December marks the annual plunge of a seemingly otherwise rational people into a world of delusion. The Holidays, as they are called, celebrate the supposed birth of Jesus or Christ, or both: the issue seems quite unclear. Anyway, this man whose mere existence is by no means confirmed, and who some people think of as God, is hailed as the King of Israel, the birth of whom the Book of Isaiah allegedly foretells. Carols sing the praises of Emmanuel, the name by which the new king shall be known.
In fact the king of Israel mentioned in Isaiah is not Jesus at all. His name is Maher'shalal'abaz and just happens to be Isaiah's son who he has with the priestess of the temple. This Jehovah's scheme (one of several) is to establish Israel as an an intermediate power positioned between Egypt to the Southwest and the Northern nations of Assyria, Babylonia, and Anatolia. That the birth of Jesus is foretold in this book is an absurd statement, made by "wolves in sheep's clothing" meant to persuade the easily convinced. But it is more than that.
The Christmas Season is a cruel joke society plays on it's children. They are led to believe that life is all about snow and mistletoe "and presents on the tree." They're bundled off to see old Saint Knick to tell him what they want for Christmas; this old man nothing but a hireling who couldn't care less what the kids want, his only qualification for the job being that he doesn't let his annoyance show. But it's Jesus' birthday! The Prince of Peace (another plagiarized bit of Isaiah) has come and now there will be "peace on earth, goodwill toward men."
Really?
And when is all this supposed to take place? It's been over two-thousand years; don't you think if there was any truth to this absurd fantasy that we'd see some results by now? But what he have had is an almost unbroken string of wars since 1951, all of them based on false evidence and outright lies. The monk Thomas Merton remarked once that the Catholic Church, which takes a strong position against abortion, the "murder" of an unborn child, takes no position against nuclear war. Pius XII collaborated with the Nazis openly while the latter were exterminating Jews along with other "inferior" races. Joy to the world?
While the world struggles with war, poverty, disease, and oppression, the latest addition to Christmas lore is that, because the ice is melting at the north Pole due to Global Warming, Santa has to find a new location for his workshop. A real crisis; no?" But not a word about ending the war in Iraq and bringing the troops home. Peace on Earth? Humbug!
Oh, but let's not spoil the illusion by bringing up serious matters. More humbug. The reason we have so many serious problems is because no one dealt with them when they weren't so serious, when matters could have been more easily resolved. But no! We have to have our escapism, something else to focus on while we continue to be herded like cattle, propagandized into near total stultification; where we are taxed without representation, sent off to wars without declaration, and where the nation's wealth has disappeared without explanation. The only good about finding Santa a new place to put his workshop is that it won't be budgeted by Congress (ie. taxpayers). It would be nice, though, if we could find new homes for the neo-con and elitist thugs who got us into the present situation; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and the rest of the dirty pack. Leavenworth would be good for openers; but how about Guantanamo?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
We Have Met the Aliens...
And they are US!
Those who have visited my website are familiar with the thesis I present there: that the earth was colonized about four million years ago by beings from another star system. To first time readers this might sound like science fiction: absurd, especially to so-called Christians who ridicule the proposition citing the Biblical account of Creation. Ironically, the Bible supports this idea as the Book, The Time of the End, on the website clearly shows. A quick summary for first-timers;
The Lords of the World as I call them were "moving across the abyss" when they discovered a lone star of the right size and containing the right elements to sustain life, The star also wobbled, indicating the presence of satellites, hopefully one at the right distance in what we call the Eco sphere. The first three days of Creation describe the steps these souls from afar took to to discover the earth. From day four on they are on the earth exploring and documenting the many wonders they found there.
Being aliens the Lords were careful to quarantine themselves until they became genetically acclimated to the new environment, and could be sure not to unleash epidemics among the denizens of this new world.
But there was one matter that had to be attended to, one that would determine their survival in this place: consanguinity, or inbreeding. The Lords had to find a source of fresh genes to augment their isolated genomic state.
They discovered a native species (Proto man) whom they "created in their own image and likeness", meaning that this native species had the equipment the Lords recognized as the keys to higher intelligence: binocular vision, stereo audition, and opposed thumbs. These creatures are what we call Homo Robustus, men but with the physical attributes of their simian ancestors: long arms and short, stubby legs. By the now-familiar process of genetic engineering the Lords elevated these creatures to their own physical stature and began mating with them (Genesis, chapter six. Some of these hybrids did not work out very well and had to be destroyed, but others went on to form civilizations based on agriculture (which the Lords taught them), governance, architecture, and socialization.
NOTE: It seems highly unlikely that man would have developed agriculture on his own. For two million years before the arrival of the Lords they had been hunter-gatherers and would have had no incentive toward farming, as all they required of fruits and vegetables were growing everywhere for the taking. Also, agriculture is a highly technical and involved discipline requiring a knowledge of the times to plant and harvest, irrigation, crop rotation, and the like; too much to contemplate man devising without aid and advice from a higher source.
What this all boils down to is that we are not native to this world. Being the offspring of Lords and human mothers we are hybrids, and the mix of the two cultures accounts for the dual spirituality of mankind; lofty, ideal, and aspiring one one side; base, mean, animalistic on the other: what we call the Tragicomic Nature of Man. Native species don't have this attribute. There are several ways in which mankind differs from native species, and it is the prupose of this article to make the case that we are aliens. The arguments;
1. We wear clothes. Native species are provided by Nature with physical attributes that enable them to survive (and thrive) without the need of any additional covering: fur, feathers, shells, and camouflage.
That we require clothing to protect us from the elements indicates that, not being adequately provided for in this respect, we are not natural to the earth.
2. Upright Stance. Man is the only biped vertebrate that maintains a fully upright stance. All others have proportionately longer arms and shorter legs, an arrangement far more efficient than out own body structure. These animals can assume upright positions when sitting, walking, or doing something with their upper limbs. But when running, their body configuration allows them to travel as four legged animals; this allows for greater speed, they tire less, and there is a more efficient weight distribution. Indeed, some medical anthropologists maintain that the human spine is not constructed to bear an upright position for great lengths of time. And isn't back pain one of the most common complaints of our kind?
3. Premature Births. Humans are also alone among biped vertebrates in this odd characteristic. All others bear viable young; whole and complete at birth, though still needing suckling at first. All human infants are blind, their skulls are not yet completely formed, they have no motor skills, are unable to stand, and at first must have their heads supported, as their necks are not yet strong enough to bear the weight alone. This condition is related to the upright stance which we inherited from our alien ancestors in that it calls for a narrower birth canal, hence babies are born sooner than is natural.
4. Indifference to Natural Science. Though we are coming aware of our place in the natural order of the earth, for all of recorded history we have plundered the natural resources of this world as if it were not our own - probably because it wasn't at first. We felt ourselves above the other creatures of the world and considered ourselves exempt from the Laws of Nature that govern all aspects of the earthly existence. This would be accounted for by the infusion of a Lordly consciousness: that we are not of this world and this would explain our preoccupation with the heavens. It's as though we feel ourselves visitors to this place, ultimately to go on from here to other worlds. Aren't we developing the technology to do just that?
5. Directed Organization. All of nature is organized; our world, the solar system, galaxies, the universe, and the infinite universes that comprise all of Creation. But all of this organization is natural, the way of things, how they work; absent this organization all would be chaos,lacking in cohesion, and would ultimately collapse.
We call our organization culture, a derived environment that is separate from and often at odds with the Natural Order. When the Lords arrived here "the dragon was loosed for another season"; the world was an untamed wilderness, the home of predator and prey, the quick and the dead. The higher sensibility infused into us by our Lordly sires, so lately the inhabitants of the perfect society that was the City of Heaven, instilled in early man the desire to replicate this Utopian model on earth. A culture is an ideal, an environment designed to ensure stability, protection, and preservation of the species.
6. Imagination: The term literally means the action of imaging and pertains to the visions we develop and store in our minds. Visions are a vital component of scientific prayer which we inherited from our Lordly ancestors. Indeed, everything that was ever made, every event that ever occurred, was initiated by a vision. Perhaps no characteristic separates us from other creatures of the earth more than our capacity for farsighted visioning, the ability to extend the imagination through a series of events and outcomes: planning.
But as we are hybrids humans are at once the beneficiaries of two distinct legacies: the inspired visions of our Lords, and the fear based imagery of our native progenitors. Therein lies the conflict. True spiritual growth is predicated on the need to grow in the aspiration of our Lordly legacy and to completely renounce the low and vile aspects of our nature. When in the Bible we read that "he who overcomes himself is mightier than he who conquers a city", that's the message exactly! Those of us who understand know that he who aspires to the good has no need of conquering a city; it's gates open wide in welcome. This of course is allegory, and it extends to all human contact, public and personal.
7. Dichotomy: The capability to turn on one's own kind is not unusual among the creatures of the earth, animals are territorial and once an area, a food or water source, is claimed the incumbent will defend its holding against all interlopers including members of its own species. But these are always, with few exceptions, momentary confrontations: the defender either vanquishes the challenger or is defeated. Seldom is deadly force used and the deposed party just goes off to find another roost. Not so with humans.
Man is dreadfully unique in his capacity to pit himself against his fellows on many bases of differentiation: race, religion, ethnicity, and nationalism. One can develop a pretty complete history of mankind just by studying the wars we have engaged in over six-thousand years (or more) of organized violence. Never has war resolved any issue permanently and often the outcome of one war sets the stage for another. One example is World War II which was fought to resolve problems arising out of World War I, particularly the humiliation the Germans suffered under the Versailles Treaty, and this was inspired by the defeat of France by the Prussians in 1870: the Franco-Prussian war - that France started!
Lao Tzu said, "Weapon after weapon conquers everything but chaos." War is insanity on two counts; it's making the same mistake over and over, expecting different results, and its effects outlast the causes cited for engaging in war. These latter have been shown in recent instances to have been based on lies (Gulf of Tonkin, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Nigerian 'yellow cake' uranium, etc.) and have caused grievous loss of life, hardship and suffering, dislocations and diasporas, and ruinous debt to all parties concerned. Creatures of the wild fight and kill each other in individual combats for survival: war pits citizens of one nation against citizens of another, in every case acting on second hand information(many of them lies), and goaded by propaganda into killing and wounding people whom they don't know, who are very much the same as themselves, and against whom neither has any personal enmity.
But war is but a symptom of the underlying spiritual malaise that is the source of all conflict: the dichotomy of the soul. From our Lordly ancestors we derive our visions of love, peace, and co-operation; from our fore bearers, treachery, violence, and divisiveness.
So, that's the argument. Is it true? That is a question you must answer for yourself. How can you tell if it's true? Truth does one of two things; either it strikes a chord or hits a nerve: you either love and embrace it, or you hate and attack it.
Which of these applies to you?
Those who have visited my website are familiar with the thesis I present there: that the earth was colonized about four million years ago by beings from another star system. To first time readers this might sound like science fiction: absurd, especially to so-called Christians who ridicule the proposition citing the Biblical account of Creation. Ironically, the Bible supports this idea as the Book, The Time of the End, on the website clearly shows. A quick summary for first-timers;
The Lords of the World as I call them were "moving across the abyss" when they discovered a lone star of the right size and containing the right elements to sustain life, The star also wobbled, indicating the presence of satellites, hopefully one at the right distance in what we call the Eco sphere. The first three days of Creation describe the steps these souls from afar took to to discover the earth. From day four on they are on the earth exploring and documenting the many wonders they found there.
Being aliens the Lords were careful to quarantine themselves until they became genetically acclimated to the new environment, and could be sure not to unleash epidemics among the denizens of this new world.
But there was one matter that had to be attended to, one that would determine their survival in this place: consanguinity, or inbreeding. The Lords had to find a source of fresh genes to augment their isolated genomic state.
They discovered a native species (Proto man) whom they "created in their own image and likeness", meaning that this native species had the equipment the Lords recognized as the keys to higher intelligence: binocular vision, stereo audition, and opposed thumbs. These creatures are what we call Homo Robustus, men but with the physical attributes of their simian ancestors: long arms and short, stubby legs. By the now-familiar process of genetic engineering the Lords elevated these creatures to their own physical stature and began mating with them (Genesis, chapter six. Some of these hybrids did not work out very well and had to be destroyed, but others went on to form civilizations based on agriculture (which the Lords taught them), governance, architecture, and socialization.
NOTE: It seems highly unlikely that man would have developed agriculture on his own. For two million years before the arrival of the Lords they had been hunter-gatherers and would have had no incentive toward farming, as all they required of fruits and vegetables were growing everywhere for the taking. Also, agriculture is a highly technical and involved discipline requiring a knowledge of the times to plant and harvest, irrigation, crop rotation, and the like; too much to contemplate man devising without aid and advice from a higher source.
What this all boils down to is that we are not native to this world. Being the offspring of Lords and human mothers we are hybrids, and the mix of the two cultures accounts for the dual spirituality of mankind; lofty, ideal, and aspiring one one side; base, mean, animalistic on the other: what we call the Tragicomic Nature of Man. Native species don't have this attribute. There are several ways in which mankind differs from native species, and it is the prupose of this article to make the case that we are aliens. The arguments;
1. We wear clothes. Native species are provided by Nature with physical attributes that enable them to survive (and thrive) without the need of any additional covering: fur, feathers, shells, and camouflage.
That we require clothing to protect us from the elements indicates that, not being adequately provided for in this respect, we are not natural to the earth.
2. Upright Stance. Man is the only biped vertebrate that maintains a fully upright stance. All others have proportionately longer arms and shorter legs, an arrangement far more efficient than out own body structure. These animals can assume upright positions when sitting, walking, or doing something with their upper limbs. But when running, their body configuration allows them to travel as four legged animals; this allows for greater speed, they tire less, and there is a more efficient weight distribution. Indeed, some medical anthropologists maintain that the human spine is not constructed to bear an upright position for great lengths of time. And isn't back pain one of the most common complaints of our kind?
3. Premature Births. Humans are also alone among biped vertebrates in this odd characteristic. All others bear viable young; whole and complete at birth, though still needing suckling at first. All human infants are blind, their skulls are not yet completely formed, they have no motor skills, are unable to stand, and at first must have their heads supported, as their necks are not yet strong enough to bear the weight alone. This condition is related to the upright stance which we inherited from our alien ancestors in that it calls for a narrower birth canal, hence babies are born sooner than is natural.
4. Indifference to Natural Science. Though we are coming aware of our place in the natural order of the earth, for all of recorded history we have plundered the natural resources of this world as if it were not our own - probably because it wasn't at first. We felt ourselves above the other creatures of the world and considered ourselves exempt from the Laws of Nature that govern all aspects of the earthly existence. This would be accounted for by the infusion of a Lordly consciousness: that we are not of this world and this would explain our preoccupation with the heavens. It's as though we feel ourselves visitors to this place, ultimately to go on from here to other worlds. Aren't we developing the technology to do just that?
5. Directed Organization. All of nature is organized; our world, the solar system, galaxies, the universe, and the infinite universes that comprise all of Creation. But all of this organization is natural, the way of things, how they work; absent this organization all would be chaos,lacking in cohesion, and would ultimately collapse.
We call our organization culture, a derived environment that is separate from and often at odds with the Natural Order. When the Lords arrived here "the dragon was loosed for another season"; the world was an untamed wilderness, the home of predator and prey, the quick and the dead. The higher sensibility infused into us by our Lordly sires, so lately the inhabitants of the perfect society that was the City of Heaven, instilled in early man the desire to replicate this Utopian model on earth. A culture is an ideal, an environment designed to ensure stability, protection, and preservation of the species.
6. Imagination: The term literally means the action of imaging and pertains to the visions we develop and store in our minds. Visions are a vital component of scientific prayer which we inherited from our Lordly ancestors. Indeed, everything that was ever made, every event that ever occurred, was initiated by a vision. Perhaps no characteristic separates us from other creatures of the earth more than our capacity for farsighted visioning, the ability to extend the imagination through a series of events and outcomes: planning.
But as we are hybrids humans are at once the beneficiaries of two distinct legacies: the inspired visions of our Lords, and the fear based imagery of our native progenitors. Therein lies the conflict. True spiritual growth is predicated on the need to grow in the aspiration of our Lordly legacy and to completely renounce the low and vile aspects of our nature. When in the Bible we read that "he who overcomes himself is mightier than he who conquers a city", that's the message exactly! Those of us who understand know that he who aspires to the good has no need of conquering a city; it's gates open wide in welcome. This of course is allegory, and it extends to all human contact, public and personal.
7. Dichotomy: The capability to turn on one's own kind is not unusual among the creatures of the earth, animals are territorial and once an area, a food or water source, is claimed the incumbent will defend its holding against all interlopers including members of its own species. But these are always, with few exceptions, momentary confrontations: the defender either vanquishes the challenger or is defeated. Seldom is deadly force used and the deposed party just goes off to find another roost. Not so with humans.
Man is dreadfully unique in his capacity to pit himself against his fellows on many bases of differentiation: race, religion, ethnicity, and nationalism. One can develop a pretty complete history of mankind just by studying the wars we have engaged in over six-thousand years (or more) of organized violence. Never has war resolved any issue permanently and often the outcome of one war sets the stage for another. One example is World War II which was fought to resolve problems arising out of World War I, particularly the humiliation the Germans suffered under the Versailles Treaty, and this was inspired by the defeat of France by the Prussians in 1870: the Franco-Prussian war - that France started!
Lao Tzu said, "Weapon after weapon conquers everything but chaos." War is insanity on two counts; it's making the same mistake over and over, expecting different results, and its effects outlast the causes cited for engaging in war. These latter have been shown in recent instances to have been based on lies (Gulf of Tonkin, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Nigerian 'yellow cake' uranium, etc.) and have caused grievous loss of life, hardship and suffering, dislocations and diasporas, and ruinous debt to all parties concerned. Creatures of the wild fight and kill each other in individual combats for survival: war pits citizens of one nation against citizens of another, in every case acting on second hand information(many of them lies), and goaded by propaganda into killing and wounding people whom they don't know, who are very much the same as themselves, and against whom neither has any personal enmity.
But war is but a symptom of the underlying spiritual malaise that is the source of all conflict: the dichotomy of the soul. From our Lordly ancestors we derive our visions of love, peace, and co-operation; from our fore bearers, treachery, violence, and divisiveness.
So, that's the argument. Is it true? That is a question you must answer for yourself. How can you tell if it's true? Truth does one of two things; either it strikes a chord or hits a nerve: you either love and embrace it, or you hate and attack it.
Which of these applies to you?
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Shroud of Turin - an Obvious Hoax
I recently traveled to Oklahoma on a trip that was part business, part recreation. After a busy and productive day I returned to my motel room and did something I seldom do - watched television. Twenty years ago when I gave my last television set away it was because I had been completely turned off by the intellectually vacant and inane fare that this once promising medium spewed out in a continuous stream to its chosen target audience - the typical twelve year-old. About the only two things I found that were worth watching were Animal Planet and the History Channel: it was on this latter that I watched a program on the famous Shroud of Turin.
This piece of linen that supposedly bears the imprint of the crucified body of Jesus is, in my opinion, proof that people are as gullible today as any Medieval churl. In my research into the realm of bizarre theories it seems to me that the most intensive research into one of these gems is carried out by those who want the theory to be true. In the case of the shroud they must really want it to be legitimate, considering the thousands of hours devoted to its study. But the so-called evidence just doesn't hold up and, again in my opinion, the evidence of obvious fraud goes entirely ignored and unremarked.
There are two items upon which the "faithful" rest their claim of authenticity; the origins of the linen and the blood evidence of the wounds in the man's head, wrists, trunk, and feet. But these so-called proofs are not conclusive by any means. Here we will examine each from a rational point of view. Concerning the linen itself, it is impregnated with pollen and dust found only in Palestine. While this may be true it doesn't prove that the shroud originated there. From the time of the First Crusade traffic between Europe and the Middle East brought many eastern artifacts west. The blood evidence is no more convincing, since all it proves is the presence of blood in all the right places, not the wounds alleged to be the source of these stains. That would make the shroud an antiquated example of "special effects" created to induce the belief in the reality of the representation. It just doesn't.
To present the argument of fraud it will be necessary to cite some quirks of the human psyche as demonstrated in the sub-conscious; acts and mindsets so deeply ingrained in the mind that people demonstrate them without realizing it. One example is that of a visitor to my home once who asked to use my bathroom. But his didn't use that word; instead he asked if he could use my "basement." Undoubtedly this man was educated in a Catholic parochial school (as was I )where he was indoctrinated into the belief that certain natural bodily functions are dirty, and should not even be mentioned. Nurses in Catholic hospitals, when told that one of their child patients needed to eliminate some waste, would ask "is it number one or number two?" And it's a safe bet that people so conditioned never realize what they are saying, how dumb it sounds. There are certain habits and practices in which people engage without any realization as to what they are doing or saying. At these deep levels of assimilation there is often little difference between intent and action.
Once, when answering machines were the sole means of recording incoming telephone calls, my girlfriend and I were leaving my apartment. She stood waiting with a puzzled look on her face as I dangled my keys on my right index finger and raised my right foot - and turned my answering machine on.
"Why did you do that?" she asked. I told her it was so I wouldn't experience the anxiety of wondering, after we had left, if I had turned the machine on. There were times when I truly couldn't recall this simple act, and there were also a couple of times when I was sure I'd turned it on but hadn't. Intending to turn it on, I was distracted by something, and thus didn't activate the device but was sure I had because I had thought to do so.
By citing these idiosyncrasies of word and deed we may come to understand the visual evidence that the Shroud of Turin is an out and out fraud. It boils down to the difference between a rational, clear thinking adult, and an ideologue. The intelligent adult's beliefs are conditioned by knowledge derived either from experience or study; the ideologue is the exact opposite: the ideologue's knowledge is conditioned by his beliefs, and when presented with any evidence counter to his a priori conclusions he will cling to those beliefs and absolutely deny the truth.
Let us return our attention to the figure on the shroud. Note the position of the hands. While it may conform to twelfth century sensibilities, the covering of the male genitalia in the manner shown on the shroud would be impossible if the man were truly dead. It is something that anyone can prove to him- or herself. Lie on the floor and cover yourself that way; you'll find that you must arch your shoulders forward and raise you elbows from the floor. This would require effort well beyond the capacity of a dead man. But once you relax your shoulders will fall back, causing your elbows to contact the floor, and your hands will pull away from the site, either coming to rest on your thighs or at your sides. There is no way a dead man could hold his position unless positioned that way at the onset of rigor mortis. Why would anyone bother to wait for the body to stiffen just to arrange the hands in this way unless they knew that the image would be transferred to the cloth? It just doesn't make any sense. The shroud is touted as a "miracle" and investigators still puzzle as to how the image was transferred, therefore the people who set this tableau must have known it would show up. If the body were coated with vinegar the pose would have to be held for time enough to allow the acidity to impregnate the cloth: after the imprint was made additional vinegar could have been introduced and allowed to set long enough to bring out the figure more clearly. But in any case no truly dead man could hold the position that the shroud shows even for an instant, much less the length of time it would take to transfer the imprint of his body to the cloth.
It seems from all this that the taboo against exposing male reproductive organs that was promoted in the twelfth century, and is still very much in evidence today, trumped the physiological truth that a limp, dead body would be unable to hold this position of false modesty at all. Didn't the pope order Michaelangelo Bounarotti to drape the nude male figures on the Sistine ceiling? Instead of asking how the shroud was created, a better question would be; Why?
The high water mark of the Roman Catholic church was the Medieval period. It was at this time that its grotesque, fear inspiring dogma found fertile ground in the ignorance and superstition of the illiterate masses who flocked to the cathedrals and parish churches of the day. There just wasn't very much diversion in the typical city or town of the Middle Ages, so church was a place to go to feel safe and perhaps to feel that life is worth living. Those who lived in cathedral towns were especially awed by the soaring grandeur and the rich appointments of such houses of worship. The church held its congregations spellbound and in fear of eternal damnation, subject to the whims of an angry, unforgiving God, whose love they were encouraged to treat. The church demanded sacrifices of its followers and occasionally rewarded them with some rare gift - such as the relic of a saint, or some other hokum that the con artists of the day dreamed up to further gull the gullible. Europe during this period was awash with bones, hair, blood stains, pieces of the "true cross" and any other artifact that could be claimed to have connection to a saint. These relics were of course for sale. One commentator wrote that there were enough pieces of the "true cross" in circulation to build a decent sized house.
The Shroud of Turin must have been the ne plus ultra of "holy relics", the cloth in which the precious body of Jesus was wrapped (false modesty and all) after his crucifixion, an event that is documented nowhere else but in the Gospels. And these accounts were written by men who weren't there at the time of this alleged execution; their essays are based solely upon hearsay. It is curious that no one at the alleged time of the crucifixion had anything to say about it, although the man being killed was one who; cleaned lepers, walked on water, raised the dead, drove out demons, and the like. Jesus should have been wildly popular, yet this seems not to have been the case. Yet the gullible, so easily convinced, probably ponied up top dollar for this "treasure" as they did for St. Geronimo's nose hairs, or St. Swithen's fingernail clippings.
This piece of linen that supposedly bears the imprint of the crucified body of Jesus is, in my opinion, proof that people are as gullible today as any Medieval churl. In my research into the realm of bizarre theories it seems to me that the most intensive research into one of these gems is carried out by those who want the theory to be true. In the case of the shroud they must really want it to be legitimate, considering the thousands of hours devoted to its study. But the so-called evidence just doesn't hold up and, again in my opinion, the evidence of obvious fraud goes entirely ignored and unremarked.
There are two items upon which the "faithful" rest their claim of authenticity; the origins of the linen and the blood evidence of the wounds in the man's head, wrists, trunk, and feet. But these so-called proofs are not conclusive by any means. Here we will examine each from a rational point of view. Concerning the linen itself, it is impregnated with pollen and dust found only in Palestine. While this may be true it doesn't prove that the shroud originated there. From the time of the First Crusade traffic between Europe and the Middle East brought many eastern artifacts west. The blood evidence is no more convincing, since all it proves is the presence of blood in all the right places, not the wounds alleged to be the source of these stains. That would make the shroud an antiquated example of "special effects" created to induce the belief in the reality of the representation. It just doesn't.
To present the argument of fraud it will be necessary to cite some quirks of the human psyche as demonstrated in the sub-conscious; acts and mindsets so deeply ingrained in the mind that people demonstrate them without realizing it. One example is that of a visitor to my home once who asked to use my bathroom. But his didn't use that word; instead he asked if he could use my "basement." Undoubtedly this man was educated in a Catholic parochial school (as was I )where he was indoctrinated into the belief that certain natural bodily functions are dirty, and should not even be mentioned. Nurses in Catholic hospitals, when told that one of their child patients needed to eliminate some waste, would ask "is it number one or number two?" And it's a safe bet that people so conditioned never realize what they are saying, how dumb it sounds. There are certain habits and practices in which people engage without any realization as to what they are doing or saying. At these deep levels of assimilation there is often little difference between intent and action.
Once, when answering machines were the sole means of recording incoming telephone calls, my girlfriend and I were leaving my apartment. She stood waiting with a puzzled look on her face as I dangled my keys on my right index finger and raised my right foot - and turned my answering machine on.
"Why did you do that?" she asked. I told her it was so I wouldn't experience the anxiety of wondering, after we had left, if I had turned the machine on. There were times when I truly couldn't recall this simple act, and there were also a couple of times when I was sure I'd turned it on but hadn't. Intending to turn it on, I was distracted by something, and thus didn't activate the device but was sure I had because I had thought to do so.
By citing these idiosyncrasies of word and deed we may come to understand the visual evidence that the Shroud of Turin is an out and out fraud. It boils down to the difference between a rational, clear thinking adult, and an ideologue. The intelligent adult's beliefs are conditioned by knowledge derived either from experience or study; the ideologue is the exact opposite: the ideologue's knowledge is conditioned by his beliefs, and when presented with any evidence counter to his a priori conclusions he will cling to those beliefs and absolutely deny the truth.
Let us return our attention to the figure on the shroud. Note the position of the hands. While it may conform to twelfth century sensibilities, the covering of the male genitalia in the manner shown on the shroud would be impossible if the man were truly dead. It is something that anyone can prove to him- or herself. Lie on the floor and cover yourself that way; you'll find that you must arch your shoulders forward and raise you elbows from the floor. This would require effort well beyond the capacity of a dead man. But once you relax your shoulders will fall back, causing your elbows to contact the floor, and your hands will pull away from the site, either coming to rest on your thighs or at your sides. There is no way a dead man could hold his position unless positioned that way at the onset of rigor mortis. Why would anyone bother to wait for the body to stiffen just to arrange the hands in this way unless they knew that the image would be transferred to the cloth? It just doesn't make any sense. The shroud is touted as a "miracle" and investigators still puzzle as to how the image was transferred, therefore the people who set this tableau must have known it would show up. If the body were coated with vinegar the pose would have to be held for time enough to allow the acidity to impregnate the cloth: after the imprint was made additional vinegar could have been introduced and allowed to set long enough to bring out the figure more clearly. But in any case no truly dead man could hold the position that the shroud shows even for an instant, much less the length of time it would take to transfer the imprint of his body to the cloth.
It seems from all this that the taboo against exposing male reproductive organs that was promoted in the twelfth century, and is still very much in evidence today, trumped the physiological truth that a limp, dead body would be unable to hold this position of false modesty at all. Didn't the pope order Michaelangelo Bounarotti to drape the nude male figures on the Sistine ceiling? Instead of asking how the shroud was created, a better question would be; Why?
The high water mark of the Roman Catholic church was the Medieval period. It was at this time that its grotesque, fear inspiring dogma found fertile ground in the ignorance and superstition of the illiterate masses who flocked to the cathedrals and parish churches of the day. There just wasn't very much diversion in the typical city or town of the Middle Ages, so church was a place to go to feel safe and perhaps to feel that life is worth living. Those who lived in cathedral towns were especially awed by the soaring grandeur and the rich appointments of such houses of worship. The church held its congregations spellbound and in fear of eternal damnation, subject to the whims of an angry, unforgiving God, whose love they were encouraged to treat. The church demanded sacrifices of its followers and occasionally rewarded them with some rare gift - such as the relic of a saint, or some other hokum that the con artists of the day dreamed up to further gull the gullible. Europe during this period was awash with bones, hair, blood stains, pieces of the "true cross" and any other artifact that could be claimed to have connection to a saint. These relics were of course for sale. One commentator wrote that there were enough pieces of the "true cross" in circulation to build a decent sized house.
The Shroud of Turin must have been the ne plus ultra of "holy relics", the cloth in which the precious body of Jesus was wrapped (false modesty and all) after his crucifixion, an event that is documented nowhere else but in the Gospels. And these accounts were written by men who weren't there at the time of this alleged execution; their essays are based solely upon hearsay. It is curious that no one at the alleged time of the crucifixion had anything to say about it, although the man being killed was one who; cleaned lepers, walked on water, raised the dead, drove out demons, and the like. Jesus should have been wildly popular, yet this seems not to have been the case. Yet the gullible, so easily convinced, probably ponied up top dollar for this "treasure" as they did for St. Geronimo's nose hairs, or St. Swithen's fingernail clippings.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Cluster Jokes?
Political satire has been with us from the beginning in cartoon and parody form since the Revolution. George Washington, the Father of Our Country, was also labeled the "stepfather of our country" as well, a harmless bit of opposition humor. It expressed the view of a segment of the population that did not agree with Washington's policies. The same is true today but in a more apparent form, and one more widely available. We see Jay Leno, Steve Colbert, and other funny men poking fun at Bush and his gang of thugs, and we take comfort in the illusion that free speech is alive and well. This is not free speech; it is entertainment pretending to be free speech.
It is, but what good is it in practical terms? Were the police in Portland, Oregon, trading one-liners with the anti-war demonstrators a couple of years back. Were the high school security guards who attacked the sixteen year-old girl in the school cafeteria, and broke her arm, just kidding around? No, friends, we are only kidding ourselves if we believe that joking about the evil political cancer that has stricken our nation will cure the malady: it going to take a lot of positive, definitive, and relentless action to recover the democratic principles that we have always held so dear, even though we may have sometimes been remiss in living up them to the fullest. As Thomas Jefferson said it, "When the government is afraid of the people, that is democracy; when the people are afraid of the government, that is tyranny."
It appears that we have both in America today. The tyranny of power corrupted beyond redemption contends with the deeply-ingrained love of liberty that is the hallmark of our society. There is no question as to who will win in the long run, history is replete with tales of empires that rose and fell, and the American Empire will fall in due course. But we the people have to wake up and start taking action.
What can we do?
First of all we can come to the understanding that the people have all the power. The lying, conniving, duplicitous, and cowardly, people who infest the highest offices in the land are scavengers. like rats who feed on unguarded, unsecured goods. They work behind the scenes, in secrecy; are we to suppose that that are proud of what they are doing? Let me ask some pointed questions and let us see how our leaders stack up.
Do you teach your children to lie? They do.
Do you teach your children to cheat? They do.
Do you teach your children to say hurtful things about others? They do.
Do you teach your children to cover up their misdeeds? They do.
Oh, I could go on. but you get the idea. Children learn from what they see, not just at home, not just at school, or in church - but everywhere! What good are all your moral teachings when they see deviant pond scum like Bush, Cheney, Perle, Rice, and the rest of the menagerie of megalomania, lie like troupers, often contradicting themselves on videos. YouTube has many examples of Bush, Cheney, and now McCain, denying that they had ever made such-and-such statement, followed by a video showing them clearly making that very same statement. Do you need a house to fall on you?
The Democratic National Convention is due to start tomorrow, the Republican to have theirs later on. Are you actually expecting an honest election? Nothing has changed since 2004; the same hackable voting machines are still out there, the local boards of the respective parties will still try to disqualify voters who oppose their party using every dirty trick in the book. And the candidates? They look different but with either one in the White House it will be business-as-usual; the money men will still call the shots, and we will still support Israel, something we should have stopped doing forty years ago.
John McCain is a certifiable nut case; just look at his videos on YouTube; he changes positions more often than I change socks. Remember the "Keating Five": he hopes you have forgotten about that little scandal. His fellow POWs in Viet Nam tell us that he was given special favors by the enemy in exchange for making propaganda films, for them and for informing on his fellow prisoners. Now he wants to be president? Bush was enough of a disaster, we can live very well without the likes of Mr. McCain.
What can we do as citizens to return our nation to constitutional principles, sound moral values, and the sovereign citizenship that the Constitution of the Unites States guarantees for us all. It is the supreme law of the land and we need leaders, and we need leaders who will uphold the Constitution, not trash it, who will put the interests of the American people first, and who will lead this nation to a new world of peace and prosperity, not the Hitlerian New World Order that the nepcom crazies have been trying to introduce. They have taken action, we therefore must also tke action.
Demonstrations do not work! All they accomplish is to give the bully boys another excuse to hurt people. They even plant agitators among the demonstrators to incite violence, and give the police an excuse to brutalize people who are just exercising their Constitutional right of free assembly. What good has ever come of protesting? Sure, we have seen videos of people being clubbed, tear gassed, knocked down, handcuffed, and arrested - but that changes nothing. And what good are protests at political gatherings when the protesters are herded into cages a hundred yards away from any cameras, candidates, or anyone else except the police that guard them. No, friends; they play rough, we must play even rougher; they work in secret, so must we; they are dedicated to their cause, we must be even more dedicated to ours. So what can we do?
Stop demonstrating! Start taking effective positive action. Got a computer, a printer, and the Internet? Good! Search out articles about the abuses of government, about the voting records of local representatives; then print these out as fliers and tack them up everywhere, place them under the windshield wipers of cars in parking lots. Email and telephone your congressmen and senators on all issues pertaining to our civil liberties: insist that they Vote American, that is, in the best interests of our nation and its people. These include jobs, affordable health care, the abolition of the Federal Reserve; separation of church and state: stop passing laws based on religious dogma; abortion, same sex marriage, Blue Laws, birth control, and anything else that gives the government a right to meddle in the private lives of people or curb their right to free expression.
Liberty is the name of this game. We enjoy freedoms that has been passed down to us by truly brave, principled men who put their very lives on the line. We are stewards of that liberty, entrusted with the holy mission of passing it on to future generations, whole and complete, not to squander it on the fantasies of cowards who see terrorists behind every bush, around every corner,and are so paranoid that their infamous Watch Lists contain children as young as five years old.
The Second American Revolution has begun; join it and together we can bring sanity back to our cherished land, before the shooting starts!
It is, but what good is it in practical terms? Were the police in Portland, Oregon, trading one-liners with the anti-war demonstrators a couple of years back. Were the high school security guards who attacked the sixteen year-old girl in the school cafeteria, and broke her arm, just kidding around? No, friends, we are only kidding ourselves if we believe that joking about the evil political cancer that has stricken our nation will cure the malady: it going to take a lot of positive, definitive, and relentless action to recover the democratic principles that we have always held so dear, even though we may have sometimes been remiss in living up them to the fullest. As Thomas Jefferson said it, "When the government is afraid of the people, that is democracy; when the people are afraid of the government, that is tyranny."
It appears that we have both in America today. The tyranny of power corrupted beyond redemption contends with the deeply-ingrained love of liberty that is the hallmark of our society. There is no question as to who will win in the long run, history is replete with tales of empires that rose and fell, and the American Empire will fall in due course. But we the people have to wake up and start taking action.
What can we do?
First of all we can come to the understanding that the people have all the power. The lying, conniving, duplicitous, and cowardly, people who infest the highest offices in the land are scavengers. like rats who feed on unguarded, unsecured goods. They work behind the scenes, in secrecy; are we to suppose that that are proud of what they are doing? Let me ask some pointed questions and let us see how our leaders stack up.
Do you teach your children to lie? They do.
Do you teach your children to cheat? They do.
Do you teach your children to say hurtful things about others? They do.
Do you teach your children to cover up their misdeeds? They do.
Oh, I could go on. but you get the idea. Children learn from what they see, not just at home, not just at school, or in church - but everywhere! What good are all your moral teachings when they see deviant pond scum like Bush, Cheney, Perle, Rice, and the rest of the menagerie of megalomania, lie like troupers, often contradicting themselves on videos. YouTube has many examples of Bush, Cheney, and now McCain, denying that they had ever made such-and-such statement, followed by a video showing them clearly making that very same statement. Do you need a house to fall on you?
The Democratic National Convention is due to start tomorrow, the Republican to have theirs later on. Are you actually expecting an honest election? Nothing has changed since 2004; the same hackable voting machines are still out there, the local boards of the respective parties will still try to disqualify voters who oppose their party using every dirty trick in the book. And the candidates? They look different but with either one in the White House it will be business-as-usual; the money men will still call the shots, and we will still support Israel, something we should have stopped doing forty years ago.
John McCain is a certifiable nut case; just look at his videos on YouTube; he changes positions more often than I change socks. Remember the "Keating Five": he hopes you have forgotten about that little scandal. His fellow POWs in Viet Nam tell us that he was given special favors by the enemy in exchange for making propaganda films, for them and for informing on his fellow prisoners. Now he wants to be president? Bush was enough of a disaster, we can live very well without the likes of Mr. McCain.
What can we do as citizens to return our nation to constitutional principles, sound moral values, and the sovereign citizenship that the Constitution of the Unites States guarantees for us all. It is the supreme law of the land and we need leaders, and we need leaders who will uphold the Constitution, not trash it, who will put the interests of the American people first, and who will lead this nation to a new world of peace and prosperity, not the Hitlerian New World Order that the nepcom crazies have been trying to introduce. They have taken action, we therefore must also tke action.
Demonstrations do not work! All they accomplish is to give the bully boys another excuse to hurt people. They even plant agitators among the demonstrators to incite violence, and give the police an excuse to brutalize people who are just exercising their Constitutional right of free assembly. What good has ever come of protesting? Sure, we have seen videos of people being clubbed, tear gassed, knocked down, handcuffed, and arrested - but that changes nothing. And what good are protests at political gatherings when the protesters are herded into cages a hundred yards away from any cameras, candidates, or anyone else except the police that guard them. No, friends; they play rough, we must play even rougher; they work in secret, so must we; they are dedicated to their cause, we must be even more dedicated to ours. So what can we do?
Stop demonstrating! Start taking effective positive action. Got a computer, a printer, and the Internet? Good! Search out articles about the abuses of government, about the voting records of local representatives; then print these out as fliers and tack them up everywhere, place them under the windshield wipers of cars in parking lots. Email and telephone your congressmen and senators on all issues pertaining to our civil liberties: insist that they Vote American, that is, in the best interests of our nation and its people. These include jobs, affordable health care, the abolition of the Federal Reserve; separation of church and state: stop passing laws based on religious dogma; abortion, same sex marriage, Blue Laws, birth control, and anything else that gives the government a right to meddle in the private lives of people or curb their right to free expression.
Liberty is the name of this game. We enjoy freedoms that has been passed down to us by truly brave, principled men who put their very lives on the line. We are stewards of that liberty, entrusted with the holy mission of passing it on to future generations, whole and complete, not to squander it on the fantasies of cowards who see terrorists behind every bush, around every corner,and are so paranoid that their infamous Watch Lists contain children as young as five years old.
The Second American Revolution has begun; join it and together we can bring sanity back to our cherished land, before the shooting starts!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Let's Get Real!
In my last post I reiterated some of examples of the Medieval thinking and ignorance that persist in modern times, by supposedly intelligent people. Were it only in these regards (Big Bang, Time Travel, and the Zero Dilemma) that brain space and time were wasted, there wouldn't be very much to worry about, but these are only the least examples of the backward thinking that hobbles peoples' minds. Like sheep they are led along the paths laid out by the twin authoritarianisms, politics and religion, which have so come to resemble one another that it becomes harder to tell them apart. Organized religion seeks to keep the spirit bound to its toxic agenda, while politics does the same thing in more secular ways. Both keep mankind living in the past while they strive to imprison us in the present. The subject this time is elections.
Who elects the president? Surely it isn't the people that he (or she, maybe someday) pledges to serve. The presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were travesties. Bush was appointed to office by the Supreme Court after Katherine Harris ordered the recount of the controversial Florida vote to stop. So the Oval Office was handed over to this criminal misfit by six people, Harris and five justices (a misnomer if ever there was one). There is no need to go into the crimes that this administration is guilty of, they are too well known by those not too frightened or stupid to face facts. It's time to put a stop to this imperialist nonsense and face one glaring fact: that our election system is woefully inadequate, prone to corruption, highly inefficient, and far more expensive than it need be. The answer?
The Internet, of course! All forms of commerce are regularly transacted on the Net; people buy and sell things, bank records are accessed and transactions performed with complete safety, bills are paid remotely, all on secured sites. Why not elections?
Computers are everywhere: anyone can gain access given enough time. And that brings up another question; why an election day, why not an election week? That way anyone who doesn't own a computer could go to their public library, school, or other facility, and vote. Here's how it would work;
Every American citizen has a Social Security number and the Social Security Administration has all the records on computer. It would be simple enough to build a pointer file consisting of a person's name and Social Security Number. Records in this file would be accessed only by the number and the file would return the person's name, solely for confirmation: the name and number match. Once the match has been established the person's full record would be accessed but not displayed. From this hidden record data would be read to ascertain the person's current address, city, state, and zip- and area codes. These data would be used to ensure that the proper input screens are pulled up for each level of candidacy. These screens would show the names of every candidate for every office; national, state, and local, currently being filled. If it's a presidential election year the screen showing the names of the candidates would be displayed first; if it's a mid-term election it wouldn't appear. Only active elections would be operational.
If a Senate seat is involved, the 'state' field in the hidden record would bring up the correct screen showing the candidates for that particular seat. The voter would only need to click on the button next to the name of their choice and to continue. The zip code would identify the Congressional District, bringing up the proper screen displaying the candidates for the House of Representatives. Gubernatorial elections would be handled the same way. Click, Enter, go on to the next screen. The candidates' screens would be arranged in a top-down sequence, and local elections could be covered as well. The 'city' field would access the correct screen for a particular mayoral election and any other city-wide office (dog catcher) and would cover county-wide elections as well. The information in the hidden record would have all the necessary data to correctly identify the candidates in every race.
After every screen has been operated upon, a final screen would appear showing the complete record of votes cast. This could be printed out for further reference. If the voter finds an error on this final screen, he or she can click on the line and bring up the proper screen to be re-entered: this should not happen, but...
Now the process has been completed. The voter sign off. When this happens the pointer file record will be erased, no longer accessible: one person, one vote.
As with anything, problems may arise. If the Social Security number brings up the wrong name, or no record is found, the first screen would show an 800-number that the person could call to report the anomaly and have it corrected. The operators at this number would have access to the hidden record for verification purposes in the event that someone has already accessed that account and placed a fraudulent entry. Upon verification of the caller's identity, the bogus vote would be erased and the pointer file record reactivated.
There is no reason this system could not be implimented: the technology exists. I personally have been programming computers since 1975 - not only do I know it can be done, I'd be happy to write the system myself! While the system would seem labor intensive, this problem could be addressed by assembling a shared file with all the screen templates stored there for access by local officials who would enter the proper locus identifiers and candidates' names.
It is, after all, the 21st Century.
Who elects the president? Surely it isn't the people that he (or she, maybe someday) pledges to serve. The presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were travesties. Bush was appointed to office by the Supreme Court after Katherine Harris ordered the recount of the controversial Florida vote to stop. So the Oval Office was handed over to this criminal misfit by six people, Harris and five justices (a misnomer if ever there was one). There is no need to go into the crimes that this administration is guilty of, they are too well known by those not too frightened or stupid to face facts. It's time to put a stop to this imperialist nonsense and face one glaring fact: that our election system is woefully inadequate, prone to corruption, highly inefficient, and far more expensive than it need be. The answer?
The Internet, of course! All forms of commerce are regularly transacted on the Net; people buy and sell things, bank records are accessed and transactions performed with complete safety, bills are paid remotely, all on secured sites. Why not elections?
Computers are everywhere: anyone can gain access given enough time. And that brings up another question; why an election day, why not an election week? That way anyone who doesn't own a computer could go to their public library, school, or other facility, and vote. Here's how it would work;
Every American citizen has a Social Security number and the Social Security Administration has all the records on computer. It would be simple enough to build a pointer file consisting of a person's name and Social Security Number. Records in this file would be accessed only by the number and the file would return the person's name, solely for confirmation: the name and number match. Once the match has been established the person's full record would be accessed but not displayed. From this hidden record data would be read to ascertain the person's current address, city, state, and zip- and area codes. These data would be used to ensure that the proper input screens are pulled up for each level of candidacy. These screens would show the names of every candidate for every office; national, state, and local, currently being filled. If it's a presidential election year the screen showing the names of the candidates would be displayed first; if it's a mid-term election it wouldn't appear. Only active elections would be operational.
If a Senate seat is involved, the 'state' field in the hidden record would bring up the correct screen showing the candidates for that particular seat. The voter would only need to click on the button next to the name of their choice and
After every screen has been operated upon, a final screen would appear showing the complete record of votes cast. This could be printed out for further reference. If the voter finds an error on this final screen, he or she can click on the line and bring up the proper screen to be re-entered: this should not happen, but...
Now the process has been completed. The voter sign off. When this happens the pointer file record will be erased, no longer accessible: one person, one vote.
As with anything, problems may arise. If the Social Security number brings up the wrong name, or no record is found, the first screen would show an 800-number that the person could call to report the anomaly and have it corrected. The operators at this number would have access to the hidden record for verification purposes in the event that someone has already accessed that account and placed a fraudulent entry. Upon verification of the caller's identity, the bogus vote would be erased and the pointer file record reactivated.
There is no reason this system could not be implimented: the technology exists. I personally have been programming computers since 1975 - not only do I know it can be done, I'd be happy to write the system myself! While the system would seem labor intensive, this problem could be addressed by assembling a shared file with all the screen templates stored there for access by local officials who would enter the proper locus identifiers and candidates' names.
It is, after all, the 21st Century.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Pseudo-science and Other Errors
Big Bang
I was just viewing a couple of YouTube videos about the Q'ran and - of all things, how it supports the Big Bang Theory. Of course nothing can prove the Big Bang because it is utter, unmitigated nonsense, a modern example of Medieval thinking. There are so many things wrong with this cockamamie idea, it beggars the mind to know where to begin.
Let's begin right here, on the earth which, if the Big Bang were true, would be once again at the center of the universe (our universe, that is: there are many others). This is because the so-called "expanding universe" is expanding at a uniform distance in every direction from us. Copious astronomical data shows that we inhabit a remote region on one of our galaxy's spiral arms, of which there are twelve. Observations have also shown that the universe and everything in it is in constant motion. There is no center to the universe; it keeps evolving, and the known universe is 286 billion light-years wide; how did it reach such proportions in only 15 billion years.
Then there's the problem with the Hubble Number, an index that measures the velocity at which the farthest-flung galaxy is moving away from us. Calculations based on the 15 billion year-old universe and some other details of the theory, provide that the Hubble Number should be somewhere around 85. Observations show that it doesn't even come close, and the margin for error is a whopping ±17! Readings vary from the low thirties to the high 40's and everyone who computes this variable comes up with a different answer. Other calculations, more accurate and time-tested indicate that our 15 billion year-old universe contains stars that are 17- to 24 billion years old.
Finally, it's just poor science to begin with a conclusion and then to set about trying to prove it. This is just Creationism, a discredited bit of Medieval ideology based on the "literal interpretation" of the Bible which, in itself is nonsense. If you fill a glass half full of water you literally have a half glass of water; whether the glass is half full or half empty is an interpretation.
Time Travel
Another bit of delusional wool gathering that occupies otherwise vacant minds is the idea that we can go backward in time. Crackpots are working to design time machines when the fact is that time machines already exist: they're called clocks. Time also exists, but it is a concept, not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Ever seen clocks hanging from trees in the woods primeval? Ever see a squirrel or a raccoon wearing a wristwatch? Ever have a pigeon stop you on a downtown street and ask you for the correct time?
Time is a standard that measures change, and goes forward, never backward. In fact, any statistical conclusion based on time is false. For example; if you set a piece of raw iron down in your back yard and wait a year, it will be completely coated with rust. It isn't the time that causes the rust, but the chemical action of the atmosphere working on the iron. The same holds true for the human body; the false information that self-interested parties (doctors, drug companies, etc.) are spreading is that after a certain age (40?) you start to slow down. You become liable for heart trouble, hardening of the arteries, back pain, arthritis, and a whole slew of other disabilities. But the fact is, time has nothing whatsoever to do with it; the telling factor is the state of your health. Your body doesn't know how old it is. Choose a healthy, nutritious diet, get plenty of exercise, adequate rest, and keep in fit spiritual condition and your body will serve you well, warding off infection, healing minor injuries, and taking you wherever you want to go without a walker or electric scooter.
Finally, as time measures change, to go back to the past would involve unchanging everything that has changed between the present and the target historical date. This would involve two events, the original change and the un-change; like unscrambling an egg. Want to go back in time? Watch old movies.
The Zero Dilemma
I'm sure you've seen this in math books; 1/0 = ∞ ( a number divided by zero is infinity ). No it isn't. The reason is simple: zero is not a number. It is a symbol that represents a concept, just like the symbol of infinity; in one instance, Nothing, and in the other, Too Many. In mathematical studies of limits, functions involving maximaa and minima, the range shown under the Σ symbol is always as x ─> 0 (as x approaches zero: it never gets there).
The correct form is; 1/0 = 1. If zero represents "nothing" then by logical inference dividing by nothing is the same as not dividing by something, and if something is not divided by something else it remains unchanged.
I welcome any arguments.
I was just viewing a couple of YouTube videos about the Q'ran and - of all things, how it supports the Big Bang Theory. Of course nothing can prove the Big Bang because it is utter, unmitigated nonsense, a modern example of Medieval thinking. There are so many things wrong with this cockamamie idea, it beggars the mind to know where to begin.
Let's begin right here, on the earth which, if the Big Bang were true, would be once again at the center of the universe (our universe, that is: there are many others). This is because the so-called "expanding universe" is expanding at a uniform distance in every direction from us. Copious astronomical data shows that we inhabit a remote region on one of our galaxy's spiral arms, of which there are twelve. Observations have also shown that the universe and everything in it is in constant motion. There is no center to the universe; it keeps evolving, and the known universe is 286 billion light-years wide; how did it reach such proportions in only 15 billion years.
Then there's the problem with the Hubble Number, an index that measures the velocity at which the farthest-flung galaxy is moving away from us. Calculations based on the 15 billion year-old universe and some other details of the theory, provide that the Hubble Number should be somewhere around 85. Observations show that it doesn't even come close, and the margin for error is a whopping ±17! Readings vary from the low thirties to the high 40's and everyone who computes this variable comes up with a different answer. Other calculations, more accurate and time-tested indicate that our 15 billion year-old universe contains stars that are 17- to 24 billion years old.
Finally, it's just poor science to begin with a conclusion and then to set about trying to prove it. This is just Creationism, a discredited bit of Medieval ideology based on the "literal interpretation" of the Bible which, in itself is nonsense. If you fill a glass half full of water you literally have a half glass of water; whether the glass is half full or half empty is an interpretation.
Time Travel
Another bit of delusional wool gathering that occupies otherwise vacant minds is the idea that we can go backward in time. Crackpots are working to design time machines when the fact is that time machines already exist: they're called clocks. Time also exists, but it is a concept, not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Ever seen clocks hanging from trees in the woods primeval? Ever see a squirrel or a raccoon wearing a wristwatch? Ever have a pigeon stop you on a downtown street and ask you for the correct time?
Time is a standard that measures change, and goes forward, never backward. In fact, any statistical conclusion based on time is false. For example; if you set a piece of raw iron down in your back yard and wait a year, it will be completely coated with rust. It isn't the time that causes the rust, but the chemical action of the atmosphere working on the iron. The same holds true for the human body; the false information that self-interested parties (doctors, drug companies, etc.) are spreading is that after a certain age (40?) you start to slow down. You become liable for heart trouble, hardening of the arteries, back pain, arthritis, and a whole slew of other disabilities. But the fact is, time has nothing whatsoever to do with it; the telling factor is the state of your health. Your body doesn't know how old it is. Choose a healthy, nutritious diet, get plenty of exercise, adequate rest, and keep in fit spiritual condition and your body will serve you well, warding off infection, healing minor injuries, and taking you wherever you want to go without a walker or electric scooter.
Finally, as time measures change, to go back to the past would involve unchanging everything that has changed between the present and the target historical date. This would involve two events, the original change and the un-change; like unscrambling an egg. Want to go back in time? Watch old movies.
The Zero Dilemma
I'm sure you've seen this in math books; 1/0 = ∞ ( a number divided by zero is infinity ). No it isn't. The reason is simple: zero is not a number. It is a symbol that represents a concept, just like the symbol of infinity; in one instance, Nothing, and in the other, Too Many. In mathematical studies of limits, functions involving maximaa and minima, the range shown under the Σ symbol is always as x ─> 0 (as x approaches zero: it never gets there).
The correct form is; 1/0 = 1. If zero represents "nothing" then by logical inference dividing by nothing is the same as not dividing by something, and if something is not divided by something else it remains unchanged.
I welcome any arguments.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Notes from Purgatory
My view of the world we live in is that it is Purgatory; a little bit of Heaven, a little bit of Hell, and a whole lot of In-between. And it seems to be sliding more into the Hell direction with each passing day. Hope we can turn things around soon; there are enough people waking up to the truth about how we are being conned and manipulated by the monied powers-that-be, using the one-two punch: Politics and Religion. For an amusing and dead-on critique of the latter, go to YouTube and search for Pat Condell - he has about 40 videos and they are all well worth watching.
But I don't want to get into all that today. Instead I would like to show you around my little piece of the world. It's a happy place most of the time, largely because I don't watch television, don't read newspapers, and don't much care about what the Fascist pigs in our governement are up to. They will answer for their crimes soon enough.
I lke my own little world better because in it I can do things to make my own life, and the lives of those who visit, better. Some of these are deeply troubled, and this piece is about one person in particular, a bittersweet story. Her name is Anna, anonymous enough as there are loads of Annas in the world. I have only known her for about three or four months but she has found a place in my heart, a real sweetheart.
One example of this happened the day after my birthday last month.
I was in a small gathering and one of my friends handed me a birthday card. Anna was there and hadn't known about my birthday. Sitting quiety she took out a pen and a small piece of paper and started working on a little picture. When it was done she handed it to me: it was a picture of a rose and a birthday greeting. I treasure that little piece of paper. What's so special? you might ask.
Well, when I first met Anna she had three monkeys on her back: drugs, alcohol, andsomething just as devastating. I have been able to help her get past the drugs and alcohol and she's beenclean and sober ever since. It's the third malady that has proven hardest to overcome: Anorexia Nervosa. You see, Anna weighs 78 pounds and was recently admitted to a local hospital with a blood pressure reading of 70/30, about as close as anybody can get to a memorial service. For twenty years she hd been isolated and depressed that it's a wonder she lived this long, but the will to live finally came to the fore and she's taking a swing at it. I have become a friend that she trusts, and with the little notes of appreciation I've received from her, it's not too hard at all. Sometimes she sinks into the darkness of despair, but when this happens she calls me and lets me guide her back to the realization that she is not alone, never has to be ever again, and that life is worth living. The last time she called from the hospital she was pretty upbeat and there's hope. She needs help with eating, and I have told her that I am pictuuring her happy, healthy, and about thirty-five pounds heavier. I'll do everything I can to help bring that vision into the fullness of realization, but there's a long way to go, and there are no guarantees. It's a day at a time, but when the day comes that Anna can have visitors she will be surpised at the group that shows up.
That's my message. Whether you are alone, depressed, feeling like life had dealt you a crappy hand, or if you are unwittingly becoming isolated with all the distractions that the modern world has to offer while the insane, narrow-minded, and bigotted ideaologues whom we know all to well are trying to take over the world, get up, get out and build relationships with others more of less fortunate thatn you are. (Boy, that was some sentence; wasn't it?) Anyway, we need to join together as the cells in the worldly body of God, the Spirit of the Universe, and allow ourselves to be led out of the new Dark Age that our cowarddly leaders are trying to fashion for us. If you can find an Anna, someone who steps up to the plate with three stikes already, you will indeed be fortunate. ot only will you have the oppotunity to help others, but you will also be helping yourself, and the rest of us who want peace and happiness.
Try it: you'll like it!
But I don't want to get into all that today. Instead I would like to show you around my little piece of the world. It's a happy place most of the time, largely because I don't watch television, don't read newspapers, and don't much care about what the Fascist pigs in our governement are up to. They will answer for their crimes soon enough.
I lke my own little world better because in it I can do things to make my own life, and the lives of those who visit, better. Some of these are deeply troubled, and this piece is about one person in particular, a bittersweet story. Her name is Anna, anonymous enough as there are loads of Annas in the world. I have only known her for about three or four months but she has found a place in my heart, a real sweetheart.
One example of this happened the day after my birthday last month.
I was in a small gathering and one of my friends handed me a birthday card. Anna was there and hadn't known about my birthday. Sitting quiety she took out a pen and a small piece of paper and started working on a little picture. When it was done she handed it to me: it was a picture of a rose and a birthday greeting. I treasure that little piece of paper. What's so special? you might ask.
Well, when I first met Anna she had three monkeys on her back: drugs, alcohol, andsomething just as devastating. I have been able to help her get past the drugs and alcohol and she's beenclean and sober ever since. It's the third malady that has proven hardest to overcome: Anorexia Nervosa. You see, Anna weighs 78 pounds and was recently admitted to a local hospital with a blood pressure reading of 70/30, about as close as anybody can get to a memorial service. For twenty years she hd been isolated and depressed that it's a wonder she lived this long, but the will to live finally came to the fore and she's taking a swing at it. I have become a friend that she trusts, and with the little notes of appreciation I've received from her, it's not too hard at all. Sometimes she sinks into the darkness of despair, but when this happens she calls me and lets me guide her back to the realization that she is not alone, never has to be ever again, and that life is worth living. The last time she called from the hospital she was pretty upbeat and there's hope. She needs help with eating, and I have told her that I am pictuuring her happy, healthy, and about thirty-five pounds heavier. I'll do everything I can to help bring that vision into the fullness of realization, but there's a long way to go, and there are no guarantees. It's a day at a time, but when the day comes that Anna can have visitors she will be surpised at the group that shows up.
That's my message. Whether you are alone, depressed, feeling like life had dealt you a crappy hand, or if you are unwittingly becoming isolated with all the distractions that the modern world has to offer while the insane, narrow-minded, and bigotted ideaologues whom we know all to well are trying to take over the world, get up, get out and build relationships with others more of less fortunate thatn you are. (Boy, that was some sentence; wasn't it?) Anyway, we need to join together as the cells in the worldly body of God, the Spirit of the Universe, and allow ourselves to be led out of the new Dark Age that our cowarddly leaders are trying to fashion for us. If you can find an Anna, someone who steps up to the plate with three stikes already, you will indeed be fortunate. ot only will you have the oppotunity to help others, but you will also be helping yourself, and the rest of us who want peace and happiness.
Try it: you'll like it!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
I AM THE CREATOR!
Blasphemy? Maybe not. Of course the majority of the religious types have been taught that God is the Creator of the universe. That's good information and, as God is the Universal Spirit of the Universe, true in that context. But true as it may be there is a dangerous loose end that needs to be tied down: that God is my Creator. It sounded plausible until I gave it some serious thought.
After I got my mind back from the Crazy Old Man in the Sky, the Christian [God], it became quite clear that I am my own creator. Until that time the Old God gave me everything I had. I was still fearful, restless, and thoroughly confused, a state common to the " faithful ", never certain just what this [God] would send my way, or what [He] would take away. I was assured by the ladies in the way-out-of-style wardrobes ( nuns ) that we " all have our crosses to bear." We just have to make the best of it. Sort of like the mantra from an old tv detective series, " Life's hard, then you die."
This [God] gave me things and took things away, often it was the same thing, especially if it was something I liked. Whenever I questioned these random ocurrences I was told that [God] had a purpose, [He] knows what's best, and stop asking questions. My life, in other words, was none of my business. I only haveto be thankful to this ersatz [God] for giving me crosses to bear and for taking stuff away from me. Not such a bargain after all.
Nonsense, in fact.
My life IS my business and no one else's. I am my own creator; my feelings, thoughts, and actions, determine the quality of my life as nothing else ever has. And it's a good life, in fact there are some times whan I have to remind myself that I am not dreaming. But this may require a bit of explaining, so here goes.
The Spirit of the Universe is eternal; without beginning, without end, so the idea that [God] manufactured everything from nothing is wrong. It's bad physics too. So how can God be the Creator of the Universe if it was never created: brough into being? The answer is: the same way a Beethoven could creat wonderful symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas, and romances for the violin, without having to invent music. The music was ( and is ) already there! So there's the answer.
God provides the tools and materials I need to live well. The Will of God is a legacy to which I am the heir, not marching orders, not as many believe, what to do. If I use the gifts that the Spirit of the Universe gives me, it matters not at all what I do but how. Am I loving, considerate of others, unthreatening in every word and deed, helpful where a need arises? All my prayers bring success. Of course, you may be wondering how that can be.
Next time you're down on your knees beside the bed, with your hands held a ceratin way, just like in Feudal times, and talking to the ceiling, ask yourself this question; What am I praying for? Are you asking for something that the Big Fella in the sky has somehow neglected to give? Are you praying for something to happen that just has to happen? Something outside yourself?
That's not praying; it's begging for a favor from some non-existent figment of the Medieval imagination, a Zeus clone that is no more real than unicorns or flying horses. That's why the response rate is so low, and when these " prayers " seem to be answered it is always the outworking of something that was going to happen anyway. But if we can reduce the entire object of prayer to a single word to describe what we pray for, that word would be - results. Talking produces no result, only action. Have you ever taken an action that did not produce a result? And were these results not perfectly consistent with the action taken? They always are.
The Spirit of the Universe, Universal God, provides every man and woman everything we need to lead happy, successful lives. True, there is poverty and suffering in the world, horrendous dislocations and abject misery, but if you are reading these words then these conditions don't apply to you. Yet, you can be as miserable as the poorest Ethiopian if you live with a Poverty Mentality. It's not about money or property; rather, it's all about attitude. It's the old bromide: If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade; if you break an egg, make an omelette.
These are simplifications, thumbnails of approaches to life's problems that may take time and effort to realize, but they can come into being - if you work for them. You are the creator of your own fortunes, and these are determined by your attitude and outlook on life, the quality of your choices, and the energy you put into right action. There are no shortcuts, no free lunches, no free rides, but that doesn't mean that life has to be hard. Æsop told us about the tortois and the hare to make the point that slow and steady wins the race: it was true 25 centuries ago, it's true today.
Creation takes place every instant, everywhere in the universe. The Spirit of the Universe handles all that, but as concerns the quality of my life it is the quality of my own words and deeds that determine whether I will be happy, outgoing, and prosperous, or miserable, isolated, and perpetually lacking. The Bible speaks of retribution, usually considered to be a cautionary negative but which in fact can be positive as well: What goes around, comes around. It's all about what I send around. It's all about what you send around, too. Imagine if enough people could learn to live in love, gratitude, patience, and forgiveness; it would only be a matter of time before the love would be returned many times over.
Guaranteed.
After I got my mind back from the Crazy Old Man in the Sky, the Christian [God], it became quite clear that I am my own creator. Until that time the Old God gave me everything I had. I was still fearful, restless, and thoroughly confused, a state common to the " faithful ", never certain just what this [God] would send my way, or what [He] would take away. I was assured by the ladies in the way-out-of-style wardrobes ( nuns ) that we " all have our crosses to bear." We just have to make the best of it. Sort of like the mantra from an old tv detective series, " Life's hard, then you die."
This [God] gave me things and took things away, often it was the same thing, especially if it was something I liked. Whenever I questioned these random ocurrences I was told that [God] had a purpose, [He] knows what's best, and stop asking questions. My life, in other words, was none of my business. I only haveto be thankful to this ersatz [God] for giving me crosses to bear and for taking stuff away from me. Not such a bargain after all.
Nonsense, in fact.
My life IS my business and no one else's. I am my own creator; my feelings, thoughts, and actions, determine the quality of my life as nothing else ever has. And it's a good life, in fact there are some times whan I have to remind myself that I am not dreaming. But this may require a bit of explaining, so here goes.
The Spirit of the Universe is eternal; without beginning, without end, so the idea that [God] manufactured everything from nothing is wrong. It's bad physics too. So how can God be the Creator of the Universe if it was never created: brough into being? The answer is: the same way a Beethoven could creat wonderful symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas, and romances for the violin, without having to invent music. The music was ( and is ) already there! So there's the answer.
God provides the tools and materials I need to live well. The Will of God is a legacy to which I am the heir, not marching orders, not as many believe, what to do. If I use the gifts that the Spirit of the Universe gives me, it matters not at all what I do but how. Am I loving, considerate of others, unthreatening in every word and deed, helpful where a need arises? All my prayers bring success. Of course, you may be wondering how that can be.
Next time you're down on your knees beside the bed, with your hands held a ceratin way, just like in Feudal times, and talking to the ceiling, ask yourself this question; What am I praying for? Are you asking for something that the Big Fella in the sky has somehow neglected to give? Are you praying for something to happen that just has to happen? Something outside yourself?
That's not praying; it's begging for a favor from some non-existent figment of the Medieval imagination, a Zeus clone that is no more real than unicorns or flying horses. That's why the response rate is so low, and when these " prayers " seem to be answered it is always the outworking of something that was going to happen anyway. But if we can reduce the entire object of prayer to a single word to describe what we pray for, that word would be - results. Talking produces no result, only action. Have you ever taken an action that did not produce a result? And were these results not perfectly consistent with the action taken? They always are.
The Spirit of the Universe, Universal God, provides every man and woman everything we need to lead happy, successful lives. True, there is poverty and suffering in the world, horrendous dislocations and abject misery, but if you are reading these words then these conditions don't apply to you. Yet, you can be as miserable as the poorest Ethiopian if you live with a Poverty Mentality. It's not about money or property; rather, it's all about attitude. It's the old bromide: If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade; if you break an egg, make an omelette.
These are simplifications, thumbnails of approaches to life's problems that may take time and effort to realize, but they can come into being - if you work for them. You are the creator of your own fortunes, and these are determined by your attitude and outlook on life, the quality of your choices, and the energy you put into right action. There are no shortcuts, no free lunches, no free rides, but that doesn't mean that life has to be hard. Æsop told us about the tortois and the hare to make the point that slow and steady wins the race: it was true 25 centuries ago, it's true today.
Creation takes place every instant, everywhere in the universe. The Spirit of the Universe handles all that, but as concerns the quality of my life it is the quality of my own words and deeds that determine whether I will be happy, outgoing, and prosperous, or miserable, isolated, and perpetually lacking. The Bible speaks of retribution, usually considered to be a cautionary negative but which in fact can be positive as well: What goes around, comes around. It's all about what I send around. It's all about what you send around, too. Imagine if enough people could learn to live in love, gratitude, patience, and forgiveness; it would only be a matter of time before the love would be returned many times over.
Guaranteed.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Relative Time and Space - Fact and Fantasy
The Theory of Special Relativity was introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905, and deals with events which take place at great distances from one another with respect to the speed of light: 186,240 miles per second. The whole idea is that a radio signal, sent from earth to a spaceship moving away from us at a high rate of speed, will take a progressively longer time to reach the ship as its distance from earth increases; when it is 186,240 miles out the signal will take one second to cover the distance; when the ship is 670 million miles away the signal will take almost an hour to reach the ship. If it is a time signal ( "it is twelve noon" ) the clock on the ship will show nearly one o'clock when the signal arrives. The crew might then, ignoring the time differential, set the ship's clock back to match the earth-time signal. As the ship moves farther away the time difference becomes ever greater. This model, poorly understood by academics who missed their true calling as stevedores, was cobbled into the preposterous notion that time actually slowed down on the departing spaceship. It's called Time Dilation and it is pure and utter nonsense. According to this "theory" a person travelling on a spaceship departing the earth. depending upon how far he went and at what velocity, would return only to find that, while he had spent a only couple of decades out there, several decades would have passed on the earth. All his contemporaries would be much older than himself, those that were still alive, that is.The fact is that if the delay in signal time which causes the clock on the spaceship to be continually turned back would be reversed on the ship's return journey. As the lag time shortens, the ship's clock would now have to be continually set ahead until, when back on earth the two clocks would record the exact same time. And this would occur without recourse to the speed of light.Time is an immutable scalar, an invention used to measure change, and only goes forward, never backward. Time is not a naturally occurring phenomenon; there are no clocks hanging from trees in the forest, racoons don't wear wristwatches, and never has a pigeon been known to stop a pedestrian on a downtown sidewalk and ask for the correct time. Time travel, another fantasy that occupies otherwise productive intellects, is impossible as all the changes that time records would have to be un-changed. Imagine un-eating every meal you've consumed between the present time and your target date of the past; you would have to un-sleep all the sleep you've gotten, and reverse every action taken in the interval. Time, though an invention of mankind, still exists, and in the matters at hand is an important consideration as respects our view of the universe. We may consider thepossibility that the distant, or not so distant stars that we see in the night sky, may in fact be in more than one place at one time. Now to explain.Many of our astronomical theories accept the speed of light as a constant, when it celarly is not. The speed co light, c, is vaiable depending upon the medium through which it passes. Any spear fisherman knows that the fish he is after is not hwre it appears to be but somewhat closer; this because light travels more slowly through water, a denser medium. Light cannot penetrate a thick fog, and cannot even pass completely through clear glass.Light is the ultimate energy transfer medium. Physicists have puzzled for years over its true nature; is it a wave or is it a particle? The ansswer is: It's both. A clue comes from the field of electrical engineering, specifically alternating current. Alternating current is generated by dynamos that spin a conductor ( a coil of wires ) through a magnetic field, thus producing the current ( flow of electrons ). A picture of this process may be seen on the screen of an oscilloscope, a device specially deisgned to show variations in voltage and current. The figure that apopears on the screen is a sine wave, but this is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional figure. Rotate it 90° with respect to the horizontal and you will see a circle; rotate it 45° and you will see a spiral, an exact representation of the action of the generator. Light must be like that: traveling in a spiral path, thus giving it both the properties of a wave and of a particle. It would also explain how light " gets around " things.Light has certain components that are a function of wavelength and fequency. At the high end of the scale ae x-rays, very energetic energy bundles with very short wavelengths and ultra-high frequencies. X-rays are capable of penetrating hardened steel because their wavelengths are so small that they can pass between the atoms of a material, their frequencies so high that they encounter virtually no interference from matter at he atomic level. At the low end are infra-red emissions with much greater wavelengths and much lower frequencies.
One erroneous belief that has flavored astronomical theory is that the speed of light through space is constant. If light can be slowed by passing through a dense medium, hlted by clouds, and bent by gravity on earth and within our sphere of perception, you cn bet that the same thing happpens " out there ". It's just not easily apparent. Oh, fifty or sixty years ago, when outer space was thught to be a hygenically devoid of any matter at all, then light would have had the freedom to streak across space at incredible speeds! But that's not at all how it is out there.The universe is full of matter; solid and gaseous, and gravitational fields in complex patterns and various levels of intensity, some ibcredibly strong, that affect starlight as it traverses the lightyears that separate them from ourselves.And light just ignores all these influences, doesn't slow, doesn't bend a little here and there? Just like Black Holes: the " theory " is all that matters; let's just ignore density and friction as all this matter implodes on itself.Nikolai Lobachevski, the famous Russian mathemetician, proposed the idea that space is curved. This idea was based on Michelson and Morley's measurement of the speed of light and Michael Faraday's concept of magnetic fields. Of course the cosmos isn't truly curved; this is merely the illusion created by the time-delay of the light reaching us from far distant celestial objects. This remarks not the actual curvature of space, but out experience with it using light as the standard. But suppose we could use light as a standard in a different and more useful way?Try shining a light on an object through glass. You will see the object illuminated alright, but you will also note a disk of light on the surface of the glass. These are the wavelengths and frequencies of light that were unable to pass through the glass. In other words they were filtered. Now try the same test with a sheet of waxed paper; noticeably less light gets through but some still does. A sheet if light tracing paper will admit stuill less light but, again, some gets through. A thin sheet of card stock will block the light entirely; but does none of it get through? Discrete, largely undetectable light quanta; x-ray, miscrowave, and UV tays must certainly penetrate the opaque obstacle, as they are also components of white light. White light is, after all, a combonation of all wavelengths and frequencies of light; when white light is passed though a ruby crystal and its frequencies are synchronized into one the result is Laserlight. Ever wonder why laser light is always red? Now you know.We also know that light can be selectively filtered out of an optical event; an object can thus be made to disappear. One of my homes had red drapes in the livingroom. The early morning sun would shine on the livingroom windows and be filtered through the drapes. I had a pair of slippers that were the same shade of red and at these times in the morning, if the slippers were on the floor a few feet away - I couldn't see them. At the time I smoked cigarettes that came in a package about the same shade of red as the drapes and the slippers, and I could barely make it out from a few feet away.Now let us turn our attention to uter space with all its bodies, gases, and debris. Telscope photos of galaxies, nebulae, and gas clouds, show a profusion of color and an infinite variety of densities. We therefore have the two influences we have been noting above: filtering and opacity. May we guess what happens to light over the course of tens-, hundreds-, thousand- or millions of light years? Suppose that the more energetic x-ray and microwave transmissions were able to pull ahead of the slower moving ultraviolet light; and if these UV emissions were in turn able to outrun the visible light components, and these could outrun the still-slower moving, less energetic infra-red and radio waves. What would we get if noy bundles of light fronm the same source reaching us at different times? We would detect x-ray stars, UV stars, infra-red stars, and radio stars, in addition to thos visible to the eye. And what do we actualy detect? X-ray, UV, infra-red, and radio stars!Isn't that a co-incidence? Here we have both elements of deductive logic and practical reasoning; antecedents that frame an argumnent and evidence of a definite conclusion to which these facts would directly lead. If light indeed separates into bundles on jourenys of even a few light years, what does that possibly tell us?Astronomers occasionally make comments about the various objects they observe that suggest a slight deviation from the facts. It's when they remark on the location of a particular star, galaxy, nebula, or some other sighting by telling us where it IS. Of course we don't know where it is, only where it was however many years ago. Where are they now? Better yet; where will they be in a few years, decades, centuries? If light truly "unbundles" as suggested here, then we just might be able to answer these questions.
Think about this; a timeline of light emmissions from the most recent to the most historic: the x-rays get here first, then the UVs, then the visible star light, then the infra-red, and finally the radio. If we could connect these perceptions into sets, relating them to one another on the basis of this timeline, we would be able to launch a space vehicle on an intercepting path, to ariive at a point in space when the object also arrives, it would save a lot of time and energy.
One erroneous belief that has flavored astronomical theory is that the speed of light through space is constant. If light can be slowed by passing through a dense medium, hlted by clouds, and bent by gravity on earth and within our sphere of perception, you cn bet that the same thing happpens " out there ". It's just not easily apparent. Oh, fifty or sixty years ago, when outer space was thught to be a hygenically devoid of any matter at all, then light would have had the freedom to streak across space at incredible speeds! But that's not at all how it is out there.The universe is full of matter; solid and gaseous, and gravitational fields in complex patterns and various levels of intensity, some ibcredibly strong, that affect starlight as it traverses the lightyears that separate them from ourselves.And light just ignores all these influences, doesn't slow, doesn't bend a little here and there? Just like Black Holes: the " theory " is all that matters; let's just ignore density and friction as all this matter implodes on itself.Nikolai Lobachevski, the famous Russian mathemetician, proposed the idea that space is curved. This idea was based on Michelson and Morley's measurement of the speed of light and Michael Faraday's concept of magnetic fields. Of course the cosmos isn't truly curved; this is merely the illusion created by the time-delay of the light reaching us from far distant celestial objects. This remarks not the actual curvature of space, but out experience with it using light as the standard. But suppose we could use light as a standard in a different and more useful way?Try shining a light on an object through glass. You will see the object illuminated alright, but you will also note a disk of light on the surface of the glass. These are the wavelengths and frequencies of light that were unable to pass through the glass. In other words they were filtered. Now try the same test with a sheet of waxed paper; noticeably less light gets through but some still does. A sheet if light tracing paper will admit stuill less light but, again, some gets through. A thin sheet of card stock will block the light entirely; but does none of it get through? Discrete, largely undetectable light quanta; x-ray, miscrowave, and UV tays must certainly penetrate the opaque obstacle, as they are also components of white light. White light is, after all, a combonation of all wavelengths and frequencies of light; when white light is passed though a ruby crystal and its frequencies are synchronized into one the result is Laserlight. Ever wonder why laser light is always red? Now you know.We also know that light can be selectively filtered out of an optical event; an object can thus be made to disappear. One of my homes had red drapes in the livingroom. The early morning sun would shine on the livingroom windows and be filtered through the drapes. I had a pair of slippers that were the same shade of red and at these times in the morning, if the slippers were on the floor a few feet away - I couldn't see them. At the time I smoked cigarettes that came in a package about the same shade of red as the drapes and the slippers, and I could barely make it out from a few feet away.Now let us turn our attention to uter space with all its bodies, gases, and debris. Telscope photos of galaxies, nebulae, and gas clouds, show a profusion of color and an infinite variety of densities. We therefore have the two influences we have been noting above: filtering and opacity. May we guess what happens to light over the course of tens-, hundreds-, thousand- or millions of light years? Suppose that the more energetic x-ray and microwave transmissions were able to pull ahead of the slower moving ultraviolet light; and if these UV emissions were in turn able to outrun the visible light components, and these could outrun the still-slower moving, less energetic infra-red and radio waves. What would we get if noy bundles of light fronm the same source reaching us at different times? We would detect x-ray stars, UV stars, infra-red stars, and radio stars, in addition to thos visible to the eye. And what do we actualy detect? X-ray, UV, infra-red, and radio stars!Isn't that a co-incidence? Here we have both elements of deductive logic and practical reasoning; antecedents that frame an argumnent and evidence of a definite conclusion to which these facts would directly lead. If light indeed separates into bundles on jourenys of even a few light years, what does that possibly tell us?Astronomers occasionally make comments about the various objects they observe that suggest a slight deviation from the facts. It's when they remark on the location of a particular star, galaxy, nebula, or some other sighting by telling us where it IS. Of course we don't know where it is, only where it was however many years ago. Where are they now? Better yet; where will they be in a few years, decades, centuries? If light truly "unbundles" as suggested here, then we just might be able to answer these questions.
Think about this; a timeline of light emmissions from the most recent to the most historic: the x-rays get here first, then the UVs, then the visible star light, then the infra-red, and finally the radio. If we could connect these perceptions into sets, relating them to one another on the basis of this timeline, we would be able to launch a space vehicle on an intercepting path, to ariive at a point in space when the object also arrives, it would save a lot of time and energy.
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Big Bang Theory - Creationism in Disguise
Of all the pseudo-scientific nonsense with which reasoning men have had to contend, none can equal the Big Bang Theory. Only a theory, many astronomers discuss Big Bang as if it truly happened, but in all their bizarre explanations there is one question that none has dared even mention.
Where was the epicenter of this great event?
It would have to have been right here in our own system, since the galaxies that are racing outward at the speed of light are all the same distance from us in every direction. Oh, yeah; the universe is expanding, according to this ill-conceived fantasy. Of course it isn't, but one thing it is: It's a whole lot bigger that anyone can imagine. It's one thing to suggest that the universe got off to such an exciting start when the earth was thought to be at the center of everything, with only six planets, the sun, the moon, and a jewel-studded canopy covering out flat earth like the top of a cake dish. But now, with billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and billions of stars, a point-mass origin with no identifiable cause is pure nonsense.
And the earth is no longer the center of the universe; in fact our solar system lies in a spiral arm ( one of twelve ) at the outermost reaches of our rather ordinary galaxy, the Milky Way. That Big Bang is not science may be shown from a simple standpoint: Compelling Cause.
Compelling Cause is the starting point of all true scientific investigation. It's the initial awareness a condition, an event, or any other personal experience that demands greater understanding, either for personal or tribal reasons, or just for the sake of curiosity. Compelling Cause is present when;
Something is seen for the first time - the discovery of fire.
Something changes - the rusting of iron, the movement of the tides, phases of the moon.
Something that was there disappears and is replaced by something else - the caterpillar morphs into a butterfly or a moth.
Something that was there vanishes - a pond dries up, a mirage.
All these causes would, by their very nature, trigger the mind to further examination of these phenomena. Take the discovery of fire; it's warm and bright and certainly drove the chill out of the caves our remote ancestors called home. But it didn't stop there. Further investigation was undertaken to detrmine what burns and what doesn't, and how to make in happen when it's wanted, how to make it go away when it's no longer needed. Fire science is still a leading discipline.
True scientific investigation begins with effect and then determines cause; why does iron rust? Why do the tides rise and fall? How do we make fire? How do we put fire out? Pseudo-science is just the reverse; beginning with an a piori conclusion it then tries to gather evidence in support of that conclusion. It is the way of the Ideaologue, one whose knowledge is conditioned by his beliefs; present him with arguments that do not agree with his pre-conceived notions and he refuses to listen. True science holds to beliefs that are conditioned by knowledge. Gather the evidence and form conclusions consistent with that evidence.
It's a simple idea.
So we must ask; where is the Compelling Cause that requires us to believe in Big Bang? Has anyone ever experienced No Universe? Except for the universe getting bigger than anyone ever thought, has it changed much? Is it really possible to have an effect ( the Big Bang ) without an identifiable cause? Why was it necessary for Stephen Hawking to invent a particle that he decided was necessary for the expansion to continue past the first millionth of a second of Big Bang: he did. He called it the Instanton, and it existed for only as long as it was needed, upon which it vanished never to be seen again! Delusional? Hmmmm. But is that the first instance of bogus justification for a patently false notion?
When Gaius Ptolemaecus developed his earth-contered universe, describe above, cake dish and all, it was hailed as a factual account of what was seen in the heavens above. Until Mars started moving backwards at times. Of course we know why this retrograde movement occurs: it's when earth passes Mars on its way around the sun. It's like when you are driving your car and pass a slower moving vehicle on the highway; while you are passing it, the other vehicle seems to be moving backward, and only when the pass is completed does it appear to be travelling forward. But Mr. Ptolemy's followers, anxious to preserve their idea of the cosmos, decided that the planets did follow circular orbits around the earth, but not exactly. In addition, they theorized that the planets actually rotated around an invisible point along the imagined orbit, and they called these Epicycles. The fallacy here is that these Epicycles only appeared whent hey were needed to explain the retrograde movement of Mars; the rest of the time the Red Planet moved in a nice smooth path, no jiggling back and forth - which would have been the case with steady-state Epicycles. And puhleeease don't ask why the 13-billion year-old univers has stars in it that are at least 17-billion years old. It's a fact, but ideaologues aren't interested in facts, only evidence that supports their preconceived ideas: Weapons of Mass Destruction anyone? And if there's no evidence available, why - invent it!
The sad fact is that the Big Bang Theory actually retards good scientific investigation. Will we ever venture out into space? One day, I'm sure, if we can survive. Then we will have to trash this toxic theory in favor of one that makes sense, and that can help us achieve our dream of going into space. Not only will we have to scrap this nonsense but we will also have to accept an idea that is presently unacceptable.
The idea? That a body can be in more than one place at one time. But that's in the next installment.
Where was the epicenter of this great event?
It would have to have been right here in our own system, since the galaxies that are racing outward at the speed of light are all the same distance from us in every direction. Oh, yeah; the universe is expanding, according to this ill-conceived fantasy. Of course it isn't, but one thing it is: It's a whole lot bigger that anyone can imagine. It's one thing to suggest that the universe got off to such an exciting start when the earth was thought to be at the center of everything, with only six planets, the sun, the moon, and a jewel-studded canopy covering out flat earth like the top of a cake dish. But now, with billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and billions of stars, a point-mass origin with no identifiable cause is pure nonsense.
And the earth is no longer the center of the universe; in fact our solar system lies in a spiral arm ( one of twelve ) at the outermost reaches of our rather ordinary galaxy, the Milky Way. That Big Bang is not science may be shown from a simple standpoint: Compelling Cause.
Compelling Cause is the starting point of all true scientific investigation. It's the initial awareness a condition, an event, or any other personal experience that demands greater understanding, either for personal or tribal reasons, or just for the sake of curiosity. Compelling Cause is present when;
Something is seen for the first time - the discovery of fire.
Something changes - the rusting of iron, the movement of the tides, phases of the moon.
Something that was there disappears and is replaced by something else - the caterpillar morphs into a butterfly or a moth.
Something that was there vanishes - a pond dries up, a mirage.
All these causes would, by their very nature, trigger the mind to further examination of these phenomena. Take the discovery of fire; it's warm and bright and certainly drove the chill out of the caves our remote ancestors called home. But it didn't stop there. Further investigation was undertaken to detrmine what burns and what doesn't, and how to make in happen when it's wanted, how to make it go away when it's no longer needed. Fire science is still a leading discipline.
True scientific investigation begins with effect and then determines cause; why does iron rust? Why do the tides rise and fall? How do we make fire? How do we put fire out? Pseudo-science is just the reverse; beginning with an a piori conclusion it then tries to gather evidence in support of that conclusion. It is the way of the Ideaologue, one whose knowledge is conditioned by his beliefs; present him with arguments that do not agree with his pre-conceived notions and he refuses to listen. True science holds to beliefs that are conditioned by knowledge. Gather the evidence and form conclusions consistent with that evidence.
It's a simple idea.
So we must ask; where is the Compelling Cause that requires us to believe in Big Bang? Has anyone ever experienced No Universe? Except for the universe getting bigger than anyone ever thought, has it changed much? Is it really possible to have an effect ( the Big Bang ) without an identifiable cause? Why was it necessary for Stephen Hawking to invent a particle that he decided was necessary for the expansion to continue past the first millionth of a second of Big Bang: he did. He called it the Instanton, and it existed for only as long as it was needed, upon which it vanished never to be seen again! Delusional? Hmmmm. But is that the first instance of bogus justification for a patently false notion?
When Gaius Ptolemaecus developed his earth-contered universe, describe above, cake dish and all, it was hailed as a factual account of what was seen in the heavens above. Until Mars started moving backwards at times. Of course we know why this retrograde movement occurs: it's when earth passes Mars on its way around the sun. It's like when you are driving your car and pass a slower moving vehicle on the highway; while you are passing it, the other vehicle seems to be moving backward, and only when the pass is completed does it appear to be travelling forward. But Mr. Ptolemy's followers, anxious to preserve their idea of the cosmos, decided that the planets did follow circular orbits around the earth, but not exactly. In addition, they theorized that the planets actually rotated around an invisible point along the imagined orbit, and they called these Epicycles. The fallacy here is that these Epicycles only appeared whent hey were needed to explain the retrograde movement of Mars; the rest of the time the Red Planet moved in a nice smooth path, no jiggling back and forth - which would have been the case with steady-state Epicycles. And puhleeease don't ask why the 13-billion year-old univers has stars in it that are at least 17-billion years old. It's a fact, but ideaologues aren't interested in facts, only evidence that supports their preconceived ideas: Weapons of Mass Destruction anyone? And if there's no evidence available, why - invent it!
The sad fact is that the Big Bang Theory actually retards good scientific investigation. Will we ever venture out into space? One day, I'm sure, if we can survive. Then we will have to trash this toxic theory in favor of one that makes sense, and that can help us achieve our dream of going into space. Not only will we have to scrap this nonsense but we will also have to accept an idea that is presently unacceptable.
The idea? That a body can be in more than one place at one time. But that's in the next installment.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Quantum Theory - Relativity Takes a Vacation
Ever had this happen? You drove into a car wash bay and it started up. Then the machine moved back and forth, completely enveloping the car. Didn't it feel as though the car were moving? If you've had this experience, or one like it, then you know something about Relativity. You know how your senses can be fooled by the lack of a fixed reference. In simple terms, Relativity relates one thing, or a group of things, to something else. But that's only part of the story.
Everything in our mechanical universe is in motion. Everything moves but we perceive movement at different rates dependng upon perspective and the presence of a fixed standard. There are two criteria involved in this observation; the Event Scale and the Visual Scale.
The Event Scale is the scope of the activity; the Visual Scale is the range of our ability to observe the event. As in the car wash example, the Visual Scale is overwhelmed by the event: the machine completely envelops the car and there is no fixed reference. The same would be true for an observer standing ten feet away from railroad tracks with an express train passing at high speed. Stand a mile away from the racing train and the progress can be measured, at least in terms of the relative movement of the train with respect to distance. The farther away it is, the slower it appears to be moving. This is because the Event Scale is much smaller than our Visual Scale: the train takes longer to traverse our range of visibility. Moreover, as the train is seen from farther away it appears to move even more slowly until it reaches what artists know as the "vanishing point" where two parallel lines seem to come together. If the train were still visible at this distance it would seem not to be moving at all because the distance between the starting point and the end point would approach zero. That's why the stars in the night sky seem fixed in position: they are large enough to be seen from lightyears distant but the Event Scale is so small that movement may only be detected over a span of time. If we could grow to such size as the Millky Way apperaed to be the size of a dinner plate we would clearly see a great deal of movement.
Quantum Theory grew out of the reverse perception: an Event Scale that is infintiely smaller than out Visual Scale. As in the preceeding discussion, the scale of events at the atomic level approach zero with respect to our Visual Scale so that the events seem to occur instantaneously. It's the same as our dinner-plate Milky Way: what appears to be fixed and motionless at the Ultra-macro scale, accelerates at the Ultra-micro, giga-, pico-, or tera-scale.
Suppose now that we could shrink ourselves down to the point that an electron were the size of the earth. Relativity tells us that we would perceive no movement at all, just as we experience ourselves on this planet. The vast distances between the nucleus of the atom and its satellites would be such that we would bserve them in the very same way that we observe the night sky: no perceptible movement.
The Special Theory of Relativity was introduced at about the same time as Max Planck concluded Quantum Theory. Without this vital tool Planck and his cohorts believed that, at the atomic level events were occurring at higher rates than at our own level of perception: things seemed to be moving at incredible speeds. They were, but solely on the basis of our range of perception being so much greater, not because they are actually moving at these rates in situ. Even today, a treatise on Quantum Theory makes for bizarre reading; muons, mu-mesons, gluons, weak forces, and let's not forget "strange" forces! Whatever useful information derived from Quantum Theory, from the Relativistic point of view its basic premise is false.
That this is mmore than a mere academic exercise will become clear in the next article on the Big Bang.
Everything in our mechanical universe is in motion. Everything moves but we perceive movement at different rates dependng upon perspective and the presence of a fixed standard. There are two criteria involved in this observation; the Event Scale and the Visual Scale.
The Event Scale is the scope of the activity; the Visual Scale is the range of our ability to observe the event. As in the car wash example, the Visual Scale is overwhelmed by the event: the machine completely envelops the car and there is no fixed reference. The same would be true for an observer standing ten feet away from railroad tracks with an express train passing at high speed. Stand a mile away from the racing train and the progress can be measured, at least in terms of the relative movement of the train with respect to distance. The farther away it is, the slower it appears to be moving. This is because the Event Scale is much smaller than our Visual Scale: the train takes longer to traverse our range of visibility. Moreover, as the train is seen from farther away it appears to move even more slowly until it reaches what artists know as the "vanishing point" where two parallel lines seem to come together. If the train were still visible at this distance it would seem not to be moving at all because the distance between the starting point and the end point would approach zero. That's why the stars in the night sky seem fixed in position: they are large enough to be seen from lightyears distant but the Event Scale is so small that movement may only be detected over a span of time. If we could grow to such size as the Millky Way apperaed to be the size of a dinner plate we would clearly see a great deal of movement.
Quantum Theory grew out of the reverse perception: an Event Scale that is infintiely smaller than out Visual Scale. As in the preceeding discussion, the scale of events at the atomic level approach zero with respect to our Visual Scale so that the events seem to occur instantaneously. It's the same as our dinner-plate Milky Way: what appears to be fixed and motionless at the Ultra-macro scale, accelerates at the Ultra-micro, giga-, pico-, or tera-scale.
Suppose now that we could shrink ourselves down to the point that an electron were the size of the earth. Relativity tells us that we would perceive no movement at all, just as we experience ourselves on this planet. The vast distances between the nucleus of the atom and its satellites would be such that we would bserve them in the very same way that we observe the night sky: no perceptible movement.
The Special Theory of Relativity was introduced at about the same time as Max Planck concluded Quantum Theory. Without this vital tool Planck and his cohorts believed that, at the atomic level events were occurring at higher rates than at our own level of perception: things seemed to be moving at incredible speeds. They were, but solely on the basis of our range of perception being so much greater, not because they are actually moving at these rates in situ. Even today, a treatise on Quantum Theory makes for bizarre reading; muons, mu-mesons, gluons, weak forces, and let's not forget "strange" forces! Whatever useful information derived from Quantum Theory, from the Relativistic point of view its basic premise is false.
That this is mmore than a mere academic exercise will become clear in the next article on the Big Bang.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Spirit of the Universe - the Only God
Everything is perfect, simple, and easy to understand - if you are willing. In the last installment we looked briefly at the Fundamentalist view of God and found it to be meager fare. Its mysteries, contradictions, and generally arbitrary nature make it distasteful to any reasoning person. This was only a cursory treatment of the topic, extracted from the parent website on which a fuller, more detailed critique may be found. Not content to simply point out the flaws in conventional religious belief, I feel it important to describe a rational, coherent, and more intelectually pleasing view of Creation; one that will lead mankind to freedom, common cause, and greater unity. The "old time religion" has had its day and the legacy it has left us is a world of poverty, want, war, and misery.
There is a better way. And this being the Millennium, we'd better get straight with it or the silly, but deadly prognostications of the ignorant will come to realization as self-fulfilling prophesy. To any who may still have lingerring doubts that the Millennium is truly here, a reminder and a question. The reminder: a millennium is a thousand years, and we are barely halfway through the eighth year; can we keep playing the dangerous games we play with food, resources, great and catasrophic weapons systems, and all the rest, and hope to survive another nine-hundred and ninety years? What hope is there when the still wealthiest nation the world has ever seen continues to elect the meanest lowlifes to the highest offices in the land? We who started with men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, have now denegrated ourselves to such a point that we are governed by the likes of George W. Bush, a flaming idiot, a delsuional nut case who told us that God told him to invade Iraq; Dick Cheney, a sneering fascist; Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of the delsuional traitors that still try to tell us that white is black, that black is white, and that they know what's best for us. Just look at the record: they've been wrong about everything they've said.
And invade we did, even though thoughtful people warned us of the consequences - but too many people were lazy and stupid enough to go along. Then, when things started going badly there, the people said they thought it was a mistake. No! It wasn't a mistake: it was a war crime worthy of Nazi Germany, with whom Prescott Bush, the American Caligula's grandfather traded while we were at war with them. The scum of the earth infects the center of government and they must be flushed out, as will happen in due course, but so much more needs to be done.
America needs a new attitude!
Consider two things. First, there is the pleasure and the power of knowing what works and what doesn't. Science in large part draws the curtain aside from what were once mysteries, forbidden knowledge, the devil's work as some of these things were seen. What would even the most enlightened Renaisance man have done if confronted by a modern commercial jet airplane, a cigarette lighter, a modern automobile? Would the totality of the wonders of the world today unhinge an otherwise stable mind? And all these dicoveries and inventions were the product of deductive logic; investigating natural phenomena and devising ways to harness these in constructive ways that serve mankind. The mind of man is designed to process logical thought.
Now look up into the night sky. See all the stars and galaxies light-years off, in some cases millions of light-years distant, and regard the logic that drives the universe through eternity. Is there any room for ignorance and superstition, of lies and fairy tales about imaginary, and ugly beings that low intellects have given us as gods? These abominations thrive on fear and confusion, their minions caring only about their own aggrandizement, the power and influence they hold over those too weak or too stupid to think for themselves. This cancerous influence must be smashed along with all its creatures; political secrecy and corruption, hare-brained science with its delusional aspects and deadly potential, and the shameful examples these set: public figures who lie to their people, oligarchies that victimize those who lack the power or the wit to provide for themselves adequately, being deprived of these capabilities by the self same power brokers; thieves who steal the wealth of a nation while professing to advance the culture they are looting; all conspirators who, like cockroaches, scheme in the shadows of priviledged position to enslave those they claim to be liberating.
It's time to turn the lights on! And that is exactly what this series is all about. Here we will expose the falsity of; Quantum Theory, the Big Bang, Black Holes, the Second Coming, the Number of the Beast (666), the Mark of the Beast, and whatever other nonsense we may encounter along the way.
Stay tuned.
There is a better way. And this being the Millennium, we'd better get straight with it or the silly, but deadly prognostications of the ignorant will come to realization as self-fulfilling prophesy. To any who may still have lingerring doubts that the Millennium is truly here, a reminder and a question. The reminder: a millennium is a thousand years, and we are barely halfway through the eighth year; can we keep playing the dangerous games we play with food, resources, great and catasrophic weapons systems, and all the rest, and hope to survive another nine-hundred and ninety years? What hope is there when the still wealthiest nation the world has ever seen continues to elect the meanest lowlifes to the highest offices in the land? We who started with men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, have now denegrated ourselves to such a point that we are governed by the likes of George W. Bush, a flaming idiot, a delsuional nut case who told us that God told him to invade Iraq; Dick Cheney, a sneering fascist; Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of the delsuional traitors that still try to tell us that white is black, that black is white, and that they know what's best for us. Just look at the record: they've been wrong about everything they've said.
And invade we did, even though thoughtful people warned us of the consequences - but too many people were lazy and stupid enough to go along. Then, when things started going badly there, the people said they thought it was a mistake. No! It wasn't a mistake: it was a war crime worthy of Nazi Germany, with whom Prescott Bush, the American Caligula's grandfather traded while we were at war with them. The scum of the earth infects the center of government and they must be flushed out, as will happen in due course, but so much more needs to be done.
America needs a new attitude!
Consider two things. First, there is the pleasure and the power of knowing what works and what doesn't. Science in large part draws the curtain aside from what were once mysteries, forbidden knowledge, the devil's work as some of these things were seen. What would even the most enlightened Renaisance man have done if confronted by a modern commercial jet airplane, a cigarette lighter, a modern automobile? Would the totality of the wonders of the world today unhinge an otherwise stable mind? And all these dicoveries and inventions were the product of deductive logic; investigating natural phenomena and devising ways to harness these in constructive ways that serve mankind. The mind of man is designed to process logical thought.
Now look up into the night sky. See all the stars and galaxies light-years off, in some cases millions of light-years distant, and regard the logic that drives the universe through eternity. Is there any room for ignorance and superstition, of lies and fairy tales about imaginary, and ugly beings that low intellects have given us as gods? These abominations thrive on fear and confusion, their minions caring only about their own aggrandizement, the power and influence they hold over those too weak or too stupid to think for themselves. This cancerous influence must be smashed along with all its creatures; political secrecy and corruption, hare-brained science with its delusional aspects and deadly potential, and the shameful examples these set: public figures who lie to their people, oligarchies that victimize those who lack the power or the wit to provide for themselves adequately, being deprived of these capabilities by the self same power brokers; thieves who steal the wealth of a nation while professing to advance the culture they are looting; all conspirators who, like cockroaches, scheme in the shadows of priviledged position to enslave those they claim to be liberating.
It's time to turn the lights on! And that is exactly what this series is all about. Here we will expose the falsity of; Quantum Theory, the Big Bang, Black Holes, the Second Coming, the Number of the Beast (666), the Mark of the Beast, and whatever other nonsense we may encounter along the way.
Stay tuned.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Does God Exist?
Who's this? Kinda looks like Jesus, don't you think? Or could it be the Big Fella himself: God? Actually it's neither. This is an artist's rendition of the Greed god Zeus, whom the Roman Church hijacked and used as a model for the crazy old man in the sky with the serious personality flaws, that so-called " Christians " look up to. Zeus, if you remember is the guy up on Olympus who interferes in the lives of mortals, throws lightning bolts at those who irritate him, and cheats on his wife. The Christian[God] is not married as far as anyone knows, therefore if Jesus is truly the "Son of God" then he was born out of wedlock, and therefore must be considered a bastard. God wasn't married to Mary, and she was married to Joseph the carpenter, and was pregnant when they tied the knot. But, see, we're not supposed to talk about these things: They're mysteries!
No. The only mystery is how supposedly intelligent people can swallow this crap whole and without blinking. Jesus, rather a decent fellow from all accounts, said of the pharisees, commenting on their many daily duties and observances, they " tug at a gnat yet swallow a camel whole. " That about says it all.
This Christian [God] is one that we really have to look up to. That's because [He] lives way out there someplace, called Heaven, where we are all going to go when we die if we have eagerly gobbled dowm all the swill that [His] minions pump out from every pulpit. Starting with the indoctrination of young children, these preacher types seek to control the minds and wills of any they can cajole, coerce, or by any means " convert " to their way of thinking. Their [God] is the classic iron fist in the velvet glove; [God] loves you but if you step out of line, well look out because something will happen that will put the Fear of God into you. Screw up badly enough and you might even get to burn in Hell for all Eternity! It seems there are some things that [God] cannot forgive. A [God] who holds grudges?
A while back I had the opportunity to debate relgious matters with a Pentacostal pastor. It was an eductaion. When I told him of my belief that God is the Spirit of the Univers, All Thigs Everywhere and in all things, he said I was wrong. "God," he told me, " is only where [He] chooses to be. " When I asked by what criteria [God] chooses to be somewhere or to do something, the answer was, "God only knows."
This [God] apparently chooses to be on one side or another, or both, in the many wars that mankind wreaks on itself. This is also an imitation of the Olympians, Zeus' children took sides in the Trojan wars and even went down to help their side, Greek or Trojan. Zeus, to his credit, didn't interfere very much, and at one point took a trip to Ethiopia and returned in twelve days. Some feat: travelling from Greece to Ethiopia, round trip, in twelve days? Pretty good for the eleventh century of the Old Era! Not a mystery, really; Zeus was a Lord of the World, one of our distant ancestors.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
A New Series - Overview
This series will consist of articles and elaborations on points made on the parent website, Timeoftheend-faithandreason.net. The object of this sit has been, and continues to be the search for Truth in this wold of ignorance, superstition, lies, and deceptions, as are evident in the three major world infuences: Religion, Science, and Politics. In coming features I will expose the falsity that tries to pass for truth; in the field of science, The Big Bang Theory, Black Holes; religion, the nature of God, the Christ Message, and the false notion of hierarchy; and in politics, propaganda, Capitalism, democracy, and conspiracy theories.
Starting with the matter of hierarchies among men, people who occupy positions of power and influence, and those on the lower rungs of the social order, have arranged themselves into an unnatural system of "betters" and "inferiors"; all because the Roman Church took one of the most brilliant observations ever put into words and subverted it to their mean, worldly agenda. Notwithstanding that the Declaration of the Thirteen States of America states that "All men are created equal," we still have a malicious ruling class that affects the lives of millions.
The statement in question was uttered by Aristotle. He said, "Everything in nature assumes its proper position."It's easy to see how the intensely focused mind of the self-seeker might find in this brilliant observation a justification for elevating low persons to high positions. But isn't that what the quote means? To the pedestrian mind: Yes. But to an intelligent, thoughtful person, conversant with the ways of nature it completely accounts for everything we observe on the material plane. And it is a dynamic plane, therefore a static evaluation of Aristotle's famous quote is false and misleading. I once showed a student a photograph showing a stack of three books on a tabletop. Resting against the books was a short piece of wood, a plank, with a ball at the center of the inclined plane. I asked the young man what was ahppening in the picture.
"The ball is rolling down the piece of wood," he correctly replied. But of course the photo was static, unmoving. "How do you know that?" I asked."It has to be!" my auditor replied excitedly. Of course, because a sphere cannot rest on an inclined plane: it's not a proper position.In physics we learn that when a body is at rest all the forces working on it are equal: the sum of the forces is zero. This is what Aristotle meant by "proper position": Rest. An "improper" position would be when the forces affecting a body are out of balance; raising, pushing, pulling, or driving the body. It is also a fact that no material substance is capable of storing energy beyond that which maintains its integrity; form, density, texture, etc.. Any additional energy must be quickly eliminated, and the most common way is to convert this excess energy into motion.
At the atomio level, high school students learn that when energy, heat or electrical, is applied to a material, it expands. The electrons, already travelling at nearly the speed of light, cannot move any faster in their incumbent "shells", they move outward to higher energy levels: bigger orbits, in other words. The reason is simple. The formula for Velocity is;V = s/t, where V is velocity, s is the distance travelled, and t is time. The rate at which the electron orbits the nucleus of the atom is called its angular velocity; we commonly know this motion as revolutions per minute (RPM). Since the electron is already revolving around the nucleus at or near the speed of light, it cannot increase its speed on its incumbent track. Time is a constant and in this case so is the angular momentum, therefore the velocty can only be increased by sending the electron over a longer distance: it "jumps" out to the next higher energy level. When the energy is removed or dissipated, the atom returns to its ambient state.
The proper position for any material sunstance is rest: when the sum of the forces is zero. So we can see that Aristotle's simple statement encompasses every event, in every instant, throughout this material plane and throughout the Universe of universes and beyond. The Roman Church and all its mindless spin-offs have corrupted the minds of men, their sole objective being to control the masses of humanity who look to them for guidance in spiritual matters. But history has a different story to tell; Popes sold indulgences for money; the practice of Simony was the sale of Red Hats ( creating cardinals ) for a price, to whomever had the money; today the prelates of the Church reign from on high, living in luxury while the rest of the world goes to hell. Do they care? Not as long as the money keeps rolling in! Know of any Evangelical, Pentacostal, or other Fundamentalist preachers who live in one-bedroom apartments? Billy Grahame, a complete fraud, has enjoyed a lifestyle fit for a king for six decades, and enjoyed the favor of presidents dating back to Richard Nixon. It was Grahame who urged Nixon to bomb Cambodia using nuclear weapons. Oral Roberts went on television once to plead with his followers to help him raise eight-million dollars, otherwise [God] would kill him. Wonder what his problem was; after all, why didn't he want to join [God], Jesus, and tehe rest of the gang in heaven?It's all about money. Take the profits away and religion as we know it will collapse like a house of cards.
The object of this series is to refute the teachings of fundamentalist religion based on ignorance and superstition, and to expose the fraudulent "science" that has been generated to further mislead mankind. In this series we will explain the true nature of man and shatter such pseudo-scienctific nonsense as Creation, the Big Bang, Black Holes, and Quantum Physics.
Keep coming back.
Starting with the matter of hierarchies among men, people who occupy positions of power and influence, and those on the lower rungs of the social order, have arranged themselves into an unnatural system of "betters" and "inferiors"; all because the Roman Church took one of the most brilliant observations ever put into words and subverted it to their mean, worldly agenda. Notwithstanding that the Declaration of the Thirteen States of America states that "All men are created equal," we still have a malicious ruling class that affects the lives of millions.
The statement in question was uttered by Aristotle. He said, "Everything in nature assumes its proper position."It's easy to see how the intensely focused mind of the self-seeker might find in this brilliant observation a justification for elevating low persons to high positions. But isn't that what the quote means? To the pedestrian mind: Yes. But to an intelligent, thoughtful person, conversant with the ways of nature it completely accounts for everything we observe on the material plane. And it is a dynamic plane, therefore a static evaluation of Aristotle's famous quote is false and misleading. I once showed a student a photograph showing a stack of three books on a tabletop. Resting against the books was a short piece of wood, a plank, with a ball at the center of the inclined plane. I asked the young man what was ahppening in the picture.
"The ball is rolling down the piece of wood," he correctly replied. But of course the photo was static, unmoving. "How do you know that?" I asked."It has to be!" my auditor replied excitedly. Of course, because a sphere cannot rest on an inclined plane: it's not a proper position.In physics we learn that when a body is at rest all the forces working on it are equal: the sum of the forces is zero. This is what Aristotle meant by "proper position": Rest. An "improper" position would be when the forces affecting a body are out of balance; raising, pushing, pulling, or driving the body. It is also a fact that no material substance is capable of storing energy beyond that which maintains its integrity; form, density, texture, etc.. Any additional energy must be quickly eliminated, and the most common way is to convert this excess energy into motion.
At the atomio level, high school students learn that when energy, heat or electrical, is applied to a material, it expands. The electrons, already travelling at nearly the speed of light, cannot move any faster in their incumbent "shells", they move outward to higher energy levels: bigger orbits, in other words. The reason is simple. The formula for Velocity is;V = s/t, where V is velocity, s is the distance travelled, and t is time. The rate at which the electron orbits the nucleus of the atom is called its angular velocity; we commonly know this motion as revolutions per minute (RPM). Since the electron is already revolving around the nucleus at or near the speed of light, it cannot increase its speed on its incumbent track. Time is a constant and in this case so is the angular momentum, therefore the velocty can only be increased by sending the electron over a longer distance: it "jumps" out to the next higher energy level. When the energy is removed or dissipated, the atom returns to its ambient state.
The proper position for any material sunstance is rest: when the sum of the forces is zero. So we can see that Aristotle's simple statement encompasses every event, in every instant, throughout this material plane and throughout the Universe of universes and beyond. The Roman Church and all its mindless spin-offs have corrupted the minds of men, their sole objective being to control the masses of humanity who look to them for guidance in spiritual matters. But history has a different story to tell; Popes sold indulgences for money; the practice of Simony was the sale of Red Hats ( creating cardinals ) for a price, to whomever had the money; today the prelates of the Church reign from on high, living in luxury while the rest of the world goes to hell. Do they care? Not as long as the money keeps rolling in! Know of any Evangelical, Pentacostal, or other Fundamentalist preachers who live in one-bedroom apartments? Billy Grahame, a complete fraud, has enjoyed a lifestyle fit for a king for six decades, and enjoyed the favor of presidents dating back to Richard Nixon. It was Grahame who urged Nixon to bomb Cambodia using nuclear weapons. Oral Roberts went on television once to plead with his followers to help him raise eight-million dollars, otherwise [God] would kill him. Wonder what his problem was; after all, why didn't he want to join [God], Jesus, and tehe rest of the gang in heaven?It's all about money. Take the profits away and religion as we know it will collapse like a house of cards.
The object of this series is to refute the teachings of fundamentalist religion based on ignorance and superstition, and to expose the fraudulent "science" that has been generated to further mislead mankind. In this series we will explain the true nature of man and shatter such pseudo-scienctific nonsense as Creation, the Big Bang, Black Holes, and Quantum Physics.
Keep coming back.
Monday, July 7, 2008
War With Iran - A Very Stupid Move
The Bush regime seems ever more intent on attacking Iran, using the same program of lies, deceptions, misinformation, propagandizing by major media, and recklessness that led up to the present disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are losing these two wars badly, for the same reason and by the same means that undid our efforts in Viet Nam - another war based on lies. Iraq and Afghanistan are what Viet Nam was: guerilla warfare which the United States military establishment has proven powerless against. War with Iran will be no different and very different at the same time. The US is now fighting a war on two fronts, a fool's mission in anybody's book. If we attack Iran we will be facing a military disaster of unparalleled severity, but not for the reasons given in the largely clueless press. And not according to the scenarion of Global War that these idiots are trying to sell us.
No. It will be far different and, in the end, will probably return an outcome that the Neocons and their Nazi-like Zionist colleagues would never have envisioned. But some explanation is in order.
For one thing, a geurilla war is not over until the guerillas win. It may take years as it did in Nam and as it is in Iraq, but the outcome is ceratin: just look at the history. For another, we know that wars cannot be won with airpower alone; there have to be boots on the ground. But where will they come from? Doesn't it stand to reason that if the United States army faces Iranian forces over the extensive border with Iraq, that the Iraqi freedom fighters won't double and redouble their efforts to eject this occupying force from their land? Prime Minister el Maliki, the head of our own puppet government in Iraq wants us to leave. The people want us to leave; the vast majority of American people want us to leave. And everyone is tired of the double talk: "we're winning, so we have to stay; we're not winning, so we have to stay." It's an insane tautology that reasoning people will not buy.
The next thing to think about is how the sides will stack up. The US/Israeli coalition of evil, with some interest allegedly shown by Great Britain, France, and Italy, on one side; Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and al Sadr's insurgents in Iraq, on the other, it will be a Chinese fire drill of monumental proportions - and we can't win against that kind of opposition. We have already wasted too many lives and treasure in the region for the American people to stand for any more. That is in addition to the strategic and tactical problems we would face.
It is a foregone conclusion that Israel would be hard hit in any retaliatory effort on the part of Iran, especially if Israel initiates an attack against them. A very risky matter for Israel, as neither the CIA or Mossad actually knows where the Iranian missile bases and military installations actually are. There seems little doubt that Israel is counting on American support in the proposed military adventure and, for reasons already given, that is not a given.
Another question; What will Russia do in the case of an attack upon Iran? They have economic ties and significant interests in Teheran; will they just sit back and allow Israel and the United States to attack? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. Aren't the idiots who are allegedly planning this insane adventure taking the Russian question into consideration? They have been wrong about everything they've said about Iraq; why should anyone think they have suddenly become proficient in the strategic arts, both diplomatic and military? There is much that they seem oblivious to that it is frightening. Or it should be.
One thing, concerning Iraq and the desire of the Iraqis for American troops to leave, that nobody so far has given any thought to: There is one man in Iraq who, by just saying the word, could bring the entire population of Iraq into the insurgent camp in a major effort to oust the occupying forces: The Ayatollah el Sistani. He is the spiritual leader of the Iraqi people and if he tells them to rise up and throw the invader out, the Iraqis will risa as one and our already overtaxed military will face near anihilation.
Then there is the question of where such an ill-advised military adventure will lead. Some feel that it will be the start of World War III and that the United States will be attacked. Not a very happy outcome in either case, but I believe the possibility of escalation to these levels is rather remote.
For one thing, neither the United States or Israel would be able to go it alone; the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon was a defeat for the Israelis, and Iraq has been the same for the United States for over six years. Each military establishment took on single nations and fared badly; both taking on the combined forces of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians, would lead to disastrous consequences for them. And lest we forget, Israel and the Unuited States have had control of the skies in the Middle East all along, but the bloodshed continues. The most likely outcome of all this would be greatly protracted guerilla warfare against greater odds than either the United States or Israel have ever faced, or even thought of facing. We might also consider what Egypt would do.
An attack on the United States? By whom? Iran would have no interest in doing that; in fact, an attack on the US would be counter-productive from their standpoint. We have a loud, vocal, and ever-expanding anti-war movement in this country. Should our leaders step over the line and go ahead with an attack on Iran they would risk a whole bucketful of "unintended consequences" right here in their own backyard. The people will stand for just-so-much and the needle is rapidly approaching red line.
Europe is much closer to the action and a war spreading to that continent is far more likely than any threat to the United States. But the Europeans still have vivid memories of World War II and would have no interest in inviting more of the same by entering into a coalition with Israel and the United States. France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, may ally themselves with us in voting sanctions against Iran in the United Nations, but we have already seen how willing they are to commit troops: not very. The Brits, who actually sent forces to Iraq, have brought most of their military personnel out and have no plans for returning anytime soon, perhaps when elephants fly.
For these and other reasons too numerous to go into here, an attack on Iran would be stupid in the extreme. Our leadership ( if that's what you call it )is playing Checkers, and not very well, while the other team is playing Chess; two very different games though the board is the same. And if you accept the Checkers/Chess analogy, then remember this: THEY INVENTED CHESS!
No. It will be far different and, in the end, will probably return an outcome that the Neocons and their Nazi-like Zionist colleagues would never have envisioned. But some explanation is in order.
For one thing, a geurilla war is not over until the guerillas win. It may take years as it did in Nam and as it is in Iraq, but the outcome is ceratin: just look at the history. For another, we know that wars cannot be won with airpower alone; there have to be boots on the ground. But where will they come from? Doesn't it stand to reason that if the United States army faces Iranian forces over the extensive border with Iraq, that the Iraqi freedom fighters won't double and redouble their efforts to eject this occupying force from their land? Prime Minister el Maliki, the head of our own puppet government in Iraq wants us to leave. The people want us to leave; the vast majority of American people want us to leave. And everyone is tired of the double talk: "we're winning, so we have to stay; we're not winning, so we have to stay." It's an insane tautology that reasoning people will not buy.
The next thing to think about is how the sides will stack up. The US/Israeli coalition of evil, with some interest allegedly shown by Great Britain, France, and Italy, on one side; Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and al Sadr's insurgents in Iraq, on the other, it will be a Chinese fire drill of monumental proportions - and we can't win against that kind of opposition. We have already wasted too many lives and treasure in the region for the American people to stand for any more. That is in addition to the strategic and tactical problems we would face.
It is a foregone conclusion that Israel would be hard hit in any retaliatory effort on the part of Iran, especially if Israel initiates an attack against them. A very risky matter for Israel, as neither the CIA or Mossad actually knows where the Iranian missile bases and military installations actually are. There seems little doubt that Israel is counting on American support in the proposed military adventure and, for reasons already given, that is not a given.
Another question; What will Russia do in the case of an attack upon Iran? They have economic ties and significant interests in Teheran; will they just sit back and allow Israel and the United States to attack? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. Aren't the idiots who are allegedly planning this insane adventure taking the Russian question into consideration? They have been wrong about everything they've said about Iraq; why should anyone think they have suddenly become proficient in the strategic arts, both diplomatic and military? There is much that they seem oblivious to that it is frightening. Or it should be.
One thing, concerning Iraq and the desire of the Iraqis for American troops to leave, that nobody so far has given any thought to: There is one man in Iraq who, by just saying the word, could bring the entire population of Iraq into the insurgent camp in a major effort to oust the occupying forces: The Ayatollah el Sistani. He is the spiritual leader of the Iraqi people and if he tells them to rise up and throw the invader out, the Iraqis will risa as one and our already overtaxed military will face near anihilation.
Then there is the question of where such an ill-advised military adventure will lead. Some feel that it will be the start of World War III and that the United States will be attacked. Not a very happy outcome in either case, but I believe the possibility of escalation to these levels is rather remote.
For one thing, neither the United States or Israel would be able to go it alone; the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon was a defeat for the Israelis, and Iraq has been the same for the United States for over six years. Each military establishment took on single nations and fared badly; both taking on the combined forces of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians, would lead to disastrous consequences for them. And lest we forget, Israel and the Unuited States have had control of the skies in the Middle East all along, but the bloodshed continues. The most likely outcome of all this would be greatly protracted guerilla warfare against greater odds than either the United States or Israel have ever faced, or even thought of facing. We might also consider what Egypt would do.
An attack on the United States? By whom? Iran would have no interest in doing that; in fact, an attack on the US would be counter-productive from their standpoint. We have a loud, vocal, and ever-expanding anti-war movement in this country. Should our leaders step over the line and go ahead with an attack on Iran they would risk a whole bucketful of "unintended consequences" right here in their own backyard. The people will stand for just-so-much and the needle is rapidly approaching red line.
Europe is much closer to the action and a war spreading to that continent is far more likely than any threat to the United States. But the Europeans still have vivid memories of World War II and would have no interest in inviting more of the same by entering into a coalition with Israel and the United States. France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, may ally themselves with us in voting sanctions against Iran in the United Nations, but we have already seen how willing they are to commit troops: not very. The Brits, who actually sent forces to Iraq, have brought most of their military personnel out and have no plans for returning anytime soon, perhaps when elephants fly.
For these and other reasons too numerous to go into here, an attack on Iran would be stupid in the extreme. Our leadership ( if that's what you call it )is playing Checkers, and not very well, while the other team is playing Chess; two very different games though the board is the same. And if you accept the Checkers/Chess analogy, then remember this: THEY INVENTED CHESS!
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Where Are We Going?
The American economy appears to be in a shambles, but it is not. What we are seeing is a transformmation. The combination of the weaker dollar and outsourcing of jobs can only lead to a resurgence in domestic production. It's the bitter pill that we as a people must swallow in the short run, much as a sot must seek hangover relief the monring after. But we will come back stronger than ever if enough people wake up and see the potential.
The days of high paying jobs are over. For too long have we piled salary increases and benefit packages on the corporations that we presently hold in such contempt, that outsourcing jobs to cheaper wage environments was a no-brainer. Of course they were going to relocate to countries where labor is cheaper. Wouldn't you? It's easy to lay blame on the most visible targets, the corporation, but it doesn't solve the basic problem: Americans' attitude about work.
We the people have brought the current calamity on ourselves. The five-day work week is bracketed by "Blue Monday" at the front end and "Thank God it's Friday!" on the other. Low paying, menial jobs are anathema; let somebody else do them, and there are people less fortunate than we who are more than glad to fill these positions. At the same time we are bringing foreign professionals, technicians, teachers, and engineers to this country because we can pay them less. A triple whammie: unskilled, semi-skilled, and highly educated workers are out in the street.Adam Smith had it right. Laisses-faire economics still works though the appearances may make it seem otherwise. The overall economy will always tend toward full employment, it just takes longer nowadays. In Smith's day economies were largely agrarian, the labor mostly unskilled. The technology was primitive by present standards, so workers could be easily trained to oil machines, operate looms, and work on farms. The labor force was adaptable and mobile. Without safety nets such as unemployment, welfare, and the like, when a worker making fifty-cents a day was laid off he had to go right out and find another job, willing to take less, say thirty cents a day. No choice in the matter. Those who kept working survived and enjoyed a marked advantage over time; unskilled though they might have been, they had more and a greater variety of experience. This is not to extoll the conditions that prevailed in those days: they were hard times, but in essence the mechanics are the same.
The Age of Technology skewed the process. Whereas in Smith's day labor was unskilled and mobile, today it is highly specialized and immobile. People are educated and trained in such closely defined occupational parameters that if their jobs go away they cannot easily secure employment in other fields where their experience might be close enough that they could be adapted to the new job. But that isn't to say that it never happens. My own experience proves that it can.
Years ago I lived in Upstate New York, an economic disaster area. At one point the unemployment rate peaked at 14%; when a job was advertized three-hundred people showed up to apply. It wasn't fun. A company that manufactured air-driven tools had an opening, and I appled for it with my background in electronics. Not a good fit.The interviewer advised me that they didn't have any jobs in electronincs, to which I replied, "Do you think that's all I know?" He said he realized that I knew a lot more than how electrons surge through conductors, and also knew that I wanted a job and wouldn't be deterred easily. He leafed through his book of job listings and told me he couldn't see me doing any of them."Like what?" I asked."Foundry," he replied and I agreed. No foundry."Well, what CAN you see me doing?" He looked some more and finally said, "Handscrew".That took a little explaining but what he was talking about was operating a turret lathe, something I had never done before."Alright, how long do you think it would take me to learn?" Three weeks was his answer."I'm willing!" I said - and he hired me. And it only took one week for me to get up to speed, and from then on I exceeded my quotas every day. It can happen, just don't fold up at the first negative indicator. If you truly want a job, you can get one;it may not be in the corner office, you might not be making big bucks, but as long as you have an income you can make it.
Got preachy that time;didn't I. But I get so disturbed at the intertia demonstrated by so many people, those who think they can pick and choose jobs. The sucker lists of people who have gotten burned with the work-at-home scams testify to the fact that too many people are stll looking for more mone, less work. In that regard our preoccupation with celebrity exacerbates this condition. But let us not lose sight of the also-rans who strove for star status and fell by the wayside. There's a good chance that the waiter who takes your order in a restaurant is an aspiring actor, writer, singer, or artist. Who wants to be a waiter all his life. That brings up another deleterious aspect of Americans' attitude toward work.
This attitude has sucked for as long as I can remember. Aside from the drudgery so often associated with work and the disdain for menial occupations, there is one more way in which the American labor force has sabotaged the economy. Upon my release from the military I immediately went to work for a defense contractor. We built aircraft on a cost-plus basis: most government contracts, especially in the area of defense were contracts of this kind. In almost everyinstance I can recall the watchword among the rank and file was, "Don't kill the job." Work progressed at an easy, slow pace, preserving the job but running the costs into the stratosphere. The prevailing wisdom behind this idiocy was that once the contract was completed there would be no more work. Now tax payers complain of cost-overruns, but few realize how the practice got started.
The Fin de Siecle period at the close of the nineteenth century lamented the demise of the craftsman, the artisan who created fine wares by hand; a good pair of shoes, a Princess Anne chair, a Sterling Silver tea service, and a panoplea of other consumer goods. The Industrial Revolution was seen as the rapacious doomsday machine bearing down on European society, threatening to crush mankind under its wheels and relegating man to the status of slaves, ever tending the noisy, smelly, grimy machines that bore on, never tiring, always needing tending.
Mass production killed the love of honest work and the pride of accomplishment that went with it. People chose careers, not, as at one time, for the love of the craft, but because of the money that could be made. Technology froze a once mobile work force into stangant pools of specialization, categories identifying individuals qualified to work in a particular field, but largely shutting them out of any other occupation group.
Labor unions had their part to play in the economic downturn. A principal feature of practically every union contract negotiation has historically been the demand for higher wages. These gradual encroachments, 3% to 5% increases, over time add substatially to a company's costs, and drive prices higher. Of course it is well to raise wages wherever and whenever possible, when the balance sheet shows adequate profits to accommodate such demands, but often these demands have been made in instances where the companies involved were under pressure from market forces, foreign imports, legal actions, and other distadvanteged positions. The cumulative effect of all this was to drive wages in union shops much higher than in othere areas of the economy, and it was these higher paying jobs that were the first to be outsourced.
In conclusion we may safely predict that the domestic economy will experience a resurgence, but at a slower rate and with lower wages. That is not as bad as it sounds because prices will be lower as well: low overhead, lower prices. Small business will predominate in the is renewed economic drive, and the sorporations that have benefited from outsourcing will experience a new set of problems when the presently low paid labor force starts agitating for more money. Watch for strikes and walkouts in these offshore labor markets. A further downturn in corporate profits will result from consumers buying American made goods; foreign imports from foreign sources and from US corporations operating overseas will become too expensive. The times they are a-changing.
The days of high paying jobs are over. For too long have we piled salary increases and benefit packages on the corporations that we presently hold in such contempt, that outsourcing jobs to cheaper wage environments was a no-brainer. Of course they were going to relocate to countries where labor is cheaper. Wouldn't you? It's easy to lay blame on the most visible targets, the corporation, but it doesn't solve the basic problem: Americans' attitude about work.
We the people have brought the current calamity on ourselves. The five-day work week is bracketed by "Blue Monday" at the front end and "Thank God it's Friday!" on the other. Low paying, menial jobs are anathema; let somebody else do them, and there are people less fortunate than we who are more than glad to fill these positions. At the same time we are bringing foreign professionals, technicians, teachers, and engineers to this country because we can pay them less. A triple whammie: unskilled, semi-skilled, and highly educated workers are out in the street.Adam Smith had it right. Laisses-faire economics still works though the appearances may make it seem otherwise. The overall economy will always tend toward full employment, it just takes longer nowadays. In Smith's day economies were largely agrarian, the labor mostly unskilled. The technology was primitive by present standards, so workers could be easily trained to oil machines, operate looms, and work on farms. The labor force was adaptable and mobile. Without safety nets such as unemployment, welfare, and the like, when a worker making fifty-cents a day was laid off he had to go right out and find another job, willing to take less, say thirty cents a day. No choice in the matter. Those who kept working survived and enjoyed a marked advantage over time; unskilled though they might have been, they had more and a greater variety of experience. This is not to extoll the conditions that prevailed in those days: they were hard times, but in essence the mechanics are the same.
The Age of Technology skewed the process. Whereas in Smith's day labor was unskilled and mobile, today it is highly specialized and immobile. People are educated and trained in such closely defined occupational parameters that if their jobs go away they cannot easily secure employment in other fields where their experience might be close enough that they could be adapted to the new job. But that isn't to say that it never happens. My own experience proves that it can.
Years ago I lived in Upstate New York, an economic disaster area. At one point the unemployment rate peaked at 14%; when a job was advertized three-hundred people showed up to apply. It wasn't fun. A company that manufactured air-driven tools had an opening, and I appled for it with my background in electronics. Not a good fit.The interviewer advised me that they didn't have any jobs in electronincs, to which I replied, "Do you think that's all I know?" He said he realized that I knew a lot more than how electrons surge through conductors, and also knew that I wanted a job and wouldn't be deterred easily. He leafed through his book of job listings and told me he couldn't see me doing any of them."Like what?" I asked."Foundry," he replied and I agreed. No foundry."Well, what CAN you see me doing?" He looked some more and finally said, "Handscrew".That took a little explaining but what he was talking about was operating a turret lathe, something I had never done before."Alright, how long do you think it would take me to learn?" Three weeks was his answer."I'm willing!" I said - and he hired me. And it only took one week for me to get up to speed, and from then on I exceeded my quotas every day. It can happen, just don't fold up at the first negative indicator. If you truly want a job, you can get one;it may not be in the corner office, you might not be making big bucks, but as long as you have an income you can make it.
Got preachy that time;didn't I. But I get so disturbed at the intertia demonstrated by so many people, those who think they can pick and choose jobs. The sucker lists of people who have gotten burned with the work-at-home scams testify to the fact that too many people are stll looking for more mone, less work. In that regard our preoccupation with celebrity exacerbates this condition. But let us not lose sight of the also-rans who strove for star status and fell by the wayside. There's a good chance that the waiter who takes your order in a restaurant is an aspiring actor, writer, singer, or artist. Who wants to be a waiter all his life. That brings up another deleterious aspect of Americans' attitude toward work.
This attitude has sucked for as long as I can remember. Aside from the drudgery so often associated with work and the disdain for menial occupations, there is one more way in which the American labor force has sabotaged the economy. Upon my release from the military I immediately went to work for a defense contractor. We built aircraft on a cost-plus basis: most government contracts, especially in the area of defense were contracts of this kind. In almost everyinstance I can recall the watchword among the rank and file was, "Don't kill the job." Work progressed at an easy, slow pace, preserving the job but running the costs into the stratosphere. The prevailing wisdom behind this idiocy was that once the contract was completed there would be no more work. Now tax payers complain of cost-overruns, but few realize how the practice got started.
The Fin de Siecle period at the close of the nineteenth century lamented the demise of the craftsman, the artisan who created fine wares by hand; a good pair of shoes, a Princess Anne chair, a Sterling Silver tea service, and a panoplea of other consumer goods. The Industrial Revolution was seen as the rapacious doomsday machine bearing down on European society, threatening to crush mankind under its wheels and relegating man to the status of slaves, ever tending the noisy, smelly, grimy machines that bore on, never tiring, always needing tending.
Mass production killed the love of honest work and the pride of accomplishment that went with it. People chose careers, not, as at one time, for the love of the craft, but because of the money that could be made. Technology froze a once mobile work force into stangant pools of specialization, categories identifying individuals qualified to work in a particular field, but largely shutting them out of any other occupation group.
Labor unions had their part to play in the economic downturn. A principal feature of practically every union contract negotiation has historically been the demand for higher wages. These gradual encroachments, 3% to 5% increases, over time add substatially to a company's costs, and drive prices higher. Of course it is well to raise wages wherever and whenever possible, when the balance sheet shows adequate profits to accommodate such demands, but often these demands have been made in instances where the companies involved were under pressure from market forces, foreign imports, legal actions, and other distadvanteged positions. The cumulative effect of all this was to drive wages in union shops much higher than in othere areas of the economy, and it was these higher paying jobs that were the first to be outsourced.
In conclusion we may safely predict that the domestic economy will experience a resurgence, but at a slower rate and with lower wages. That is not as bad as it sounds because prices will be lower as well: low overhead, lower prices. Small business will predominate in the is renewed economic drive, and the sorporations that have benefited from outsourcing will experience a new set of problems when the presently low paid labor force starts agitating for more money. Watch for strikes and walkouts in these offshore labor markets. A further downturn in corporate profits will result from consumers buying American made goods; foreign imports from foreign sources and from US corporations operating overseas will become too expensive. The times they are a-changing.
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