line is that efficient overseas factories utilizing cheap labor can readily produce clothing that undercuts all domestic manufacturing of such, because the labor costs in America are way too steep.  This means in practicality that the clothes that we wear each day on our backs in a manner of speaking comes via the sweat of an ill-educated foreign woman's brow.

Can Dividends be Gamed?

In an era in which investors don't make a dime in a money market fund, or a savings account, and 10-year treasuries yield less than 2%, the making of money on money, has become far more difficult than a generation ago, and while pundits and governmental authorities state over and over again, that interest rates will go back up, when this one thing or that other thing happen, it just hasn't been happening for the last decade, which makes one to reasonably conclude that it isn't going to happen in reality, anytime soon.  All of this means, for conservative investors, that they are literally between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere safe to park their money to which they can be assured of both making a smallish profit as well as being secure that their investment is sound.

However, if one looks at the stock market, there are a fair amount of seasoned and well tested stocks, that have dividend yields of 4% of greater, such as Ford, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, Philip Morris, and Abbvie, to name just a few of them.  In today's world, a yield of 4% is definitely something to pay attention to, but as you might expect there are a few caveats.  For one, dividends themselves are not guaranteed, they can be lowered, raised, kept the same, or eliminated, and that decision is left to the Board of Directors; that said, though, companies with long standing historical records of consistently paying out dividends have a strong tendency to keep doing the same thing, come thick or thin.  Another issue, perhaps the elephant in the room, is that stock prices are not stable, they can go up or down, so that in theory, on the one hand, you would not only get your dividend but also stock price appreciation, then again, you could also get the dividend but stock price reduction, placing yourself in the position of receiving the 4% yield, but having that yield wiped out by a greater than 4% loss in the subject stock price.

The way most dividends are paid in America, is that they are paid out quarterly to those that are the stockholders of record, and the stockholder of record, is he who owns the stock before the ex-dividend date, so if you buy the stock before the ex-dividend date and then decide to sell the stock on the ex-dividend date, you will still receive that dividend.  This means, quite simply, that you don't need to own the stock for one year to receive dividends, nor ninety days, you only need to own the stock for one day, and that day has to be before the ex-dividend date and if done correctly you will receive that scheduled dividend payment.   However, there is an important caveat, which is that on the ex-dividend date typically the stock price is set to open at the previous close minus the dividend share dollar amount, so that if the dividend paid was $1 on a $100 stock, the opening would be set for $99, thereby canceling out your entire dividend payment.  That said, the fact of the matter is, that on any given day, stocks fluctuate and never remain stagnant, so that the stock price during that day and subsequent days will not remain the same. 

This means that at a minimum you have gained the dividend, and if somehow or someway, you were to average selling back the stock at a price to which you have sacrificed, for instance, only half of the dividend payment, such as fifty cents of the $1, by selling at $99.50, and do this time and time again, on various other high yielding dividend stocks you will make over a period of time a fair amount of money, readily.  However, there are two more considerations; one is the tax consequences of all this trading in and out, as well as also the commission costs of buying and selling of these equities.  In regards to the former, there are no tax consequences if these trades are made through your IRA, and in regards to transaction costs there are brokerages that offer either free trades as a matter of policy or for a period of time and those too that offer significantly discounted trading costs which are almost immaterial.

There are websites that allow you to practice theories without costing you a dime of real money, and while practicing specific techniques, such as trying to game dividends, is never going to be quite the same as trying to do it in the real word, it will afford you the opportunity to test out a theory without sacrificing anything other than the time to do so.  The bottom line is that every day there are buyers and sellers of equities to which each side believes that they are getting over on the other, in regards to dividends, and the correct pricing of the stock come the ex-dividend date, it's no different.

Trailer Park Homes

In you drive around just about any community far enough and in every conceivable direction; you will often eventually find a trailer park.  These trailer parks willvary considerably in quality, location, desirability, and looks, with some being near a beach or river and on land that appears to be of high value whereas others look run down, forgotten, and in areas that seem to have been abandoned or forsaken by time.  As reported by bbc.com: "Mobile homes make up 6.4% of the US housing sector," which certainly means that manufactured housing in America appeals to a fair amount of people for whatever reasons, with affordability and freedom being the most prominent ones.  The basic situation in most trailer parks is that the occupant of the trailer owns the trailer itself, but rents the land that it rests upon, and depending upon the trailer park may have amenities such as a community pool, playground, cable hookups, and so forth, but at a minimum the rent paid to the landlord will include the right to their lot locale, access to water and trash removal, with the tenant being responsible for the paying of his own heat and electricity.

The quality and age of trailer homes varies considerably, from park to park, and from person to person, so that while there are some trailers that appear to be on their last legs, there are, on the other hand, trailers that have both the look and the space on the inside that would remind most people of a real home.  There isn't any doubt that nicer looking trailers as well as the more pleasant or desirable looking trailer parks have a different demographic than most trailer parks that you might run across on a given day, and the reason for that, is typically the type of person that is attracted to or makes a decision to make their residence within a trailer, is the type of person that doesn't usually have access to a lot of income, yet prefers the more open space and room that a trailer represents as well as the impression that by owning their own trailer, they own their own housing, even though they still have a landlord, and a HOA to respond to, and in most cases it is the land, not the trailer, that will appreciate in value over time.

Because there are so many trailer homes in America and the fact that so many of them appear to be in various states of disrepair, those that own trailers, have typically been confronted at one time or another with being summoned by the pejorative term: "trailer trash", and/or people that come across as low-class, crude, dressing poorly, smelling, are often associated with the same term: "trailer trash", even if it is pretty much understood that they don't actually come from or live in a trailer park home.  That, unfortunately, for better or for worse, is the way trailer residents are viewed often by those that don't live in them, don't care to live in them, and don't really care to know anything further.

In an era in which typical housing for sale such as townhomes, condos, and houses may be permanently out of the reach for a significant swath of Americans and with an understanding that apartment dwellings themselves are expensive for what they bring to the table, an opportunity to purchase a trailer is something worth considering as not only is that trailer home your own castle, it is and can be a way to raise a family that feels traditional, and pretty much works.

The Japanese Stock Market Peaked in 1989

On December 29, 1989, the Nikkei Index  stock market index peaked at 38,915.87. As of March, 29, 2016 it stands at not even half of that amount at 17,103.53, which means that those that have invested a substantial amount of their savings into the Nikkei Index or a basket of stocks that are part of that index, have seen their investment eviscerated over the last twenty-six years.  Japan is not some third world country, as it was for a considerable period of time, the second largest economy in the world, second only to America, and even today, it stands as the third largest economy worldwide.  The fact that the Nikkei index has done so poorly in recent times, should be a wakeup call to stock market pundits worldwide, to which, it can be said, that stock markets price in anticipated future events and when that future looks rather bleak for GDP growth, along with aging demographics, little or no population growth, and declining labor participation rate in the workforce, than the stock market will surely reflect those facts.

For instance, as reported by socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com, the decade of 1980-1989 saw Japan's annual GDP growth of 3.95%, followed by a GDP growth rate for the next decade at just 1.19%, and then the GDP growth rate of 2001-2010 was just 0.75%, with the projected rate of GDP growth for this current decade expected to stay under 1%, which is has for the first five years of this decade.  The aging of Japan's population has increased dramatically since 1989, to which at that point, approximately 12% of the Japanese population was 65 or older, whereas as reported by zerohedge.com in 2015, this percentage had increased to an incredibly high 26.7% of the Japanese population, a more than doubling of just over twenty-six years ago. The population of Japan in 1990 was 123,611,000 and by 2015 had grown to just 127,110.00 a paltry increase of less than 3%, but even more worrisome for Japan, in 2010 their population was 128,057,000 so in the ensuing five years, Japan's population had actually decreased, and is projected to continue to decrease, essentially because of Japan's no or very limited immigration policy, with deaths of an aging population now exceeding births.  Finally, in order for GDP to grow, you need both workers and machines, and while the industrialization of Japan is high, its workforce as reported by tradingeconomics.com was at: "…an all time high of 74 percent in June of 1955 and a record low of 58.50 percent in December of 2012," and now rests at 59.30%. 

The bottom line is the underlying fundamentals of a given country are going to be reflected in their stock market and those numbers for Japan have been rather bleak, but a fair reflection of the fact that there is little hope, if any, that their GDP will ever again hit around 4% per annum, as it did during the 1980s; as their population is too old, and older people do not produce nor care to produce as much as those that are in their prime years which is further why the labor force participation rate will not come close to approaching 74% ever again, nor do senior citizens consume as much as those that are in their 30s or 40s or 50s, and with net deaths outnumbering net births in Japan there isn't any realistic prospect of internal growth. 

The thing about stock markets is that they are international, and money has a tendency to gravitate to where both the bargains are, or more importantly, where the growth will be, and that picture would imply that Japan has seen better days, whereas a country such as India has plenty of room to grow and prosper.

NFL Games Times Need to Be More Varied

The majority of NFL games are played on Sunday, and depending upon what part of the continental United States you live on, those games could start as early as 10 AM Pacific time, or as late as 4:25 PM Eastern time, with an additional evening game typically at 8:30 PM Eastern time.  The NFL has 32 teams, of which 17 are in the Eastern time zone, 8 are in the Central time zone, 2 are in the Mountain time zone, and the balance of 5 teams beginning in the 2016 season are in the Pacific time zone.  In every other major sport, except for the NFL, the game time of the sport is typically based on the time zone that the team is located in, so that in basketball the Washington Wizards game would typically start at 7:05 PM Eastern time, whereas the Chicago Bulls game would typically start at 7:05 PM Central time, which is 8:05 Eastern time,  the Denver Nuggets game would typically start at 7:05 PM Mountain time, which is 9:05 Eastern time, and the Los Angeles Lakers game would typically start at 7:05 PM Pacific time, which is 10:05 Eastern time, thereby essentially making each of the games tipping off at the exact same local time, which makes sense, because if 7:05 PM is in the NBA's opinion the best time to schedule a game, they then make sure to schedule it for that local time in all of the markets that the NBA has teams.  On the other hand, the NFL, breaks down their time schedule into essentially two zones, to which the Eastern and Central-based teams typically have their games scheduled at 1 PM Eastern time, which means the Central division home games at actually being held at 12 PM in their respective time zone, and these two time zones as of 2016 season encompass 25 out of the 32 teams.  The Pacific and Mountain-based teams typically have their games around 4:15PM Eastern time, or 1:15PM Pacific time, and therefore 2:15PM Mountain time, for the balance of the 7 out of the 32 teams.  Because of the game time structure as well as the fact that there are many more teams located on the Eastern and Central time zones, most of the NFL games on any given Sunday are the "early" games, meaning that there are far fewer selectionsto watch in the afternoon games.  In addition, probably not taken into account often enough, when a West coast team visits an East coast team, the visiting team is typically playing the East coast team at 1 PM Eastern time, which equates to 10 AM Pacific time, probably giving the East coast team, an additional small percentage of favor against their West coast opponent.

In any given sport, and the NFL is no different, people that live in close proximity to a given NFL team, have a more abiding interest in that local team, so that it makes much more sense that schedules should reflect that fact, indicating that first off, if 1PM is the magic local time for games to be played at on the Eastern and Western coasts, it should also be the magic time to be played at for the Mountain and Central time games.  Additionally, with the exception of games not coming into conflict against the late Sunday night game, NFL teams should have more flexibility to determine their game times so as to maximize their revenue and viewership, in addition to the fact that the NFL should make a concerted effort to have far fewer games scheduled at 10 AM Pacific Time for America's most popular sport.  The bottom line is the NFL needs to take a much more discriminating look at their game times, as by so doing, viewership and interest should incrementally increase.

Mandatory Fingerprints for a Driver's License

To the best of my knowledge there are four States that require either a fingerprint, or thumbprint, in order to receive a driver's license in that State, which are: California, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas; in addition Texas is the only one of these States requiring a complete set of fingerprints in order to receive a driver's license, to which, this law, was overturned in February of 2015.   The fact that these States collect fingerprints whatsoever is disturbing as a driver's license is the primary way that most adults identify themselves.  For many people, fingerprinting carries the stigma of guilt and is typically mandated only for those that are arrested for certain criminal offenses as well as for those that are required to submit to background checks for certain, particular employment opportunities. 

The general purpose of fingerprints is to correlate fingerprints to a database of crimes that have been committed for review, and the fact that all citizens of these respective States have to submit their finger or thumbprint in order to receive a driver's license from such State, seems of questionable Constitutional validity, as this gives the State government, in one place, facial (as in the driver's license color picture), current address of the driver's license applicant, physical description of the driver's license applicants' height, weight, date of birth, as well as eye color, all of which is individually applied to that unique driver's license number, along with the finger or thumbprint to which all of this information can easily be analyzed, correlated, and processed through databases supposedly to make sure that the driver's license applicant has not fraudulently applied for more than one driver's license, to which this information can easily be cross-checked against numerous other databases for crimes of the past, now, or in the future.

When you take a finger or thumbprint along with the other physical and factual characteristics of an individual or instead take his DNA, you have effectively made it public or in this particular case, State policy, that any citizen, using his most likely source of identity, his most likely source to have a means of independent transportation, his most likely source for employment or enrollment of all sorts, a de facto ward of the State, under the thumb of the State, unable or not easily able to escape from the watchful eye of the State.  Today, it is finger or thumbprints, in order to have the privilege to drive in certain States, tomorrow, it may well be DNA, and DNA is considered to be the most accurate forensic tool for law enforcement agencies.

As always, laws such as these are justified by stating that they are to protect us from criminals, terrorists, or to identify illegal aliens, amongst other hobgoblins of fear that the populace needs to be protected from, and as good citizens, it is our duty to obey.  The truth of the matter is that fingerprinting for a driver's license is just one more forge in the chain of our own making, that makes us lesser citizens to those that control our fates, to which these authorities answer to no one but their own fellow privileged and elite mates, who want us docile and under their collective thumbs for their continual exploitation of and for their own enrichment of in return for the safety a hamster gets in a cage with a wheel that goes nowhere but to travel back to where it began.

Knowledge--From Previous Generations to the Next

Knowledge may be acquired by many means of which one of them is experience, and while experience can be a great and wonderful teacher, it isn’t necessarily the best way and certainly isn't the only way to acquire knowledge.  In fact, a significant amount of knowledge that we acquire each and every year comes from school, mentors, fellow associates, and documents in any of its many forms.  This knowledge that we draw upon can be numerous generations old, or of more recent vintage, and all of this knowledge is necessary for the world to continue to advance and to become a better place.  That is to say, it is because of the hard work and discoveries that we have from previous great men and women that we are able to build upon that base and to create even more of worth for our fellow members of mankind and to learn from history of our errors.  This then signifies that knowledge and the passing on of it, is fundamentally a gift that is of great service to our communities and country.

Because knowledge is so important it certainly makes sense to state that those that are selfish in their discoveries and wishing to keep such special knowledge that they have developed to themselves, are doing a grand disservice to mankind, whereas those that take their knowledge and collaborate and pass on this information to others, understanding that a team working together, brick by brick, from one generation to the next, are brightening and making the world a better place.  This signifies that scientific papers, research, conferences of like-minded people, active listening, and good communication, are absolutely essential for the continual improvement of not only people in your community, your State, your country, but also the world at large.

While it is intriguing when two disparate groups are able to essential discover another scientific truth thru independent paths, there are unfortunately far more groups that come to an impasse, for lack of knowledge of things that have previously already been discovered, but unfortunately for these people, they are blithely unaware of. That is why in this era of the worldwide web, so much of our scientific knowledge, should be readily available throughout the world, and thereby like the editors of Wikipedia, that allows worldwide contribution from all, or open source code that allows others to modify the code or to enhance it, changes and improvement can be made "on the fly".

The importance of knowledge being passed successively from one generation to the next, can be viewed as understanding that if each generation had to count on re-discovering the things that other great scientists have discovered, we would, almost at best, barely be able to tread water, which is why we have had epochs such as the "dark ages" to which mankind in a lot of respects, lost the continuity and knowledge of the previous age and regressed in their growth and development to the detriment of living standards, freedom,  happiness, and health. 

The thing about knowledge is everything of worth that you have learned and understood, if you are unable to pass that knowledge onto either your family, friends, or associates in some way, form, or manner, than that knowledge dies within you and will therefore have to be re-discovered or unearthed by someone else, whereas all that you pass on to your progeny or associates will continue to live on in the minds and ideas of generations of today and hopefully for generations yet unborn.  To be selfish with your knowledge is to die onto yourself, whereas to be selfless is to never taste death because your knowledge lives on and is transported through the wisdom of others.