Rav Avraham Abulafia of the Middle Ages

 You might ask why do I pay attention to Rav Avraham Abulafia of the Middle Ages in terms of sensitive subjects. Faith in the wise is one of the most important principles by which the Torah is acquired.  The only thing is one needs a certain degree of sense to be able to discern who really is wise and who is faking it.

In fact this is one of the problems of very smart people. They tend to not know their limits.. In the Midrash its says that the mother of Samuel the prophet prayed that her son should not be overly smart nor dumb.

There are more parasites in the seas than in the past.

;There are more parasites in the seas than in the past. The salmon and other species suffer. These sorts of worms that dig into the skin of fish do the same with humans.

spacecraft-in-a-warp-bubble-could-travel-faster-than-light-claims-physicist/

https://physicsworld.com/a/spacecraft-in-a-warp-bubble-could-travel-faster-than-light-claims-physicist/

This becomes even more interesting if you take into account that there are lots of ER bridges around. In a paper by Susskind, it is suggested that ER bridges are what connects entangled atoms one to another.

way of learning - from the beginning to end, and end to beginning, and from the middle and outwards.

 When I was in high school, there was a physics student that told me his way of learning. It was from the beginning to end and end to beginning and from the middle and outwards.

I have found that helpful for me in terms of method of review. I get to some place in the text where it seems to me that that I need to start review. So instead of going to the very beginning, I simply start going back page by page from where I am holding.  But I keep the place where I left off by some kind of place marker so that when I get to the beginning I can pick up again at that place.

Not speaking lashon hara/slander. But the equal importance of warning the public

 I can see the importance of not speaking lashon hara/slander but I think that this emphasis tends to diminish the equal importance of warning the public or individuals about dangerous friends or groups. There must be many more sources for this but the two that I recall off hand are Kamtza and Bar Kamtza by which the Second Temple was destroyed. Not so much for some individual transgression but the fact that no one objected. Also the events surrounding the concubine at Giva. It is not at all that some people in that one city had killed the concubine, but rather that no one in that city nor in the entire tribe of Binyamin objected.

See sefer hamidot [of Rav Nahman] the section on embarrassment. he brings there a statement from the sages that it is permissible to embarrass the religious authorities that make money off of the Torah [and what religious authorities don't?], and one must not stand before them, and the clothing they wear is like a saddle on a donkey. So we see that sometimes one must object. Certainly the Gra and Rav Shach objected to great evil, even though it is clear that no one paid any attention to what they were saying until this very day.

There is a lot of tension between the Schools based on Kant and those based on Hegel.

I see philosophy as a sort of orchestra conductor. That is one who is making all the separate aspects of the orchestra /reality to be one unified whole. So the Mind Body problem has been an issue since Descartes.

But 20th century philosophy is not a very good conductor. Especially when philosophy ventures into politics. The results are dismal. 

So I would like to recommend the Kant Fries approach of Leonard Nelson. However that is not to deny the value and important points of all the thinkers after Kant up until Hegel. [There is a lot of tension between the Schools based on Kant and those based on Hegel. And I wish I could decide which is right. But I can not. Each has good points. In fact one of the major objections to Hegel is the sorts of Marxist ideas that perverted his approach. Abusus non tollit usum."Abuse dos not kill use"

The "work book"

 The oddest sort of thing which pops up every time I take a look at the Russian Revolution is that the impression that people have of it being all about everyone getting an equal amount of stuff was not at all what it was about. It was about the industrial workers. And when they took power on Oct 24-25 that is what they in fact enforced. The "work book". If people did not have a continuous set of entries they went to jail. They did not receive "welfare". [The "soviets" were the elected representatives of the workers in the city. This was against the "zemstvos" --the elected representatives of the villages.]

There have been plenty of attempted takeovers of the USA by internal enemies that are welfare-takers. And they claim communism for their model. But what they are asking for is to be the masters, and the white people the slaves. They are not actually asking for communism.

And in fact I agree with the idea of work. That is to say I do not think that Torah ought to be a means to make a living. However that does not negate the idea of sitting and learning Torah. But that I think is a matter of trust in God. When one trusts in God, then I believe that often God provides. [Depending on how sincere the trust is.] But to sit and learn and extort money from the State seems to me to be not the Torah way.

Often one finds in kollels that they feel they deserve to get paid for learning Torah. I have never been able to digest that idea.

To me the idea of kollels and even religious leaders getting paid seems ridiculous. Trust in God I understand. But using Torah as a means to make money seems extremely offense to me.

And furthermore- I do not see any devotion to Torah in it. The whole religious business seems like a sneaky way trick. They pretend to not be using Torah to make money while that is exactly what they are doing. 

Since it is clear that using Torah to make money is forbidden, why not simply stop it in its tracks--once and for all?