My Developing Republican Political Positions

# Principles and values

- From many religions and cultures, one common ethic: Faith in each other and in Compassionate Love over Suspicion, Punishment, and Fear

- Government by the people and for the people: enable the poor, the weak, and the average to govern well

- Equal political representation and vote for all citizens. Voting is too unequal and too hard and overwhelming. Make voting just, easier, and smarter for everybody.

- Prevention of revolution by masterfully recognizing and avoiding the destabilizing condition of extreme wealth and income inequality

- Local budgets and programs plus universal values; great concentrations of power are dangerous

- Conservatively, compassionately, intelligently, humbly, and sustainably progressive; neither revolutionary, reactionary, nor beholden to the past

# Electoral Reform

Break the two-party stranglehold and the outsized influence of the few ultra-rich. Government by the people, not by the powerful.

- Political funding limits: by real people only with annual cap per donor accessible for the poor (like 10% of poverty income per donor)

- Deprecate districting: use proportional representation and multiple-candidate districts

- Abolish or neuter the anti-by-the-people electoral college

- Ranked choice voting

- Fund elections sacredly: small government does not mean bad voting or skimping on the cost of democracy.

- Political party accountability: link ballot access to transparent, by-the-people practices 

# Work freedom

- Replace minimum wage with:

  - disparity limits on ratio between highest and lowest effective personal hourly compensation (not counting tipping) across any service and supply chain. Data and accreditation served by the NGO sector.

  - anti-bondage (anti-monopoly) restrictions:

    - 600-hour to 900-hour per employer/client annual work limit for non-voting workers.

    - Limits on non-portable "benefits" or "perks" to minimize employer lock-in and maximize the freedom to walk.

# Abortion

- Minimize pregnancy abortion rates and delays using a combination of global technocratic research and policy with clarity about values: anti-suffering, not anti-pleasure; culture of life, not culture of control. 

# Homicide

- Prosecute every homicide, whether accidental, official, or criminal. No killing without accountability, even when done "in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets". Sentence with magnanimity and wisdom, not vengeance. 

Unlimited Lock-free Online Looped Water Distribution Network Modeling with EPANET solver

I added a looped water supply pipe network modeling application to my FLOSS (GPL = totally unchained to say "I love you") suite of online engineering calculators that allow multiple units selections and serve multiple languages (recently expanded to 26 for coverage focus in the developing world). It includes a "use EPANET solver" option. Here are some introductory walk-throughs for new shoppers, new users, and new projects.

Thoughts About The Corporation

I have radical implicit faith in all my friends.  I believe that together we can create Corporation 2.0.

The Story of the Corporation: Once upon a time in good faith we invented a way for property to be held and action to be taken anonymously by a society we have come to call the corporation.  This invention became so successful that it achieved what in other fields we would call The Singularity.  It reached the point at which it took on a life of its own, the point at which the tail began wagging the dog.  It wasn't until it reached The Singularity that certain defects in our invention became obvious.  We began to notice that the device had an unlimited growth mandate, and that it was capable of efficiently pursuing that mandate.  We noticed that the device was wired for short term performance at the expense of long term survival.

I founded NPS Global Engineers in 2017 as an experiment in Corporation 2.0.

What Are The Best Countries on Earth?

This is a 2025 update of my 2014 post about Best Countries. In 2014 took my first impartial look at which countries on earth are doing best at the factors that matter to me. I looked up maps and tables for Income Equality, Corruption, Homicide Rate, World Citizenship, Healthy Average Life Expectancy, Annual Work Hours Per Worker, Abortion Rate, Capital Punishment Rate, Freedom, Economic Freedom. I chose the first of these factors because I thought it would be nice to live in a country where I had lots of free time in health and safety without listening to a lot of griping about the government and the rich.  I added more factors later, some of them by request. If you can think of important factors I omitted, please leave me a comment. Here are the numbers and the countries that are doing best on earth.

Tom's hemorrhoid posts really work!

For the first time in many years, I got a hemorrhoid on Saturday May 3, and it bled more than any before it, so much that I got bloody underpants twice the next day. In the moment the pain, the lump, and the distress were so great that I thought surely all I had learned about hemorrhoids decades ago was garbage. But my son said, "They go away." So I went through all my previous discoveries and decided that for the previous few days I had been wearing my shorts poorly, with the waist tight above or at my belly button. I immediately changed that habit to wear them resting on my buttocks, and I started all the usual first aid including "Kegel" exercises (pelvic floor muscle training) and raising my desk to stand at work for a while. Sure enough, by the next Saturday my distress was gone and there was no lump obstructing my toilet wiping. My hemorrhoid posts aren't garbage. They really work, even when I am almost 60 years old!

Scientific vegan and raw-food vegan smoothie recipes

I am not a vegan; but I lean that way. And thanks to the interest of some friends and family, I immersed myself for the last couple of months in designing and testing some two-a-day smoothie recipes for complete nutrition.

Best advice I ever got

 This post is a growing collection of the most life-guiding advice I ever received.

Why I Stopped Believing That The Human Brain Creates Consciousness

The reason I stopped believing 31 days ago (July 11, 2024) that consciousness depends solely on a functioning brain is twofold: 

1. There is a remarkable and growing body of interesting evidence in a few fledgling fields studying consciousness as acknowledged by Carl Sagan and Sam Harris. See my annotated list below. 

2. I suddenly realized I had a mental block—insisting that consciousness must work a certain way—instead of keeping my mind open

My Ukelele Progress Levels - Songs to Play From The Beginning

At this point I am maybe an intermediate ukelele player; I can play Sing and Climb Every Mountain poorly in the key of C. These ukelele learning progress levels are mostly for myself. Maybe somebody else will find them useful. Let me know if you need specific chord charts for any of these songs.

General Notes:

1. Hyphen lists of chords (C-Am-F-G) represent progressions that occur at some point in a song.

2. Comma lists of chords (C, G7) are all the chords of a song in their order of appearance.

Level	New chords	New songs (easiest first)	Practical and theoretical notes
1	C	Some rounds: Are You Sleeping, Row Your Boat, Three Blind Mice	The common ukelele is a soprano ukelele. Its most natural or easiest key (scale) to play in is the key of C. For the key (scale) of C, C is the tonic chord (I), which is a foundation of music. Depending on the song, the key of C may not be easy to sing in, but that's the price of being a beginner. Later you can play also in the key of G to make most songs work reasonably well with your vocal range. Meanwhile, you can add a capo temporarily to at least practice more songs.
2	G7	Rounds variations, Down in the Valley, It Ain't Gonna Rain No More, Polly Wolly Doodle, La Cucaracha, The Wheels On The Bus	For the key of C, G7 is the dominant seventh chord (V7) that leads strongly (resolves) to the tonic chord C. This is a second foundation of music. Experiment with adding G7 to some of the rounds from Level 1.
3	F	Cielito Lindo, This Land Is My Land, Oh Danny Boy*, Oh Susanna, When They Ring Those Golden Bells*, Rock of Ages, How Great Thou Art, Purple People Eater, She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain, My Bonnie To Me, Joy To the World ¢ = capo, Silent Night ¢, Up On The Housetop ¢	For the key of C, F is the subdominant chord (IV) that leads to the tonic (I) in the plagal cadence (IV-I) or "Amen" (F-C). With the dominant G7 and the tonic C, the subdominant F opens up a universe of traditional songs (*at least in their simplest form). The plagal cadence (IV-I "Amen") is a nice way to end songs with the "Oh, yeah!" sound (What A Wonderful World).
4	Am	Heart and Soul, In The Still Of The Night, *A Teenager In Love, Duke of Earl, The Monster Mash, This Magic Moment, Who Put the Bomp, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Unchained Melody, Stand By Me*, Mandy	For the key of C, Am is the submediant (vi) chord. Adding it opens up the 50's chord progression I-vi-IV-I (C-Am-F-C). *Some of these songs sound better with a plain G instead of G7, and that's at level 6.
5	C7	This Land Is Your Land, When They Ring Those Golden Bells, Oh Danny Boy ("and all the flow'rs")	C7 is very easy to play, and since it is the dominant chord of the key of F, it is a great way to foreshadow the F chord leading into the chorus on later verses of songs including some of your earlier songs.
6	G, D7	Home on the Range ("deer" in chorus)	1. A super cool concept in music theory is secondary dominants or secondary function, in which any dominant seventh chord can resolve to the tonic chord of some key (scale). In the key of G, the dominant seventh is the D7 chord, and it can resolve to the G chord, which adds a really nice temporary "key of G" feel to these new songs. Remembering secondary function (and the "circle of fifths") is a huge trick for figuring out your way through songs by ear. 2. Now that you know how to play both the plain G and the G7 chords, you can add variation and nuance to some of your earlier songs by changing to G initially and then changing to G7 just when your artistic sense calls for its foreshadowing effect. You can also play the more "original" form of the 50's chord progression, which may make some of the Level 4 songs sound better.
7	Dm	Sincerely, When You Wish Upon A Star	1. This is the first, mild "finger squisher" chord. Three-finger squishers to come later (D, Eb, E). 2. You can use the Dm chord as a second verse or second phrase variation on the F chord in the 50s chord progression or other contexts (Perhaps Love). 3. Point 2 implies that the Dm chord (ii) may lead to the G chord (V). Noticing that Dm is a minor form of the dominant of the key of G is helpful because sometimes "circle of fifth" progressions want to alternate between minor and major like this (B7-Em-A7-Dm-G7-C as in "...goes, some things are meant to be. Take...." in Can't Help Falling in Love).
8	Em, B7	Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Shenandoah, Perhaps Love, O Holy Night, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus	These two three-finger chords are fun to learn together since your fingers stair-step up the frets identically for them both, making it delightfully easy to switch between them. Now we can play some fancy songs!
9	E7	What A Wonderful World (C-Em-F-C-F-C-E7-Am, F-G7-C-F-G)	Happily, E7 is not hard to play!
10	Fm	Home on the Range (last "word"), When They Ring Those Golden Bells ("...gether")	Fm is a hard chord to play. But it lets you add fancy endings to songs. Try adding it at the end of these songs.
11	C+, CMaj7	Let There Be Peace On Earth (CMaj7 before "Let me/us walk..." and C+ at last "... there be ... ")	These new "fancy" chords are very easy to play, and they add nice nuances.
12	A7	Can't Help Falling In Love (Em-B7-Em-B7-Em-B7-Em-A7-Dm-G)	As we spend more time (even temporarily) in the key of G, we find the need for the dominant chain ("circle of fifths") A7-D-D7-G
13	Gm	Sing (C, CMaj7, Am, F, Dm, G, G7, C7, D7, Gm, Fm)	Gm is related to C7, and in "Sing" at the climax note "long", we could play C7, but it sounds a little better to play Gm.
14	Cm, D	Climb Every Mountain (C, D7, G, Gm, C, Am, Fm, C, G7, CMaj7, C7, A7, D, Em, C+)	Cm and D look similar on a ukelele chord chart, but where Cm is an easy three-string bar chord, D is a challenge. Both arise from being in the key of G, with Cm acting like Fm (iv) and C acting like G (V).

Water Surface Increase Calculation for Wall Openings

I present here the method used by NPS Global Engineers for calculating the post-development water surface increase due to a wall with standardized openings. This method has been accepted for multiple projects (including APN 211-44-273, 216-67-067B, 216-67-067A, 219-40-293J, 211-45-084B, 211-47-031, 211-51-031G, 211-51-020K, 211-51-031K, and 503-51-966M) by Maricopa County Planning and Development.

Civil engineer Tom Haws and Atlas Land Surveying

About Atlas Land Surveying, Bill Barry, and Tom Haws

Bill Barry is the president of Atlas Land Surveying. He is a non-registrant who affiliates with registrants as the department heads of Atlas Land Surveying.

About Tom Haws and Atlas Land Surveying

Long ago (2014?) Bill Barry affiliated with me as his civil engineering department head. Now that I rarely do any work that I don't give to NPS, any work that Bill needs me to do is done by NPS. The Board of Technical Registration told me I am allowed to be the registrant for as many companies as I want, subject to other rules. 

Arizona Subdivision Law Avoidance by Licensed Professionals

I found today this statute at ARS 32-2181(D) that establishes the liability of Arizona licensed professionals who knew or should have known they were acting in concert to subdivide in avoidance of state law.

How I Succeed In Business

To my astonishment, I am a good CEO. And my businesses are solvent. Here's my first attempt to explain how I succeed in business. In other words, how do I deliver? I hope to get better at explaining.

Genesis emphasizes that Noah's flood was not an extinction event

Genesis says:

The Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7) "I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish." (Genesis 6:17)

But Genesis says:

A cappella doo wop mingle and sing Mesa AZ April 6

I'm inviting my people to mingle and sing with me at an a cappella doo wop night at City of Mesa Fire Station 202 at 830 S Stapley Drive on Thursday April 6. You are very welcome to invite others including interested youths. Please let me know if you want to be reminded.