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Back in Kyiv and fighting for Ukraine, Nikita Nakonchnyi, a former Lake George employee, says that Ukrainians will win or they will die defending their country (“View from Kyiv: 'We will win or we will die,'” April 4). They will never surrender. He states, to prevent defeat, “We need a lot of money and we need a lot of weapons.” So do most other Western European nations.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warns that we have entered a pre-war era and Europe is not prepared. We are sleepwalking toward World War III. A similar situation existed in the 1930s when Hitler was amassing his war machine to invade Europe.

The problem then and now is American isolationism. Former President Donald Trump’s America First policy maintains that the United States can go it alone and ignore what happens in the rest of the world today. It cannot. As Vice President Kamala Harris has said, “isolationism is not insulation.” Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has called democracy a failed form of government, Winston Churchill said that is the best form of government worth defending, despite its flaws, at all costs.

If Ukraine is not supported with military and financial aid soon, and Ukraine falls to Russia, then other NATO countries will quickly follow and the United States will be plunged into a larger war that could have been prevented by fighting a smaller one in Ukraine now.

President Joe Biden warns that not supporting his aid package for Ukraine plays into Putin’s hands and threatens the survival of Western democracy itself.

Published April 22, 2024

Kratom is an herb that is highly effective for pain relief, opioid withdrawal, anxiety reduction and much more. It’s also inexpensive and infinitely safer than opioids.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have attributed a few dozen deaths to kratom, much fewer than occur in a single day from opioids, and most were in individuals who had other drugs in their system. Pain patients who have switched to kratom from opioids have found that it works better for pain, and their quality of life improved.

The only real threat from kratom is to the bottom lines of pharmaceutical companies. Yet the FDA has tried to get kratom banned in the United States and, when that effort failed, tried to get the World Health Organization to ban it internationally. Both efforts failed because of a lack of evidence that kratom is harmful, and tens of thousands of patients testified that it helped them.

Passage of a state kratom safety bill is a good idea because there are some bad actors selling adulterated products. However, the American Kratom Association has a list of online companies on its website that have passed strict standards for lab testing and good manufacturing processes.

If more people were using kratom instead of prescription drugs, many deaths could be averted, much suffering could be reduced and the savings to our health care system would be immense.

The writer is the CEO of Alternative Pain Treatment Directory.

Published April 22, 2024

The casing of the new quantum computer at RPI looks like a statue of the concept “science” as envisaged by Bauhaus-inspired marketers at IBM. It’s watched over by stained-glass images of saints in a repurposed chapel. As a repurposed physicist working to promote human survival prospects, I’m inspired by the picture to discuss one reason for respecting each other and, indeed, all life.

Some believe that people possess fixed attributes from which they sometimes deviate. Others say that people incorporate opposite attributes that coexist simultaneously. For particles, quantum mechanics concerns mixtures, or “superpositions,” of coexisting mutually exclusive attributes.

People often expect to understand each other as simple lists of fixed attributes. Spending time away from these expectations helps a person to embrace ambiguity in their sense of self. Returning to society can push them back into a persona. Likewise, particles that interact enough become less quantum mechanical in nature. Physicists speak of “quantum decoherence,” the loss of superposition.

I hope physics seems relatable, but physics can’t tell us what this universe is. By definition, everything science can tell us is information. There are many ways to store and process information, including via minds. Scientifically speaking, we and everything else could be thoughts in the mind (s) of God (s). Panpsychism, the principle of ubiquitous mentality, is again gaining academic........

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