The year 2023 had a lot of ups and downs, surprises and opportunities for us. Deena and I got off to a running start only two weeks into the year when I was diagnosed with high grade bladder cancer (see below.) Several months later, I was classified with the Veterans Administration as being totally and permanently disabled based on several different issues, and one of the benefits of that classification allowed Deena the opportunity to finish graduate school, first at SUNY-New Paltz and now continuing at SUNY-Albany.
Happy trails
In March, Deena went with her sister, her niece, her daughter-in-law and her daughter-in-law’s sister to Ireland for a week or so. They had a wonderful time exploring the southern part of the republic. In May, Deena and I flew to Texas to see my grandson graduate from high school. In August, Deena flew with her son Nick’s family to Orlando, Fl. One of Nick’s and Kelly’s children was sponsored by the “Make-a-Wish” foundation for an all expense paid visit to Disney World. Finally, in November, Deena, her sister and her niece flew to Savannah to celebrate her youngest sibling’s sixtieth birthday. This Christmas, one of my sons and his family will be visiting us here in upstate New York. All in all, we’ve kept pretty busy.
Bladder cancer wrap
So, presumably because of exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam, I developed bladder cancer. which was diagnosed last January. While the tumors were a concerning size in diameter, the cancer had not yet reached the muscle wall, else I would not have a bladder today. Several surgeries were needed to “scrape” as much of the cancer as they found visually off the bladder wall. The good news is that as of now, I don’t appear to have any active cancer, though there are abnormal but benign cells floating around in my bladder. The bad news is that there is an elevated chance of reoccurance with high grade bladder cancer, so I may very well go under the knife again. I continue to receive chemotherapy monthly and cystoscopies every three months. But God is gracious and I trust in him. I also have a good medical team that I am confident in.
Blogging
When I was first diagnosed with bladder cancer last January, I decided to resign from teaching because I had no idea of how the surgeries and the chemotherapy treatments might affect me. Fortunately, and thanks be to God, I did very well compared to people with other sorts of cancer. This extra time allowed me to blog more frequently. In addition to posts on faith, I also wrote extensively on cancer, current events (specifically Ukraine and more recently, Israel), politics, exobiology, science, seasons and the topic of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. See below for wraps in some of these areas.
Using an artificial intelligence program that I subscribe to, I am also able to translate selected posts into Chinese, German and Russian. In the coming year I hope to organize these foreign language posts a bit more so they’re not scattered about. I do get alot of visitors from Russia and China, however.
I also guest-posted my first essay with another author.
The war in Ukraine
The Ukranians faced an uphill battle fighting what is perhaps the second more formidable military in the world. The Ukrainians had no real navy and a 1970’s era Air Force. And, the Russians could from a population four times as large as Ukraine, if necessary, raise an army many times larger than Ukraine could. It took a year to get Western tanks into Ukraine to match modern Russian tanks, almost a year for state-of-the-art artillery which the U.S. degraded in terms of range,, however. It will be next year before any fighter jets arrive, and without fighter jets the Ukranians cannot keep Russian fighters from destroying their airports and runways. As a result of this imbalance, the Ukranian offensive this year was largely a bust for Ukraine. Now, with Israel getting most of our spare artillery munitions, Patriot missiles and other weapons and with the Republicans restricting any money for Ukraine until the Mexican-U.S. border crossings are resolved after forty years of chaos Ukraine has barely enough military capacity at the moment to make it to January.
Other global conflicts
Israel and China. I had several posts this year on the issues dealing with Israel and China. What is happening in Gaza is absolutely horrifying. Yet, rather than end their war against Israel, Hamas is promising to perpetrate even more violence against Israel, whether in Israel or in Europe and elsewhere. What else can Israel do but retaliate? Israel cannot accommodate Hamas any more than the U.S. can co-exist with ISIS and Al-Qaida. Many innocent civilians were killed in the U.S. war against terror, despite our best efforts to minimize casualties. How can we expect more than that from Israel?
China is using confrontational though not lethal measures against the Philippines to keep them from the Second Thomas Shoal which is within the “Nine-Dash-Line” that China arbitrarily drew in the South China Sea while claiming sovereignty. Countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam arguably have the same rights to those international waters as China has, but seeing as China is a world power, sometimes “might makes right,” or, as Thuycides said: “In this world, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
The 2024 election
At the moment, Donald J. Trump seems to be on track to win the race for the White House. Close behind him and nipping at his heels are dozens of indictments and court appearances in three different states plus the District of Columbia. Trump’s strategy is to delay, appeal, etc. until he is elected and sworn in, and then shut down all of the investigations (Georgia might be a problem.) He’ll undoubtedly pardon himself, his friends, and the those “patriots” who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Unfortunately, President Biden will almost certainly pardon his son on Biden’s last day in office. What loving father would let his son serve most of the rest of his life in prison (assuming Hunter Biden is convicted of federal crimes?) And what does all of this say about America?
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Everyday there are news stories about artificial intelligence. The most pressing concerns regarding AI this year deal with the loss of jobs, including in the fields of journalism, law and publishing. A network news channel in Los Angeles plans to introduce an avatar next year as a news anchor to see if it can do the same job performed to date by humans. There is some talk about using AI to settle misdemeanor suits in court, but that may still be a few years off. Currently, there is a fad among adolescent males to use deepfake programs and real life photos of girls they know to create hybrid “nudes.” Even though it is or should be obvious that these are fake creations, this is causing considerable disruption as far as families go.
Climate change
This has been the hottest year on record for Planet Earth. In the U.S. alone, over seventeen hundred people died from heat-related illnesses. Deaths among men were three times the number of deaths among women from heat. Forest fires burned with a vengeance in the West while Canadian fires were responsible for smoke and smog blowing southward into New England and elsewhere.
Disruption in nature, whether glacial melting or the changes in the length of typhoon season continue. Some hundreds of Ridley Turtles were recently rescued from death from hypothermia (cold) off the coast of New England. They have been traveling ever northward early in the year to escape the deadly tropical ocean heat, and then they are caught in the cold of winter before they can move south again.
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
This is suddenly a mainstream issue dealiing with what used to be called Unidentified Flying Objects. Going back to even before the late 1940’s, people in the U.S. started reporting unusual objects in the sky. These reports eventually wound up at the federal government level. Perhaps nine out of ten objects reported decades ago had what were called common or prosaic explanations, such as weather balloons, stars, planets or conventional aircraft. But over the past twenty years, more and more objects were reported, particularly by military aviators flying advanced tactical fighters and by radar operators as new generations of radar emerged. Some of these objects were “parked” at the entrances to restricted air space near Washington DC or over nuclear missile silos, research facilities and other sensitive areas. When challenged by U.S. aircraft, the objects would streak out of sight in a flash. The number of unsolved cases in the past decade grew in proportion to those which were solved. These recent unknown objects, however, flew at impossible speeds (e.g. mach 15), rose or fell vertically at a thousand feet per second, turned on a dime, hovered completely stationary in hurricane-force winds and so on. In late July, three credible whistleblowers, two of whom were retired Navy pilots who eyewitnessed UAPs themselves and the third a former intelligence officer who collected top secret data concerning UAPs made incredible statements to a Congressional committee about crashed, nonterrestrial vehicles, with the remains of alien lifeforms in them. Neither of the three service members had personally seen debris or bodies, but one or two of them could name the people who did and were willing to so if they were not prosecuted. The whistleblowers also claimed that the military was cooperating with U.S. aerospace corporations to reverse engineer what had been discovered. As a result of these allegations, bipartisan members of Congress inserted legislation in the 2024 Defense appropriations bill mandating any government personnel with first hand knowledge of these programs to report to Congress immediately as well as ordering the programs, themselves, to be shut down and all retrieved technology be surrendered. At this moment, the Republican leadership in Congress is trying to strip these reporting requirements from the final bill for some reason or other, which would serve to continue the secrecy. This suggests that there is something to keep hidden. The Pentagon flately denied any top secret programs involving extraterrestrial craft exist, but the Pentagon’s out-going chief UAP investigator, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, stated last month off the record that after looking into the whistleblowers statements and their Congressional testimony, “There are some bits of information that are turning out to be things and events that really happened.” The further allegations by these whistleblowers (and others) included crashed alien ships; at least two intact alien ships; bodies of presumed extraterrestrial beings, with perhaps one or more beings still alive when found. The whistleblowers also admitted that there were an unknown number of American technicians injured or killed in workplace settings while attempting to examine or operate the exotic technology and a cover-up to hide this information and these activities from Congress. Just one of any these allegations would be front page news around the world. If there is some truth to this, one wonders what it might be, since every claim made under oath is sensational in itself. But as Kirkpatrick summarized his experiences: “If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people [i.e., global countries] doing stuff in our backyard. And that’s not good…”
And it’s not good for two reasons: (1) These craft are a century or more ahead of our present capabilities and as a result, we (2) cannot defend against them, even if they are just drones. For these machines to be constructed and piloted by humans means that an enemy of the U.S., perhaps China or Russia, was more successful than the U.S. at developing or reverse engineering most likely exotic (i.e., extraterrestrial) technology.
New information is making the news every two-three weeks as additional whistleblowers are “coming out” or more UAP incidents are being revealed. This is where we are right now. I personally try not get too far “out there” without any concrete evidence, but these reports are coming from career naval officers and the sort of individuals who normally would not perjure themselves before Congress and risk their pensions.
That sums up what going on. Please check my blog for future posts.
