messiestobjects

Vitamins B(ald) & E(agles) Are Recommended By Crying Chief

    Eagles! Four of us drove up to Lackawaxen, PA several weeks ago to hit a spot where the Lackawaxen River meets the Delaware River on the New York border and bald eagles like to congregate. For the fish. It wound up being pretty exciting because I was thinking about how, growing up in the 70s and early 80s, the word on the birds was that they were disappeared, very rare, nearly extinct. To actually see them around now is exciting and probably worthy of some sort of American Indian quote about soaring hearts or summ'at, but no. We saw about seven of them. My pictures are lame though, because I need a better telephoto lens. Mine is cheap-o. Also, that's all I have to report. So the rest of this blog will be other bad bald eagle pictures, and a response I had to write for English class last year on an article in the NY Times by Michael Pollan. Yup, I'm scraping up the dregs.

    Michael Pollan artfully defines “food” as anything your great-great-grandmother would recognize as such, and his point is that in modern times the industry has drastically altered our perception of what qualifies as real food. Pollan says that part of the reason people have a difficult time eating real food is that when you walk into a grocery store the “most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.” He has a decidedly sneering attitude about such health claims, and with good reason; in 1977, George McGovern “prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called ‘Dietary Goals for the United States’… calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products.” The red-meat and dairy industry bellowed, and this very practical advice was drowned out. In Pollan’s view and in mine, the food industry has since waged a campaign of misinformation about American health.

    In 2007, at 35 years old, 5’ 11” and 220 lbs., my doctor told me my cholesterol was high and wrote a prescription for Lipitor. Concurrently I had seen a specialist about my arms frequently going numb during sleep and was told that I had pre-carpal tunnel syndrome, meaning that it wasn’t full-blown and not too late to fix it with arm braces and some other types of treatment. I had a brief conversation with myself at that point that went something like this: “Self, you’re 35. You’re falling apart. You’re too young for this shit.” I decided that I needed to get in better shape. I never filled the Lipitor prescription because of my personal conviction that it is a junk drug, meant to treat a symptom but not the actual problem. I never wore the arm braces because I couldn’t bear the idea of starting down that path towards riding a jazzy with a big-slurp in Wal-Mart. I got a gym membership and lost 35 pounds in about a year. I slowly began changing my diet to whole foods, which became easier the more I exercised because I didn’t want to ruin a good workout with empty calories. I also started getting into vitamins.

    Pollan believes that separating individual vitamins and nutrients from food is missing the forest for the trees. I agree with this to an extent in that I strongly believe that vitamins are not a substitute for healthy food. However, since I began taking natural, non-synthetic vitamins in addition to my healthier diet and exercise, I haven’t had a single cold. I have felt a bit run-down on occasion, which I strongly suspect were cases of my body fighting off what would normally be some such common sickness. I did get bronchitis once, but it only lasted about two days which is unusual for such a normally debilitating condition. While I could attribute this to exercise and healthy eating, and I’m sure that’s a part of it, I know plenty of people who eat well and exercise and yet still get regular illnesses.

    While my evidence for the health benefits of vitamins is anecdotal and hardly scientific, I am wary of ending my vitamin regimen as Pollan, while offering much sage wisdom, had little in the way of science in his opinions on individual vitamins to offer either. My own feeling from reading various sources is that today’s farming practices have reduced the amount of minerals and nutrients in our soil, therefore reducing the health benefits of even the most naturally grown whole foods, which is why I feel that supplementing a healthy diet with natural vitamins is still important.

    Pollan seems to fall into the same trap that he warns us of, asking that we take so-called scientific studies done by nutritionists with a grain of salt and yet at the same time citing a study that says “in the case of beta carotene ingested as a supplement, scientists have discovered that it actually increases the risk of certain cancers.” The error in this stance lies in what he leaves out; that many such negative vitamin studies are done using synthetic vitamins. Synthetic vitamins have been shown in fact to be very bad for you, however when the naturally occurring forms of these vitamins are used in more honest studies, no such negative health consequences are found. Therefore it seems obvious to me that the hype surrounding the supposed danger of vitamins is simply more misinformation from the industry.

Shooting Fish In A Barrel In Prague

    It's time for one more of my audience-killing school-related posts. It's another Philosophy class discussion board from last year; I'm taking American History and some micro-computing class this semester, so I'm not anticipating many lively conversations coming up. But the topic for this one was: "Freud said that an irrational belief is believing in something that is not reasonable.  He was talking about the belief in God.  Do you find it irrational to believe in God?  Do you think it could be an illusion?" Haha! Easy one for me! Many fun hijinks ensued, where one or two people gamely tried to debate me for a minute, then gave up. Accompanying my awesome debate skillz this post will be old pictures from three different excursions to Prague, in the Czech Republic.

_______________________________________________________________________

    Author:

    messiestobjects

    In order for God to be an illusion, there would have to be something to see first. Since no one has ever verifiably seen God, he doesn’t even qualify as illusion. Whether believing in God is rational or not depends on why someone believes in God in the first place. If someone claims to have seen God, they are either telling the truth, lying, or delusional.

•     If they are telling the truth, they still may be delusional, but for the sake of argument if someone actually did see him and was able to provide evidence, then they would be rational. However this has never happened. If they are telling the truth but are unable to provide evidence, they are either delusional, or useless. The world doesn’t need a powerless God who can only make his wishes known to select individuals, who are usually the type of people you wouldn’t buy a used car from. And God is a much bigger commitment than a used car.
•     If they are lying about having seen God, then they still might be rational because they most likely would be lying about it in order to gain money/power/followers/whatever. This has demonstrably happened in the past in such cases as Joseph Smith. Mormonism is clearly a fraud. So Joe was an evil con-artist, but perhaps not entirely irrational given that a huge cult has risen up to follow after him. This is the danger of believing in something without evidence: You are probably being conned. Enjoy that shitty car until the engine falls out next week!
•     If they are delusional, well then by definition they are not rational.

    For me personally, yes I think the belief in God is completely irrational. I’ve argued my case extensively on this subject in this class several times, so I don’t need to add too much here except to say that there is ZERO evidence—solid, verifiable evidence—that a God or Gods have ever had any interaction with the world. Believing in something without evidence isn’t always necessarily irrational, but the bigger the claim, the more evidence you need for it. And God is a pretty big claim, whose followers routinely murder, coerce, and marginalize those who don’t believe in what they believe in. So to make such a claim, yet to have such non-existent evidence to back it up… yes this is irrational.

Author:

Robin 

Posted Date:

Sunday, November 11, 2012 4:56:12 PM EST

    Don't you realize you're making an overgeneralized statement to say that God's followers "murder, coerce, and marginalize those who don't believe in what they believe in?" You sound like a God hater to me and hateful and disgusted by people who believe in God. Can't you keep your insults out of this difference of beliefs?

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 5:15:31 PM EST

     It is not an insult to state a fact. Do ALL believers murder, coerce, and marginalize? No. But I never claimed that they all did and therefore it is not an over generalization. But many many many do. Look at Islamic terrorism, or the Christian crusades, inquisition, witch hunts, etc, or the religious right trying to make Biblical morals into law right here right now in the US. I'm not a God hater, simply because you can't hate something that you don't believe in. I am certainly disgusted by people who murder, coerce, and marginalize in the name of their God, as should you be. If you're NOT disgusted by that, well, I can't wait to read about you in the papers.

     I'm not insulting anyone by saying that believers are delusional. I mean, that was the question of the week. Are you saying I should just shut up and keep my opinion to myself, even though I've been asked for it? Even if I hadn't been asked for it?

Author:

    Robin

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 7:42:34 PM EST

    No messiestobjects, I don't want you to shut up, sorry for this. It's just that those "Christians" that are very hurtful to others that you mentioned are not doing what God wants, (I'm with you on this, it is awful) even if they say they're doing it in God's name. There are more types of Christians and people that believe in God, just wish you would include the ones that are good too and not bring up the bad ones as the only example for people that believe in God.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 7:57:20 PM EST

    I understand, but at the risk of being combative I want to say that it is not up to me to defend the "good" side of religion against the "bad" side of religion. I personally feel that all religion is bad. Not religious people, per se, but religion itself. I've always thought that, when people commit atrocities in the name of God, that "good" religious people ought to be the first to speak out against it. Instead, they tend to attack atheists who say that religious belief is the problem that caused the atrocity in the first place and keep silent regarding the atrocities. As an example, where is the Catholic outrage directed against the ongoing pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church? Sure, there is some, but the overwhelming majority of outrage about priests diddling children is coming from people outside of the catholic faith, and mostly from atheists.

     The problem is that when you are willing to accept religion without evidence, then you are trained to accept a lot of faulty ideas without evidence, which is why so many Christians in America fall for the Republican talking points.

    Also, how do you know that they aren't doing what God wants? Does God tell you what he wants? God sanctioned some pretty horrific things in the Old Testament. What I mean is, why should I believe that what you say God wants is any more valid than what Pat Robertson or Joseph Kony says God wants? The Bible is full of enough sayings and contradictions that confirm that God can want whatever the particular interpreter wants him to want.

Author:

    Jason

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:31:34 PM EST

    Why then is rational to believe science. Were you there to see the big bang happen, can you provide any evidence that the big bang actually happened and that the universe is 13.7 billion years old? The big bang theory also has a "big claim" with absolutely no evidence.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:56:28 PM EST

     Actually, you are totally, 100% wrong. There are mountains of evidence for the big bang. The earliest and most direct kinds of observational evidence are the Hubble-type expansion seen in the redshifts of galaxies, the detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the relative abundances of light elements produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and today also the large scale distribution and apparent evolution of galaxies predicted to occur due to gravitational growth of structure in the standard theory. These are sometimes called "the four pillars of the Big Bang theory".

     If you don't understand why these count as evidence, then you should take a class in astrophysics where these ideas can be further explained. "Belief in science" doesn't actually make sense. Science doesn't believe in anything for which there is no evidence. If there is evidence, you can put together a scientific theory which would explain the evidence, and test it further through prediction and experiment. You can "believe" in science because every modern comfort, from your dishwasher to your laptop to your iphone, is evidence of how scientific theories can be proven. If you don't understand the evidence, that is your issue because science is verifiable, and can be learned by anyone who bothers to make the effort.

Author:

    Jason

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 11:08:52 PM EST

    I like how you always ramble on to try and make a point but end up not making a point. I also like how you always talk about not being combative but you actually are, just like the republicans you are talking about. I like how you always come off as being very condescending, which you are. For your information I am taking Astronomy and I have not read a chapter that explain any evidence.

    Theory: 1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

    2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.

    3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.

    4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.

    5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.

    6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

 Big bang theory, evolution theory. I kind of miss the part of the definition that mentioned that a theory is 100% fact, but obviously because you are the smartest man on earth you did not.  The mountains that were blown up to make roads, the roads did not form from the mere explosion and will never be formed from an explosion someone created the roads.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 11:48:03 PM EST

    I did not say that the Big Bang was 100% fact, I said that there were mountains of evidence for them, which you asked for, and that you were 100% wrong in your assertion that there was no evidence. Also, I didn't say I was not combative, I said "I hate to be combative, but..." but sometimes it is necessary to be combative when the people I argue with try to act as though I've said something that I did not say.

    As far as your definitions of theory are concerned, the only one that matters as far as a Scientific Theory goes is number 1. A scientific theory is not the same as speculation. I'm sorry that you missed the part of the definition that mentioned that a theory is [considered to be] fact, but clearly you breezed over that very first definition. Scientific Theory is not the same thing as the common usage of the word 'theory.'

    So you are taking astronomy. Have you gotten to the part yet where they explain the evidence for the Big Bang? No? I guess that means that no evidence must exist.

    Also, Astronomy is not the same thing as Astrophysics. Also, your claim that I am not making a point is false. Please demonstrate how I in any way have failed to make a point. Also, yes, sometimes I am very condescending.

Author:

    Jason

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:51:54 PM EST

    “Whose followers routinely murder, coerce, and marginalize those who don’t believe in what they believe in.” clearly generalizing all those who believe in GOD. Where are all these murders taking place, in your atheist mind?

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:59:10 PM EST

    Islamic terrorists who behead infidels are murdering in the name of God. Salem witch trials. Crusades. Spanish Inquisition. That lady who murdered her children because God told her to. There are plenty of examples.

Author:

    Jason

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 1:30:36 AM EST

    How many billion or million or thousand years ago did reproduction replace evolution?

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 10:59:25 AM EST

    Reproduction never replaced evolution because evolution is an ongoing process; it's still happening today.

Author:

    Jason Manhertz

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 11:33:05 AM EST

    So how did you come to be, through evolution or reproduction?

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 12:26:56 PM EST

    Both. Evolution describes how complex organisms evolve from simple ones through the process of natural selection. Reproduction is the separate yet intertwined method by which individuals pass their genes onto the next generation. There is no discrepancy between the two things.

Author:

    Kendra

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 11:03:30 PM EST

messiestobjects,

     I do agree with your post. There is no evidence of God, but it doesn't make it irrational to believe in him. It's people's religion and their beliefs and you can't bash it and say everyone is nuts. No one will ever know whether or not God is or ever was, real. If there was evidence it would change the whole religion and belief forever, but there isn't. It's just like any other religion. Can they prove that there is a real person they worship or is it just in books? I don't think any of it is an illusion because like you said, no one can see anything and I don't think anyone is irrational for believing in God.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 11:33:23 PM EST

     But technically, it IS irrational to believe in something for which there is no evidence. The fact that a lot of people believe in God doesn't qualify as any sort of evidence that he just might exist. For instance, which Presidential candidate did you believe would win? A lot of Democrats believed that Obama was the right choice, because Romney is clearly a corrupt maniac. Conversely, a lot of Republicans believed that Romney was the right choice because Obama is clearly a Muslim socialist bent on destroying all the values America stands for. Both sides obviously couldn't be right, yet each candidate got around 60 million votes apiece! This is not a small number! 58 million people believed that Romney was the right choice, but 62 million believed that Obama was. Either way you look at it, at least 58 million people were wrong in their beliefs. Karl Rove, for instance, was clearly deluded about Romney's chances of winning. My point is, if 58 million people can be wrong about something, then clearly it doesn't stop something from being illusory just because a lot of people believe in it.

Author:

    Dana

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 11:26:18 PM EST

Hey messiestobjects,

    Great post and although I am a Christian, I appreciate your thoughts. I actually agree with you on most points. Belief in God is very irrational on many levels. However, in my humble opinion, irrational doesn't necessarily mean wrong. There are many things that I have come across in life that aren't rational but that doesn't mean that they aren't real. An example I gave in post is feelings. Feelings are rarely if ever rational. When people fall in love, rationality tends to get thrown out the window (at least for a time). God may be an illusion, but if that is the case, the only fault in my beliefs is mine. (since I am not a murderer or marginalizer). Thanks again for an interesting post!

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 11:45:24 PM EST

     That is exactly the appropriate stance to take as a religious believer, Dana! Thank you. If someone wants to believe in God, that is of course their business. But trying to convince other people to believe in him too without any evidence is where so many believers go wrong and you are entirely correct to say that any fault in your belief lies solely with you. The only thing I have to argue with you about is when you say that feelings aren't rational. Of course, people do behave irrationally due to emotions beyond their control, but in fact there are perfectly rational reasons why people have emotions in the first place. Chemicals in the brain. It's science! So, being irrationally in love is real, I agree, but so is irrationally believing in God. The difference is that, being in love has an object, an actual person that your irrational feelings are directed towards. You can touch him or her, speak to them and, most importantly, so can other people. The fact that there is such evidence that your boy/girl friend exists means that your love is only irrational in the sense of which particular actually existing human you chose to love. God, on the other hand, is a completely unverifiable object of irrational belief, and therefore illusory.

Author:

    Dana

Posted Date:

    Tuesday, November 13, 2012 7:13:48 PM EST

messiestobjects,

I completely agree with you that feelings are created by something rational (chemicals in the brain) but the exact nature of WHY those chemicals behave the way they do is unexplainable in the human psyche... meaning why something can trigger one person to feel a certain way about something while someone else does not. There are many valid theories but none that can completely and perfectly explain everyone's feelings/reactions. Most feelings are based on early experiences. With that being said, one can also argue that belief in God is also based on experiences. My personal feelings on certain things can sometimes fall into the category of irrational/illogical. Even with years of therapy some people can never fully justify(rationalize) why they feel the way that they do.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:31:11 PM EST

     That's true: Science doesn't yet know everything. The key word being "yet." Neurologists may not know everything about what makes the brain tick, but they know a lot more than they did even 10 years ago, and they learn more all the time. The thing is that brain science is testable: you can ask questions, perform experiments, make hypotheses, and gain knowledge in order to ask more questions, perform more experiments, narrow down your hypotheses... etc. The God question, however, is not testable. There is no possible way that you can test the God hypothesis because he is by definition (according to the big 3 religions, at least) outside of nature. This winds up being the reason why atheists ultimately say that it is pointless to believe in God: something that is outside of nature can never be detected, proven, or disproven, and personal anecdotes of people having God experiences are completely unverifiable in any way. I have never had an experience that could not be explained except by a God of some sort, so I have no more reason to believe in him/her/it than I do in Santa Claus. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has learned many things about the brain and has bettered mankind in verifiable ways, so even though I have never studied neurology, I have more reason to trust in it than I do in a God who has told his followers that they will go to hell for not believing in him despite being a jerk and not providing any evidence that he actually exists.

Author:

    Samantha

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 5, 2012 5:31:10 PM EST

    I do not believe it is irrational to believe in God and I do not think it is an illusion.  I think Freud is looking for scientific fact that God does not exist.  I believe Freud and his followers are hoping there is no God and therefore, they will not be judged at the time of death.  I believe Freud and his followers are delusional by their beliefs and their statements.  However, everyone is entitled to their thoughts and beliefs as long as they do not harm or hurt anyone.

    I have seen some people who are elderly such as my grandfather who did not believe in God and as he was aging and knew he had a limited time on this earth started accepting God.  He actually started talking to a minister at his part time job and attended his church in the last several years of his life.   My mom tells me he never attended church for the time she knew him.  However, as we get closer to our immortality our views and beliefs change for believing in God or NOT.  It really comes down to your choice and your belief! I choose to believe there is a God  so according to Freud call me irrational and delusional….

Author:

    Jason

Posted Date:

    Thursday, November 8, 2012 2:02:10 PM EST

    I agree with the views that you have presented here, Samantha. I would just like to add that I find it quite fascinating that most of these men who do not believe in God and call believers like you and I irrational and delusional were men who had been declared mentally ill at some point.  It only makes me wonder why do sane people have to study and make sense of what people who were not in their right mind had to say...

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 3:50:12 PM EST

    Christopher Hitchens died an avowed atheist. He never not once started quibbling about his own mortality. Neither did Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Carl Sagan, or my Uncle. And for the record, not one of them were ever "declared mentally ill at some point."

    Most atheists aren't looking for proof that God does not exist--you can never prove that God does not exist in the same way that you can never prove that there isn't a teapot the size of a gnat orbiting the smallest star in the Andomeda Galaxy--they simply demand proof that he does exist before believing, without reason, that he does.

Author:

    Stefani

Posted Date:

    Tuesday, November 6, 2012 10:56:08 PM EST

    Personally I do not believe it is irrational to believe in God. Everyone has the right to believe what they want to. Since Freud was a scientific man, he was probably just looking for specific and concrete evidence that God exists and since he didnt really find that, he would say it is an illusion. For many, they allow the presence of God to create an illusion, but I do not think believe in him is irrational or can be considered an illusion.

Author:

    Tracy

Posted Date:

    Wednesday, November 7, 2012 11:39:05 AM EST

    Hey Stefani,

    I would have to agree with you on this one. I think calling people who believe in God irrational is a bizarre considering most of the world believes in a God.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 3:56:31 PM EST

    So... by this logic, if most of the world believed that owning slaves was moral, then it would be bizarre to call slave-owning immoral? See, the world was like that, not so very long ago. Just because 100 people think that committing suicide by drinking poisoned kool-aid to jump on a passing comet is rational, doesn't make that one guy who said "fuck this!" and ran away from Heaven's Gate irrational.

Author:

    Robin

Posted Date:

    Wednesday, November 7, 2012 8:01:56 PM EST

    I don't think believing in God is irrational, but I do think it depends on how you believe in God. I think that being legalistic is irrational and is harmful to yourself and even others around you. I don't think it is an illusion, I've seen proof in my life and I put my trust in faith. I wonder if why we can't prove God in a scientific way to people is because it would not give people a chance to find God with their hearts, which is what is important to God. What we know by proof in life and what our minds reveal to be rational, is not enough to proove if God is an illusion or not.  We have free-will, the power to choose, which is something that can only be done alone in a person, no one make you believe or not believe it. We can influence each other though, good and bad on the matter. Again- we have free-will.

Author:

    Paulette

Posted Date:

    Wednesday, November 7, 2012 10:12:15 PM EST

    I just loved your statement "wonder if why we can't prove God in a scientific way to people is because it would not give people a chance to find God with their hearts" excellent. Yes we have free will, but because our free will is supposedly given to us by god then is that real or the illusion?

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 4:07:42 PM EST

    Some people found the Wiccan Earth-Mother with their hearts. Others found Mormonism. Yet others believe with all their hearts in Mohammed, or Krishna, or even in the power of Satan. Don't you think the real God has a duty to leave some sort of a road-map to him so that innocent people who only happened to be born into a family who believed in the wrong God don't get sent to Hell and torture and damnation for all eternity? Otherwise, he's either powerless or just an asshole.

Author:

    Yohance

Posted Date:

    Thursday, November 8, 2012 1:11:27 AM EST

    I do not think that it is irrational to believe in god. As I have said in numerous posts before, I do not think that God is what the religions make it out to be. To believe in God, and by this I mean the entity or existence that is, or the concept that keeps everything together, One must take a leaf of faith or an abstract understanding of something that cannot necessarily be put into words, but only understood. I constantly reiterate that science, and god/religion, are two sides of the same coin. In science and mathematics we take leaps of faith almost in every scientific calculation we make, The concept of zero and infinity is something that cannot be explained, It can only be understood. To the right of zero but before one on the number line there are an infinite amount of values And to the left of zero but before negative one there are also an infinite amount of value. The number zero somehow bridges the gap between negative and positive values that have an infinite source. This in itself requires a leap of faith to believe. Scientifically Speaking numbers are an illusion used by mankind, used in complete belief that has propelled our civilization to where it is today. I do not think that God is an illusion, I think God is a concept that the majority of us have not yet understood.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Sunday, November 11, 2012 4:14:52 PM EST

    Numbers aren't actually an illusion though. They represent actual values. Saying that numbers are an illusion is like saying that words are illusions, but they are not because words represent ideas, real things even though they may not have physical substance. The difference between things that are real yet do not have physical substance and God is that you can see the evidence of ideas at work in the world every day in everything you do. Anything that people attribute to God, however, can be explained by other, more rational means. In any case, no one is claiming that numbers or words have an independent intelligence of their own, and so they are not even in the same class as an all-powerful, all-intelligent creator.

Author:

    Brittany

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 12:55:03 PM EST

    I think Freud was correct in his assertion that believing in God is irrational. I don't think this really applies to the people who just use religion as a way to remember to be nice to their neighbors and such, because they are just using the idea of a vengeful God to help guide their moral compasses. The people that I have an issue with are those who take everything in the Bible to be literal, and shut out the idea that science is fact. For example, people commonly refute the theory of evolution, and laws have to be passed so that it can be taught to school children. It doesn't make sense to me that some people would rather have a clouded view of the world, instead of questioning what they have been taught in church. I also think that people who only pray about their problems, instead of actively seeking out a solution are being irrational. Prayer alone never solved anything, because you have to be in charge of your own life. Personally, I believe that religion was socially constructed to keep people “in line” morally and limit questioning of authority, therefore, I do think that it is all an illusion.

Author:

    messiestobjects

Posted Date:

    Monday, November 12, 2012 1:00:44 PM EST

    Totally! Also, it's extremely disturbing that religious people keep trying to get Creationism, or "Intelligent Design" taught in public schools. This is wrong in so many ways but my favorite retort to people who want science teachers to "teach the controversy" in public schools is, "Fine. Can I come to your church and teach evolution in Sunday School? Teach the controversy!" There's a reason why church and state are meant to be separated.

Philosophy Needs Science The Way That Blogs Need Pictures

    It's been a slow end-of-year for work... nothing since Portland. I'm in Dallas Texas right now, but trust me, there won't be any exciting photos from here. I'm stuck right next to 6 Flags. What a horrible place. So I'm going to intersperse some really old photos I took while living in Europe, and have never posted. Hover over them for a brief description and as always, if you click on them you can see a larger version for all those little details.

    I have a ton of old photojunk like that, so I figure I ought to use them for these wordy posts... and this is going to be a wordy post because: I'm finished with another semester, hoo-rah! And I've got more accolades under my belt. My Philosophy professor loved my final paper. So guess what? Here it is. We had to make up our own topic, based on what we got out of the material we covered in class, and so mine was "Why Philosophy needs science." There's a little bit of bullshit in there—I have trouble both getting started and wrapping things up in my writing—and by the time I got to the end, I realized that this subject is much bigger than an 8 page assignment.

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From Philosophy To Philoscientia: Escape From Aether Mountain

    Though the literal definition of Philosophy is ‘the love of wisdom,’ that is no longer what Philosophy represents to people. It has come to signify man’s search for meaning in the Universe, which is not always the same thing as wisdom. It is a discipline of thought where the natures of things are pondered, values are ascribed to ideas, and those ideas are then used to ask bigger questions. In this historical hunt for truth and meaning, there is often an essential component missing; the critical evaluation of evidence. Assuredly, the great philosophers do not usually ignore evidence—and here I will use bow hunting as an analogy—but in the pursuit of knowledge, it has not always been deemed necessary for them to be one hundred percent sure of their footing or the current wind speed before aiming at a truth. When Aristotle posited the existence of a fifth element, which he named the aether, the only evidence he had to back up his claim was a personal conviction that there needed to be a substance which made possible the movement of atoms in a void, otherwise nature would have made no sense to him. The aether became a part of man’s understanding of nature for two thousand years and became the root of all manner of chicanery from alchemy to all-purpose elixirs. As Professor Smoot of UC Berkeley puts it:

Although there was some degree of experience and observation in the physics of Aristotle, at its heart was a philosophical approach to science where the laws of nature are constructed to conform to a particular philosophical outlook. This basis for the investigation of nature led to some strange statements by Aristotle - for instance, that women have fewer teeth than men. Either Aristotle was not a very accurate observer, he couldn't count, or he had odd taste in women.  (Smoot, 1996) 

So if Philosophy is the bow hunt, then Science is the act of observing the arrow. If your shots are missing the target, figure out why, adjust your aim, and shoot again. Philosophy needs Science.   

    In a very real sense, Philosophy is the evolutionary forerunner of Science. “The word ‘Physics’ derives from the Greek word for natural philosophy, physikos, and the early physicists were, in fact, often called natural philosophers” (The Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science, p. 14). According to Reference.com, “natural philosophy (from Latin philosophia naturalis) is a term applied to the objective study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics.” Additionally, “the word ‘science’ comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge” (The Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science, p. 8) .

    Therefore it seems that the definition and purpose of Philosophy had evolved, from the mere asking of rational questions about the nature of the world, into the collection of knowledge gained from testing the validity of such questions through physical experimentation. In other words, the early philosophers were simply scientists who hadn’t yet figured out scientific principles. Once those were better understood—for example that in order to propose an explanation for a natural phenomenon (make a hypothesis), you had to fully understand your starting assumptions and whether they were valid—the discipline of Science split off from Philosophy and became something new and more powerful. Philosophy, for better or worse, was left behind.

    So now it would seem that Philosophy, in the minds of most people, is something completely other than what it was when it began. Statements that begin “My own philosophy is…” indicate that in common usage, a philosophy is a personal belief system. Even in modern Philosophy classes, students discuss different philosophical ideas as though they are a matter of opinion, or personal taste. But this forgets the fact that as a branch of study, Philosophy originated as a search for truth, a method of rational investigation for understanding the Universe and one’s place in it. When people became so good at it that they were using it to invent telescopes and predict natural events such as eclipses, they had to rename it and relegate philosophical query to strictly humanistic concerns. Is life a dream? What happens after death? What is the meaning of life? And other objectively unanswerable questions. But it shares deep roots with the scientific method, and perhaps the most important aspect of Philosophy is that it is all about asking questions.

    The Greek Philosopher Thales made a claim that exemplifies both the strongest and weakest aspects of Philosophy and in the process invented Natural Philosophy:

Thales believed that the Earth floats on water and all things come to be from water. For him the Earth was a flat disc floating on an infinite ocean. It has also been claimed that Thales explained earthquakes from the fact that the Earth floats on water. Again the importance of Thales' idea is that he is the first recorded person who tried to explain such phenomena by rational rather than by supernatural means. (O'Connor & Robertson, 1999)

The weakest part of his earthquake explanation is of course that he is dead wrong. It illustrates the dangers of stating a philosophical belief without having any evidence for it other than some sort of idea arrived at by rationalizing a limited amount of knowledge. The relative strength of it, however, is as O’Connor & Robertson state; he tried to provide a rational, natural explanation rather than an irrational superstitious one. Moreover, his hypothesis is testable, in principle—sail out into the ocean and see if it is infinite, dig down deep enough and find out what is holding us up—but simply claiming that the Gods cause earthquakes is not.

    So, in asking a testable question about the nature of earthquakes, Thales provided humanity with a framework for investigating the world. In asking the question, he provided the groundwork for finding the answer. This is the strength of Philosophy, and its most important function, even in the modern world. It is important to note that not all philosophical questions are equal. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I will claim that the question “Is there a God or Gods?” is among the most useless. There is simply no way to ever answer that question. “Is there a teapot orbiting the smallest star in the Andromeda galaxy? Do leprechauns, unicorns, and angels exist? How deep is the well of human gullibility, anyway?” These are the equivalents of mental masturbation in that they are not testable, and serve no greater purpose than to distract the masses from questions of greater import.

    Some might argue that this is exactly why people find Philosophy so fascinating, that it is in the very discussion or argument of such questions that truths can be found, even if rational explanations cannot. To this I would reply with another query; of what use are such truths? When two people disagree about the nature of something that has no basis in verifiable evidence—for instance when Muslims and Christians discuss their differing views of God—isn’t that the same as two people disagreeing about the color of the teapot in Andromeda? I cannot prove that the teapot, or God for that matter, don’t exist (let alone what color they are or what type of sexual behavior they condone), but do I really need to? There are an infinite amount of things which may exist, and disproving any one of them is not simply a waste of time, it is an infinite waste of time.

    The human imagination can come up with any number of monsters, fairies, gods, teapots, or endless other scenarios, and thus rational inquiry must restrict itself to that which has measure. This is why Philosophy needs Science. Science is a natural extension of Philosophy which demands critical thought and verifiable facts from any statements that its progenitor may make, from which it learned how to use them in the first place. Philosophy is the train and Science is the track. Philosophy, as I have shown, tends to go off the rails when it ignores such Natural Philosophical strictures.

    The Age of Enlightenment is significant in regards to two of my purposes in writing this paper. One—it is when Science finally reached its age of majority. Thanks to Isaac Newton’s classical mechanics, a new world of thought became available to mankind and it definitively demonstrated the most accurate system for understanding and explaining how the Universe operates: Aristotle’s physics were replaced with non-teleological explanations discerned using the Scientific Method. Two—a most interesting correlation occurred in the remaining branches of Philosophy. In the period known as Early Modern Philosophy, philosophers began to abandon traditional authorities:

During the Middle Ages, philosophizing took place in the arts faculties […] and in the theological faculties of the universities. It thus came under the direct and censorious scrutiny of the Church. By the seventeenth century, however, [...] it had become more common to find original philosophical minds working outside the strictures of the university—i.e., ecclesiastic—framework. [...] by the end of the eighteenth century, [philosophy] was a secular enterprise. (Nadler, 2002, pp. 1-2)

    When philosophers emancipated themselves from the yoke of authoritarian “thought,” they ceased looking for truths and causes that had their basis in religious or Aristotelian assumptions, and began focusing their attention towards more humanistic concerns such as the nature of the mind, free will, and secular morality. I believe that these two intertwined occurrences—the parting of ways between science and philosophy, and the more deterministic direction which philosophy itself then took—illustrate the power of philosophical inquiry and its dependence upon testable facts—i.e. the Scientific Method.

    As I asserted earlier, the most vital aspect of philosophy lies in asking questions. That is its ultimate strength, and when philosophical questions are asked properly they can lead to astounding discoveries. What causes Earthquakes? Gods? No! Water? No! Tectonic plates bumping into each other and generally sliding around like a bunch of drunken Greeks? Yes! Next Question! The fact that asking simple questions led to finding the method for asking better questions, and in turn led to finding the ways to then answer those questions is perhaps the most dramatic quest in the history of humanity. In other words, if Philosophy is the question—How do I find answers to my questions and know that I’ve found a truthful answer?—then Science is the How. Ask a testable question, experiment, revise your assumptions and make a prediction, experiment again. Revise again. Ask again. Philosophy is thus most successful when Science can prove that it has asked a good question.

    The danger of Philosophy then is of course when you ask a question that you are certain that you already know the answer to, based especially on feelings of how the world “ought” to be. Socrates was the earliest recorded human to realize this and he made it his life’s work to instill in his students, and thus in humanity, the humility of never assuming too much self-certitude. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says:

I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either. (Plato, p. 21d)

    What he was communicating is that it is folly to claim knowledge that is unearned; if you assume that you know something without having subjected it to rational dissection first, then further questions that you may ask based on this assumed knowledge will be faulty. His famous technique of questioning his opponents has come to be called the Socratic Method, but with a little age and maturity the Socratic Method begins to look quite a lot like the Scientific Method. When Aristotle assumed that there must be something like aether holding up the heavenly bodies, every question that future Western philosophers asked about the nature of the Universe afterwards was supposed on the basis of this false knowledge. Two-thousand years were wasted trying to find a way to turn lead into gold using Aristotelian principles. It is a shame for humanity that Aristotle didn’t heed his grand-master’s teaching more closely.

    Another example of reading your own presuppositions into philosophy and the danger this can lead to are the Nazi interpretations of Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s philosophy seems diabolical and radical when taken at face value, and his harsh German writing style doesn’t help. But he was anti-Judaist, not anti-Semitic or in other words, he was anti-religious and anti-authoritarian, not racist. His idea of the coming master race did not involve singling out any particular race, Aryan or otherwise, for the honor. Instead, it involved the eventual evolution of all mankind in a similar manner as when Homo Erectus evolved into Homo Sapiens. However, he envisioned the Übermensch as the end result of a more spiritual or mental evolution, perhaps even as a goal which humanity can set for itself purposefully.

    Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth was anti-Semitic, and she had total control over all of his manuscripts for many years. It is well documented how she used and changed them to her own purposes. Thanks to her meddling, “Nietzsche's philosophy had been made ambiguous and incoherent, allowing loose interpretation. This ambiguity prompted Nazi interpreters to choose a context that supported Nazi literature and prophesy” (Kalish, 2004). When you think you know the truth, you will go looking for something to support it even if what you find must be altered—or conflicting evidence ignored—in order to do so. This is called confirmation bias and needs to be just as assiduously avoided in Philosophy as it is in Science.

    Therefore in order to avoid the appearance of confirmation bias myself, I wish to make one final point whose distinction I may not have made clear until now. When I say that there is danger in philosophizing without a scientific license, so to speak, I am not mainly talking about philosophical speculation. Although any philosophical speculation can be strengthened with a more firmly logical, scientific footing, there is no harm in sitting around the dorm room and wondering if the Universe is an atom in a giant cheese pizza. Nor is there any harm in writing a philosophical paper, treatise, or novel based around uncertain principles—whether by a stoned college undergrad or a tenured Ivy League professor—so long as it’s speculative nature is made unequivocally clear. As a matter of fact, such speculation is the cornerstone of much progress in all of the Arts and Humanities. If you are too afraid to ask absurd questions, you will never learn how to ask the good ones and in any case, the truth is often found out to be more absurd than could have been believed in the first place.

    No, I am mostly talking about making policy based on such speculative philosophies. As in the case of the Nazis who based many of their actions on a misunderstood reading of Nietzsche, there is danger in claiming that you have found a woman’s,  Jew’s, or homosexual’s place in society, or the meaning of life, or the one true God, all based on a logically flawed philosophy. It is mostly a given among scientists and philosophers nowadays that you must be certain of your footing before you aim for exciting new questions, but it is almost never a given among the less educated. Philosophy in the hands of a politician is often a tool for suppression. If people demanded that the philosophies of the powerful lived up to well understood facts and not to simple ideology, it would be infinitely more difficult for the atrocities of population marginalization and genocide to occur.

    If Philosophy then is the love of wisdom, and Science is knowledge, it must be understood that there can be no wisdom without the love of knowledge. It is far easier to convince an ignorant population to commit atrocities in the name of an ideology or a deity than it is to convince an educated one that recognizes the difference between a well-reasoned position and a scatterbrained dogma. If a philosophy is to do no harm, it must be understood in its entirety by an educated population before decisions of policy are based on it.

    Conversely, in an age of nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, it would seem that knowledge is also in dire need of some wisdom. How do you then gain the wisdom to use knowledge? It is not so much a chicken and egg situation, but a male and female one. So, while my main assertion is that Philosophy needs scientific back-up in order to be valid, the reverse is also necessary. The two must be learned hand-in-hand; they each need the validation of the other in order to survive.

 

 

Works Cited

Dorling Kindersley Limited, London. (1998). The Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science. New York: DK Publishing.

Kalish, M. (2004, June). Friedrich Nietzsche's Influence on Hitler's Mein Kampf. Retrieved December 07, 2012, from UCSB Department of History: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133p/133p04papers/MKalishNietzNazi046.htm

Nadler, S. (2002). A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy. Blackwell Publishers.

O'Connor, J. J., & Robertson, E. F. (1999, January). Thales of Miletus. Retrieved December 03, 2012, from School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland: http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Thales.html

Plato. (n.d.). Apology. http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekTexts&query=Pl.%20Ap.%2022a&getid=1.

Smoot, P. G. (1996, December 21). Professor Smoot Courses' Page . Retrieved December 03, 2012, from CMB Astrophysics Research Program : http://aether.lbl.gov/www/classes/p10/aristotle-physics.html

An Atheist In Ken Ham's Court

    There is a sign on the entrance to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky that tells you that they reserve the right to remove from the property anyone who wears offensive clothing, among other things. Well I braved it anyway, and ran into no problems for the duration of my visit. I suspect that when deeply religious people (of the type who might visit the Creation Museum) see written words their first impulse is not to read them. Avoid knowledge at all costs! Such seemed to be the case on the day I was there, at any rate. To be fair, there was a preponderance of Mennonites, who are likely more used to ignoring what people's T-Shirts might say.

mu·se·um

[myoo-zee-uhm]

noun. a building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.

    So right off the bat, the Creation Museum fails to meet the requirements of actually being, you know, a museum. All that is there are dioramas of Bible scenes, and placards which lay out the anti-science of Creationism. Also, they have a huge dinosaur fetish. In the old days, Creationists denied that dinosaurs ever existed. They used to say that dinosaur bones were deliberately placed by God to test our Faith. Well, they must have finally conceded that this would make God a huge asshole, and so to quite a large extent the Creation Museum is a Christian Apology, where they are now saying that dinosaurs are in the Bible, and that Fossils actually prove that the Bible is true. This is a popular reverse-position tactic used by Christian Apologists all throughout history, and it was entertaining to see the results of the latest Christian Backpedalist thinking.

    There is this whole thing that they keep saying there that the conclusions that people come to change depending on what point you start your assumptions from. They divide the only two possible starting points, apparently, between "Man's Word" and "God's Word."

    This is an example of the kind of "scientific specimen" they have there. They list certain scientific ideas, devoid of context or explanation as though it's insane to "believe" in the "priesthood" of Science, and right next to it they list certain vaguely congruous Biblical ideas, devoid of any context, evidence, or logic other than Biblical authority itself.

    So God is apparently Popeye now. Sorry, cheap shot, but goodness gracious. I yam what I yam. At any rate, what they've done here, right from the get-go, is to set up a false equivalency, a straw man argument that carries them through their twisted line of logic. Before I explain the false equivalency, allow me to digress on that point. When you go to a real museum, which is full of actual specimens and scientific conclusions arrived at through careful examination of evidence, the museum is usually an open floor plan. You can go from room to room, willy-nilly, and decide what section you want to peruse as your own whim takes you. This is because real evidence supports itself, it can stand on its own and is supported by other evidence from other disciplines, or at the very least remains uncontradictory. The creation museum, interestingly, is physically laid out as a single, twisty road which you follow from beginning to end in order to be exposed to certain ideas at proper moments. They start you off with faulty assumptions and build on them from there, until by the end of the walk you are asked to accept as the Creation-version of truth some pretty outrageous claims, and you hopefully ignore the contradictory and hypocritical statements they've fed you along the way. We'll get to that stuff.

    So back to the false equivalency. This whole "Man's Word" vs. "God's Word" business. It reveals a severe lack of understanding of what science actually is. Science is NOT man's word. It IS man's understanding of nature, as revealed through observation, experiment, the cataloging of verifiable fact, and the careful consideration of facts in conjunction with each other based, yet again, on further experiment. We arrive at scientific conclusions based on THINGS THAT ACTUALLY CAN BE MEASURED by other people, even people from different cultural, religious, or linguistic backgrounds, and they will all arrive at the same answers because physics always works the same way under similar conditions, in all places. Science is not just some dudes getting together and making shit up based on fancy. So calling science "Man's Word" sets up a false idea in the minds of the gullible. In reality it is "Nature's Word" vs. "Bible's (written by many different people, from goat farmers to pubescent scribes, who had less idea of what was really going on in the world than most 2nd graders do today) Word."

    "But because we never have all the evidence, different scientists can reach very different conclusions, depending on their starting assumptions." ARGH. This is just stupidity. The scientific method actually rules out starting assumptions. Experimenters have all manner of ways to eliminate Confirmation bias from their results. Is it always successful? No. Scientists actually can come to incorrect answers, yes. BUT, that is why science demands rigor, repeat experimentation, and PEER REVIEW before it will ever accept any particular idea from any particular scientist. If Richard Dawkins, a very respected biologist and champion of the modern atheist movement, came out and said that he had discovered evidence that Christian's brains were smaller than atheist's, the scientific community would not accept it as a fact just because he said so. They would say "That's preposterous. Prove it." And no one would accept his claim as fact until he could verifiably demonstrate it. Which of course he couldn't, because it's a lie I just made up. And it shows that if even someone like Dawkins made an erroneous claim, it would still not become scientific fact, because science does not allow false ideas to remain once evidence proves them wrong.

    This, however, is an example of the type of evidence that Creationists require and the type of reasoning they use. Atrocious, just atrocious. They think they've proved that the world is 6000 years old by adding up the ages of the sons of Adam in the Bible. This right here is the poster-child poster for what this museum is all about. A literal interpretation of the Bible and unquestioning trust in its authority, and a severe misunderstanding of science.

    And hopefully, you never will hear this in school. This is the garbage that they want taught in public education.

    This, for instance, is an outright lie! "Scientists are puzzled how so many finch species could arise?" NO THEY'RE NOT! They know exactly how. Natural Selection. Oh but wait, later on in the museum you want to talk about Darwin's Finches?

    So HERE NOW they are saying that Natural Selection (or as they are trying to rename it "created kinds", which are studied by a type of creation pseudo-scientist called a "Baraminologist") is now acceptable! Just like dinosaur bones, Creationists are finally coming around to the idea of Natural Selection, but it is still not proof of Evolution, they say. So in the previous picture, they say that Scientists are puzzled by finches, when in reality they are not because Darwin, Natural Selection; the many-finch problem SOLVED over a hundred years ago. Boom, lie. And in this one they are saying oh well, natural selection as told in the Bible is perfectly reasonable! Gah! Do you see the mental disconnect? Do you see how they take what they want, use it when they want it, and discard it when it is not convenient for a different argument they want to make?!

    "There is not enough time--even in billions of years" for man to evolve from microbe. This again is, if not exactly a lie (though it is), at the very least a simple bold statement with no context, and no evidence presented either way. ABSOLUTELY there is enough time for a microbe to evolve into a man... in the 3.5 to 3.9 Billion years that scientists think it may actually have taken. Again, this reveals the stupidity of creation scientists. They cannot conceive of a billion years, so therefore evolution could not have happened.

    Going back to Natural Selection, which apparently creationists now concede as true (though note the subtle switch from "Man's Word" to "man's opinion"); The fact that in our own minuscule lifetimes we can observe natural selection occurring in various species is a compelling argument for much larger changes occurring over much larger stretches of time. Simply saying "There is not enough time" is meaningless. How do they know there is not enough time? They are happy to add up all the sons of Adam, after all, why don't they want to add up the time it takes for natural selection to occur, and apply that function from 100 years to 3.5 billion years? There is definitely enough time. Also they are saying, again apropos of nothing with no facts or evidence, that mutation does not have the ability to create new genetic information. IDIOT, that's what mutation IS. A mutation IS a change in genetic information. Since that is what it IS, it most certainly HAS the ability to be what it IS. Fucking infantile word games with these people.

    So... because poison dart frogs aren't naturally poisonous, this is evidence that the Garden of Eden actually existed? What about Rattlesnakes? Black Widows? Scorpions? Jellyfish? Pfeffer's Flamboyant Cuttlefishes? This is cherry picking one instance to back up your argument while ignoring all other instances which contradict it, and is known as Confirmation Bias. And in any case, the "evidence" of the Poison Dart Frog is evidence of nothing except that Poison Dart Frogs can synthesize their poisons from the alkaloids in the food they eat in the wild. In no way does this "evidence" in any way prove or even imply that someplace named Eden existed, though it doesn't stop them from trying to imply it anyway.

    Biblical diorama of Adam fucking a sheep from behind in the garden of fuckin'. "Holy Me, Adam, knock that shit off! I said name them, not rape them! Man, I need to give you something to fuck. Go to sleep, will you? Even though I created the entire Universe out of nothing, I need your rib to create just one more thing. You dirty sheep-fucker."

    Adam: "Awwwww yeah. Thanks God, but you know, the sheep didn't make so many mouth noises. Maybe this woman-thing ought to be subservient and silent, hey? Hmm, apples."

    Anyway, another big thing in the Creation Museum, obviously, is a literal interpretation of the Wholly Babble. They had this urban section dedicated to the dangers of what happens when culture abandons scripture. This was a 7-fucking minute video of a kid fidgeting in church. They claim that when a literal interpretation of the Babble is given up in exchange for liberal Christianity, the damn kids lose respect for religious authority and, you know, do drugs and whores and fidget in church and stuff. The real point Ken Ham wants to make here is that when you stop terrifying children with the real, literal possibility of hellfire and damnation, because actual science has shown that it's totally, ridiculously impossible for the Bible to be literally true, that they will no longer respect his religious authority! Wah! This actually is evidence of the authoritarian nature of religious control, and nothing else.

    "The Big Bang is just a theory! Scientists don't have all the evidence, they're just guessing! Man's Word! I mean, Man's opinion! Oh wait, we can't find any timber from Noah's Ark, which should definitely still be there if the Flood only happened a few thousand years ago? WELLLLL, we can't be sure that the Ararat in the Babble is the same Ararat as the Ararat in Turkey! The Earth's crust was probably unstable! Guess, obfuscate, theory! BUT DAMN YOU TO HELL, THE BIBLE IS LITERALLY THE TRUTH YOU FUCKIN' HEATHEN!" Now see, here is where an actual museum might have, say, some actual timbers from Noah's ark, or a leg to stand on.

    Nope. Some nice models though, with a subtle reminder that all you damn unbelievers are gettin' they asses left behind. And oh, wait, perhaps some more apology and supposition?

    "With a jug maybe like this, Noah's family could simply... With a cage system similar to this one, Noah's family could simply..." In other words, we don't know shit, because there is no evidence that anything in the Bible ever happened, but we're going to twist science to mean what we want it to mean, abuse English to say what we want it to say, and attack facts as mere suppositions and imply that suppositions are facts until your head is so fucked you won't think straight 'till Sunday, when we can fuck your brainhole in Church, too.

    Oh yeah. And Dragons. They had this whole movie about how even though every scholar on earth regards dragons as mythical, that the fact that they are such a prevalent myth means that Dragons actually existed... as dinosaurs. PROOF OF DINOSAURS AND HUMANS, LIVING TOGETHER, THEREFORE BIBLE. BITCHES. That was pretty much when my head exploded, and the Lord forced me to reveal my inner four-eyed demon, and I had to run before the Christians pitchforked me.
So that was my Creation "Museum" adventure. At its conclusion, I had to admit that it is in fact a museum, if not in the way its creators intend: A museum dedicated to human stupidity and willful ignorance. 2 Peter 3:3-6 - ³ Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,⁴ And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.⁵ For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:⁶ Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: I love that they highlight 'willingly Ignorant.' Oh how they twist and twist!

The Bible mentioned me!

Bad Movies and Mad Monks

Well so it has been a month since I posted. Julie and I took a work-cation to Austin, Texas for a job. It was fun; Austin is a cool town and we saw something called Master Pancake at the Ritz theatre. It was basically MST3K with Sex & the City. My god that was a horrible movie. For all the women in the world who aspire to Sex & the City levels of "coolness" or whatever that is that's going on there... DIE. But the live razzing made it bearable, plus they served beer and cheesesteaks. I didn't get a single picture the whole trip. Austin's not that kind of cool I guess. If I get to go again I want to find all of the Slacker locations.

Otherwise, I've been busy with school, which is the main reason I haven't posted. So since I've got nothing else, below is a link to a powerpoint I had to do for my math class. I had to choose a mathematician and I chose Grigori Perelman because he's totally hard core. I lost points on it for being "too wordy". I think my math teacher might be an idiot. Click on the link to enjoy.

Download Grigori Perelman Powerpoint

Albert Einstein's Dead Letter Mailman

It's been awhile, but my doctor finally gave me the green light to go back to work. I've already had a couple of short local trips, nothing too exciting but it's nice to be on the road again. A couple of weeks ago, Julie and I went down to Maryland for a job where we had some nice dinners and a nice relaxed time. Nothing of note but I did get this shot at a statue park on Solomon's Island which showcased what happens when idle wealthy housewives have nothing better to do with their time, and think they know what art is.

I also just had a job at Fort Dix. Huh huh. But I got to swing by Princeton University and check out 112 Mercer Street, the home of Albert Einstein when he lived in Princeton. Very exciting.

While I was there, the mailman was doing his rounds and he stopped me while I was taking a picture and jokingly said that he didn't think I was allowed to take pictures of that house, that the CIA would jump out from behind some bushes and arrest me or something. I laughed at this statement for some reason and said that I thought it was a National Historic Landmark. He conceded this point but said that the lady who lives there gets crazy with people who invade their privacy, as kids often knock on their door thinking they can get a tour or something. I'd known it was a private residence and assured the mailman that I had no intention of doing anything other than snapping a quick photo. He then told me that he just the day before got a letter for Albert Einstein addressed to the house, and that it drove him crazy when that happened because, you know, damn kids. Plus he had to fill out a deceased mail recipient form or something like that every time. Look, here he is delivering mail there!

It's All About The Little Differences

I was in San Diego for a week and on one of my days off, naturally I headed down to Tijuana Mexico. There's not much to see there, but I wanted to get a real Mexican taco and some cheap prescription medication. Specifically I was looking for a topical creme (none of your business!) that even with a prescription here in the land of the medically fleeced is wicked expensive. Also I was thinking of picking up some prescription strength ibuprofen because the constant long flights criss-crossing the land of ridiculously high medical care costs can get tedious in my lower back and ass-bone area.

These are pretty much the only pictures I got in Tijuana, but I have more border town follies to tell. Luckily, I also visited the Mount Palomar Observatory while in Southern California and there's not much to tell about that trip so I'll punctuate my Mexican tale with those pictures instead.

So randomly, I chose one Mexican pharmacy out of hundreds; a tiny corner shop that I liked the look of. I went in and the proprietor introduced himself as Federico. I asked him if he had my topical creme (shut. up.) and he did, and then I asked him about my ibuprofen. He had it of course but it was a bit expensive for me so I opted not to get it there and maybe shop around a bit first.

So as I was purchasing the topical creme Federico pulls up a bottle from behind the counter and asks me if I like Tequila. I stutter for a moment but what is one supposed to do in such a situation? I say well sure, who doesn't? So we do a shot of tequila together. I then sputter a bit with the tequila shivers, but it's actually pretty smooth stuff and I enjoy my shot. I say well that's mighty nice of you Federico, thank you very much. He says hang on hang on, want another?

So we're hanging out for a while, chatting about this or that, doing shots of tequila in this pharmacy over the counter in broad busy daylight and I think, "Mexico is different." Then he asks me why I wanted the prescription strength ibuprofen for and I explain to him about my lower back pain and all of that. So my new friend ducks down under the counter again and pulls out a large blue pill and hands it to me with another shot of tequila and says to try this one out. I of course take it because I trust this mad chemist completely, for some reason (I'm guessing it had something to do with the tequila but I suppose we'll never know for certain). "What is it?" I ask, putting down my empty shot glass. "Vicodin my friend," he says. "Wonderful," I reply.

I had sprained my foot jogging on a hotel treadmill earlier and I quite forgot about it during my afternoon in Tijuana. I had the nicest time, walking about, buying a cup full of salty pomegranate seeds from a street vendor. I got my taco and a cerveza too, and they were delicious and I felt very good and nice.

My job in San Diego was on a Navy Base, and the next day I was talking to one of the Navy guys in the class telling him about my trip to Tijuana and he got all weird on me. He said "You went to Tijuana?!" And I was kind of like uh, yeah why not? It's like 15 minutes down the road, what's the big deal? And apparently the big deal is that the military has forbidden servicemen to go into Mexico while off duty because of all the drug cartel related violence down there. He was telling me how people are getting killed there all the time, or kidnapped, even American bystanders and I was thinking huh, I'm glad I went and had such a nice relaxed time there without knowing about all of that.

I'm A Damn Tree-Photohugger. Don't Like It? Kiss My Aspen!

About a 30 minute drive to the East of Salt Lake City is Park City, home of world class skiing and the Sundance film festival. So of course I had to go check it out. I got sidetracked once I got there though, and found myself driving around some mountain tops, narrowly avoiding car crashes and running off of cliffs as I stared out at these amazing trees. I of course stopped and took several pictures without knowing what they were, but thinking that they were some kind of birch tree.

I found out later that day that they were Aspens. I have this thing that I do when I travel where I try not to find out too much ahead of time about the places I go, other than the basic landmarks and attractions to watch out for. I like to see things with fresh eyes and as few preconceptions as possible. Often after I've seen something on a trip, I'll look it up later and find out all the history and details about it Ex Post Facto. Usually this works out fine for me as really, for example, I don't need to know every little particular about why the Mormons built the Temple Square, or it's history, in order to take pictures of it and appreciate it for what it is; My brain retains information about places much better when I have recent first hand experience and a subsequent interest in the subject.

In this case however, I rather wish I'd known about Aspens before going. I'm fairly happy with my tree pictures here, but I probably would have spent more time tramping about the woods and tried to go more in depth with photos had I known the deal. Aspens are like, the raddest trees ever. The incredible thing about them is that what you're looking at is not a grouping of individual trees, but a single root organism with multiple extensions coming up out of the Earth, a vast system which looks like individuals above ground.

In fact, the oldest, largest, and heaviest known organism on Earth is an Aspen grove known as Pando (Latin for 'I Spread') located in the Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah.

I didn't have time to head down there, but if I ever get another job out that way I just might make the time for it. At any rate, the Aspens were gorgeous and inspiring enough to make me get out of my car on top of a cold windy mountain road and spend not a little time snapping shots without even knowing what they were. That should tell you something even if the pictures themselves don't. I took a load of them as usual, but I'll stop with just these next four. They're all the same photo obviously, but with different RAW and HDR techniques applied.

As usual I had trouble deciding which I like best, and it's a short post about trees anyway so, why not throw 'em all out there. I'll get to Park City itself in the next post.

Mount Wilson Observations And Coronal Messy Ejections

Stuck in LA for three days because of mass flight cancellations due to Hurricane Irene while Julie is at home alone filling the bathtub with water and battening down the hatches, and what do you do? You find the coolest thing in LA and go there. The Mount Wilson Observatory is up the road past Pasadena, high up on top of Mount Wilson overlooking the city and as George Ellery Hale surmised in 1904, a really good spot to put an astronomical telescope or two.

This of course was before LA was a smog and light-polluted blight on the planet and, due to the natural inversion layer there which causes the temperature of the air to increase with height, was a doubly good spot as a side effect of the inversion is that Mount Wilson hosts some of the steadiest air in the country. I suppose the reason this is good for astronomical observations being that stars twinkle less and you can get a better look at them. The inversion also happens to be a major cause of smog, as it traps the noxious gases and helps keep them there, but whaddyagonnado.

But in 1904, the smog and the light pollution were not an issue and as a result some very important Astronomy was performed here, and I love to pay homage to historic scientific sites. As per my hit or miss luck with such things, I happened to arrive on the day when they conducted the very first ever paid tour of the Observatory, and as a result was among the first of the public ever to be conducted inside the building housing the 100-inch Hooker telescope, pictured in the first photo on top, but we'll get to that in a bit. Now this is a picture of a picture on display in the small museum there that tickled my funny bone:

If you are familiar with the Astronomical bestiary, you will know that pictured above is not in fact a nebula, spiral or otherwise, but a Galaxy as noted in the smaller print underneath. This picture was taken, printed, and on display here at Mount Wilson at a time before Astronomers knew about Galaxies! That killed me. They thought it was only 10,000 light years away, when in fact it is now known to be about 23,000,000 light years away, and 100,000 light years in diameter. We've come so far in just one century in our understanding of the size and scope of the Universe.

The above picture was taken inside of the 150 foot tower, (the one in the middle in the 2nd picture of this post) which is in fact a solar telescope that is still in use. As part of the first paying tour group we were allowed inside to meet an astronomer working on it, and to see some real time sun activity.

I couldn't set up my tripod in such tight quarters so this is not the clearest picture I could've got, but that is the sun, as reflected onto the viewing plate directly through the lens and 150 feet of tower. Now, I could be sensationalistic and say that those are actual sunspots that we got to see, but the fact is that what you can't see in the picture is that those spots are on a small piece of paper which he put down next to the actual, much smaller sunspots which we were able to see but which the brightness of the sun has washed out in the photo. He did this as an exercise in comparison; the big ones you can see are a copy of the largest spots ever observed at this telescope, and the ones not visible in the photo were the actually occurring at that moment, and were the size of the Earth. So those spots you can actually see there are in reality tens of times larger than our whole planet.

They had a couple of walls of this kind of Data in there, and I love that stuff. One other thing about sunspots; relative to the rest of the surface of the sun, they are much cooler and therefore appear to be black, shining far less brightly. In reality they still range in temperature from about 2727–4227 °C and would still burn the fuck out of your eyes if the sunspot light was isolated. One photo on the wall caught my attention as an example of what you can do with a little planning and a really really good telephoto lens, or an astronomical camera advantage.

Love it! What a cool photograph. They also had some other very interesting pictures hanging on one wall. Apparently Einstein and Hawking both visited on various scientific errands.

So that's how star hunting is done in LA, for real. Messiestobjects style. And so last and best was the 100-inch Hooker telescope. Obviously it's quite large; the 100-inch refers to the size of the lens. This is the building it's housed in.

In we went and up some stairs and voila, scientific glory.

Using this telescope, this fabulous beautiful piece of machinery, Edwin Hubble discovered that those Nebulae were in actuality Galaxies. Rather than oddly shaped clouds of dust and gas, they were in fact gigantic, amazing whirling structures of stars, millions and billions of stars. Structures of a size to rival what we thought previously to be the size of the entire Universe, all there was, our own Milky Way. And once again, our own personal size and place in the cosmos was reduced, yet our understanding of it made more unimaginably awe-inspiring.

This is also where Hubble and an assistant discovered the redshift, the indication that our Universe is expanding rather than static as Einstein had hoped. More than many other such places I've visited, standing underneath this historical object really gave me a glimpse of the scientific endeavor and it's awesome sense of the joy of discovery.

At any rate, it was awesome, but I still had three more nights and two full days, stuck in that helLA hole. So I decided to get out. I went down to Palm Springs, got a nice little hotel, sat in a salt water pool and jacuzzi, and ate a bunch of good food. I took no pictures because it was a dreadfully dull place and is a good example of the occasional downside of my job.

'Going In Circles' Would Be The Name Of My Travel Show

Well I finally had a job last week. Don't get me wrong, it was awesome being home for a month, being with my family, working out, gathering and cutting wood for the winter. But I definitely appreciate the balance in my life of being domestic then being on the road then being domestic then being on the road, etc. etc.

My work was actually in Ridgecrest, California. Normally I'd fly into Las Vegas and drive through Death Valley, and I was actually looking forward to it as it's one of my favorite drives and I haven't been out that way yet this year. But then I noticed on the map that if I flew into LA instead, I'd drive right through Mojave on the way to work.

Mojave Air & Space Port is of course the home of Scaled Composites, who are famous for being the design team behind SpaceShipOne, the craft which won them the Ansari X Prize for being the first company to successfully launch a privately funded, manned space flight.

And there it is. Actually it's a replica, which irritates me. The original is hanging in the Smithsonian's National Air And Space Museum right next to the Spirit of St. Louis. I was there a few years back and saw it, but it seems like it should be at Mojave, the site of it's triumph.

The other thing that irritated me is that if it's a replica, why do they shut it in a glass tomb that you're not allowed to go in? Hard to get a decent picture on a sunny day. I guess I can console myself with the HDR shots that make reflections look somewhat arty, where no art credits are deserved.

I took the 5 dollar tour of the airfield. There was no other space related stuff that I saw out there, but I saw Scaled Composite's work hangar, though it was closed. They are currently working on SpaceShipTwo in there. Which will be test flown at Mojave until it's ready for its first commercial spaceflight. Which will take place at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Which is currently under construction where I went and blogged about a few months back. It's the circle of messiestobjects, man.

Exciting, right? But what was cool about the tour is that the airport actually serves as a dumping ground for planes. Whenever airlines want to retire a plane or just store one somewhere for a while, Mojave is one of the places they do it at. Their HUGE plane yard was full of old wrecks, planes used for spare parts, and planes on sabbatical. It was totally wild and a photo shoot there would yield some fascinating gains, no question. But I wasn't allowed to take pictures, it was screamingly frustrating. Apparently the airlines don't like pictures of wrecked planes and whatnot circulating around out there because they feel its bad for their image, which is silly of course. However you know how they won't show movies on planes about bad things happening to planes, so they are famously touchy about that stuff after all.

I snuck that one photo after the tour from the road with my telephoto, which tells you nothing about how awesome the place really was. Those are resting planes, you can't even see the junkers unless you're deep in Mojave airport territory. One really fun thing about the tour: there was this couple who were on it with me and the guy was a huge plane nerd. He recognized all the different types and was ohhing and ahhing and saying stuff like "Check out that old 7blah blah something 7 fuselage just lying there! Awesome!" or "Man, I haven't seen one of those engines in years!" And his wife, who was less technically savvy was nonetheless as weird about it as he was. She was into them for different reasons: "I love those old USAir planes! I prefer the old color scheme to their new one." Or, "Oooh! There's an old Continental! Those are my favorites" (She declared those old Continentals to be her favorites at least 4 times) Or, upon seing an old Aloha Air (which no longer exists) plane; "Wow, look at the artwork on that tailfin! It looks so 70's, very groovy!" It was hysterical, but I couldn't laugh because they were very serious about it. It was like they were birdwatching and going nuts over the plummage.

Anyway, after Mojave, and on my way back to LA after completeing my work in Ridgecrest, my flight home on Saturday morning was cancelled due to Hurricane Irene. It took me hours to get someone at the airline on the phone to reschedule, and by the time I did the earliest they could get me home was Tuesday. Stuck in LA for 3 days! LA kind of sucks. I'll get to that in another post.

Sommerflaute Is What It's All About

We've hit an odd Summer lull at work and I've been off for a few weeks, and a few more to come. Luckily, there was an episode of The Hollow Geographic in my yard this morning as a young Buck came wandering through to break up the monotony.

I thought I'd also post a few 3rd stringers from the couple of months I spent in and out of New Mexico. This is a shop window in Roswell, though I don't know to what kind of shop it belonged; this is all they had on display.

And Sunspot, NM is high on a mountain overlooking the White Sands range. On the way out there I took some of those breathtaking-to behold yet pointless-in-a-photo shots of the valley.

See those white sands way off... eh. Here's a telephoto at least.

Speaking of Sunspot, I went there a second time because the first time I'd gone I got there after 5pm and the visitor's center was closed, so I wasn't able to get a magnet for my fridge. I collect magnets at US travel destinations. Shut up, it's better than collectible spoons. Also, I was able to go inside of the Dunn Solar Telescope building, so it was worth it.

They keep it very dimly lit in there, so I had to tripod and open-shutter it. But telescopes is neat. Plus, I got to watch some of the Solar Astronomers hard at work to understand solar behavior in order to, among other reasons, better predict major solar events which could massively disrupt many electromagnetic-based technologies here on Earth.

Roswell Does NOT In Fact End Very Well, Futurama.

"The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble." - Ellen DeGeneres

Third trip to New Mexico is the charm! Roswell, baby. Actually it wasn't all that. I mean, it's cool to be able to say that I went, but other than the UFO Museum and Research center, there's not a lot going on there.

Not that, as a town, they don't embrace the hell out of their notoriety. Visitors are, after all, welcome.

The whole town has crap like that all over the place. Alien head lampposts and see the mailbox?

They need to take a little more pride in their place in history.

But what kills me is that the UFO crash didn't even happen at Roswell, rather 30 miles North closer to a town named Corona. But the military base where the investigation went out from was in Roswell, so there you go.

The museum was... well full of things like this. There is a LOT of reading material in the research room, but who has time for all of that when you're just using up some free time on a work assignment? Hell, who has time for that unless you're totally obsessed anyway?

Not that I'm not intensely curious. But I'm in the camp of people who don't really think that any information that is available to the public can point with any certainty to anything, well, for certain.

I've just finished reading that new book on Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen, and nothing in it made me feel any differently. It's an excellent book, well written and full of information about Area 51 that I didn't know before, including the U2 and OXCART spy plane dramas, but her conclusion about what the Roswell incident was about is a bit... well all she's doing is telling us what some guy who used to work there told her what he was told it was.

Which, if you've read anything about the book online, you'll know is that it was a technologically advanced hover saucer piloted by surgically altered retarded children (altered by none other than Joseph Mengele himself) sent by Joseph Stalin as both a psy-op to induce panic in America and to send a message to Eisenhower that he had wack Nazi technology at his disposal too, so what up?

She calls this a simpler, more Occam's Razor-like explanation than an extra-terrestrial crash landing, but I'm not so sure about that. This explanation leaves a lot of other questions; if Stalin had such advanced hover technology back in '47, and was able to penetrate American airspace with such ease, why wasn't this technology used again or since? I'm not sure that we could have won the cold war if they were that far ahead of us in stealth technology.

Anyway, I'm not saying I believe it was an alien crash. More likely it was something we were working on, and every bit of cover and disinformation ever released about it is just that, including very probably Annie's findings. One disturbing thing she says in the book is that the real reason Area 51 has been kept so secret all these years is because atrocities in the name of National Security have been going on there since the 50's, including human experimentation. I suppose the people involved would rather the public speculated endlessly about Aliens and/or Joseph Mengele than consider for a moment that a US Government-sanctioned continuation of Nazi experiments might be going on. In fact, I much prefer to believe that it is Extraterrestrial in nature.

Knowing what we know about how the corporate-controlled military-industrial complex of a government that we have operates in public, however, I shudder to think what the reality is about how they operate in private.

They're not the Aliens man, we're the Aliens.

Oh, Write Of Me, Not "Died In Bitter Pains," But "Emigrated To Another Star!"

Who knows what myriad colonies there are
Of fairest fields, and rich, undreamed-of gains
Thick planted in the distant shining plains
Which we call sky because they lie so far?
Oh, write of me, not "Died in bitter pains,"
But "Emigrated to another star!"

- From Helen Hunt Jackson, "Emigravit" (1886)

So as promised, the high point of my second work week in New Mexico. Spaceport America. Funny story. Funny sad, not funny ha-ha. I was actually signed up to do the tour with Follow the Sun Tours during my first week in New Mexico, on Friday May 13th. Which was the very first tour they were ever going to do of the place. They called me the night before to say they had to cancel, because I was the only one signed up for the tour. My heart broke a little on that day. I begged them to let me pay extra for the privilege of being the first paying tourist of what will become the World's first private Spaceport, because how cool would that be?! But, no go. They asked me if I wanted to reschedule for Saturday, and still be in the first tour group as they had people signed up for that one, but I was flying home and couldn't do it. So that, grandkids, is how your irascible 'ol granpa was cheated out of his itty bitty spot in history. But I knew I'd be back in a week or two, so I rescheduled for that and settled for just being one of the early tourists, who probably get no historical recognition but still get to say "We were there, before everyone in the world wanted to be there."

Indeed, we were there before they were even finished constructing it! This is a view of the approach to the Spaceport, what will one day very soon be the main entrance. Where those who are wealthy enough to pay Sir Richard Branson and his company, Virgin Galactic, for the $200,000 ticket will arrive for their trip to sub-orbit on SpaceShipTwo. Sigh. Once upon a time, I was flush enough to afford a trip to the very edge of space on a Russian Mig-25 jet just outside of Moscow, but this particular ride will be out of my price range until prices come way down. Doublesigh.

This is a testing pad for vertical launch and hover landing models, I think. The tour guide wasn't allowed to stop or let us out of the vehicle while in this area apparently, so I was trying to snap shots through the window while being bounced about on gravel roads as he was giving the tour spiel so I didn't really catch everything. But yeah, the pockmarks in the concrete pad are from rocket testing. I don't know why there are rocks on top. Paperweights?

In the foreground is what will one day be the Spaceport Operations Center, and in the background, the side of the Spaceport. Here's a better side view:

They did let us get a bit closer, naturally. Here we all are, wearing our fashionable construction site tour-wear in front of the gaping entrance to the hangar which will one day house spaceships.

Spaceships! Hahahahahaha! I will come back one day, so that I can see them.

Ok, here come a few more shots of the hangar area.

See how the side facing the runway has mirrors?

Yes well, if you know me at all, you should be able to see what's coming next.

That's me in the mirror there! Standing on the entrance to the runway! Waving!

It's going to be a very pretty building. One of the cool things about touring the Spaceport during its construction phase is that we got to poke around in areas that will not be open to the public once it's open for business, such as the runway, obviously. Very soon, they will cease allowing tourists to walk out onto the runway.

Spaceport runway points! The Spaceport, by the way, is located right next to a portion of El Camino Real (The Royal Road), which was a major trade route between northern New Mexico and Mexico City from 1598 through 1882, until a railroad was built parallel to the Real in order to make the 6 month journey, well, take a bit less time. And now, the runway of the Spaceport has been built parallel to both of them. A very literal symbol of technological progression, and a striking one at that.

Unfortunately when I asked if there were any plans, even very remote plans, to build an airport near Spaceport America, I got a definitive no. There are lots of good reasons for not building an airport, including ecological issues and a nearby no-fly zone over White Sands testing range which rivals the White House's no-fly zone, but what I interpret this fact to mean is that Spaceflight at this location will always be a rich fucker's club. They did not plan this public Spaceport to ever be public enough that you can hop on a commuter from Chicago, Newark or LA to get here, and then flea-hop a quick 45 minute space ride over to Dubai or Sweden, where there are plans to build connecting spaceports. So as exciting as visiting a real live Spaceport was for me, it is only the itty bittiest of baby steps towards a future where spaceflight is as common as air travel. Still, it's more exciting than your typical Sunday drive.

Interlude: Observing The Observatory And Wandering The White Sands

On my free afternoon I headed out past Alamogordo to Sunspot, New Mexico. There is a secluded community of solar scientists there, and one of two missions for the National Solar Observatory. It was neat-o.

The other mission of the National Solar Observatory is at Kitt Peak in Arizona, where I got to go a couple of times last year. Unfortunately I got to Sunspot after the visitor's center was closed, but I was able to walk around outside and snap a few shots anyway.

This is the Dunn Solar Telescope, and it looks spooky in black and white. I framed it with the sun right behind it because I'm all apropos like that.

And the obligatory myself-in-the-mirror shot, of course.

After my science pilgrimage, I drove back to Las Cruces, stopping off at sunset in the White Sands for a few shots.

I wasn't quite in time for actual sunset, but a sandstorm was rolling in and it looked so cool these people started dancing. I think that's what they're doing. Those are dried up Yucca plants in front. I have two other nearly identical pictures of this scene, but I like them all.

I'm not good at choosing between similar pictures sometimes. I like the people dancing in the first one, but in the second I like the way the Yucca is in the middle of the sunset colors. In the next one, well it looks like some sort of romantic stock photo. Yuchsh. But still, I like it.

I stuck around a bit so I could find a Yucca plant that had live flowers because they're really neat looking, and I wasn't disappointed. Got three shots of this one, too.

They're a bit grainy; it was dark, windy, and sand-stormy so I had to have enough exposure to light the subject, but not so much that it blurred the plant because of the wind. Difficult. The graininess comes from using a high ISO, but whaddyagonnado? I like the way they turned out anyway.

See? Pretty Yucca flowers, and wavy sand.

I'll get to the high point of my trip in the next post, promise.

Get Back On That Rocket And Make Me Some Trinitite, Boy!

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

-Omar Bradley

So on my second work trip to New Mexico, I wanted to hit the outdoor missile museum at the White Sands Missile Range again because I hadn't taken the shot I really wanted to get the first time. So on my way in to work I gave it another shot. It's really striking how appropriate it is that the base of a giant rocket testing facility is situated right in front of the Organ mountain range. The missile display rather mirrors the mountains, don't you think?

I'm guessing that was intentional, but who knows. At any rate, it struck me ominous every time I drove by the mountains. It's as though they've been waiting all of their geologic lives for someone to come test big pointy phallic payloads of destruction at their feet.

So I keep getting really stuck thinking about the duality of the space rocket/ death missile theme going on all over New Mexico. The technology is mostly the same, but the application is as different as annihilation and salvation. And the birth of both aspects of the technology happened right here. (Actually, most of the original work happened over at Fort Bliss, but it's practically the same base as White Sands; they're adjoining) I guess there's not much to say about it, I just keep coming back to that fact in my circular thoughts.

"Hey son, check out this big ass gun. We killed a buncha commie nazi jerk-offs with this bad boy!" "Wow, Dad! Nazi jerk-offs!"

To be fair, I have no idea if that was the actual conversation. I just think it's weird to bring your kid to a museum dedicated to high tech killing machines. Maybe, like me, he's troubled by this aspect of technology and wants his son to see the park in a philosophical sense. Forgive me if my expectations for the typical American family are rather low in this regard. At any rate, they also have an inside museum which I didn't get to the first time. This next batch of photos are probably tedious, but I'm just a bit riveted here and I think they're interesting.

I like the fact that the sound effects guy from the original Star Wars flick donated a Darth Vader helmet for letting him record some sound effects there. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but why not a light saber or a spaceship model? Was he subtly commenting on the evil of fetishising death machines? Actually a Death Star model may have been more appropriate in that case, but perhaps that would be too on-the-nosey. Or, most likely, it means nothing other than, "Hey, I got this extra helmet lying around. Here you go, thanks for helping me out." But I like the symbolism there whether it was intentional or not. I mean, look at this thing; it could be the model for a death star right?

That's a model of the original A-bomb tested at Trinity. Here's a closer up of the information on the wall above it.

Such a weird period in history. Did you know that the explosion of the Nuclear bomb created a new type of mineral? Trinitite. Hard to come by for your rock collection.

They also had this duck and cover display. I'm not sure if the museum was mocking its own historical propaganda here or if they're still trying to put a serious face on it, but I feel like mocking it. Mock mock mock.

And imagine being stuck in a bomb shelter for 20 years while waiting for the radiation levels go down to a safe level with these military provided sanitation kits. Bomb shelter crapping is a complicated business.

Well that's that for now. I did more stuff but once again I've taken so many photos that I'll save it for another post.

Yet Another Very Large Array Of Photos Of The Very Large Array, This Time At Sunset

And so after leaving the Las Cruces area, I drove the four hours back up to the San Agustin plains, and got there just in time to catch some sunset photos of the VLA. The cold opener above is an HDR I tried out and they aren't supposed to come out looking like that, but I really really like it.

I got some Plains life in just before the sun set. That deer above was headed straight away from me, so I shot him. And these cows, too.

There is nothing like standing out in a gigantic plain in the middle of nowhere with a tripod and some radio antennae at sunset.

That movie 'Contact' was filmed in part out here, and there is a scene where Jodi Foster is looking out over a canyon, with the radio dishes behind her. Yeah, that's Hollywood stupidity. There is no canyon; I looked. I hate that. Why do they always feel the need to amp up things that in reality need no amping up? If you want the VLA in your movie, film it as it is. It doesn't need a canyon to be awesome.

But HDR doesn't hurt! Actually, taking HDR shots at sunset is a tricky business. Weird colors kept popping in that aren't in any of the original bracketed photos. This next one is not HDR, but it almost looks like it is. I'm learning that not everything needs such embellishment, myself. And also how hard it is not to embellish, sometimes. Maybe I should go easier on Hollywood.

I really like this next one; there's two small line gaps in the dish where the setting sun shines through them, and echoes the reflective train tracks quite nicely. I like the continuity of theme in that; the radio signals from space track down into the dish, and get carried along the train tracks back to the receivers that interpret them.

Ok that's probably not how the signals actually get sent to the receivers, damn you Hollywood! You've corrupted the way I interpret things with your need to visualize everything dramatically! But still. Pretty.

And yes, I really like tonemapping. Sometimes the accidental byproducts are neat, such as green radio dishes. At any rate, remember when I said that there is nothing like standing out in a gigantic plain in the middle of nowhere with a tripod and some radio antennae at sunset? Well, that's nothing compared to doing it at night.

Unfortunately, the moon was really bright that night, and I had to work hard to get any stars in the photos at all.

Damn moon. At one point I tried taking a ten minute exposure, but that didn't really bring out any more stars either. Still.

You'll notice the dish is pointing at a different angles in different photos. They moved them to point at different parts of the sky every so often. I tried to get a shot that captured the motion in an interesting way, but it kept catching me by surprise. This is the best I could do.

At one point, a couple of guys with a mexican accent drove out to where I was in a dirty pick-up and told me I had to leave because the astronomers don't like it when people hang out by the dishes at night. Hope I didn't mess up any of their work! But still, I couldn't leave without at least attempting a laser light self-portrait.

Rockets And Missiles; Salvation And Destruction In The New Mexican Desert

So picking up where I left off, after leaving the VLA I headed down to Las Cruces for work. Actually, I stayed in Las Cruces but my job was in the White Sands Missile Range, just over the mountain pass 20 miles or so. Inside the base, about 100 miles north of where I entered it, is the Trinity site where the first nuclear bomb was tested. It's open twice a year for the public to tour, unfortunately one of those times did not coincide with my visit. There is a museum on base though.

An open air display of many of the missiles they've tested there over the years. What about the Bomb you ask? Here's one. You might recognize it from it's stint on that long con of a TV show, LOST. It's called the Fat Man.

Sobering. I mean, it could have actually had a plot, and then it would have been a great show, but they made their cowardly writing choices, and all we were left with was that fat bloated sorry excuse of a bombed TV show. Bomb... right, sorry, got sidetracked. At any rate, as fascinating as a "museum"consisting of a yard full of devices designed solely to exterminate as much of the human race in one shot as possible is, I did run across something a little more interesting.

I don't know if you'll be able to read that so here it is, cropped.

I would guess that they were trying to insert this into the Roswell narrative somehow, but the "first firing date" of 1966-1967 is well after the alleged UFO Crash near there so it's a clumsy attempt in that case, especially since it also seems to have abandoned the "weather balloon" story but then why bother mentioning Roswell at all? I sort of suspect that it's a bit of a psi-op, or perhaps the military folk at White Sands actually simply have a sense of humor. We'll never know, because I'm sure a sense of humor in the military is classified information.

So out in the middle of the base, just off of the public highway that runs through it, is the White Sands National Monument. It's a vast sea of sand dunes composed of white gypsum crystals, where the military base took it's name from.

Got a picture. The sand really is very white, and because it's gypsum it stays cool to the touch even at midday in a very hot sun. I walked around barefoot for a while, it was nice.

But you know, sand is sand. I drove on to Alamogordo where they have the International Space Hall of Fame, which is not sand, and which is dedicated to the less destructive aspect of rocket technology. It's always fascinated me how the two aspects of rocket science so perfectly represent the potential destruction or salvation of the human species. The ones designed for killing are meant to fly only high enough to get over their target before crashing back down in fiery armageddon, while the ones designed for exploration are meant to keep going up and up until they escape the insanity of local politics. The other more interesting thing about this inherent symbolism of rocket science is that we humans are ourselves the architects of the instruments of our own destiny, whichever way it goes. If there is ever a day of Heavenly Judgment, raining fire on us from above, it will be of our own design.

Having said that, they all crash in the experimental phase. This is a crashed V-2 rocket, designed by Werner Von Braun for the Nazis before he came over to our side. They also had a moon rock at the museum, showing that sometimes rockets do get to where they're supposed to be going.

I got to hold it thanks to an amateurish bit of trick photography. I also hit on one of the pretty scientists that worked there. She was all wrapped up in her work though. "Hey baby, can I have a job?"

One of the other museum guides who worked there was a guy named Viggy who had worked on the Hawk missiles from their inception over at Fort Bliss in Texas. He was obviously proud of that so I asked him to pose with his rocket for me.

The only other interesting thing going on at the Space Hall of fame was that Ham, the first chimp in space, is buried there. I paid my respects.

After leaving the Alamogordo area, I headed back to White Sands for work, and from there I made my way back up to the VLA for some more shots before flying home. But I'll leave it here for now.

The Very Large Array Is An Array Of Very Large Radio Antennae, Arrayed Over A Very Large Baseline On Top Of A Very Large Plain

This is the Very Large Array, in New Mexico. I had a job in the south of the state last week for five days, so I flew into Albuquerque and proceeded to head straight for the, uh, very large array of 27 independent radio telescope antennae for a visit on my way down. Get ready for many, many shots.

I didn't get there until the evening, after the visitor center was closed, but I headed over anyway to try and get some night shots. It was windy, cloudy, and cold.

So I did my best, but even with a tripod it is difficult to get clear shots in such weather at night. Black & white helps; makes things look intentionally arty, or summ'at.

HDR could even only do so much for me. But it works. However, my prize for the night came about completely accidentally. I was trying to take some long exposures, hoping to get a few stars in through the clouds (didn't wind up getting any), and I was testing different settings for them to see if I could get it to work (I couldn't). But after I'd got back to my dingy hotel room in the tiny New Mexican town of Magdalena and went through my photos, I saw that with one 30 second exposure I'd caught a meteor shower!

I certainly did not actually see the shower while taking the picture, but the exposure revealed it. I'm not sure how that works but, there you go. My regret of course is that it's such a dark, noisy picture. Had I left it exposed just a bit longer, or used a better ISO... anyway. I tried messing with it to make it look better, and this is the best I could do.

Still noisy, and I honestly can't decide which of the two is any good. But still, meteor shower points! What's weird though is that the expected meteor shower from the tail of Halley's Comet hit Earth and peaked on May 6th, whereas I took this photo on the evening of May 10th, so I'm not sure what it is we're looking at, unless it's just a random shower that nobody predicted, and nobody knew about, because I can't find any mention of news for a May 10th shower. Maybe it's just some Halley leftovers.

At any rate I got up early the next morning and headed the 20 miles back to the VLA. There are 27 (according to Wikipedia) or 29 (according to my admittedly faulty memory) independent radio dishes arrayed about the vast Plains of San Agustin, over a distance of three 13 mile tracks set in a single large Y-shape. The dishes are frequently moved from close together to spread completely out, depending on the configuration they need. Last week, they seemed to be spread completely out, making it difficult to get shots with multiple dishes in them.

But with a telephoto lens and a little determination, I did my best. How do they move them you ask? Why, by specially designed train cars of course. There's this whole process which they explain in a video at the visitor's center, and it's pretty fascinating but if I revealed everything, why would you ever want to visit the VLA yourself?

There are two of those dish transport vehicles, and they always seemed to be moving about on some mission or another. But I like this shot because it gives you some perspective on how large the dishes actually are. Just imagine a little guy standing in the man-lift there and you'll see what I mean. Plus, it's nice to have some color in one of these shots. The Plains of San Agustin (as in the winds are a'gustin'?) are beautiful, but fairly large and colorless. At least during the day, anyway.

So okay having said that, here are the obligatory HDR shots.

And I tried to get all clever with the next one. There's a balcony on one of the buildings that they don't let you go in. The stairs are on the outside, so they do let you walk up to get a slightly higher view, and there is a large window which acts as a one way mirror so that you can't see in. But it allowed me to experiment further with HDR.

As Julie noticed, in our mirror Universe, people smoke. In our mirror near-twin Universe, they do not. Also, the dummies who smoke are so primitive that they need handles to open doors. And I just like this next one. The fluorescent lights behind the mirror make it look like the dish is shooting death rays.

Well that's all I got on that morning's trip; I had to head down to Las Cruces for work. There's only so much free time on my work trips, after all. Sigh. But don't worry, I had to fly home from Albuquerque (which brought me past the VLA again!), and the area around Las Cruces held a few surprises as well, so there are more pictures to come. But this post is long enough and I got other stuff to do. I'll post some more junk later. Meanwhile, check out 'ol Radiohead, here.

In Another Universe, This Post Is About This Universe. (Where This Post Is About Another Universe, Where This Post Is About This Universe...∞

I want to do a book report on Brian Greene's new publication in the worst way, but I'm not sure that I am capable of it. I used to read popular science books quite regularly, and I'd realized that it's been years since those days at about the same time that 'The Hidden Reality' caught my eye. As I was going through it I realized that reading, and keeping pace with, popular science texts is a skill which must be practiced, especially if one is not particularly well trained in physics.

That's not to say that he doesn't do a great job of explaining the concept behind 9 different types of multiple/parallel Universes quite engagingly; he does. It's more that, once I put the book down for a few minutes after every couple of pages to think about the implications of whatever mind-blowing concept he's introduced, the particulars begin to drain away because my poor little head is not lately used to holding on to the strange and complicated concepts behind Infinity, Relativity, Quantum physics, and String Theory.

However I'm going to try because I feel that my motive in writing about this book is more an effort to hang on as best as I am able to the understanding of a beautiful dream that fades quickly after waking than an attempt to convince anyone else to read it. Of course after completing that last sentence, I've sat and stared at the book cover for about ten minutes trying to figure out how to start. Sigh.

So here then; let's begin with the apology. Mr. Greene himself goes to great lengths in the book to make the reader understand that, at the moment, no versions of the multiverse which he posits are actually provable with hard data, and therefore may fall slightly outside the boundary of science. I say slightly, because though their detection may currently lie beyond our best detectors, they are in fact unavoidable outcomes of certain aspects of science which ARE scientifically sound, mathematically speaking.

As a comparison, when Einstein published his theory of General Relativity the technology available at the time was not capable of disproving his math. He came up with that theory using creative visualization, math and perspiration. And whatever other tools of genius he had at his disposal. But he himself did not go out and measure the Cosmic Background Radiation which ultimately helped to prove his theory correct. Now I'm not comparing Brian Greene or any other String Theorist to Einstein, (and neither was Greene in his book) merely the scientific process itself which is at work here. If you follow the math it leads to amazing places which, more often than you might think, describes the cosmos as it is in reality, even though it may also lead beyond all common sense. So this exploration of the side effects and the possibilities of infinity, string theory and math is extremely valid science, even if in the end it turns out that they've missed something and there are other things at work. You have to explore every avenue if you want to find out what's actually out there.

So why bother getting all excited over Parallel Universes if there's a chance it's inaccurate? Because it's exciting. And because, all things being equal, it's probably not inaccurate. It is currently science's best guess, much as Relativity and Evolution once were, and therefore worth a lengthy consideration.

So I'll start with the multiverse which I understand the most clearly, naturally. He calls it the Quilted Multiverse and here is how it works: There is some question in the cosmologist community whether the space that we inhabit is either very, very, very freaking large but ultimately finite, or whether it is in fact infinite. It all depends on the overall shape of the universe, which we don't yet know. (It's important to have a good grasp of the concept of infinity for this one, which I am lucky to have in some finite degree thanks to Rudy Rucker. His book 'White Light' is a rollicking exploration of infinity, and with extremely visual storytelling really helped me to glimpse what mathematicians actually mean when they use the term infinity. I highly recommend it.)

At any rate, If our Universe in fact turns out to be infinite (as the current trend of thought among cosmologists apparently believe is the likeliest scenario) then there is almost certainly another messiestobjects out there, writing up a book report about a publication by Brian Browne, (the last name of the author perhaps being the only difference between that Earth and this one) and positing some strange world where a version of himself is typing up a book report on a publication by a Brian Greene. In fact, there would be an infinite amount of Earths out there, that look just like ours. And there would be an infinite amount of other possible Earths as well. One, perhaps, that was solely inhabited by shrimp. Or one with no shrimp. Let your imagination go wild, like mine!

The reason why this would be so is simply statistical. Matter is evenly distributed throughout the visible Universe on very large scales. What that means is, you can take a really big box, say about 100 million light years cubed and chunk it down here, then weigh all of the matter in it. Then pick it up and chunk it down over there, again weighing all of the matter. Do this in several locations throughout the Universe and you will find that each box-full of matter will weigh in at about equal amounts, and it will be so all throughout the Universe. The idea here is that while matter may be evenly spread throughout an infinite Universe, there is a finite amount of forms that matter can take.

So the implication of this is that matter, as much of it as there is, can only arrange itself in so many ways. It's like a deck of cards; there are 52 cards in a deck, and 52 cards can be arranged in 10⁶⁷ unique ways. That number fully written out is 80,658,175,170,943, 878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000  which is obviously a really huge number. However, once you have arranged those 52 cards in that many unique ways, the cycle will repeat and you will start to get duplicate arrangements. Of course, some arrangements are more likely than others, so you will have odd random assortments of cards duplicate more often than you will see the deck fall out completely arranged from aces to Kings in all four suits, but as unlikely as that is, it will happen eventually.

The same is true for the arrangement of matter. In the entirety of our visible Universe, there are about 10¹⁰¹²² possible particle configurations. Which again, is a totally inconceivable number yet is definitely a finite number. Once you've reached every possible unique combination, the patterns will begin to repeat, and repeat infinitely. Thus, messyobjects is out there, messierobjects, and even an evenmoremessiestobjects, all trying to say hi to me right now. Since our brains and life experiences are nearly completely identical and in some cases absolutely identical, I can say hi to them and they've received the message! I know this because I've received their message, having sent one myself. We're totally braintext messaging across the infinite light years right now. They say hi back, and ask how's the wife and pets and I say oh, the same as yours, pretty much. ad infinitum. (Of course it's not a very interesting conversation, having identical thoughts and all, but there's always a downside.)

Whew. That was the first and easiest version of a multiverse in this book, and believe me they get far more difficult to grasp. The existence of the Quilted Multiverse depends only on discovering the shape of the Universe we currently reside in without calling any of the more unproven forms of science into the matter, but it is important here to note that Brian Greene and other String Theorists did not go out looking for multiverses. They did not read some ridiculous New Age drama and say "Oy, how can we finagle the math to come up with parallel dimensional portal-thingies in order to dazzle the public?" No, the attempt to understand actual observed phenomena through the framework of String Theory led them mathematically all on its own to many other different types of possible multiverses.

The Inflationary Multiverse, which better fits the definition of a multiverse in my extremely humble opinion, is one in which bits of our universe break off and inflate into bubble universes of their own, our Universe having broken off from another "larger" one at its own birth. There are also the Brane, Cyclic, Landscape, and Quantum types of multiverses. I like the Quantum Multiverse; it basically goes back to the Schrödinger's Cat thing, and Quantum uncertainty.

(jpeg of a print by Jie Qi) In case you are not familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, it is a Thought Experiment designed to help one visualize how Quantum Particles behave. The way it goes is, you put a cat in a box, close the lid, and have a radioactive atom timed to decay and open a flask of poison. In the quantum world, there is an equal possibility of the decay happening and causing the cat to be dead or alive when you open the lid. Until you open the lid, the cat is actually in an uncertain state, being both alive and dead at the same time which would be an unsettling thing to witness, I'm sure. The traditional outcome of this little game is that when you open the box, the probability wave collapses and the cat becomes one or the other. Thus the very act of observation determines the ultimate quantum state. (For a more accurate and less confused rundown of the thought experiment in mid-twentieth century science nerd jargon, visit the wikipedia page on the subject)

This is weird. But this type of behavior has been observed in quantum particle physics, hence the Quantum Uncertainty Principle and it does not apply to the world of things of our size, only to the realm of the very, very small. There is a gap between the quantum scale and ours where Quantum Theory breaks down and reality then becomes guided by Newtonian physics and Relativity. If you add String Theory math to this experiment, you can bridge the gap and in fact the cat is actually both alive and dead for realsies, in two different universes! Long, complex, nearly-incomprehensible-to-a-non-String-Theorist story short, the reason that Quantum particles behave so oddly is that we are seeing them play out every possible state of existence across a multiverse.

As an interesting aside, that particular multiverse explanation is where the idea comes from that every time one makes a choice, universes diverge and a separate reality for each choice carries on it's course. It may sound a bit hippie or New Age-ish, but if String Theory turns out to be correct, this in fact may actually be happening, right now, right next to you.

Another multiverse is the Holographic Multiverse, which is conceptually easy, but also very hard to explain the whys and wherefores of. This one is due to the nature of information and how it is stored in the universe, and when looked at closely begins to look a bit as though all matter as we see it is actually a projection of another type of matter on a distant quantum dimensional surface. In this multiverse all of our actions, in fact all interaction between all forms of matter everywhere is a shadow play. We're hand puppets. Don't ask me to explain the science though. It has something to do with Black Holes, very tall drinking straws, and math. Beyond that, I haven't retained a thing. Damn it.

The final multiverse of the book is the so-called Ultimate Multiverse, a distinction earned due to a new twist on the Anthropic Principle, which is the idea that asking the question "How is it possible that our planet, our very universe have the conditions necessary to bring forth life?" is meaningless because life evolves in the place to which it is suited. In other words, we are here both to ask the question and be the answer. I like this one for purely philosophical reasons, as it's an (yet another) answer of sorts in the debate between religion and science, at least for a certain set of debate points. The religious often like to point out that the Universe, Life, and Everything are far too complex to have "just happened" which is about as far as their understanding of the sciences of Cosmology and Evolution usually go. A very sad, limited viewpoint indeed.

At any rate, the Ultimate Multiverse answers the question of why the Physical Laws of our particular Universe are just right in order for galaxy, star, planet, and life formation to "just happen". Because in an infinite multiverse, where every possible Universe that can exist does exist, one with our physical laws and conditions for life merely becomes an inevitability, not a miracle. Therefore there is no "why" of existence, merely the statistical likelihood of it. You'll note that the Ultimate Multiverse differs from the Quilted Multiverse in the sense that, with the latter, there may be an infinite set of volumes with repeating particle configurations, allowing for infinite versions of themselves, however they are all still set in the same Universe as we are and subject to the same physical laws, merely separated by distances too large for any technology to ever cross. The Quilted version answers the question of why there is life on Earth, but does not answer the why of the overall conditions in our Goldilocks Universe and its particular laws of physics being just right in order to allow life to come about in the first place. The Ultimate Multiverse does, however. It states that while there are Universes like ours with just the right amount of density for galaxies, stars, and planets to form, there are also an infinite amount of stillborn ones. Our Universe is the Royal Flush that comes along once in a blue moon... or rather once in a Blue Iteration.

There are solid mathematical underpinnings to the Ultimate Multiverse, as well as for all of the others, but I'm not going there. If you want to try to understand them, or any of the other concepts, I suggest that you pick up a few popular science books and get cracking. 'The Hidden Reality' is wonderful, but unless you've already attempted to come to grips with the ideas behind Relativity, Infinity, or Quantum Physics, you might want to get a more basic picture of the Universe first. 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan is an excellent place to start for basic Cosmology, that Rucker book I already pimped for Infinity, and Brian Greene's earlier work 'The Elegant Universe' is a great introduction to String Theory. So get busy with the head scratching, braniac!

Another great way to contemplate infinity, by the way, is to obsessively-compulsively watch fractal zoom videos. I've posted about fractals before, here and here. I don't know how, but I'm sure that fractal math figures in to multiverses somehow. This one magnifies the Mandelbrot set 10²⁷⁵ times, and ends up at a copy of itself. Apropos.

 

"Astronomy Compels The [Mind] To Look Upwards And Leads Us From This World To Another"

Guess where I went again? And this time I brought my tripod. One aspect of my job that I very much appreciate (one aspect among many) is how I am able to return to the same place more than once. With some assignments it's not the greatest, but getting to return to Napa Valley, Death Valley or Kitt Peak on multiple occasions way more than makes up for multiple Nowhere, Indiana or the occasional Harrisburg, PA types of assignments. I like going some places many times because each time I go, I notice something different or have a new experience, and I get to know that place a bit better. Also, when I am somewhat familiar with where I'm going, I can make more adequate preparations.

Several things about my second visit to Kitt Peak totally ruled. As I said, a) this time I was prepared and brought my tripod, b) it was a much clearer night than on my previous visit, with no clouds or moon out, which makes the stars extremely bright and multitudinous and c) it was less windy and a bit warmer (though still quite desert-at-night chilly) and so they opened up a different telescope for us to use this time. So all around it was a totally different experience than before. The telescope we used this time was more or less the same as the other one (pictured above), except this one was housed a bit further up the hill in a flattop observatory rather than a domed one. The flattop style would have been quite dreadful on a windier night, open to the elements as it is, you see.

That flat part to the left, hanging over the red light, is the roof; it's been rolled back from the cylindrical observatory on the right. We got to see some really awesome stuff this time around. The middle star in Orion's sword stands out in my memory mainly because while it looks like a single star to the naked eye, it's actually four newborn stars surrounded by clouds of gas and dust cast off from their birth. It was quite lovely. You can see Orion in the next picture. That really bright star just above the roof-line of the Observatory is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and only 8 light years away, and Orion is just above it, the next brightest stars in the picture being his sword. It looks like I also caught a faint shooting star, between Sirius and the telescope. Or maybe that's an airplane, who knows. I bet Astronomers really hate airplanes.

Oop, there's another one. It's a meteorite, it's an airplane, no! It's a...! Well, no it's got to be one of those two things. You decide.

I also got to see something that is apparently very difficult to see in most places due to light pollution. Kitt Peak is far away and high enough from any major city that the night sky just pops, more so than I've ever seen but less so than people could see from anywhere only 100 years ago. I know that last picture rather looks light polluted from the ground, but that's mostly just a quirk of shutter exposure. At any rate, what we were able to see was the Zodiacal Plane. It's the plane in which all of the planets orbit the sun, and the reason it's see-able is that the millions of leftover particles and gases that are trapped in the same orbit from which all of the planets emerged reflect a faint light. The really bright star just above the robot-looking weather sensor thingy is actually Jupiter, and you can see how the sky is brighter just around it.

I also got to see the double star Almach, The Eskimo Nebula, the star cluster M44 with hundreds of tiny blue stars, the cigar galaxy M82, and our docent even showed us how to find the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. And of course, the only other thing which my camera is actually capable of taking a picture of, the Milky Way.

Although I did get this picture of Jupiter early on just around sunset. I was just playing with settings on my camera when I took it, and it's totally dull and would never make the cut in a million years except I just happened to shake my camera in just the right way to give the planet its self-referential initial.

Hee hee. Anyway, one thing I didn't mention in my first Kitt Peak post was that at the end of the evening, around 10pm, they have to lead us in a caravan down the mountain because you're not allowed to turn your headlights on as they would interfere with the Astronomers doing real work at the observatory. Parking and taillights are fine because they are not luminous enough to have an effect on the telescopes. So as they were gathering us up to go this time, I realized that I'd forgotten my tripod bag back in the flattop observatory. So while everybody else drove down the mountain, I got to wait behind for the docent to come back so he could let me in to get my bag. While I was waiting, I got a nice shot of the parking lot and everyone's taillights as they queued up and drove off. Now I'm not saying that I forgot my bag on purpose, I'm just saying that it worked out rather well for me.

So another awesome night at Kitt Peak all around. I really hope I get to go at least one more time because aside from all of the astronomical learning, I figured out a thing or two about taking night sky pictures which I didn't know before and I'd like the chance to try them out further. At any rate I'll leave you with my final picture of the night; when I got all the way down to the bottom of Kitt Peak I stopped to take a final shot which I thought was poetic, and sad.

I Went As A Proctor, I Went To The Mountain, I Looked Through The Eyepiece, I Drank From The Coffee Urn

Kitt Peak was. Awesome. I had done Tombstone the previous day in what was originally supposed to be my only free time after a job in Fort Huachuca, but I couldn't get a plane out until Saturday so Kitt Peak was my overstay day two destination of choice.

Cartoon cactus! Kitt Peak National Observatory is about a 2 hour drive West of Tucson. It is the home of 26 telescopes, the largest array of them anywhere in the world. Included among them are one radio telescope dish which is a member of the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array), the largest solar telescope in the world, and the first telescope used to search for near-Earth asteroids that could possibly strike us one day.

It was a holy pilgimmage. Only better, because the sense of holiness at the top of this mountain felt like something real, something tangible, and not simply mass superstitious willfull delusion. (That needs a better word; is there a word that describes The Emperor Wears No Clothes syndrome? Mass delusion, hysteria, or hypnosis don't really cut it because we need something to connotate the willfullness of it.)

There is always a very real sense of excitement when one visits such places, places where the advancement of the human race has occurred, is still occurring, and will always occur as long as there are those who use their minds rather than their emotions to peer into reality. Or at least engage in the attempt.

It's a feeling of utter joy and freedom, something I never did feel as a member of a certain religion. Perhaps, in light of my previous paragraph, I ought not to use the word 'feeling'. Obviously I don't mean that emotions are evil; though they do lead one into error quite handily, especially during investigations. One should feel one's emotions, take pleasure in them, even use them in any form of expression you might choose, but never be guided by them.

Well enough of traveller's philosophy. Suffice it to say, I prefer a big metal telescope on a mountaintop to a guru any day.

So getting back to the details of my pilgrimmage; having a whole day and night until my departure from the desert around Tucson, I decided to take part in the evening observation program which they offer nightly. It was awesome. First they take you on a brief sunset tour of a few choice spots on the peak.

Then they let us into one of the working telescope domes for a brief lecture and demonstration of stuff. You know, sciencey stuff.

But the absolute high point was of course actual observation. We got to play with one of the telescopes. A dinky one to be sure, as far as Kitt Peak scopes go, but certainly a more powerful one than I've ever had the opportunity to use before.

We got to see moon craters, a binary star system, and Jupiter's cloud bands. it was pretty freaking sweet. In the advanced observing program for amateur astronomers, they let you use their digital telescope cameras to take and keep pictures of stuff that you choose to look at. But that program costs like $500 and is a sleepover so, not in the cards for me on this trip. (Or should I say, not in the STARS for me on this trip? Yuk snort! No, no I guess I shouldn't.) Next time.

I also got to sit around and take cool night photos while other people got a turn at the eyepiece so, win win all around. I took a metric ton of these, but I'll spare you and post only the money shot.

And that's pretty much it. It was quite a hushed evening, meditative even; there's a stillness on an astronomer's mound at night, even among a group of other stargazers, that has to be experienced to be appreciated, hence all of my holy comparisons.

There was an infrared camera inside, and I couldn't resist a parting shot of myself in the monitor. Creepy right?

And now I am currently on my Honeymoon! You know, with that girl I married. It's been a great trip so far, but I just wanted to get these Kitt Peak pix up before the onslaught of European photos begin.

Rockets Rockets Everywhere, And Not A Spot To Think

I went on a couple of jobs this month to places that were interestingly related. I was in Minot, ND a few weeks ago, giving a computer security exam on the Air Force base there to military personnel responsible for well, computer security, on the base there. Minot AFB is one of two bases in the US which apparently contain our largest stockpile of Nuclear Bombs. They proudly display an old Minuteman I Missile as you enter the base.

I didn't know that before I got there, that I was going to be aiding and abetting our Nuclear arsenal personnel, and I admit I felt a keen sense of ambivalence when I found out. (That sounds like nonsense, doesn't it? A keen sense of ambivalence?! Kind of an oxymoron; however if you've ever had that emotion you'll know what I mean.) I mean on the one hand, I will always feel the guilt of aiding and abetting our previous administration's dishonest and uber-destructive war reconstruction in Iraq. And so here I was again, in a position of compliance with the most immoral weapon yet conceived by humanity's spinal column thinkers. However I also feel that as long as nuclear weapons exist, well then by gum they oughtta be secured and if my small presence there as an exam proctor allows those with the crucial duty of keeping our warheads safe from being hacked to do their jobs better, then I suppose I feel good about it. Much as I hate nuclear weaponry and wish they'd go away, I don't want them getting lost or stolen!

Wait, what? Uh... do you guys remember that 2007 incident where some nuclear warheads went missing? Yeah, it happened at Minot. They were transporting some ICBM missiles (just the missiles, without the nuclear warheads attached) from Minot to the other big nuclear bomb site in Louisiana, so they loaded them up onto a B-52 for transport, and forgot to remove the warheads. A little bit later, someone was doing their, what, Bi-annual inventory checklist? And said "hey uh, where're those, um, y'know, nuclear warheads that are supposed to be on that shelf over there?"

Meanwhile, there were some very surprised cargo unloaders in Louisiana. "Hey uh, dude? Are we getting paid danger salary today? Do you know how to unscrew a nuclear warhead? Well, I'm sure we can figure it out."

Jesus. Here's a nice shot of some B-52s I got from the public highway.

I hope I don't get in trouble for posting that photo. I shouldn't; like I said I was on a public highway and it's public knowledge that they have bombs and B-52s there, and if they can't be bothered to hide their runway from view on the highway, then I can't see them being bothered to worry about the occasional photo showing up online.

ANYway, so my next job this month was to Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City. A different kind of missile history, home of Marshall Space Flight Center (itself the original home of NASA) and Space Camp. I had a job for a company that is involved in space and defense contracting, and that was a much better feeling. I think Space is really really cool. I don't know if you know that about me. I got to go to the Rocket museum there.

That was sweet. I did all the kid stuff; saw a 3D movie about Mars, an Imax about our moonwalk missions, and climbed around in old rockets and spacejunk. They obligingly placed some of their items in such a way that taking a wry picture was possible. Space rockets, War rockets, and a carnival ride; whee America!

The West Is Big And Full Of Holes And Rocks

As promised, here are a few more pictures of the Trona Pinnacles. I know it's been a while; it's been a very busy few weeks here. But Christmas is over, I'm finally getting settled in to the new place, and my routines are slowly renewing their control over my life, so here we go. The picture above isn't really a scary-ass man with a halo, it's just a rock with the sun placed conveniently behind it. But you can see why maybe some location scout thought this might be a good place to film a Forbidden Zone or two.

As I didn't get a chance to explain last time, the Trona Pinnacles were once formations at the bottom of an inland sea in southern California. Now they are formations in the middle of a desert in southern California. Geology is quirky that way. I took the following photo from the top of one of the pinnacles. There was absolutely no one and nothing for as far as I could see (except for the borax mining company we passed on the way in; much of the ground on the way out to the pinnacles is white with borax. Pretty neat looking) and there were no signs telling us we couldn't climb them, so of course one is obligated to do so.

I put up many many more very forbidding shots over at my smugmug page, as usual. The Trona gallery is here. And now for...

Meteor Crater Arizona! After our 2 days at that really large canyon, we headed down to Flagstaff Arizona to see what was what. The first thing I wanted to do, naturally enough, was to blow right past town and head out to Winslow where a meteor crashed into our dear home not too long ago, around 42,000 B.C. and made yet another really really big hole in the ground. It's hard to get an idea of the size of this thing from the photo... hell it was kind of hard to get a good perspective on it standing right at its rim! Granted, it's not even close to the immensity of the Grand Canyon, but this is a very different beast and equally as cool for different reasons. So here's a gauging aid:

That itty bitty pebble on the top of the rim, directly above the viewing scope is indeed the size of a house. Big crater. Small meteor. Makes one really hope that we figure out a way to blast bigger rocks out of the Earth's path jackrabbit quick. I mean, an even better way than sending oil rig drillers into space. (That would be an Armageddon reference, by the by. What's the opposite of creative genius? Michael Bay, that's what) It was so windy the day we were here that I was actually picked up off my feet slightly when I tried to go up past an area they had roped off so I could get a better shot. That was neat. I of course have my Meteor Crater gallery with more photos over at smugmug. Anyway, back in Flagstaff...

We visited the Lowell Observatory! Percival Lowell thought he'd discovered canals on Mars back in like 1895 with this very telescope! What a maroon. I'd loved that story since hearing about it from Carl Sagan in Cosmos, which I'd read long before seeing the TV series. Because of his mistake, he fired up many a young boy's imagination with thoughts of Mars and Martians, culminating in HG Wells' War of the Worlds. Pluto was discovered here, as well as the observation that the galaxies were receding from us very very fast which lead to the discovery that the Universe is expanding. Good scientific history. The telescope was also awesome to visit because it just looks so damn cool. Very Steampunk. Those are truck tires which rotate the roof of the observatory so that the telescope can be pointed at any direction in the sky. Here's a quick video I took:

The only other thing notable in Flagstaff was the hotel we stayed at, the Monte Vista. It has a bunch of hokey ghost stories about it which Miss Luongo posted about already. Parts of Casablanca were filmed there, and it's one of those places where movie stars love to check in. We stayed in the room in which Lee Marvin resided while filming some western or other. Wicked. Flagstaff Gallery is here.

So I actually have more stuff, but I'm tired of this post. I'll save it for the next one. I took way too many pictures this trip and had way too much free time, causing me to visit way too many Arizona attractions. Ugh. Work is hell.

Ba-Doink-a BOINC

I don't often do this, but there is a gnarly piece of software that I want to recommend that everybody use. It's called BOINC, and it's awesome. I actually used to use it years ago, but between all my traveling and moving I kind of forgot about it, and I've just rediscovered it. It's basically a screen saver program, but not just a pretty one. It's useful. What you do is you download the BOINC software, and then choose a project. The instructions are all there on the homepage. But what BOINC does is this: When your computer is idle, it comes on just like your normal screen saver would, and it uses your computer processor to perform calculations needed by various scientific projects which you can choose from, showing you a neat little visual of the calculations being performed as the screen saver. What's so powerful about this tool is that thousands of people doing calculations on a project offers more computing power than is possible to the individual scientific programs on their own, so you can help them to do some really incredible things.

I myself run a project called SETI@home, which I've I had a link to on my sidebar forever and still managed to forget about all this time, dur. But as an example of how BOINC works, SETI@home is the radio signal project for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) people. You may have heard of them from that movie Contact, in which Jodi Foster represented them, based on the book by Carl Sagan. So anyway, what they do is point their radio telescopes at different points in the sky for periods of time, and record space noise of all sorts. They record this space noise in huge batches and parcel it up, then send it out to everybody running their project via BOINC. BOINC, with the help of your computer processor while you're not using it, then sifts through this raw data, searching for patterns and signals, and sends the results back to SETI. If your computer is the one that finds indication of Extra-Terrestrial radio signals, you'll be famous. Here's what my screen saver looks like:

Of course I understand that a lot of people might think that this is a loopy project, with about a zero chance of ever finding anything meaningful. To you people, I say up yours. Aliens is cool. But, you know, there are plenty of other projects to choose from should the search for the answer to the most profound question we have (are we alone?) not be your particular cup of awesome.

There is a nice one called Rosetta@home, which needs your help to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases. There is also one called climateprediction.net, which is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century because climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else. There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will probably warm over the coming century; climateprediction.net should, for the first time, tell us what is most likely to happen.

But there is a whole list of such non-profit projects you can choose from over on the BOINC project page, so you can choose one that you feel is important, regardless of the ultimate importance of the Alien question.

Ghouls & Goblins & Palin Oh My! It's Going To Be The Scariest Halloween Yet!

I haven't been around much lately, I know. My question is, have any of us? For myself, I've been consumed with fear and paranoia over the state of the economy. My 401k has less money in it now than what was put into it out of my original paychecks. My stocks... well, as I've said before; when in 2050 they are teaching schoolchildren in the most powerful Nation in the world (my prediction: Eurasia) about the great world stock market crash of '08, my picture will be in the book as the poster child for those who bought in at exactly the worst moment in history. Maybe. I'm sticking it out in case my fears are incorrect.

Also, I've been consumed with the fear that no matter how many nonsensical utterings of bullshit come out of Sarah Palin's mouth, we still might be forced to look at her pasty vapid psycho doll eyed face for the next four years. If that happens, it'll be the final nail in the coffin of our country. She's deeply stupid (yet thinks she's smarter than everyone and that no one can see through to her motivations) and masks it poorly with down-home stylings meant to fool the common man into thinking she's like one of them. She's playing on the irrational blue collar disdain of elitists, which is scary because apparently the present down-home version of an elitist is someone with an education who speaks with knowledge and authority on a given subject. Apparently, the people with whom Palin is trying to connect would rather the officials in charge of their government not understand how to answer basic questions and mask their ignorance with folksy exclamations which make no sense. I CAN NOT believe that people are being taken in by her and McCain, especially after realizing finally that they've been taken in by Bush for the last 8 years.

It's embarrassing to have these people on the world stage representing us, and if you're voting for Palin (to hell with McCain; he's irrelevant and will keel over soon) shame on you, dupe. Well, the polls do currently favor Obama of course, but not by a wide enough margin to quell my disbelief.

Another thing I'm afraid of lately is this Creation Museum in Kentucky. It's a museum. Dedicated to Creationism. And people are visiting it in droves. Creationism is the belief that the world was created by God around this time of the year on a Monday morning in 4004 BC. Dinosaur bones and all. Now, the belief in God, the Bible, and its literal truth, is a Faith. Faith, not Science. The line between the two concepts is under attack. Science is the search for truth, based on verifiable fact. Faith is the belief in something for which you have no proof. I have no problem with people of Faith going to Church and learning about what they believe in. I just wish they'd stop trying to force their beliefs into the schoolroom. It's dangerous and useless. Education in America is already severely limited these days. I met a Gas Station attendant in Germany who studied math for fun and spoke four languages. Most European students can talk intelligently and at great length about world politics, and know where Eritrea is on a map. There are people like that in the States, to be sure, but they get made fun of and called geeks. Something that modern day religious Americans seem to forget is that part of the reason why America is such a great place to live is that we once valued a secular education, and our prosperity comes from the application of our knowledge AND hard work. And on Sundays and at mealtimes, God was valued and thanked in many homes, sure, but at the end of the work day, God helps those who help themselves. Deceiving ourselves into thinking that faith needs to compete with science is not going to help anybody, because it's false. When it comes to science, religion tends to breed rather a hostile attitude of indifference because what difference does science make when Jesus is coming back to turn the Earth into blood soup and all the people who are looking forward to this disaster get to skip it and go to Heaven for candy and unicorns? They tend to forget that, even according to the Bible, we are Stewards of the Earth, and as such will be held responsible for it one day, one way or another.

Granted, science has caused a lot of problems on this Earth. Next to all the good things like medicine and movie theaters. But at this point, Science is also the only tool we have to save ourselves, and subverting it with Bible stories is NOT the way to go.

So now I come to the thing I'm actually afraid of this morning, the real reason behind this post. I get up and begin my routine as usual; perform the daily miracle of turning tap water into coffee. Eat breakfast. Drink some pre-miracled water, gulp down my daily plethora of vitamins with a big glass of more tap water, brush my teeth with tap water from the bathroom sink. I go sit down at my computer for my daily stock torture, notice I have a message on my phone. It's my landlord, Frank, telling me they put out a warning last night not to drink the tap water, not even after boiling it, and that it might not be safe to even bathe in until further notice; I listen to this as I'm taking another long sip of coffee. SO, I call Frank back to see if I need to go to the hospital, and he says he doesn't know; he's on his way up to the borough office to find out what's going on. Meanwhile, I wait here, typing out my ranty fears in this post, wondering how sick I can expect to be at any moment. I continue drinking my coffee because, what the hell, what's done is done.

I finally get a call back from Frank. Apparently, someone who lives next to the town Water Tower saw three guys hanging around the tower. Climbing it and other shady behavior. Neighbors called it in, water's being checked to see if terrorists poisoned it. I live in a very small town; that water tower probably supplies about 5 or 6 hundred people.

I make more coffee and drink a big fat glass of tap water. Laugh and shake my head. More disbelief, more wonderment at how afraid people are, and how much America is being ruled by their fears. I laugh as my stocks tumble. Screw it. It's only money. President Palin? Ha! Good joke! She'll only hasten the downfall of this abominable government we're stuck with! The terrorists have already won anyway. They've shown us how weak and vulnerable we've become, all on our own. Thank God I got to see Stereolab at the Fillmore in NYC before I died. Miss Luongo and I went up to see them last week with my friends Jeff and Steph. Pure aural pleasure.

And Along Came A Transrealist

I picked up this book relatively randomly a few weeks ago. Stuff of this nature always piques my curiosity because I like both science fiction and popular science. (Also, I saw it sitting next to a new book of transcripts from some lectures that Carl Sagan gave in Scotland in 1985 which has recently been published by his wife, which is what originally caught my eye.) It's a book of essays by various pundits about what humanity could possibly look like if we were still around in, well, Year Million.

It's not overall a great book; I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it but it's a bit stale in many ways. Naturally, it's difficult for anyone to guess what even the very near future is going to look like. For instance, go into a Starbucks on lunch hour in any major city, listen to a conversation that the nerdy computer types are having about the drudgery of their IT jobs, and try to imagine what that conversation would have sounded like to you back in say, 1985. I'm sure even Carl Sagan would have been like, "What the crap are you maniacs talking about?" Words that mean one thing back then have taken on whole new meanings in light of technological advances, so to a 1985er, the words might even sound familiar, but the ways in which they were being put together might remind him of a conversation in a particularly dire lunatic asylum. For instance: "I was trying to download some music files onto my cellphone, but Apple's damn proprietary iTunes system keeps messing me up. I've got to figure out a way to hack that shit." Think about what that sentence could possibly mean in a pre-home computing world. It's English, but it's nonsense.

Stanislaw Lem actually wrote a really excellent book on that subject called "Return From The Stars", which in a nutshell is about a Spaceman who returns to Earth after a 100 year mission only to find that he doesn't understand anything that is going on. Looking at the problem in reverse, I just re-watched that fabulous David Mamet movie, Glengarry Glen Ross, which is about the cutthroat business of real estate sales in, I assume, the late 80's early 90's. These salesmen kept having to make telephone calls to potential sales leads via pay phone, and in one Scene Jack Lemmon is calling his family and telling them he won't be able to be reached later and I kept thinking, what? Why are they bothering with pay phones? Can't he be reached by his cell? Major plot hole. It's amazing to me how anachronistic those pay phones seemed, and that it took me a beat or two to catch on to the time frame. I think it was the combination of familiarity and a decade of perspective... I've seen that movie before and all the actors in it are pertinent to my adolescent movie experience, yet give it ten years and whammo, weirdness.

So you can see, the idea of trying to look a million years into the future seems at first glance a bit useless. One major technological advance and wham, everything changes. But in a weird sort of way, looking a million years into the future might actually be easier than looking a decade into the future. You have to ask larger, less precise questions such as, Will we have colonized other planets, or entire galaxies by then? Will our energy source be entire suns, entire star clusters, or dark energy itself? Will we be human, something more evolved, or will our personalities be downloaded into huge programs in which our thought processes will be in effect immortal, and capable of computations greater than our current meat-brains can presently conceive? Well, all of these possibilities are addressed, of course. Some of the essays are more successful at getting the points across than others. But here's the reason I really loved this book:

There are about 14 essays in this book, and the first 10 are all asking questions along these lines. Futures are spun out for us that to a Borg seem like heaven. We have deconstructed entire planetary systems and turned them into so-called Dyson Spheres: technological monstrosities made of "computronium" which would make the Death Star run away with its tiny little tail between its legs. We turn ourselves into gigantic computer minds, more capable of exploring the infinite Universe than in our present, limited meat bodies of mortality. All of which are not necessarily impossible ideas, they just seem to us now as that airplane seemed to those people from the last of the uncontacted tribes in South America. Or perhaps they are impossible; it's a book of speculation, after all. But then, along comes chapter 11. And who is it written by? Why, none other than the greatest speculative mind of our time, Rudy Rucker. I haven't said it enough lately; I love that guy. He is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Not that that matters; his own body of work is genius. He's a well respected mathematician and philosopher in his own right. But I've written enough about him in the past, so I'll spare you.

Except that, his essay in this book is why I love the book and why I think he's the greatest, in a nutshell. All these impressive, impossible to fully comprehend, yet fundamentally bleak views of the future of humanity, and along comes a transrealist. His essay is about how all of that mechanical technology is a real downer and totally beak. It's a great book because it shows the real value of genius, standing him up next to the more mainstream and dull views of the status quo. I'm going to quote him now:

 "Ultrageek advocates of the computronium Dyson-shell scenario like to claim that nothing need be lost when Earth [or any other structure] is pulped into computer chips. Supposedly the resulting computronium can run a VR (virtual reality) simulation that's a perfect match for the old Earth. Call the new one Vearth. It's worth taking a moment to explain the problems with trying to replace real reality with virtual reality. We know that our present-day videogames and digital movies don't fully match the richness of the real world. What's not so well known is that no feasible VR can ever match nature, because there are no shortcuts for nature's computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the "principle of natural unpredictability," fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires using a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don't allow for drastic shortcuts."
Natural unpredictability means that if you build a computer-simulated world that's smaller than the physical world, the simulation cuts corners and makes compromises, such as using bitmapped wood-grain, linearized fluid dynamics, or cartoon-style repeating backgrounds. Smallish simulated worlds are doomed to be dippy Las Vegas/ Disneyland environments populated by simulated people as dull and predictable as characters in bad novels."

So basically what he's saying is, the physical matter of the Universe is already the most complicated calculation there is, and that any desire on our part to harness it for our own small needs is rather ugly and in the long run diminishing. Not that he doesn't predict amazing possibilities for our future. Due to the high calculation potential of every bit of matter, he predicts something he calls Hylozoism, from the Greek, hyle, matter, and zoe, life. He believes that, given a million years, we'll find a way to wake matter up. As in, making it conscious. So that we can communicate with it. You'll actually be able to talk to walls, and it will be more productive than talking to politicians. He even has a plan for it, involving bending certain spatial topologies utilizing the extra dimensions of space. The benefits of waking matter up are enormous, and too much to go into, but they involve the possibility of teleportation, matter duplication, etc. This is a book report, not the Cliff's Notes. Suffice it to say, Rudy paints a much more incredible, surreal, no, transreal, view of the future, and on top of it, shows how it's just as conceivably possible as the deader versions of the typical futurist. If I could buy stock in Rudy Rucker, I'd grab every share I could, because I have a feeling that his ideas are going to be around for a long long time.

"Lately I've been working to convince myself that everything is a computation."

"It's tedious to watch something very obvious being worked out, like a movie that's not particularly good and after about half an hour you know how it's going to end."

"It's soothing to realize that my mind's processes are inherently uncontrollable."

"If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it's quite abundantly clear that there's not going to be a final answer and there won't be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!"

"Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way."

"Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons."

  -Rudy Rucker

I Bring You The TEN [CRASH!] Um, FIFTEEN Commandments!

"There is in every village a torch and an extinguisher: the schoolteacher and the priest."
-Victor Hugo

The Athiest’s Commandments from ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. The first ten are from a website he found while researching his book, then XI through XIV are his own additions, and XV is mine, as well as the comments in brackets.

 I. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

 II. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

III. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

 IV. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

 V. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

 VI. Always seek to be learning something new.

 VII. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

 VIII. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you. [But don’t let them get away with faulty reasoning without a fight. Besides, maybe they’ll prove you wrong and that’s good too.]

 IX. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

 X. Question everything.

 XI. Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.

 XII. Do not discriminate or oppress on the on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.

 XIII. Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

 XIV. Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

 XV.  Patriotism is a lie. Religion is a lie. God is an unknown. [Patriotism and Religion are not even compatible, and yet most Patriotic Americans are Religious too. Here, I’ll prove it:

 a) Patriotism = My country is #1, above and beyond all others, right or wrong.

  b) My Country is run by old rich cowards who want our young idealistic men to kill for their comforts

c) Religion says thou shall not kill. [even if that commandment is the only part of the Old Testament which actually says that, because otherwise God sanctioned quite a lot of killin’ and rapin’ in those days.]

  d) Therefore, Patriotism & Religion can not go hand in hand. Yet somehow, when combined in the mind of deeply uncritical people, they do.

I’m not saying I'm an atheist. But I am saying that I share a lot more in common with an atheist than with religious thinkers these days. And here's the reason. One time in Church, I remember my pastor doing that whole thing where he says that a lot of people out there in the world will try to tell good Christians that the Bible is full of lies and contradictions. His response to the congregation? "Well I'm here to tell you that the Bible is NOT full of lies!" Brilliant, carry on, Pastor. What? That's all you got? Huh. Anyway I think I related this story in somewhat more detail once before, here.

But the realization that I eventually came to is that belief in God is fundamentally, in the mind of religion at any rate, an insidious and lazy way of avoiding the issue of Life, The Universe, and Everything. What I mean is, one thing that many religious types use to try to convince people that evolution is bunk is the idea that the world is too complicated, too amazing, too wonderful to have all just happened by random chance, it must have been created. (Here's a YouTube I will NEVER get tired of, which is a prime example of that sort of reasoning. If, of all horrors, you find the banana argument compelling, please watch this one also. Thanks again, GoDrex! )

First off, anyone who has taken the time to attempt to understand evolution would never say that. Evolution is anything but random, which is part of its beauty and power. Secondly, all they've done by this argument is show a lack of logical thought. SO, you're saying that the Universe is too complicated and "well designed" to have just happened? So, there must be a Creator. Well then, logically, any possible Creator has to be larger and more well designed than the object of his creation. A hammer and anvil do not forge a blacksmith, for instance. Therefore essentially all that this argument has done is to push the question back a step and in reality, magnify it. Rather than believe in the apparent existence of a complicated and evolved Universe (based on verifiable fact), you'd rather believe in the apparent existence of an even larger and more complicated, magical Creator.

I'm not saying that definitively there's no God, which is why I'm not an atheist. (Although according to Dawkins' scale of atheism, I am a 5th or 6th degree atheist, with a 7th degree atheist believing absolutely %100 in the non-existence of God. I will always leave room for the possibility, if not the probability.) I'm just pointing out the weakness of logic in the Religious mind. And I AM saying that IF there's a God, he's not the God of that great work of fiction, the Bible. I think that IF there is a Creator, the only thing that he really gave us are our hearts and our minds, which are very effective tools when reason and logic are applied, and I think he'd be very disappointed in Religion.

For anybody who has read 'The God Delusion', it's apparent that I've used much of Dawkins' material here. In my own idiosyncratic way, of course. But I feel that it's a book which has provided me with a clear way of thinking about ideas which I've held for a while.

Basically what it all boils down to for me is this: Religious apologists have NEVER been able to prove the existence of God or the veracity of the Bible through either Science, logic, or reason. Which makes sense according to the Fundamental Religious version of "logic" anyway; it's all about faith, regardless of the facts. (Dinosaur bones were purposefully planted there to test our faith.) So why do they keep trying? Why do they want Creationism, sorry, Intelligent Design, taught in science classes? Science is about verifiable fact, religion is about faith. You don't see scientists banging on the doors of churches, trying to force Sunday school teachers to teach evolution. Although, the inevitable backlash has already begun with the likes of Dawkins. He's tired of Religion's interference in the world of reality, hence the book. It's time for the Religious to accept that faith is based on nothing verifiable, and that they are welcome to it. 

And his main points are good ones; You don't need Religion to be moral, brainwashing children with religion is immoral (Christians don't call it brainwashing when they do it, but what else would you call it when, in a different religion such as Islam for example, brainwashed children grow up to steer planes into buildings in the name of their faith?), and he (and I) would be the first one to believe in the existence of God should there ever be proof of his existence. In the meantime, people should stop fighting, brainwashing, and killing each other over minor differences in opinion as to his nature. Something tells me that should your particular version of God turn out to be the real one, he'd still be very pissed at you for adhering to such nonsense and calamity. Unless of course you're Jewish. The Old Testament God was an asshole.

On a final note, I want to reiterate what I believe to be Dawkins' most imperative point in his book: There is no such thing as a Christian child, a Muslim child, an atheist child, or a Buddhist child etc. There are only Children of Christian parents, Children of Muslim parents, Children of atheist parents, and Children of Buddhist parents etc. Until children are mature enough to have weighed all the facts and decide for themselves, they are only children. After all, no one says that their child is a Marxist, or a Democrat, or a Communist. It's ok to wait until the child is of age to decide for itself what its political leanings are, and the same needs to be true of religion.

My Scientist Could Kick Your Scientist's Ass

"Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame."
-Lydia M. Child

So I've been reading this biography on Nikola Tesla. Wowzers. This guy was insane, and there is quite a bit of misinformation out there about him and his inventions. For instance, Thomas Edison was a royal tool. Edison is credited with inventing electricity, but actually, Tesla invented alternating current, which is the form of electricity we use today. Edison was a proponent of DC, and had a whole bunch of money invested in patents for it. Tesla came along and dreamed up AC, and a battle ensued as to which form of current would be adopted. Much like the Betamax / VHS war, or the other, more recent Blew-Ray / HD DVD battle. Grrr. Argh.

Anyway, Edison resorted to some extremely dirty tactics. He kidnapped dogs and cats off of the streets, even people's pets, and electrocuted them to death with AC current in a barrage of propaganda stunts intended to scare people off of using it, saying that Alternating Current was far too dangerous to be used safely. He even apparently filmed the electrocution of an elephant with AC. Tesla won out though, because AC is superior and people realized it eventually. Unlike with HD DVD. Grrr. Argh.

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
-Thomas A. Edison

"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."
-Nikola Tesla

Mark Twain was a close friend of Tesla's. Mark used to hang out in Tesla's lab, and one time Tesla was experimenting with electrical therapy, and Mark insisted on trying it out. So he got up on a special rubber platform and thoroughly enjoyed a sensation of electrical vibrations. When Tesla told him that it was time to stop, Mark refused, whooping, waving his arms, and saying that this was awesome, and he could take it! Tesla smiled and said that for Mark's own well-being, he really ought to let it go and get down; a person is only meant to take so much vibrating. Mark laughed and still refused, despite Tesla's repeated warnings. Suddenly, Mark got a look of consternation on his face and clenched a bit. He abruptly hobbled to the edge of the platform and begged Tesla for the direction to the bathroom, as Tesla and his assistant laughed uproariously, knowing full well the laxative effect of the electrical therapy.

"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
-Mark Twain

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more."
-Nikola Tesla

Tesla demonstrated publicly many amazing feats of electricity, some of which engineers are still baffled by today as to how he did them.

There are some extremely sobering, and frankly rather quite scary things which he claimed to have invented and tested, but which we know nothing of today. He claimed to have invented a device which could fit in his pocket, and could knock down a building simply by attaching it to a metal girder. It worked by resonating vibrations, and there is proof that his theory was sound. He'd been experimenting with it in his lab in New York City, and it caused great rumblings and broken glass 15 blocks away. He claims that later, he put such a device in his pocket, sauntered down to a building that was under construction, attached it, and waited until the entire structure began to vibrate alarmingly. It made an unbelievable sound, construction workers began running, and he surreptitiously stopped the device, put it back in his pocket, and strolled off unnoticed.

By the way, after he died, the US government confiscated all of his papers and personal notes, and they have still yet to see the light of public scrutiny. Nobody knows what was in them. For those of you who are conspiracy-minded, chew on that.

Tesla claimed that with that same device he could collapse the Brooklyn Bridge in minutes, and with appropriate timing and a large enough such device, he could split the Earth like an apple.

For further conspiracy theorizing, here's a paragraph from his Wikipedia entry:

Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft. Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.

Hmmm... Sound like any UFOs you've heard of?

He also demonstrated claims that he could transmit electricity wirelessly, and believed in the possibility of "Free Energy"; Do you have any idea what wireless power and free energy would mean to the world? Of course you do. But it has never been developed. He tried building a tower at Wardenclyffe designed to transmit power in just such a manner, but he ran out of funds, everybody thought he was a nutter, and the tower was destroyed for scrap.

He is actually the unsung inventor of Radio. Marconi was originally credited with inventing it, but all he did was steal an idea of Tesla's from a lecture, and patented it before Tesla had a chance to. In a nutshell. Tesla was eventually awarded the patent and credit for inventing Radio, but the Marconi misconception persists to this day. Tesla was cheated out of credit for many many things in this manner... he did patent quite a few inventions, but he is one of those historical geniuses that had more ideas in a day than I've had in ten lifetimes. He was so far ahead of his time that many of the things he accomplished have yet to be rediscovered, and he is uncredited for many of the ones that have been because at the time people thought his ideas were loony, and other people followed in the footsteps of Marconi with Tesla's "crazy" notions.

"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
-Nikola Tesla

After reading this biography, I've had to rethink my opinion of The Prestige. I mean, I still think that it's a sloppy movie, and the denouement is still visible ten miles away, but part of what I thought was ridiculous about that movie was the portrayal of Tesla by David Bowie. I thought that the particular invention that he came up with in that film was utterly laughable, but now, I'm less sure. I mean, duplication of matter through the simple application of electricity is still extremely far fetched, but less so to me now that I've read about some of the things that he actually did experiment with.

 “Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”
-Nikola Tesla

Whirling Dervishes Eat Haunted Donuts

I'm in Atlanta Georgia and I'm bored. I haven't really had a chance to leave the hotel yet, and even when I get a chance I'm not particularly excited about it. I mean, it's Atlanta. Although, one cool thing, I'm about 3 blocks away from this sweet looking Haunted House, which was rated the #1 Haunted House in America by Hauntworld Magazine! So, I will definitely check that out soon.

Also, I finished reading both of those Rudy Rucker books.  Spacetime Donuts was the first book he ever wrote, but 2nd published after White Light. SD was fantastic. It's about the idea that the Universe is shaped like a donut, so that if you were to shrink infinitely, you'd eventually wind up coming back around to our size. In other words, our Universe is contained within itself, in every atom. The donut analogy as Rudy describes it is this:

Say you have this donut laying flat, and you place a piece of paper on top of it. The points where the paper actually touch the donut form a circle and is our size level. Staying on the surface of the donut but moving towards the center, the hole of the donut, the size of the circle you are on shrinks. That's you shrinking down to the size of molecules, atoms, quarks. Continue around and without going backwards, you wind up growing back up in size until you are back to where you started. It's very fractal. Good timing that I just read that book actually... everything is speaking to me through fractals these days. Rudy is often trying to describe the complex mathematical ideas of infinity through his gonzo transreal stories. My brain actually feels massaged every time I finish one of his books. He's very good at it.

I know I know. You're exhausted with my Rudy Rucker blogs by now. Sorry. Maybe you should get off your butt and read some already, so you'll know how awesome he is, too.

Moving on, I was holding off on this until it actually came to fruition, but it looks like it never will, so... I was contacted last February by someone who works in the Religion and Ethics department of the BBC website. He had stumbled across my video and pictures of the Whirling Dervish ceremony I'd attended in Turkey, and he wanted to use them in a piece he was putting together. I of course was flattered with a much enlarged ego. He'd written to me once or twice to say that he was still working on it, and that it could be a while before it came together, but it's been a really long time now and nothing. They did however put my name and website prematurely on their photo credits page, so I've got that going for me! See here! Scroll down to the M's. Very exciting, very nothing.

And Now For Something Completely... Earie?

This dude had an ear grafted on to his arm in the name of art. Ear. On his arm.

I'm totally not making this up.

Human ear. Grafted. On human arm. Art.

Urg.

I want eyes on my fingers. Oohh! Gills! I want gills!

Fractally Speaking, Of Course

Fractals freak me out a little bit. If you start with the mother of all fractals, the Mandelbrot Set:

and you zoom in, and keep zooming in, you can get to a point where if the portion that is viewable on your screen were actual size, then the rest of the Mandelbrot which you've zoomed past would be larger than the universe itself. And you can keep going, and going, and going, and always there will be more richly detailed fractal vistas. THAT'S infinity.

I think what freaks me out is how... familiar... it feels. It's like watching your brain operate from the manager's factory overlook. What's completely strange is that while the Mandelbrot Set was discovered in 1980, the mathematical formula is really simple. No calculus, no trigonometry. It's some algebra. Adding and multiplying. The mathematical formula known as the Mandelbrot set could have been discovered at any time in the history of math... technically. What was required to make the realization that the Mandelbrot set is actually infinite complexity generated by a simple formula was computers, because zooming down into a fractal requires constant calculation, and a computer screen which visually details the results. It's almost as though the Mandelbrot was always there, waiting until we were ready to find it, a living, breathing concept. A universal theorem equivalent to the obelisks of 2001:A Space Odyssey.

Fractals have always made my head spin a little bit. Sometimes, I actually aurally hallucinate while watching them. It's one of those sounds that could be children laughing and playing on a playground far off in the distance, or screams from a slaughterhouse, or a tinkly waterfall, but you can't really tell which. Sometimes they move on their own... even the jpegs, not just the YouTubes. I have to literally force myself to stop thinking about them when I start getting into a fractal kick. Today's fractal head trip was inspired by this video, which someone over on MySpace sent out in a mass bulletin. I've even downloaded a fractal generating program. It's awesome, but I've only just begun to figure out how it works. It's slightly technical. They're so pretty.

Fractal math is quite probably the mathematical function used to calculate the Universe, whether by design or by nature, whichever your bent. It's sort of amazing that we can even comprehend such a thing, see the edges of it in reality, and wonder about it. Here's one that is Universe scale.

The Space Coast Is The Most

I just got back from Orlando and I think I have to eat some crow and say that it's not so bad a place as I may have thought after my first trip there. Actually, on this trip I had a really great time and the reason is because on this job, I had a lot more free time. On regular jobs, such as my aforementioned first trip to Orlando, you have to pretty much stay near the hotel where the students are staying because on top of being their computer test proctor, you're also their concierge during their week of intense computer training. But this last job was an Onsite, which means that a company has paid us to train their own employees at their own facilities, so all I have to do is show up on testing days, which gave me 3 full free days to find something fun to do. I really like the onsite jobs. My trip to Wyoming was an onsite.

Anyway, I hit the Kennedy Space Center, which was the awesomest place ever. I'd actually been there once before; when I was packing oranges at Vero Beach one year right after my first summer in Alaska, a couple of the guys I was working with and I took a ride up there. That was around 11 years ago though and my memories of it are fuzzy. Anyway I didn't have a camera then and this time I could afford to take the big tour, which is kind of expensive. I got to see the rockets from the Mercury and Gemini missions,

walk around one of the space shuttle launch pads up close,

and see a Saturn V rocket from the Apollo missions.

Awesome. The other really cool thing they had was a Shuttle launch simulator. It was basically a tube with seats that goes from horizontal to a vertical sitting position and shakes around a lot while making really loud noises while an astronaut yammers at you from the video screen in front of footage of the view from a real shuttle taking off into space, but if you suspend your disbelief sufficiently it's easy enough to imagine that you're on your way up there. It even does a passable job of simulating zero gravity when you're "in space" by tipping you on a forward angle so that you're slightly out of your seat and only being held in by your shoulder straps. The Zero-gravity I experienced on my flight in a Mig-25 to the edge of space was a bit better, though.

See? Even the pigeons want to go.

Anyway, I believe that the 60s NASA missions comprised one of the most exciting times in human history, and I really loved getting a sense of what it must have felt like to be a part of that. When I got home yesterday I immediately popped in that movie The Right Stuff. It's really fantastic. I can't believe there's no big movie about the first moonwalk; If you want to see something about the Apollo missions, you're pretty much stuck with Apollo 13, which is great, but it's no moonwalk. There are documentaries I suppose, of which I have several, but they don't really capture the excitement quite the same way a good NASA drama does. The Dish comes closest to that for the Neil Armstrong walk, but it's not actually about the mission itself.

Well I do carry on so. But Space is the Place, man.

On my second free day, I hit Cocoa Beach. It's kind of a famous beach because that's where a lot of the crowds would gather back in the day to watch the Rockets lift off, and I think that's where the astronaut bars were, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I didn't see any of that, but it's a fairly nice beach anyway. Good waves. The next day I had to work in the morning, but in the afternoon I went for an airboat ride on St. John's river and saw loads of alligators and birds and crazy cypress trees with Spanish moss. It was pretty damn cool. Those airboats are pretty zippy.

On that last photo you can see the head and back of an alligator kind of just peeking up from the water by the base of that tree.

On my third free day... well, I did it. I went to the Magic Kingdom. I'd never been there before... I always wanted to go as a child, of course, but when I got older I got cynical and realized how evil Disney is and sort of decided I didn't really want to go as all things Disney tend to be shallow and banal, and they destroy the stories they tell. BUT, I did have this extra day with nothing to do and I couldn't figure anything else out, and also my brother and sister were taken there by my family when they were kids and I never was, so, I figured it was something I had an opportunity to get out of my system. Believe me, that whole morning I was filled with a bizarre emotion consisting of dread, bittersweet, shamefaced excitement. The approach to that saccharine hell-hole did nothing to alleviate it, and neither did almost anything I did there.

The coolest part was Space Mountain. I'd been dying to do that ride all my childhood, when friends would come back from there and tell me about it. And you know what? It's still fairly cool. A roller coaster ride in the dark, only feebly lit up by stars, planets, and galaxies? Punctuated by terrified screams coming from all directions, some of them possibly but not definitely from my own mouth? What's not to like? The Haunted Mansion was also pretty wild, although not scary at all. But the special effects were sweet.

But the rest of it? Everything I ever hated and feared about that place. Every time I saw a parade of some Disney freaks grinning and dancing about, I wanted to smack them and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, prancing about like happy little idiots. There was one ride that, while being horrendous, was nonetheless quite interesting. The so-named "Silly Jungle Cruise." It's a boat ride through a mock jungle river, filled with plastic animals. It's not a kiddie ride, either. It was all adults on my boat. It looks like, once upon a time, maybe back in the 50s or 60s, it was possibly a high class Disney ride. But I think that fake plastic jungle cruises likely don't have much staying power in this day and age, so what they've done is to turn it into a joke. The boat guide makes fun of everything you see for ten full minutes. A large orange fiber glass snake hangs from a tree, and pretending to be frightened, the tour guide asks what is large, orange, begins with a 'P' and can kill you? "Python!" shouts out one of the, um, adult, cruisers. "That's right," says the guide, "Plastic."

Oh, he had a ton of 'em. But what's interesting to me is that that ride is probably the most honest Disney has ever been with it's customers. A fake plastic safari is set up to give a cheap thrill, which is kind of Disney's over-all philosophy actually, and instead of trying to get you to go along with it, in this case they are forced to cop to how phony and silly it is, because it's really a horrendous ride and there's no hiding it as they do with everything else. Quite illuminating. It's like when Big Tobacco was finally forced to admit that smoking is unhealthy.

I even had a personal moment of clarity on that ride. As we were passing all the plastic, immobile animals, I was thinking to myself how I'd seen these kinds of animals for real in the semi-wild at South Africa Kruger national game park. And then: we came to a plastic temple and the guide announced that we were now passing a Cambodian jungle temple. My mind kind of froze because I've actually been to Angkor Wat and explored tens of actual Cambodian jungle temples, and here I was at Disney, the phoniest place on Earth, passing by a phony temple.

I love this:

Virtual Magic Kingdom? What, that's in case your mind is so jelly that you can't walk down the street here to the actual Magic Kingdom?

Well anyway.

The Kennedy Space Center. Wicked cool.

I Was Fated To Choose To Write This Post In An Idiosyncratic Manner

There's an old conundrum bandied about in philosophical and spiritual circles about whether or not our lives, the universe, and everything are driven by free will or are pre-destined. I believe the Catholics like to call it pre-determination, which is the specific opinion that God has chosen all of our destinies, made all of our choices for us.

Leaving out the existence of God or lack thereof argument for the moment, this has always struck me as an idiotic and short-sighted position on the matter for religious types. The whole point behind the oldest Christian moral, that of Adam and Eve, is about giving man a choice between happy-go-lucky gardening in Eden or the loss of their innocence in exchange for cold hard knowledge. In other words, the very first choice in the Bible that was given to man by God was to do as he will; ignore the fruit tree as commanded, or eat some and suffer. That's what I believe what the kids are calling free will these days is. God wanted to see what Adam was made of, so he gave him a choice. So I really don't understand where all this religious pre-determination nonsense comes from. Probably some crusty old robed dude with a superiority complex sitting in the Vatican thinking up ways to justify his job.

Leaving pre-determination behind as anachronistic and moving on to the more philosophical aspect of the question, known as pre-destination, we begin to tread more logical ground. Pre-destination makes more sense to me as an idea because of some of the revelations of modern science, actually. Namely, the fact that Einstein discovered that Time is in reality not something that hasn't happened yet, but merely a 4th dimension. In other words, Time is quite possibly all of a piece; what we consider the past, present, and future are extremely subjective and actually may conceivably exist in the Universe all at once, and we are like mites on a round table or cavemen on a globe, too small to see the shape of it, but destined to travel in circles while believing we walk in a straight line. In other words, everything that ever was, is, or will be, exists right here and now, but our little minds are not large enough to perceive more than a tiny bit of it at any particular instant, which we call the present. By this logic, our futures have already happened and there is no changing them, and this is where the more philosophical side of the pre-destiny of our lives argument comes from. And you can still blame God if you want, or shake your hand futilely at the sky and rail against unpersonified fate. Whichever tickles your angry fancy.

Of course, logically, this breaks down for me also. The fact that our futures have already happened, are happening, or will happen, doesn't really mean anything. In other words, even if the future is all laid out, so are the choices we made at those points in our destiny. If the future is as set in stone as our past, well, you made your choices then, you're choosing to read this now, (sorry about that), and you will choose in a moment to get up and get more coffee. I've never understood why pre-destination has to cancel out free will. Just because the future exists doesn't mean your mind isn't there also to perceive it and make those choices.

I think it's just an outdated religious question that got out of hand, and a good example of people who think that they are logical not being logical. There's no reason to think that just because the future exists means that we didn't get to choose how it unfolded, barring any more data on the matter.

If you're wondering why I seem to be using the word logic a lot (See? I can get it right from time to time!) lately, it's because I'm apparently an INTJ and that's allegedly just how we operate, according to Personality Theory. So, now that I know that, I've spent a lot (See? I did it again!) of time thinking about logical conundrums. So, do I think logically because I choose to, or pecause Personality Theory (or God, or Fate) dictates that I should, hmm? Am I even thinking logically? I think that most people think that they think things through, so, it's entirely possible that I'm deluding myself.

One thing that I think that I am fated, predestined, or just simply chose to be is the kind of person that likes to play Devil's advocate. I often like to argue with people whether I agree with what I'm arguing for or not. Usually I do it just to irritate my friend Scott, but I enjoy the argument for argument's sake, also. I'll never forget the time when I turned my Mom's face pastier white than snow could dare to dream to be; I must have been like 1 or 2 years old, tops. I realize that that is an awfully young age to have such a vivid memory of, but if you'd seen the look on my Mom's face, you'd never have forgotten it either. I remember thinking, in a vague sort of way, that I wanted to get a reaction out of her just to see what would happen. We went to church every Sunday, where there was a lot of talk about God, and Jesus, and all that, and being so young I liked it all. Good vs. Evil was a concept I appreciated and I liked Jesus well enough. But again, I was looking for a reaction, and I remember walking into the kitchen and very innocently stating to my mother in a sweet little 2 year old boy voice, "Mom, I hate Jesus."

Well, I got a reaction all right. I hadn't realized it would be such a controversial statement. I remember being shocked by her anger and by what I didn't recognize at the time as her own shock and fear; I believe I actually thought she would think it was a funny joke. You know, two-year old humor. It took a long time to convince her that I didn't really mean it, which was really hard because I don't think I had the words at my disposal to explain myself at that age. It was a very strict lesson that arguments about ideas are not always well-handled by others, and also taught me that I sometimes enjoy getting a reaction out of them, regardless.

I Know, I'm Sorry, I'm Behaving Like A Total Particle Accelerator. I'll Stop, Truly I Will, Please Don't Stay.

So one of the more vexing problems facing scientists who explore the quantum universe is that the very act of observing quantum phenomena (do dooo do do do) changes the thing observed. (Mah-nah-mah-nah.) That's why when looking at particles in a particle accelerator, they sometimes behave as a wave and other times behave as separate little bits. It just depends on what criteria you're observing by. That's where Schrodinger's Cat comes from, also, and why a quantum physicist can't tell you if the lab kitty is alive or dead for sure either way, until you poke it with a stick. Actually that's not quite right, it's weirder than that. If you put a cat in a box and point a laser at it, which is set off by a quantum trigger that goes off (or not) while the box is closed, the cat, until you actually open the box and observe it, is in a quantum simultaneous alive/dead state, being neither wholly one nor the other. I think. Dammit, it's been a while since I read any popular Quantum Physics books. That stuff is hard to keep in your head. Is my brain dead, or alive? I'd prefer a constant either/or state to actually knowing, thank you very much. Anyway, all this really goes to show is why people avoid scientists at parties, and especially avoid those of us who aren't scientists but try to explain scientific matters as if we had any clue about them whatsoever. But I had a point, really I did. Wait, it's coming back to me... oh there it is! So, quantum problem, the mere viewing of a quantum particle will alter it's behaviour, so you can never really know what it was up to or what it would have gotten up to until you came along and freaked it all out; you can only know what it did self-consciously under the lens of a quantum particle accelerator. And here's what I was trying to get at: Tourism, it's the same thing. But without the particle accelerator. The very act of tourism somewhat destroys what it is people were going to see in the first place. It's not as noticeable in places like Europe, except in small ways. The Vatican, for instance, since it was built, has always looked more or less the same, and remains unaffected physically by tourism, excepting minimal wear and tear. But the difference there is more aesthetic. There is a huge difference, I imagine, between being alone in the Sistine chapel and soaking in all that art at your leisure, and being one of 1000 people and fighting for space, with the whispers gradually reaching a level to where the priests in attendance have to go "SHHHHHHHHH!!", then the whispers die down for a time, gradually rising over the next five minutes until the priests do the dreaded "SHHHH!" again, this wave of whisperage going on constantly until, hot sweaty and tired of bumping into people, you leave.
But in places like Thailand, tourism does much worse. Think back to four score and seven years ago, maybe multiply that by 10 or so since I'm not actually entirely sure what quantity four score is. I think maybe I used to know. Anyway, back in those pristine days of yore, Thailand's beaches were, in all likelihood, serene, untouched places of indescribable beauty. Some intrepid hippie backpacker came across it one day, and pow, fast forward to four score and seven times ten years later, there are thousands and thousands of tourists (including me, I'm not judging) who all came in search of fabled beauty, but in the process tore it up and filled the place with dive shops and 7elevens, and lots of levelled jungle to make room for 5 star beach resorts. It's just not the same anymore. It's still really nice, but not the paradise it was, and I imagine it's only going to get worse. Ohh, maybe the particle accelerator could metaphorically be word-of-mouth and/or advertising about certain tourist hotspots! Well, no need to really run with metaphor, I suppose. The point is more or less made.
But where I was really going with all this, was that Cambodia is both more and less than Thailand, for me. So far. I really like Phnom Penh in some ways: There are a lot fewer white people around, so I can kind of feel like I'm treading new ground, (I know I'm not, it's just the feeling that modern tourists have to hope for the best for) and there is next to none of the usual tourist infrastructure, so you don't get cut off from the normal daily life of locals. I mean, there are hotels, even a few really big expensive ones, but the city itself is a thriving mass of streetlife, motorbikes, tuk tuks, people asking for money or begging you to take a ride on their cyclo, and there is no getting away from it! Not that you want to, when travelling. That's why you travel. But sometimes it's easy to avoid actually experiencing a country and just sit in cafes and go to museums and whatnot. Here, it's in your face and I kind of like that. I had a blast taking a 30 minute tuk tuk ride out to Choeung Ek today... dodging people, other vehicles, everybody waving hello because they're not entirely jaded on western tourists yet... it's a really poor country though, so that takes some of the fun out of it. Meaning that you wind up feeling bad about yourself alot for being able to afford to jaunt off to Cambodia, when alot of them make $20 a month... Choeung Ek, by the way, is the villiage where Pol Pot had his famous Killing Fields. That was also a downer, but interesting. I overheard one guide telling his group the grisly manner in which they killed children and babies, bashing them on trees and even worse. The S-21 prison, which is now a genocide museum dedicated to Pol Pot's victims, was sobering also. You know, most of his soldiers, the ones who did the majority of murdering, were little more than children themselves? That always seems to be the way, in murderous holocausts. Hitler had his Youth, Pol Pot brainwashed young Cambodians... beware of activist organizations breeding armies of children. Hmmm... we should all keep our eyes on this type of behaviour.
Anyway, things I don't like about Phnom Penh; ultimately, it's small and you can do everything in a day, and following the oft-quoted travelling rule of 1 day or 1 month (or is it 3 days or 3 months? Meh, in Phnom Penh, it's 1 day 1 month), I've been here a day too long. That's why I have so much time to blather. But tomorrow, Angkor Wat, for 5 days. I understand that that is a good amount of time there, so we'll see.

The Man Never Actually Said Billions & Billions or Millions & Millions That Way... That Was A Johnny Carson Thing

An article on NY Times just reminded me how much I miss Carl. I read everything he ever published years ago, even the gigantic volume Cosmos; especially Cosmos, actually. That book changed my brain. I even bought the 12 DVD Cosmos television series, long before I could really afford to buy such things. It was %100 worth it. But as great as he was at explaining science to the dumb masses (hee get it? Dumb-masses?) like me, he was also in posession of a deep philosophical mind and had the gift of imparting his ideas with a forthrightness and compassion that others don't even understand that they're missing. The Demon-Haunted World is fantastic, and does a much better job of delineating the problems facing science vs. religion than Dawkins in all his shrillness could hope to achieve. I can't wait to pick up the new book his widow just published from writings he left behind. He was an impeccable scientist, although to my knowledge he never won a Nobel prize for any of his work, and he was an impressive humanitarian, though he never won a Nobel there, either. (He did win other various lesser scientific and humanitarian awards, however.) Unfortunately, there is no category for him, as his particular gift was a combination of those things, a calm implacable manner, and a gift for explaining complicated ideas in an extremely engaging and understandable way. He was just awesome, is all I'm trying to say, and I wish he was on the scene today.
That's all. Going to Cambodia tomorrow.

I Was All Like, Yeah, And He Was All Like, Nuh-uh, And I Was All Like, Dude, Yeah-huh

I was over at Cosmic Variance yesterday and got into a small discussion with the guy who wrote this post about Richard Dawkins, and after going back and forth a couple of times (comment #s 66-70 & 72-73), was rather solidly given the "talk to the hand, buddy". I'm not sure if it's because I was not being clear enough in my argument, or if it's just that I'm an embarassing moron to have show up on your science blog and blather on about a subject which I have no degree in...
The gist of it was that I initially posted a comment saying that I don't understand atheism any more than I understand religious certainty, and that I felt that the more reasonable philosophy for a rational person (which I assume scientists generally are) to assume is agnosticism. Atheism, to me, is every bit as much a belief based on no empirical evidence as [pick a religion] is. I've never understood how anyone, especially scientists who require proof of everything, can say that God does not exist, end of story. There is no proof that he does and there is no proof that he doesn't! How can you prove that God does not exist? You can't! And Mark (the writer over at CV) came back with a more delineated definition of what atheism meant to him: "Atheism means that you do not believe in god, not that you will say with absolute certainty that one does not exist."
I looked up atheism on wikipedia, and sure enough, most atheistic philosophers assume that definition. Which really kind of throws me for a loop... that statement makes no more scientific sense than the idea of religious faith, which atheists spend so much time bashing. What that's saying is that you believe that God does not exist, not that you know. So then atheists, by that statement, really are the exact opposite side of the coin from religious wack-os, with about the same amount of rationality! Both sides are stating a belief about God or the lack of one, with nothing empirical backing either up.
When I tried explaining that, and that agnosticism seemed a much more rational approach for a scientist, he didn't seem to get my point (which is likely my own fault; my reasoning seems clear to me but I'm sure it's muddier than I think it is, half the time) and didn't acknowledge that he, by using that definition of atheism, was stating a belief. Instead he said that he felt uncomfortable with "beliefs", and that on the subject of the currently unprovable, he'd rather state "I don't know" and then try to figure out the truth... Then I pointed out that that is exactly what agnosticism is! Agnosticism means simply, lack of knowledge. I said that we were actually in agreement, and that we were just approaching the same conclusion from different sides... then he never responded to me again. There are of course many possible reasons for this, the most likely that he was simply getting annoyed with me. I admit, were I in his shoes and some snot-nose was trying to out-comment me on my own blog, I'd snub him down right quick also.
But it's a discussion which has many facets and I'm really intrigued, which is why I'm having trouble shutting up about it.
The thing about agnosticism is, of course, that like atheism, it can also have a couple of different interpretations. I think that Mark and other sciencey smart-guy types tend to shy away from agnosticism because it does have certain religious overtones. Gnostics were an early sect of Christianity that purported to have an insider's spiritual knowledge; Agnostics chose the name for themselves precisely because they want to say that they do not have any such luck. However, some people that call themselves Agnostics believe very firmly in God, but that any knowledge of such a vastly superior being is currently unknowable to the likes of us hairless apes. That's probably why certain rationals prefer the moniker of atheism, because while they won't say with certainty that there is no God, they prefer to have the cloak of what seems more likely in this Universe to them as being the case, the disbelief in God, keeping all possible distance from any sort of religious flavoring whatsoever.
To me, Agnosticism means that maybe there is, maybe there ain't. If he wants me to know, he'll tell me. If I don't hear from him, well, we will just have to wait until all the facts are in. Meanwhile, I don't need religion to tell me to be nice to other people (well, at least not to kill or actively harm them... being nice is often a tall order in the face of the ignorant) regardless of what they choose to say they believe the truth to be, and Agnosticism won't stop me from knowing that evolution is a fact or from eagerly awaiting any news about more great scientific discoveries that open more doors to the Universe for our tiny, hungry little brains.
After reading about the many different types of agnostics on the wikipedia page, I'd have to say I'm a Weak Agnostic, but that I prefer the alt-term of Open Agnostic. As I said on CV, The Universe is God, science is his means of communication, and it is a scientist’s duty to follow wherever that may lead, whether it proves that God is intelligent or accidental. (Ok I just added a few bits there... I'm always editing myself. It's a problem.)
I am willing to be wrong about any of this... I don't in fact have a degree on this subject and it's not like I've read anybody's thesis on atheism vs. agnosticism... chances are, they're identical viewpoints with different tones. Atheism just sticks in my craw (what's a craw?) because it seems to me to be an irrational viewpoint shared by a large group of people who are in most other matters extremely rational.

Name Calling And Other Green, Black & Yellow Issues

Aha! I was right! About too much water in American toilets, I mean. There's a great post over at Inky Circus about how wasteful our current system is. They also link to another article on the subject worth a further read, which reminded me of how the company of mercenaries I saw alot of in the Interzone in Baghdad, named 'Blackwater', (you should all have heard of them, if you pay attention to news) is named after what the sewage treatment business calls water with nasty smelly human poo in it. You can't make this poop up folks! The other thing it talks about is how in the future men will have to pee sitting down, if we want to solve the problem with urine separating toilets. Screw that; when I finally have my own place, I'm getting a waterless urine-separating urinal installed... I never understood why all houses with men residing in them don't have urinals already, anyway. Much less water wasted in those, and it would stop all fights about having the lid up or down. Another Green issue on everybody's mind is this unreasonably warm winter, and whether it is Global Warming. This article says to expect 2007 to be the warmest year on record, a record originally set in 1998... a quickly moving upward trend if I ever saw one. They're also pulling out the 'ol El Niño defense again. I haven't seen a real snow in 4 years, and now this! Grr, argh. Global Warming is really cramping my style, man.
Anyway, I'm going to Thailand! I was hanging out in my Dad's house, trying to figure out if I should find an apartment, or where I want to work, and all kinds of deep life issues that I am apparently still not equipped to deal with properly, when I realized that there is no reason I can't run off and play for a bit before settling those questions. I've done everything I needed to do by coming back to the US for the moment, and while there are other issues on the horizon, at the moment I have a more or less clean calender and so I decided to go on the trip I'd wanted to go on after leaving Baghdad in the first place. I also wanted to get Lasik surgery, and after some research discovered that it's actually cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket and get it done in Thailand than it is to get it done here! Don't believe me? Check out US prices, and then go to the site of a very famous hospital in Bangkok and check out their prices and add that to the price of a round-trip ticket purchased at least a month in advance from expedia. The total pricing may wind up being more or less equivalent, but then you also get a sweet trip to southeast Asia out of the deal and a nifty passport stamp. It's totally a no-brainer.
I leave at the end of the month and will be gone for about 3 to 4 weeks. Sorry TF, (Can I call you Tim? You always sign in as TF, even though your name is Tim, and I feel kind of weird calling you TF if you'd prefer Tim. Let me know.) I'd love to go oil-drilling in Canada, but I hadn't heard back from you and I get antsy left to my own devices. If it's still an option come March, drop me a line.
In the meantime I am still having some issues with my old company about whether they will pay me or not and whether I am going to Washington DC later this week for a few days to give my deposition or not. I imagine I'll have a better idea of what's going to happen there by tuesday.
Meanwhile, go buy this shirt. My friend Heather made it (I think) to promote a book written by my newest friend, Miss Luongo. (Do you mind if I call you Miss Luongo? It fits, somehow, but if you don't like it I'll stop.) It's called "The Hard Way" and comes out sometime this spring. (Which, judging by the weather, is any time between now and April. I think that in May, summer will be here.) It's her debut novel, and I both painfully admire and jealously despise anybody I know that actually gets something published. Apparently it's a really really good book too, which shoots up my admiration even further, and sends my covetous black heart even lower. I can't wait to read it.

The World Is Full Of Tools

So, what with the fact that I have uploaded all of my pictures from Istanbul, Cappadocia, and my tour of the South Aegean region, and typed in descriptions of each one, not to mention the other day's post and now this one, you might think I seem to have more time on my hands than a traveller should. Well, I'm back in Istanbul with a few days to kill, and while I'm still making it out there everyday, I have seen most of the city, and so I'm taking advantage of the good internet and downtime to catch up on a bunch of stuff.
One thing I've noticed online in the last few days is an upsurge in the scientific community against religion, starting with a really thoughtful post over at Cosmic Varience, and then today an article on NY Times which I just finished reading and is the cause of this out-of-travel rant.
Of course, we've been hearing alot of this noise from Richard Dawkins recently since the publiction of his book, but it seems to be stepping up a notch in the rest of science-land as well.
In the post on CV, Natalie Angier basically states her disatisfaction with scientists who wail about the whole Darwin/Creationism controversy, yet fail to step up to the plate against the scientifically ludricrous Virgin Birth. She feels that it's Science's duty to tackle all forms of such preposterous false beliefs. Have some balls, labcoats! Put Occam's Razor on Mary and see what theory you can dredge up there!
Then today, the NY Times article discussed a forum that occured earlier this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., where a bunch of scientists brought out the idea of spearheading a movement to Evangelize science against religion. There were differing views among the scientists attending, with Dawkins and like-minded god-haters basically wanting to have Christian Concentration Camps along with Bible, Koran, and Book of Mormon burnings laughing all the way, while other more even-keeled scientists wish to press forward with the age old technique of testing hypothesis, re-testing, then showing the world proof of the veracity of science with cool toys like paved roads, penicillin, rubber gloves, and home theatre systems, and eventually staging a remake of the 'ol Baal vs. God play, where Elijah (I think it's Elijah, someone else will have to fact check for me 'cause I'm on a roll!) mocks the Baal worshippers and says ok, if Baal is so great, tell him to make it rain! So they pray to Baal and weep and gnash and of course no rain comes. Then Elijah says, "Yo! Yahweh! Bring on the water!" And it dumps buckets of water and the Baal freaks freak out, only this time the scientists will be all like, okay God and Allah freaks, you guys pray to your grand high poo-bahs for a better video digital compression format than DVD, and we'll apply our science, and see who gets one first.
The reason behind all of this recent push for science to begin a more active fight against religion is, of course, due to the recent outbreak of the evils which religion has caused in the world, not to mention the very many evils caused by religion in the past. People like Dawkins think that if religion were done away with, the world would go all shiny and everybody would have spacecars and candy and live for a hundred years.
Here's my problem with all of that. Now, I am a great believer in science. I will agree with Dawkins insofar that if you're not, you're retarded because even the Amish need to churn butter, a very scientifically advanced dairy farm achievement. Well okay, it was advanced several hundred years ago or whatever, but it's still science. If you really believe that science is evil, go live in Cappadocia, but away from the main population of more advanced cave-dwellers, please.
The problem is, that in reality it is NOT religion which causes the larger of the world's evils. Oh sure, witch burnings, being afraid to sail off the edge of the flat Earth until thousands of years after the Greeks already knew the world was a ball, yeah. Totally religion. But the real problem isn't religion. Religions generally ask their followers to be nice to each other, it's just that their followers usually miss the point. "Each other" means, you know, everybody in the world, not this thing where it's taken as only your fellow Sunni muslims, and kill all the rest. The problem is people. People screw up religion, starting with people who only want to use religion as a means to power. The catholic church probably needs to be abolished. I despise the catholic church. Not because I hate god, but because the catholic church hates God; they've totally obliviated everything that Jesus had to say about real spirituality. They are the Pharisees reborn.
I'm afraid that getting rid of religion, much as Jesus abolished the old rules of Judaism, and Mohammed made a few addendums, and then so did Joseph Smith... well you see my point. There will rise up a science cult and people will still kill each other for scientific heresies. As long as there are people in the world who desire power over other people, there will be a way for them to get it, and if not religion, than something else. Religion is a tool, just like Science or Democracy or Communism. They all sound good at the beginning, but they can be used however the user wants. It's a baser human nature to be very very nasty to other humans in order to get to what they want.
I'm not saying that science shouldn't shed some light on some of mankind's fuzzier notions... Evolution is, I'm afraid, a fact, and I think it's important to teach it over Creationism... it's an old argument, but Evolution doesn't rule out God. I don't think that Science can or ever will. Science is the greatest, most effective tool we've ever come up with for understanding nature, but to a spiritual person, God is above and beyond the reach of nature. God's tool to make the universe could easily be Evolution.
But a war against religion is sort of self-defeating. What science really needs to concentrate on is George Bush's brain, and how it got that way. Also the Pope's. Rush Limbaugh's. Osama what's-his-face's. Michael Moore's. And Richard Dawkins'. And how to weed this us vs. them mentality out of the human race, you know? Make sure everybody gets up above that spinal cord thinking thing which Einstein pointed out as our main problem these days. Or at least make the Us, smart, creative, compassionate people, and the Them, power mad, intolerant, blind  freaks. Weed 'em out, yo.

Sermon On The Mount Of Space Tourism And Exploration

Something that really bothers me is when I hear otherwise-intelligent people making denigrating jokes about the idea of Space Exploration, or in the particular instance that has set me off on writing today’s rant, Space Tourism. Now I don’t actually know if Lewis Black can be safely bedded in the intelligence camp or not; he seems a little too coked out or something to retain much hold on his objectivity, but he is a regular on John Stewart’s show, and you have to respect that. I was watching the Daily Show yesterday, here on one of the two big plasma TVs which they have in the lobby of Freedom Rest. Incidentally, the mini-palace compound that is Freedom Rest is just a few blocks down from Saddam’s Presidential Palace (now the US Embassy), and served at one time as an Officer’s clubhouse for the former Iraqi President’s more favoured staff. Now my friends Darren and Steve, who were awesome enough to let me stay here until I can get out of country, run the place and oversee a team of people dedicated to making sure that soldiers here on R&R have fun. There’s a guy here whose job it is to fill up water balloons. I think I’ve mentioned that one before. The first time I came over here to visit a while back, Darren was refereeing a Sumo Suit match… that’s pretty much what it sounds like, where the contestants wear these really large padded suits which resemble sumo wrestler blubber and attempt to roll each other around the mat. Now as cool as all that is, let’s change the subject and talk about what a waste of money space adventuring is. (Yes, in case you missed it, there was definitely some snark in that last sentence. The Government spends a lot on Morale, Welfare, and Recreation programs for soldiers… which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but come on, it produces a resume which claims ‘water balloon filling’ as job experience?! Anyway, I won’t even get into the overall waste of money that is the war in Iraq; I think we’re all on the same page as far as that goes at this point.)
Anyway, Mr. Black was making fun of Anousheh Ansari, who returned recently from her 8 day sojourn aboard the International Space Station, saying that the reason she spent the $20 million for the experience was so that she could basically yell nyah nyah at the world’s poor from really high up. It was funnier the way he said it, I suppose, but as I’ve already said that sort of narrow minded joke telling irks me. I understand the fact that a lot of people consider Space Exploration, and more importantly the money that Space Exploration costs, a huge waste. I understand the fact, but not the why. Miss Ansari is an Iranian-American, and was the main sponsor of the Ansari X-prize. A real hero, as far as I’m concerned. The Ansari X-prize was an award of $10 million to the first non-government organization that could build a reusable space craft; it had to be launched and reach an altitude of 100 kilometers, the true boundary of space, twice within two weeks. The X-Prize has done more to spur competition in the private sector for reaching space than anything before or since, and has directly led to the possibility of affordable space flight for those of us who were too dumb in high school to understand that you had to get really really good grades to become an astronaut. With cheap spaceflight, a whole new frontier will open for the world, and the possibilities are awe-inspiring. I honestly believe that, for my (hypothetical) grandchildren to survive, we as a species have to keep moving forward. In a world where large sums of money are spent on infinitely more questionable purposes, it seems like the relatively small amount of money spent on furthering our understanding of the Universe should be beyond ridicule. It is, after all, merely a continuation of the greatest endeavour of the human race. Without exploration, we are nothing, and further, when man is brave enough to push at his boundaries and go where few have gone, invariably he comes back with knowledge that can change the face of what we thought we knew about the world.
Something I hear or read about a lot as an argument against spending money in Space is that the world has too many problems, more attention should be focused on poverty and yadda yadda. All this is true, but why start with bashing Space? There are so many other wastes of money and resources going on, that Space Exploration is a very small fraction of where the world’s money is going, and it has such tremendous possibilities. Compared to other wasteful government spending, for instance, space funding, which usually takes up less than 0.5% of the US Government budget, doesn’t even make the Heritage Foundation's top ten list of wasteful spending! And as far as someone like Miss Ansari spending a cool $20 mil on her lifetime dream goes, well, to hell with Lewis Black. I wonder if he, or even John Stewart, spends the same percentage of their worth on charities that she does? I mean, she was on the board of directors for the Make-A-Wish foundation, for god’s sake! It doesn’t make sense to make a joke at her expense in that manner. Even if you believe that she, or people like her, are morally bankrupt for spending that kind of money on something that you consider frivolous, you have to understand that for those who dream of a better future, Space is the catalyst that can make it all happen, the dream of man come true. It’s the highest ideal worth spending on, certainly more worthy than much of the other 99.5%! Well, that's an opinion, not a fact, but go take a look at that list and tell me that funding for space programs should be cut before any other single thing on it.
By the way, I’ve been trying really hard not to use Star Trek phrases here, (Final Frontier, etc.)  because I hate that anybody with an enthusiasm for space exploration is often lumped in with the Trekkies… I actually rather despise Star Trek. It’s just another easy joke for those wishing to minimize the awesomeness of the whole endeavour. Irony, sarcasm and wit are fine tools, but not when they are misdirected at the dreams of mankind. Save them for simian Presidents and pig-headed Secretaries of Defense and State. Speaking of which, don’t you think it’s rather amazing that Bush is getting impatient with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki? That takes a lot of chutzpah, even for him. Bush illegally invades Iraq, his boy Bremer disintegrates the Iraqi army, they have absolutely no discernable plan for running the country, and everything goes to hell over a period of three years, so they throw up this poor guy al-Maliki and a few months later are trying to shift the responsibility for all of the chaos to him. They are getting impatient with him for not cleaning up their mess quickly enough, a mess which to all appearances is beyond fixing. I think that someone just needs to punch the man in the face, seriously. It’s way overdue.

Someday, You'll Be Able To Pull The Green Zone's Finger On Smell TV

The wait is over! Smell-o-vision is here at last! I can't wait to get one. The sad truth is, of course, that no matter how noble the ideals behind wanting to make audio/visual and nasal sensations into a collaborative "learning" tool, much like what they said about TV in the first place back in the day, I guarantee that when I pick up my first Stinky Set at Smell-o-Visions R Us, the first thing I'll be sniffing is a commercial for McDonalds. You think advertising is pervasive now? Just wait until you are subjected to ads for awesome fatty foods with smellomercials! You'll be able to taste the greasy goodness all day long, and won't be able to rest until you buy what they're smelling you. Plus, those geeks in high school are going to have to change all of their door plates to say AVN Club! At least the media can finally give a positive spin to the meaning of Snuff Films. The world is changing too fast for me... I was just getting used to this whole internet fad, and now this. Minority Report didn't predict the half of it. But seriously, the day I walk down the street, and billboards are doing retina scans on passers-by to determine how to tailor their ads based on their personal consumer profiles, and I then have to not only be subjected to a bright, noisy, obnoxious ad for a quarter pounder with cheese, but also have a squirt of burger perfume micturated in my nasal direction, I'm stabbing myself in the brain with a coffee spoon.
Well, I'm getting off-topic, I know. I should be sticking to writing about life working for a corrupt company in the Interzone. Incidentally, I looked up International Zone on Wikipedia, only to discover that, even though it officially had it's nomenclature changed to International Zone in 2004, due to the stubbornness of people and their cliquey lingo it is slowly being reverted to Green Zone. Which makes me feel like we've missed a great opportunity... I always call it the Interzone, a portmanteau coined by William Burroughs in his novel 'Naked Lunch'. Interzone was his drug-induced alternate universe version of Tangiers, Morocco, which was in fact an International Zone at the time. Interzone describes the madness and paranoia of this place infinitely better than dumb 'ol Green Zone does. A different kind of paranoia, to be sure, but paranoia nonetheless. Ah well, I will continue in calling it Interzone, though I be shut from "Green Zone" high society for my crime.
I don't have much news, unfortunately, about the closedown of my camp. It's taking a depressingly long amount of time to get moving, and we only have about 12 days left! Plus, while we have begun this sort of low-level disconnecting of the caravans from their foundations, (unhooking power and water lines, loosening the bolts, etc. etc.) the guys back in the States are still trying to appeal our eviction... It's really very upsetting. I am bored all to hell with this whole thing and am really counting on getting my ass tossed out of this place on the 26th. If they actually manage to stave off the inevitable, I'm going to scream. It doesn't matter; I'm still leaving, it's just that getting evicted will be a nice clean break and I don't have to feel bad about abandoned responsibilities, whereas this slow process of GBG having a death grip on the pathetic life they have left is really eating away at my soul, such as it is.

Assuming Does Not Only Make A You-Know-What Out Of U And Me, But It Also Winds Up Retarding My Brain If I... Pizza Party Pizza Party!!!

All the rumors are true; what they say about assumption, I mean. It makes an ass out of me... for example, take broccoli. I've thought for years, probably because some random friend or other whose every word I didn't automatically assume was bull-pucky said it over lunch or something, that broccoli was engineered in a lab in the 50s. You know, like a cross between cauliflower, the mustard plant, and I don't know, asparagus or some odd green thing. A real frankenveggie. So I look it up on Wikipedia, and it was apparently around in Roman Empire times. True, it came about because of man's artificial selection for the suppression of flower development in the wild mustard plant, but not by some Dexter in some agro-freakshow lab. Just the usual old farm-guy way of doing things, like breeding milk-giving prarie dogs into cows or whatever. (Okay that was a joke... prarie dogs, heh. Everyone knows that cows really were bred from whales and horses!)
Now, you might think that I am leading into something, that I have a point about dirty rotten jerks who assume things about you without checking out Wikipedia first, but I don't. I am really quite astonished about the whole broccoli kafuffle. Crazy! But, you know, this is still a cautionary tale... it actually makes me wonder if I should be putting so much faith into Wikipedia... I'm just assuming that it has all of it's Brassica Oleracea facts straight... Wikipedia is, after all, an open source encyclopedia. Anyone can type in whatever they want for any entry... that's part of it's strength and also a weakness, obviously. For instance, my former employer has his own Wikipedia page, and when I stumbled on it last night, I tested the whole open source thing by adding a paragraph on to his biography stating that, even though he is close to 70 years old, he has the fine youthful appearance and vigor of a much younger man of, say, 58 or so, and that the secret to his youthful mien was his little known and never discussed habit of raiding abortion clinic garbage bins and sucking the juice right out of whatever's left, only sometimes supplementing his diet with shark babies. I was going to tack on a few choice tidbits of his alleged sexual harassment of certain former employees, but I decided to forgo that particular mischevious, well, evil character defamation.
Anyway, I clicked save, reloaded the page, and there it was! Muah hah hah ha ha!!!! Man that was awesome. Well, of course after ten minutes or so I went back and deleted it, because the man has enough problems, and so do I. I decided to bow out of that potential lawsuit. And anyway I was simply testing the wiki-water. I mean, it would have been caught by a mediator, or whatever they call them, sooner or later and deleted because I was unable to provide a reputable resource to back up my claim, but who knows how long it would have sat there before it got caught! I wanted to test that too, actually, but I'm not sure what kind of trouble that would get me in, and anyway it's just not nice. But dude, it was frikken funny. You shoulda been there, yo! Har har.
I am frightfully, painfully emotionally retarded, I know it.

I Am The Glitter In The Glue. Koo Koo Katchoo.

Last week they confirmed the existence of Dark Matter! So it is official: You and I and everything that is made of ordinary matter are the glitter in the glue that binds the universe together. Without Dark Matter, which comprises about %25 of the total energy of the universe, our Galaxies, suns and planets would never have been able to congeal long enough to cool down and allow worms, religious fundamentalists, and humans to exist. Ordinary matter, which fundies need in order to bash their beliefs into other people's brains, comprises only about %5 of the total energy of the universe. In other words, you need the extra gravity which Dark Matter provides in order to keep the matter with which we are more familiar orbiting itself, from galaxies in a super-cluster (though I'm not sure that what they are actually doing can be called orbiting... they are condensed into superstructure filaments, however), suns orbiting the galactic center in a whirlpool spiral, to our 4 inner rocky, 4 gas, and 3 dwarf planets orbiting Sol. Previously, there were scientists who tried to explain the fact that matter wasn't flying about all willy-nilly in the universe by questioning their current understanding of gravity, and getting all crazy and trying to prove that gravity was a different animal on larger cosmic scales than it is here in the tiny now. Well, that's done with, for the moment. Of course, there is still that pesky other %70 of the energy of the universe out there milling about all unlabelled... It's been catalogued as Dark Energy at the moment, but they still have to find some direct evidence of it. Maybe when they find some, they could call it 'The Force'. That would be sweet.
Yeah, I know. I seem to be getting a bit off topic, lately. After all, all I really know about real science is what Carl Sagan taught me. You know, the popular stuff. I've been sitting here for months, feeling pretty accomplished because I was stupid enough to spend three years of my life somewhere I don't belong and making local friends and broadening my horizons, and shrinking the world around me. But when I wind up on a real science blog, and then start following links around and find this whole ring of them, it makes me feel lost in a big universe again and now I want to go back to school and learn what they know so that I can really understand what's going on around me. I've actually been wanting to write about Dark Matter all week, but couldn't figure out a way to make it fit in with the rest of the posts on my playground. Finally, I realized that Dark Matter concerns us all, and I need no excuse to go all rapturous on it.
So okay, what is Dark Matter? Well, it's not just gas and rocks that don't reflect light, and it's not a soul-sucking gob of energy like a Black Hole... it's not even quite the same as Anti-Matter, apparently. It's just kind of there, and somewhat out of phase with our matter. They proved it's existence simply by observing the aftermath of colliding Galaxy clusters... the Dark Matter acted rather like the Queen of England... gliding unaffected and unseeing through the cacophony of the masses of common matter with a fake smile and little wave, yet all eyes watch her depart. If you were watching this scene from two thousand feet above, you would know she was there by watching the masses move around her, not by being able to actually see her.
Of course, none of this yet explains what Dark Matter is... That's because they still haven't reached up and grabbed any so far. It's been observed indirectly, and they've proven it's effect on matter, which is gravitational only, but they haven't got a handful of it yet. So the poets and the fundies are still free to dream, theorize, and demonize, but science marches on! The world is round, my friends, and we are of it, not the rightful masters of it. We are not at the center of anything, except ourselves, and the more we understand about nature, the more mankind's preconceived notions shrink into the background cosmic noise.

Welcome, Little Sol Brothers & Sisters!

I was all ready to title this entry 'Astronomers Are Stupid', because of Pluto's demotion. But when I thought about it, I decided that I don't really care if it's called a planet, a dwarf planet, the first "plutonian", or a proto trans-Neptunian ice gob. Actually, now I think about it even more, and realize that the people who are depressed that the solar system just got smaller don't really understand the laws of physics. Einstein's first implied law of E=MC² says that re-classifying the scientific nomenclature of something neither creates nor destroys matter. Therefore, by implication only, of course, one can deduce that Pluto has in fact not gone anywhere. In actual point of fact, this whole thing just makes the solar system even more interesting! Now we have a whole new breed of Sol brothers (and sisters)! Dwarf planets! How cool is that? And instead of just one, we have 3 of 'em! So, instead of losing a planet, we gained 3 dwarfs. Pluto, Ceres, and Xena, and Xena is way hot, I'm told. Good in a fight, too. Looks great in a metal bikini. Okay enough of that.
Also, something that many people might not be aware of, but there may be a good reason why the abrupt turnaround on Pluto. You see, the assembly where the International Astronomical Union decided to vote on Pluto was held in Prague, and as anybody that has been there may know, in Prague, absinthe is legal! Until the last 5 years or so, absinthe was only legal in like 3 countries, and the Czech Republic was one of them, so they have a booming absinthe industry. Absinthe, as anyone knows, really gets the creative juices flowing... Hemingway, Van Gough... it also makes you stupid-crazy in the long term, but you never get something for nothing, you know. There's that pesky science again... conservation of matter and all that. Anyway I digress.
So these Astronomers were all hanging out, getting wasted on absinthe. And although they all showed up with the intention of voting to make Pluto, Ceres, and Xena into planets, they instead got all absinthed up and fidgety, and some tipsy fellow said "Whassat? Kepler wasn' no dwarf intellect you scoundrel! He wuzza planetary motion genius! Tycho Brae was a hack!" And then the smart drunk guy next to him said, "Huzzah! Wot? Dwarf planet!? Tha's fergin' brilliant, is wot that is! In'nit?!" And the rest is history.
If you've had absinthe before, you will understand. Hopefully by the time these guys get home, they'll all still have ears.