Helios Backstory Part 1

When the sunset on July 2nd, 80 FE, the bombings began. The next morning images of the destruction of Satsuma flashed across all residents of Japan's TV sets. A gathering of members of the high government had declared war on the nation of LanxingFang. In Yashiharou, residents were ordered to meet in the Yashiharou Square, an announcer began, “hello citizens; this is a declaration from the government; due to the number of current active soldiers in the imperial army; a draft will be called beginning at 1500 hours.” “During that time, those men between the ages of 16 to 26 will meet here at the central square, those whose surname begins with A to K; for those of you with special skills; a supplemental test shall be administered to determine proper placement; that will be all.” There was chatter among the audience; some were angry at the common enemy while others; primarily women and children worried over their male family members; among the crowd Helios Ata shook his head and looked over to his friend Joji. “Looks like our generation must fight the battles of the older generation, when will humanity learn from its past mistakes?” questioned Helios. “You can’t say that too loud, the wrong person may overhear you,” replied Joji, “I think you are right, come let's head to the mill.” The duo walked over to the mill; “you boys ready for your shift?” asked the foreman, Joji announced “we can only work until 2:30; we need to show up to the draft drawings.” The foreman approached Joji and stated “ah.yes you two are of age; well get to work and i'll speak with the boss”, and so Helios and Joji get started on their work; half way through the shift, Hiro Ushima approaches the duo, “you boys can take a break now, i’d like to have a word with you in my office, please follow me up there”, the boys complied and once they entered his office he shut the door behind them. Once all of them had sat down Hiro began, “I want you two to take the science aptitude tests for this here draft”, after some hesitation Helios spoke, “I don’t know sir, we may not be up to par to be specialists.'' Ushima replied “look here, I’ve spoken to some officials and due to our business dealing with manufacturing; I’m allowed one specialist to help us here to increase production and maintain military standards and I think you two have the best chance of taking that spot; those who are allowed to serve behind the front are more likely to survive this ordeal” told Ushima. “Mr. Ushima, are you suggesting that we should behave like cowards?” questioned Joji. “No!, listen I have been alive three times as long as you have and I’ve seen what war does to people, you can be just as useful to us here as overseas, I will show you the damage to my chest”, he proceeded to unbutton his shirt to show severe scars around his body; “these are bullet wounds and sword wounds; I’ve barely returned alive during my service and a lot of my friends didn’t make it back home; I’m an old man, I need the help and maybe; I can save one of your lives”, after a moment of silence, Hikari stood up from the chair, “alright, I’ll take the test, who knows maybe my habits and work ethic will lead to something”, Joji followed “might as well try it” and then the two thanked Mr Ushima and left his office. Mr. Ushima sat back down in his chair and thought with a smile on his face ‘perhaps the future can change’. At the Plaza, Joji and Hikari waited in line to take the examination. Both of them received an answer sheet and went to work on the examination. After the written portion was complete, there was an oral exam.

A few hours later, the results were sent. Mr. Ushima sent for Joji and Helios, “I will see you one at a time.” Joji went in first, after 15 minutes he left without saying anything. Helios next went into the office. “Please, sit down” told Ushima “I have good news for you, you scored high on the examination and will be continuing to work with us… congratulations,” announced Ushima. Helios’s face changed from a tense uptight disposition to a look of ease. Without saying anything Helios bowed, shook Mr Ushima’s hand and walked out of the office. The Time was 2:50 pm, Joji made his way to the central square when Helios caught up with him. Helios placed his hand on Joji’s shoulder and began speaking. “Joji… listen, I didn’t want things to turn out this way, damn these times of ours” stated Helios. Joji looked over at Helios once he had finished and replied “it’s a man’s duty to serve one’s country, never forget that” and then he walked off into the nearby crowd. Helios would not hear from his friend for the next 2 years.

Goals in due time.

In our modern age, It has become fashionable to follow a rigid pathway of increased performance and productivity in a workplace or to work towards a goal to the sacrifice of everything else. One can speculate that this promoted trend has to do with the COVID-19 Pandemic and its consequences on the job market, that being the increased competitive nature of a job market and finding a job in an international economy while it is under major stress. With that being said, this idea of continual hustle and grind is not a new concept and we can take a look at old concepts as a source for these new age ideas that have manifested themselves in self help videos and articles online.

Some years ago, I read a book called “The Time Paradox” by Philip Zimbardo; essentially, this book could be boiled down to the following central tenants. 1. There are three main time perspectives. These perspectives that exist are the past focus, the present focus and the future focus. The differences between these three perspectives are that a person focuses on either their past, present or future and depending on which course of action they take, it will heavily impact their life and corresponding success. This is because, the past focuser is reminiscing or complaining about what has happened before, and thus this holds them back from continual self improvement. In contrast, the present focuser is attempting to deal with life with the primary issue being what is directly in front of them. According to Zimbardo, these individuals may have some limited success, but because they are so caught up in the here and now, they are limited in which ways they can expand and grow and so, in the long term they will have limited success. The future thinker is thus put on a pedestal and showered with praise for that they don’t worry about the past and instead just keep grinding towards their goals and keep moving in a forward direction. While, grinding forward towards specific goals is all well and good; today, I would like to address how the unconventional individual, that is someone who wants to take a different path than the perpetual grinder, may be on a wise path.

In history, there were individuals who were highly skilled in many topics and made great names for themselves. Such individuals were noted in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and include individuals such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Goethe. The term for these people is called “Polymath”. For those unaware of the words origin, it comes from Greek language roots meaning someone who has high expertise in multiple fields of study.

Many people, assume that if they set a linear pathway of goals and objectives that they must hit these in order to progress; however, I would argue that this is not the only way forward and that divergent pathways can be very positive and even complimentary for pursuing long term goals. A pertinent example is that of NASA Space Program. Many inventions such as space water filtration, improved solar cells and imaging systems now used in cellphones have come about from the spending into the Federal Space programs for the purpose of examining the conditions of space and of landing people on the moon in the 20th century. Such investment has led to many new ideas and progressions on problems in the world despite not seeming applicable in the here and now.

The Corollary of having an open mind while working on different goals is a central point of the many notable books like that of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstader and the Art of Programming by Donald Knuth. They emphasis that different approaches to problems is vital. Why is an open mind necessary, you may ask? I think it is essential for people to understand that a day of thinking about an issue and one hour of actual execution may very well be much better than doing 8 hours of continual work down the wrong path. For where would Classical Physics be if it wasn’t for Isaac Newton sitting under a tree?

In Conclusion, individuals will have to decide for themselves the best use of their time; however, I suspect that if individuals take the time to explore different pathways out there for their goals, then they will be happier in the endgame.

Archaeology in Real Life

Archaeology Policy in Southwest Asia

Within the nations of Northern Africa and southwest Asia, there have been many challenges posed by civilians towards Government policies and its outcomes. This essay will not dive into the specifics of each country’s challenges, yet it will focus on one specific element of the aftermath of civil disobedience in events like the Arab Springs. From these events, they maintain the element of developing specific social identity and cohesion. Specifically, the focus of this essay will be on the differences between how Egypt and Turkey have conducted social policies and the outcome of these actions.

Many foreign observers of Egypt may not realize that for Egypt’s visitor economy, it was under great strain due to the challenges of the new millennium and previous governmental policy. For example, there was a serious attack in 1997 near Luxor, Egypt that killed 62 people. This, along with the events of a post 9/11 world; caused a lot of worry about safety while traveling and created negative thinking about traveling to the Northern African, and the Southwest Asian region in general. This caused great strain to the profits of the tourism economy of Egypt and thus the budgets of the Egyptian government for further excavation and analysis of ancient sites was diminished. Accordingly, Ministries under the controversial Hosni Mubarak government took action to try to appease tourists and to promote the findings of Archaeologists of the existing sites and the new sites found in more modern times. This effort was mostly successful and despite the backlash from other issues that led to Mubarek being ousted from power in 2011, the policies of the government have largely been supportive of the tourism economy. With exceptional finds such as those of the recent Saqarra tomb and auxiliary structures, the presentation and preservation of antiquities from Egypt seem to be secure financially and in a civil manner in a post global pandemic world.

In the case of Turkey, the Turkish government has been continually consolidated under Recip Tayyip Erdogan; first under the position of prime minister and now while he holds the presidency. Due to this, his cabinet and government have exceptional authority on day to day policy from the top down; in order to make policy. The Turkish government survived largely unscathed from the events of the different Arab Spring movements and despite Erdogan facing challenges from dissidents for different policies such as increasing the role of religion in state, Erdogan’s top down approach has maintained a steady course in contrast to other governments in the region. This consistent course appears to be not beneficial for the average person and a lot of money is being spent on paying debt and policies with marginal returns; because of this, the Turkish Lira has been descending through hyperinflation and the government has had to choose what to invest their limited funds in. From its decision makers, the Turkish government does not find conducting Archaeology to be a significant item to do and thus many major sites of multiple cultures have not been thoroughly investigated into.

Some cultural sites that exist in Turkey include: Roman, Greek, Byzantine and of course Turkish sites. The Government has decided to not investigate further and in some cases even manipulated sites for their own gain. One notable site is the Hagia Sofia, a Christian Church has been converted into a Mosque in modern times and Gobekli Tepe, one of the significant sites of pre-Turkic culture has been largely ignored and has only been excavated to a minor extent. The reason this matters is because the morale in Turkey’s population appears to be low given what accurate information one can attain and having cultural victories gives legitimacy to a government. The Turkish government which plays a balancing act between multiple world powers with the Bosporus could greatly improve its standing in the international community and at home by investigating into its own backyard. One can compare the idea of this to how when one visits France, UK, or Germany; it is common to see the great architecture and artwork when one is there. Very few questions come forward of the long term stability of these western nations. The funding involved to increase a nation’s appearance is minor and the dividends are vast to present yourself as strong in the international community.

With the contrast of the Turkish and Egyptian Archaeology policies, one can extrapolate that it is crucial to search for social victories when managing a nation. When a country has supported its national identity by positive, constructive developments; it is much more likely to stay in power than one that does not listen to the people when they call for change.

Sources:

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Zahi Hawass | History| Smithsonian Magazine Göbekli Tepe, Turkey – Global Heritage Fund

On NATO

NATO, a tested hypothesis once more.

The concept of NATO,The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was intended as a post World War 2 strategic alliance led by the United States to counter the rising Iron curtain of the USSR in Eastern Europe. The essential details were that the members of NATO are to support one another in a traditional sense. To provide aid to one another in times of war and to spend a certain amount to maintain their military.

In reality, members of NATO have not maintained the original charter for what was expected of them and this has created a situation that is very similar to how the Byzantine Empire ran its foreign alliances. The Eastern Roman Empire, known to modernity from its 19th century term of Byzantium, ran a large governmental structure centered in the great middle ages city of Constantinople, it had maintained a large amount of trade and wealth generation from its provinces. With this money, it attempted to counter the troubles of the day; which included conducting war and to defend its land territories. This basic plan worked for a time when the Eastern Empire had dealt with smaller federations of migrations of people including Varangians, Tatars, and other Germanic tribes.This strategy failed however once the Byzantine Empire encountered a unified front from elsewhere. In the Byzantine case, this was the rise of Islam and the first Islamic Caliphates. Under strong pressure and the failure of quid pro quo diplomacy, the Byzantines lost their eastern provinces in the middle east and north Africa and thus lost a lot of influence in the 600s. The reason for this is that the Byzantine Empire had traditionally bribed tribes to fight amongst each other; yet, once it encountered a strong unified foe, it failed to make a strong defense.

The situation of a wealthy nation trying to encourage discourse for strategic gain has been seen in the post WW2 United States. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States funded the rebel groups to take to guerrilla warfare in order to fight the USSR. This was successful in large part because the USSR had tried to control the area by using tactics that had worked in traditional warfare. The belief of the Soviets was that they could kill enough resistance that eventually the country would bow down to them. This worked fine in the cities of Afghanistan, but as those who are aware of the situation in Afghanistan. There is a large influence of the countryside tribes in the country. When the majority of these tribes went against the Soviets and formed their Mujaheddin factions. The USSR had little opportunity to try to divide and conquer. Despite this not being a European conflict, we can use this as evidence to show that deep consideration must be made of alliances and situations on the ground.

For NATO, its actions after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been very aggressive in its expansion approach. Evidence for this is that there seems to be a strong correlation between the growth of the European Union into Eastern Europe and the expansion of NATO. Nations such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland are participating states in the expansion of Western ideas and economic practices. All of these countries have sent delegations and maintained memberships in the European Union for many years now. For the Russians, these developments have been cause for alarm in Moscow. For some perspective of how the Western nations have out competed the USSR and the Russian state take for example the Kremlin provide a statistic of in the year 1980, the USSR had a third of the economic size of the United States. Now, the Russian economy is about 1/15th the size of the United States. Hence, economic stagnation is a major pull factor of Russia to enter into Ukraine to protect its national albeit Imperialistic ambitions.

From what can be seen is that the NATO nations have had success to divide Russian Influence from its post Soviet sphere of influence, yet it has not paid adequate attention to its eastern counterparts. . Russia is part of BRICS, an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have come to represent a sort of counterbalance to that of the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has many countries under the Western banking sphere and has a large influence on economic policy. BRICS is trying to remove the US Dollar from its World Reserve Currency status by economic promotion, so when the nations of NATO are pushing sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, its still not addressing the financing and economic power of BRICS and even the Western nations support it by the purchasing of Chinese goods. This profit made in China can easily be fed back into Russia, if needed. What logically should be done is that there should be an ultimatum to China, where if they do not cut off trade with Russia then they will also be under an embargo. This would cause harsh penalties to Russia and may push the Chinese to convince Russia to call back the attack.

The problem fundamentally with NATO was that it was going to hit a roadblock onto how much division it could cause in Russia’s sphere of influence and its reliance on the United States to lead the alliance. The United States has waned somewhat in power projection in the early 21st century. This has allowed members of NATO to not take seriously its called for obligations within the alliance with notable members such as Germany, not holding up their budgetary responsibilities to provide for a strong military. When Ukraine was invaded on 24 February 2022, Germany was not prepared and even relied on Russian Natural gas to fuel its factories. Without this natural gas, Germany, which needs 1/3rd of its supply of total natural gas to fuel its robust factories could not operate at a strong capacity. The Germans were unprepared and so were the French. French president Macron had taken up the delegation to negotiate with Russia for a peace deal; he and his advisors failed to materialize this. France based on its contributions to NATO should not be given authority to negotiate on behalf of the alliance. It is the failure of strong leadership in the United States that is ultimately just after Vladimir Putin to blame for the developments in Europe in February 2022. Now, NATO has responded and appears weak to the rest of the world due to its failure to deal with a united Russian front. One of its biggest mistakes was to announce that a nuclear option was not possible. Even if one doesn’t want to do that, it should not tell the enemy so, this is because an enemy who has this information will do everything it can to exploit it. It is probable that Russia would have been less aggressive if they thought Moscow might be obliterated for its actions.To be frank, NATO sounds good on paper, but with the reality of this event and others priors, it shows that NATO as currently structured does not work and should be abolished and replaced with something else.

Ultimately, NATO and the United States’ role in the alliance shows just as past Empires have come to understand is that you cannot only rely on divide and conquer to deal with your enemies and you can’t buy your way out. It is necessary to be adaptable to the times and to keep all options on the table.
Sources: 1. https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV 2. https://www.worldeconomics.com/GrossDomesticProduct/Russia.gdp

On Entrepreneurship

On Entrepreneurship, or the Art of paying attention.

There is an idea that is common among people that you need to have an extensive business plan in order to run a successful business. You must have a lot of start up money, that is capital to get your business off the ground. It is considered normal to run in the red until through perseverance and grit that you finally get to a good place in your business. Although, a solid business plan and capital is definitely a wise thing to do and have, it isn’t fundamental to start a business. For this contradictory standpoint, I will provide personal anecdotes and then expand to general terms.

I am the type of person to keep tabs on world events. Perhaps, this understanding of events may be superficial, yet it gives me a fundamental advantage of perspective over someone who does not care. The events unfolding in China in late 2019 and early 2020 rang alarm bells in my mind. I knew that it would be important to make further consideration of how to secure more income because of lock downs in China that I had seen. In this line of thinking, I committed to selling items online.

In the past, I had experimented from time to time, over the years with selling this and that here and there, but nothing was ever too serious. I did notice how one could make a good return if they had bought something at a low enough price and then sold at a higher price. It was simple supply and demand. When February, 2020 had emerged and things had not improved in Asia, I determined to sit down and think about what to do to make more money. This action was very good in hindsight because just as March and then April had rolled around, my hours at work had been cut dramatically. For many people with a similar situation, they did not see this coming; however, with this more worldly perspective, I got to work selling online seriously. During the first month, I used some of my savings to buy some merchandise and to get rid of some items that were just laying around the place. I managed to sell a few hundred dollars worth in the first few months and was happy to have this money coming in. By June, I had expanded this action of buying and selling in the 500-600 dollar range and continued. Financial stress continued in my main employment, so that situation had not improved much, yet I wasn’t tied to filling deadlines like others out of sheer desperation for a bailout. By the end of 2020, I had increased selling to amounts in the thousands of dollars range. Was this some sort of remarkable sense of business? No, it was not.

Entrepreneurship in my opinion is the ability to see opportunity and to go for it. Paying attention to the events unfolding and potential consequences of events, doesn't have to be a negative task, but rather a challenge for something to change. The worldwide lock downs caused many people to be stuck at home, and because of the high standard of living in 1st world nations, people still had access to the internet, and their desire for stuff just increased. The internet still has a lot of opportunity as a sort of digital wild west and there is money on the table for those who are willing to work for it. Compare this to the capital needed to run a physical location, the comparison to the start up costs online is next to nothing.

The example of reselling takes one to see where you can procure items at a fair cost and then finding the markets, this case online and then bringing merchandise there. For some, their pride doesn’t allow them to lower themselves into making lower gains or returns, but it is this kind of attitude that would sink them if there had an inheritance or access to capital. Making a mistake will 500 dollars is much more manageable than sinking 50k into a failed venture. This may seem like common sense, but with the amount of physical business that fail each year, it begs the question of what is the logic of buying before you try.

Trying out different ideas and tactics is very similar to the Scientific method. There, it is common to try and retry different hypothesis and steps in order to get a reproducible conclusion. If the hypothesis holds up, then it becomes a theory. We then use these theories in order to build a lot of technology that people take for granite, yet if it wasn’t for this experimentation, we would be a lot further back in the scheme of things. Due to this, I propose that when it comes to business, use the entrepreneur mindset to get started.

In conclusion, learning to pay attention to the world around us gives us daily valuable information. By exploring different markets and supplies, it allows us to try before we financially buy and this can save a lot of people, time and effort that could be used to start them on a brighter future.

LL 2022

Ideas on Learning Languages in 2022

At the end of the year, many people reflect on the different goals and their progression in those areas. They think of whether they have met or have not met goals during the year and decide what to take on next. Due to this being a large scale issue, I will focus on some reflections on a topic that is important to myself and others with similar perspectives. This would be the topics of language learning.

Many individuals, particularly those who are on the younger side of the life spectrum have a lot of excitement for learning new languages. This is a great thing; however, a lot of people don’t really understand how to develop a sound program to get themselves to the goals they want to achieve. For some, the idea of “fluency” and reaching that is the goal, but they don’t know how to start or how to continue towards that path, so today I will attempt to lay down some elements, some methods to help them get there. On the other hand, some need to learn a language because of workplace employment opportunities or requirements. For them, it can be hard to maintain a proper motivation to keep to their goals.

To be clear, it is evident that those who have a genuine interest and discipline will do much better than those who don’t. These suggestions put forward won’t be a quick path, but an effective one for progress; therefore, here are observations and suggestions for language learning for the new year.

To start, perhaps the most important part of language learning in the new year, is to realize that your ideas now will likely change as the year progresses. For example, you might be interested in German, French, Spanish and Italian. This hypothetical person might do 3 months of German and then decide to work on Spanish. For the rest of the year, they work on Spanish until December. This individual may think they have failed, but what they don’t realize is that, they are just are on a different time scale then they had set about. Unless, they decide not to learn those other languages, whose to say that you must learn those 4 languages in a year’s time. Chances are, getting that strong foundation in one or two languages can give you the opportunity to learn the culture and cover more topics than learn 4 languages to a basic level. In the Romance languages, they build upon each other in the scheme of learning, so if you want the majority of them, then progress in one will lead to progress in others. Patience is a virtue as they say.

For the daily route, spending 10 minutes a day is much better than spending 70 minutes on one day. If you think about how you learn in school or something you are interested in, then it’s clear there is a lot of repetition. For some situations, grinding can be effective, but not when you’re just beginning. What comes to mind is taking an exam or going for an interview, grinding can be useful. If you are doing this a side project for fun or even in a productive capacity, repetition is key.

For watching shows, if your language level in a given language is intermediate or above, then casually watching shows is just fine. That being said, if it’s not there; which you can evaluate by watching without subtitles, then there is little profitable time happening if you don’t work while watching. According to material and studies supporting this conception of repetition, it is necessary to understand at least 90-95% of material to grasp and gain from watching or reading a material. If one writes or records vocabulary during a show, then it can be useful.

On number 4, I think a rounded program of the three major elements of reading, writing and listening is crucial to give you the overall usage for interacting with native speakers. I doubt that only knowing how to read will be satisfactory for those who like to communicate with others on a daily bases.

Finally, for your learning project. Find out what works for you. I like lists since I don’t prefer to be told when and what to learn. Creating my own schedule is much more fulfilling to me; yet for some, they like being told what to do. Nothing wrong with either of those tactics.

In conclusion, don’t be hard on yourself about learning a new language. If you want to learn a new language, then you will get there if you keep at it. Depending on your schedule, you can always adjust your schedule to increase or decrease your time involved. Taking an outline such as the common framework for languages with the references of B1, B2 and so on is very useful. Anyways, everyone have a great new year!

Film Review for Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln

Check it out below.

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