True Cosmology

November 1, 2021 9:53pm

A superficial awareness of red-shift in astronomy – caused by increasing recessional velocity of distant objects – leads many to the mistaken belief that the big bang was equivalent to a bomb exploding in empty space, accelerating galaxies away from a central point. In reality, space itself is expanding so it is inaccurate to say that objects are accelerating through “unoccupied” space! No, it is the very space itself that is expanding and this feature of cosmology permits a violation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity; you see, objects cannot exceed the speed of light but space has no such constraint, so the universe can expand at some multiple of light-speed which means it may be much larger than the “observable ” universe. Note that we observe objects and not space!

We say the universe is about 13 billion years old. Cosmologists believe the observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter and they estimate that the actual size is 250 times larger – or SEVEN TRILLION lightyears in diameter.

Hamlet’s quote fits perfectly: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” – William Shakespeare

Indeed, who knows what devils and Gods live at the far frontiers of the universe?

Huxley’s New World

November 2, 2021 9:45am

I just read this article on ZeroHedge and wanted to link it for posterity. It lists many of the extreme views of some leading minds and may provide a roadmap that our “elites” have adopted for the future of mankind.

Who Will Be Brave in Huxley’s New World? — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.org)

Huxley’s New World, Part 2: The War On Science | ZeroHedge

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”  – Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”

Another article about the impact of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on our culture contained a comment referencing Gramsci who I ran across just days ago (interesting how once you become aware of a word, concept, or ideology, you begin to see it everywhere!) anyway, in short Gramsci was a Marxist who saw the failures and while in an Italian prison for opposing Mussolini, he spent nine years describing how Marxists can achieve their goals by controlling culture. Carrot or stick….no need for a Gulag when you can eviscerate tradition/morality and promise…..what? escape from responsibility?

Gramsci is considered a seminal thinker and I wonder if that questionable quote attributed to Khrushchev about the US falling into the Communist’s hands like over-ripe fruit was influenced by his (Gramsci’s) ideas?

Here’s an introduction to Gramsci’s Grand Plan

The Road to Madness

November 5, 2021 12:03am

Weathered and twisted in the dry winds of fate, we change in ways we never anticipated. The life I now lead is nothing like the one I expected when I was 18. The almost total rejection of all I once held sacred sometimes shocks me, but I cannot be otherwise, I can no longer believe. I cannot live on faith alone, so I am left to wander a grim landscape with no hope. I see others wandering and believe them to be the same lost souls I see in my own eyes. It is all a done deal; our destiny is inevitable and to truly grasp that truth is to take another step on the road to madness.

The Unreality of Reality

November 7, 2021 5:49pm

I feel this total alienation even when doing the most mundane activities. I can’t believe that the scenes I see around me are real. This nagging perception is a constant companion. I sometimes find myself whispering, “None of this is real.”

But I watch the people around me in a restaurant eating, talking, watching football on TV and I realize that in this exact instant, in this exact location in the universe, a few self-aware beings are interacting and I am one of them and the freaking impossibility of this improbable scene takes hold of me and I am almost overwhelmed by the infinitesimally small chance that this “reality” could even occur. Then, I think of the thousands of years of human history, the generations of humans who have gone before us – countless lives, each a variation on a theme, each with dreams, passions, and disappointments and I am overcome with disbelief. How could any of this be true…and yet the humans go on about their lives as if they can’t see the miracle, the horrors all around.

Emotions, Supercontinents, the Future

November 13, 2021 10:57pm

Let us now consider the primary human emotions and the extent to which we have experienced them. It is said that fear is stronger than love and that a leader can be more sure of fear than love. On a scale of zero to ten, how much have you loved or been loved, how much have you feared or been feared? What about hate, jealousy, envy, anxiety, contentment, joy, sadness, loyalty pride, guilt, despair, hopelessness, determination? There are many theories of emotion and many lists of these most human of behaviors but all are the products of physiological reactions to our environment. In the end, chemicals are responsible for every emotion a human may experience….or so say the materialists.

Now, if you assigned your number to each emotion to show how much you have experienced it, would you conclude that you have tasted your fill of life’s extremes or have you only sipped a few common vintages?

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Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The early molten planet cooled enough after about a half-billion years to form a crust and oceans. There was constant volcanic activity, frequent meteorite and asteroid collisions, and violent upheavals of the crust. Whole mountain ranges rose and disappeared. Oceans rushed in to fill gaps when land masses split – and then they disappeared when these early continents collided again. Supercontinents Kenorland, Atlantica, Columbia, Rodinia, Pannotia, Gondwana, and Pangaea, each existed for millions upon millions of years ….and each disappeared again. Then about 50 million years ago, we begin to recognize at least Africa, and the Americas. Ten million years ago, Eurasia and Australia had adopted their present shapes and we easily see the entire world map that we have used since the 1500’s. But it wasn’t until the space age that we had photographs of the Earth to confirm and refine our maps.

Now the continents continue to shift, volcanoes and earthquakes change the surface yearly, and we still run the risk of a major asteroid strike once again altering the present course of life….or ending it entirely. Unfortunately, we live with uncertainty about the ultimate fate of humankind but on a long enough timeline….well, it just doesn’t look good for us.

RIP Graeme Edge

March 30, 1941-November 11, 2021

Last member of the original Moody Blues.

My favorite Edge poem opened  THE DREAM on the album
On the Threshold of a Dream and reads:

When the white eagle of the North is flying overhead,
And the browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter dead,
Remember then the summer birds with wings of fire flaming,
Come to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying,
As new life will come from death.

Love will come at leisure,
Love of love, love of life and giving without measure,
Gives in return a wondrous yearn for promise almost seen,
Live hand in hand and together we’ll stand,
On the threshold of a dream. – Graeme Edge

Delayed Gratification

November 18, 2021 12:14am

If you know exactly what you seek, your standards are high, and nothing less is acceptable, you are on a lonely road. Walk as far as you will. No one will join you and no one will care that you chose your path. Not one in a thousand is willing to make the same sacrifice…..and in the end, you will give up and take what life offers just like everyone else.

The Foundations of the Earth

November 23, 2021 10:33am

When an ice crystal begins to grow, how does it maintain symmetry? The distance across the crystal (snowflake) is great in molecular terms, yet the crystal seems to have a “blueprint” guiding its formation. What encourages such symmetry?

I ran across this question while watching a presentation on some alternate interpretations of physics… most of it was debatable at best but the crystal question was interesting. Other aspects – not so much. The presenters got into the “water memory” hoax – which is interesting but ultimately unreplicated. This suggests to me that even prominent scientists like Luc Montagnier (Nobel Laureate for work in HIV) want so much to find some supernatural / spiritual underpinning for our reality that they see what they want to see. And scientific method suffers.

No, if you want to have faith in God (or whatever you choose to call your “purpose”) then accept the uncertainty you choose and just believe – because you must.

Now, something here reminded me of God speaking to Job from the whirlwind in Job 38. God said, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge. Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the Earth? declare if thou hast understanding.”

And then God proceeds to list the miracles of the universe, the questions of consciousness, and the hubris of mankind. Interestingly, in light of the earlier “crystal question”, God even asks Job, “hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?”

Perhaps God is, even now, instructing the likes of Hawking, Dirac, and Schrödinger in the final Academy of his creation.

Western Sky

November 28, 2021 12:36am

At dusk I walk the back field and pause to observe the western sky. The clouds, which appear stationary, are slowly moving eastward but this is only apparent after I stand perfectly still for several minutes. Sometimes observation requires patience. To SEE you must quiet your thoughts and wait. Then the truth around you becomes visible.

Once I noticed the slow progress of the clouds, I could see that the whole sky was changing over time and the orange steaks of sunset were disappearing from view.

I questioned whether someone watching me would wonder at the dark figure staring into the western sky and occasionally glancing directly overhead at the thin clouds. Who looks so long at the sky? Only the simple-minded who perhaps see more than others?

I walked on as a darker dusk descended.

Knut Hamsun

November 28, 2021 10:16am

Just stumbled upon Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian writer who won the 1920 Noble prize in literature for his work “Growth of the Soil.” Interestingly, he was a Nazi sympathizer, an avowed racist, and a hater of both England and the US. Yikes!

He was an early craftsman of stream-of-consciousness techniques (Dorothy Richarson hated the term SOC) and Hamsun declared that writers should describe “the whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow.” Beautiful! This statement suggests the reverse engineering of clichès to arrive at a new perspective,