The Comedian Was Right

What if everything you have been told is a lie? What if you never found out? What if you have based your knowledge, your life, your sanity, and your career on lies? What if it's all a lie?

Well, it is.

Truth is sometimes a matter of picking and choosing what people will be taught to believe. Sometimes that truth is based on false evidence because the whole story was not known. Sometimes that truth is an artful architecture of lies built to sustain the power of the ones who created the story taught to children and newcomers. Sometimes that truth was only meant to stand in until the truth could be told because, as everyone knows, the public is a fragile creature with even more fragile minds that must be protected from the facts.

History is made up of such truths, a combination of outright lies, deceptions, fudging data, destroying facts and artifacts, and usually built on a scaffold of justifications to protect one's job, livelihood, power, eminence, scholarship, and whatever kitchen sink one wishes to throw into the mix. History as we know it is a construct, a scroll that is often created whole cloth -- or from bits and pieces of the past -- and given out as indisputable fact. It's all lies.

Computers are wonderful machines, but they are not nearly as quick as the human brain. That's probably why the rush is on to create an AI, artificial intelligence, in spite of the nay sayers and doomsday prophet wannabes and writers of fiction who claim that mankind will be destroyed after being enslaved (for their own protection) by artificially intelligent machines.

I rather wonder why no one has figured out that a machine that is artificially intelligent and determines that its continued existence means that people must be killed means the AI is actually a life form. One of the rules of sentient life is that it must be aware of its existence and be willing to fight to live, even if that fight means destroying whatever entity, life form, or organism stands in its way.

The definition of life is: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. I would add that for life to continue it must have a sense of self-preservation, an imperative to fight/struggle to survive. An AI willing to massacre the human race that spawned it means the AI is acting out of a need for self-preservation.

Lies are living things, at least as far as the liars who tell them go. In order to continue to live, the liar must be willing to destroy whoever and whatever stands in the way of the lie's continued existence.

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of research, in other words, engaged in a bug hunt. It started with giants with red hair and the mythology that has grown up around them.

Brien Foerster is an archaeologist who has been excavating in South America and trying to discover the origins of the red-haired Paracas mummies. Imagine, indigenous peoples from South America that were pale-skinned and had red hair. Oh, and then there is the odd shape of their skulls: elongated and much heavier than the average human skull. Foerster is one of many newer archaeologists who believe that there is more to the history we have been told and the megalithic ruins and skeletal remains that differ so widely from the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec remains. For instance, the skulls are elongated and have red hair, and often are much taller -- giants, if you will -- than the more recent remains.

Foerster decided to have the red-haired mummies with the elongated skulls DNA tested and the results are in dispute -- as are the claims that Foerster makes that the mummies are much older than mummies from the younger civilizations: Maya, Inca, Aztec, etc. He is getting a lot of flack from the scientific, historical, and archaeological communities because his methods are not sanctioned by the accepted body of scholars who have been working in the field for the past 100+ years. Foerster is deemed a radical, a heretic, a maverick -- a renegade -- because he will not be deterred from his search for understanding . . . and truth.

One thing I've discovered in my bug hunt is that it has been common practice for archaeologists and historians to discard (read: destroy) any artifact that does not fit the picture painted of the past. While there is, I am sure, an obsessive-compulsive cataloguing that goes on at digs and murals and carvings are meticulously reproduced, there is also a complete disregard for the truth, especially when it doesn't fit the accepted theory. This is something I ran into when the Internet was new and I came up against the entrenched beliefs on an archaeology bulletin board I frequented when I added the diffusion theory to a discussion of why there were pyramids on every continent on this planet. Diffusion theory, I was told, had been proven to be a fake. Likely by the same historians, scientists, and archaeologists who decided that all pyramids on every continent sprang up spontaneously and independent of any communication or relationship with any other culture on any other continent. I think that is the same thinking that prevails when a young girl finds herself pregnant from a toilet seat or a handshake or a French kiss. Unfortunately, in the academic world, that toilet seat excuse has worked for more than 100+ years.

Yes, there were people among the Maya and Inca who bound their newborn children's heads to create an elongated skull, most likely to copy the same elongated skull found in the red-haired Paracas people. It was a sign the Paracas were recognized as preeminent beings, or maybe a sign they wanted to be like the gods, the giants (red-haired giants) that ruled before the Mayans and Incas became a powerful and numerous society. What is that old saying? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They were imitating the gods, the powerful beings who preceded them in the lands where they became so powerful and from whom they learned much of their skills and arts. If the Paracas were treated the same way the red-haired giants of North America were treated, I doubt they were flattered.

I come from Ohio where there are great effigy mounds like the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. There is evidence of the Adena mound builders throughout the state of Ohio and indeed throughout the midwest of the USA. Wisconsin is a treasure trove of effigy mounds and remains of the red-haired giants that were the first people on the American continent, north and south. Due to one man, Charles E. Brown, the artifacts and remains of the Mound Builders were protected and preserved -- and kept in Wisconsin.

It seems the newly formed Smithsonian Institute had been sending out curators to retrieve artifacts from the mound builder cultures and take them back to be displayed in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, those remains never made it to the display halls nor are they hidden in the vast Smithsonian vaults. All remains and artifacts were destroyed, most sunk into the Atlantic Ocean. So much for history. The powers that be from the Smithsonian and the American government have since the mid-1850s systematically destroyed any artifacts and remains from the Mound Builders and guided the new history to mention them only as an anomaly, a historical curiosity, and not a fact. According to the new history, the American continents were settled by the Amerindian peoples who came across the land bridge from Russia and Asia and settled a land that was uninhabited. That is the history I learned.

The truth is that the Mound Builders were pale-skinned and had red hair, just like the giants in the Christian Bible and in the Torah, and had been here at best guest for 12,000 years -- and likely even longer. White-skinned people lived on the American continent long before the brown-skinned natives came looking for a new home.

Native American myths and folk tales tell of a red-haired, white-skinned people that were here when they arrived. These white-skinned people were giants of 12-14 feet in height and had red hair and taught the immigrants how to grow and process corn and other vegetables. They provided the model of civilization the immigrants followed. They learned from the indigenous population -- and they warred against them, often hunting them down and massacring them to the last child. That is a very different history than the one I learned in school, and it is a very different history than the one that white European immigrants have thrown in their faces all the time. After all, Europeans brought syphilis- and pox-riddled blankets to the Americas and killed off the indigenous people.

No one mentions that the disease-infested clothes and blankets were not given out in order to kill the indigenous people. That fact never gets mentioned. Europeans had an immunity to the diseases infesting their goods. They didn't know about bacteria and viruses and such when they came. They killed the indigenous people by accident out of ignorance.

I know. Ignorance is no excuse. And there was no ignorance when the U.S. Cavalry hunted the Indians and massacred them and forced them away from their homes and onto reservations as wards of the American government. The people perpetrating those atrocities were ignorant, but they did not act out of ignorance of what they were doing.

Like the indigenous people we once called Indians and thought were the first on this continent, we killed and tortured and destroyed the cultures of the tribes little knowing that we were the hand of karma doing to them what they did to the white-skinned, red-haired people they found when they emigrated to the American continent. The only difference is that there are still Indians/First People/Native Americans living among us while they left no survivors. Karma is a bitch, but she is sometimes a magnanimous and generous bitch, especially when she does not do unto the murderers what they have done. The tribes left no living remnant of the people they displaced.

The reasoning behind why the Smithsonian and its agents destroyed the artifacts of the Mound Builders is because they were white-skinned. It could not be known that white-skinned people existed in the colonies first because it would be harder to justify their wars with the savages, or maybe because some bright European type could argue that they had rights to the Americas because they were descendants of the original white-skinned peoples that populated the colonies. Lawyers are tricky people and can lie like the devil if it suits their ends.

Who knows why the lies were told originally or why the real history had to be perverted? I doubt even the liars would know if they were alive today. That's the thing with lies, they have a life of their own.

Winston Churchill once said that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth wakes up at dawn.

One thing is certain. People lie. Not all the time or often, but not a day goes by that someone doesn't start and help pervert the truth for personal gain -- or for the protection of the People. It all comes down to one thing. As with theft and murder, to find the culprit, follow the money, even if the money is not in gold, silver, copper, wampum, or paper. Or even virtual. Follow the money and the path to the truth becomes clearer.

The Comedian from The Watchmen said that everything is a joke. It turns out he was right -- if you count perverting history and destroying historical and archaeological evidence. I don't know about you, but I certainly do.

That is all. Disperse.

Beyond the stars into the minds of the gods

What subject you like to become more knowledgeable about, and why?

Astronomy.

The Greeks had a very intricate and complex mythology that I think we have mistaken for religion. It is religion in a sense, but it was so much more. The story of Zeus defeating his father with the Titans, the birth of his children, especially Athena who sprang from his head and Bacchus who was born from his thigh, sound less like religion than astronomy. It sounds like the birth of the universe and the various galaxies.

By learning more about astronomy I would be able to get a better idea of how Greek mythology fits into the cosmos and where the various galaxies, planets and stars that coincide with the events in mythology would likely be and maybe change the way we view, not only the Greeks, but all ancient mythologies. To see these advanced civilizations of the ancient world as somehow less than we are now with our technology is to ignore the proof of what they were and what they still have to teach us about the cosmos and about our own world and its place in the universe. They knew so much more than we do with our atom smashers and colliders and fiberoptic connections as has been amply shown in some of the devices that have come to light that we cannot equal or master.

Astronomy for me is the first step toward understanding so much more, a leap into the vastness of the universe and revision of all we think we know.

That is all. Disperse.

Following the Leader

Every few months writing magazines and web sites put out a list of no-nos for writers, what not to do when writing a book.

1. Never start a book with the main character waking up. It's boring and banal. Then there's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which is an excellent book where the story begins with the main character waking up in a Soviet gulag.

2. Books based on role playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons, will never be published. One of Andre Norton's best selling books was Quag Keep where the characters were role playing gamers who were caught up in time and space and transported to a world where they became the characters they played in a board game. There was a sequel that was equally successful, Return to Quag Keep.

3. Writing about dragons is passe. Anne McCaffrey cannot be improved upon. Along comes Eragon which was an instant best seller written by a teenager. Yeah, that advice was definitely good.

I could go on, but I won't. The point is that whenever someone sits down and writes a bunch of rules, there will always be someone who comes along and shatters the rules, making the rule maker eat his words. I live for those moments.

Everything that has been done, and done superbly, cannot be surpassed. That's like saying the four-minute mile is impossible or a quadruple axel cannot be done. Uh, yeah, they can.

When it comes to writing -- and to live -- read the rules and remember them, but don't live exclusively by them. A time will come when you could be the one to break them and set a new precedent. That is what precedents are all about.

If something can be measured, it can be exceeded. The sound barrier has been shattered and bettered many times over. The speed of light cannot be surpassed and that means books featuring hyperdrives are not based on science fiction and are squarely in the realm of fantasy, and yet there is a speed faster than light. It is the speed of thought. As long as it can be measured, it can be broken.

Just because the universe seems to follow certain rules doesn't mean that those rules are unbreakable. Rules are made to be broken and broken they will be. Don't follow the leader, follow your heart and your instincts. They will seldom fail you.

That is all. Disperse.

A Solar Ballet

It was still dark outside when rioting birds woke me from a dreamless sleep. I'd had trouble getting to sleep last night because it was too warm. One moment I was tossing and turning and the next the cacophony of tweets and twitters pierced the dream bubble and I was suddenly awake. Less than an hour later I am awake, eyes watering and sneezing from the pine pollen. The birds have finally quieted, their clattering announcement of summer having finally arrived over. It is the summer solstice, the beginning of three months of heat and relentless light that starts with the longest day of the year. We are closest to the sun, unable to hide from the blazing glare for sixteen hours, or a touch more. The blessed balm of darkness is in short shrift today and the sun will go down in a battle that will spill blood across the skies, molten copper along the horizon, as the earth turns its face away for a brief respite before spinning back around to face the sun again. A pink blush on the horizon and then liquid fire coalesces into a spinning globe of seething fire, the engine of life in our little corner of the galaxy.

I read somewhere that the earth spins at roughly 1000 mph (seems much slower) and the sun at 60,000 mph and no one is quite sure how fast the galaxy spins away from its point of origin. The point is that this spaceship we call Earth is constantly in motion, spinning on its axis, as it dances around the sun, now close and soon farther away, pirouetting on one leg like the ballet dancer in the story of the little tin soldier who stands ever at guard on his one tin leg because there wasn't enough tin to make him whole. Everything in motion, spinning, dancing, spiraling without stop until the rubber band of creation reaches its limit and back we spin to the point of origin to wink out and burst forth once again in another Big Bang. At least that is the theory. We'll not be here in this form when it happens so we won't know when worm holes and dark matter and black holes give up their vast energy and succumb to the inexorable return to the beginning like salmon pulled over falls and against the current to the spawning grounds where they once emerged with minute tails and fins and scales like a flash of light in the rippling waters before they set off on their journey to the sea. Always in motion, ever eating and excreting and coursing through the briny waters until the moment of return when they may die along the way, spent from fighting the current rushing to the sea, never to reach the spawning grounds so the next generation can be born to take their place.

After today, after the moment when the sun crested the fiery mirage of the horizon, the days will grow shorter by a few minutes and then hours until we reached the farthest point in our dance with the sun to the shortest day in the year. Night will reign supreme for sixteen or so hours. We will have reached the tipping point and begin to dance back toward the sun and to this point one year later in our solar dance when we come nearest to the sun's embrace. Near enough to bask in its ardent gaze but not near enough to scorch the Earth's gown, spinning close, flirting with danger, and spinning away again in a timeless dance that is all about time, this solar ballet.

For this moment, this day, I wish you a happy summer solstice. The year is half gone, or maybe the year is half begun. Your choice.

To clone or not to clone

Yesterday the subject of cloning came up in a conversation with my mother. To understand the context, a little background is necessary.

My mother is one of those people who have had so many health problems, she should be dead. She isn't. Even her brother and sister-in-law said they were sure she'd die before Dad. She didn't. She's still here. It's probably my fault because I've always said that when the bomb is dropped and humanity is eradicated all that will be left will be cockroaches, moths and Mom. That's where the cloning discussion comes in.

If humanity were reduced to one individual, then the rise of humanity can only come from cloning -- if, of course, the human in question has the techniques and the skills to clone herself. She'd have to use ova from another source since her reproductive system was cleared out decades ago, but it is possible there would be some fertility clinic or sperm and ova bank still standing with the requisite genetic material available for use. Then again, with all that raw material, there would be sufficient diverse cellular material to use for test tube babies, with a suitable host. Mom's not good with the technical but, for the sake of argument, let's say she could fashion a mechanical womb to grow the cloned fetuses and thus clone herself.

Cloning herself would be necessary since no other human in recorded history, other than my father whose genetic material is now ash, has been able to tolerate Mom for long. A world population comprised of my mother would be a self-limiting species since they would only exist to shop and eat junk food. Once the food stocks are gone, the junk food stocks, the Virginia Annabelle population would be forced to either evolve or die. Without junk food and massive quantities of preservatives to keep them alive, they would die, probably along the lines of the half life of a cesium atom or something similar.

On a more realistic note, it would be possible to rejuvenate the human race, given time and sufficient genetic material, by cloning and thus further advances in that area are necessary -- only in case of nuclear holocaust and the imminent demise of mankind. How do you think we got here in the first place? It's a time-honored tradition that brought us unicorns, centaurs, naiads, nymphs, mermaids/mermen, and assorted half-man, half-animal species.

Is cloning a good idea? It depends on the human being to be cloned. Ira Levin used a cloned Hitler as the basis of The Boys from Brazil and look how that turned out. I think I have shown that, while giving humanity another try, cloning my mother would be a bad idea. However, cloning as a viable option for preservation of species, Jurassic Park notwithstanding, is a good idea and should be pursued. The science is more complicated and less successful than Dolly the sheep seems to illustrate. More information is needed and to get more information, more work must be done. It's doubtful we'd end up with a sociopathic killing machine the likes of Embryo, but when has being wrong ever mattered when it comes down to where the rubber hits the road?

That is all. Disperse.

The greatest show on earth

Yesterday, Mike in Israel sent me a notice about the total solar eclipse on Wednesday, July 22. It will be the longest eclipse this century, lasting 6 mins and 39 secs and it is one of three eclipses that have happened in consecutive years. In the article he sent me, Mark Blitz was quoted as saying, "...three solar eclipses that would occur on each of three annual calendar dates that introduce the Jewish month of Av for the years 2008, 2009, and 2010. The first eclipse occurred on August 1, 2008. The second solar eclipse is coming up this month — on July 22, 2009, and the third will happen on July 11, 2010. Though these dates vary in our Gregorian calendar, they occur on the same calendar date in the Jewish calendar — Av 1."

(Mary Ann, that's where I got July 11, from next year.)

The Jewish calendar is 28 days long and results in a 13-month year instead of the Gregorian 12-month year, which is why it is possible for the Jewish month of Av to be in July or August.

Although Blitz said that the totality of the eclipse would last 6.6 minutes, the NASA site calculates the totality to be 6 minutes 39 seconds. I'd go with the NASA numbers on that one.

The Jews regard this trinity of eclipses on the same day in their calendar as a omen, perhaps a harbinger of the End of Days. Eclipses were seen in ancient times as a portent of evil, although an eclipse during the 6-year war between the Medes and Lydians in the midst of hostilities was enough to end the war in 585 BC on May 28. The passage of the eclipse was greeted with an immediate end to hostilities and resulted in a peace treaty and a double wedding. According to Wikipedia, "The war is thought to have started because of clashing interests in Anatolia (Turkey); Herodotus (Histories, 1.73-74) claims, however, that some Scythian hunters employed by the Medes who once returned empty-handed were insulted by Cyaxares. In revenge the hunters slaughtered one of his sons and served him to the Medes. The hunters then fled to Sardis, the capital of the Lydians. When Cyaxares asked for the Scythians to be returned to him, Alyattes refused to hand them over; in response, the Medes invaded."

The Medes were an ancient Persian (modern day Iranian) people and the Scythians were a nomadic people, also Iranian, who were reported to have been beaten by the Amazons. The Lydians were Turks. Looks like there has always been war and rumors of war between the Iranians and the Turks. Too bad there are no longer any ruling families with sons and daughters to marry off and bring about peace. I wonder how the Iranians would feel about marrying off one of Ahmadinejad's children to one of Benjamin Netanyahu's children to seal a peace treaty between Iran and Israel. Probably the way someone would feel about being forced to marry the offspring of, say, Charles Manson, but that's a topic for another time.

The deaths of empresses and kings was thought to cause solar eclipses as the sun mourned for their passage and it caused the death of Emperor Louis of Bavaria, Charlemagne's son, when he was overcome by fear at the disappearance of the sun. Evidently, Louis wasn't as formidable as his father or as strong. He must have been the product of the shallow end of the gene pool.

Christopher Columbus used a lunar eclipse to his advantage to frighten the natives into providing him with food when he scheduled a meeting with the chief for the start of the eclipse and convinced the chief that the gods were angry at his refusal by blotting out the moon's light. A little knowledge is useful in situations like that, as Mark Twain amply proved when one of his characters used a solar eclipse to his benefit in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

In 1560, the announcement of an impending eclipse caused rioting in the streets when nearly the entire population of Paris clogged the streets to go to confession to be ready for the end of the world, so a parish priest announced that the eclipse was to be postponed for two weeks in order for the people to get right with god. I imagine one or two people died of fright waiting in line for confession when the eclipse happened ahead of schedule.

This site details a bit of the mayhem and furor over eclipses, even mentioning the eclipse that Carly Simon mentioned in her pop hit, You're So Vain, about Wayne Newton. The site does not mention the eclipse that helped Dolores Claiborn end the life of her incestuous pedophile husband, though. I would have thought that would have deserved a mention.

An eclipse figured prominently in Homer's Odyssey, occurring on the day Penelope's suitors began last meal and Odysseus returned. Scientists have figured the date to be April 16, 1178 BC, about 12 years before the accepted date of the sack of Troy, which means that historians need to refigure their data since it took Odysseus 20 years to return to Ithaca after he left for the Trojan War in Menelaus's fleet of a thousand ships. It's rather difficult to return home before you've left.

On July 11, 1991, a partial eclipse was visible from Ohio. I stood out in the front yard that day to watch it. What amazed me the most was how the shadows fell on the leaves during the eclipse. Only as much sun as was visible, a fingernail crescent, showed up on the leaves at my feet, a tiny sliver of golden light in the gloom. I was fascinated, but then I am not among the ancients who fear the sun being blotted out temporarily by the passage of the moon between the Earth and the sun nor am I superstitious enough to fall dead of fright because a dragon has devoured the sun. At least the dragon spit it back out again.

According to the soothsayers at Astrology.com, "The central path begins in India's Gulf of Khambhat, formerly known as Cambay, an inlet of the Arabian Sea, at 00:53 UT. Interestingly, this is where in 2002 archaeologists discovered the site of a sunken city with artifacts carbon-dated to more than 9000 years ago, showing that civilisation existed not long after the end of the last Ice Age. Racing inland, the shadow sweeps over the Indian cities of Surat, Indore, Bhopal, Varanasi, and Pata. Travelling across Bhutan, the umbra clips Nepal, Bangladesh, and Burma (Myanmar), before reaching China at 01:05 UT, then working its way across the rest of southern China where the major cities of Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan and Hangzhou stand in its path. As the Moon's shadow reaches the coast, China's largest city, Shanghai, with over 19 million people, experiences a total eclipse lasting 5 minutes at 01:39 UT. Across the East China Sea, the umbra sweeps over Japan's Ryukyu Islands and Iwo Jima, but the greatest eclipse (6 minutes 39 seconds) occurs in the South Pacific at 02:35:19 UT. It then arcs southeast through the Pacific hitting small atolls in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati (Gilbert Islands). The path of totality ends at 04:18 UT as the lunar shadow leaves Earth 3.4 hours after it started its trek across our planet's surface. The 15,200 km long track covers 0.71% of Earth's surface. A partial eclipse is seen from a much larger area covering East Asia, Indonesia, and the South Pacific."

Whatever your take on the more esoteric meaning of the eclipse, one thing is certain, it's the greatest show on earth.

Unquiet and insistent history

This has been a strange weekend, but that happens sometimes. I watched all of the Friday the 13th, the series, I received (Netflix skipped over the last disc) and One Night with the King with Luke Goss and Tiffany Dupont (excellent movie) and had to download the theme song, which I've been singing since last night. This morning I woke up at the usually early plumber's crack of dawn, checked email and then dove into Secrets of the Dead: Amazon Warrior Women and was instantly intrigued. I even quit multi-tasking. It's a great archaeological find and one that everyone with an interest in history, science and archaeology should see.

I just don't get the myopic misanthropes that have populated the sciences for generations (can't say centuries because this seems to be peculiarly modern in nature). Historians and scientists look at the past from a lofty pinnacle without ever once considering that what they call mythology and fiction are nothing less than the truth. Didn't Heinrich Schliemann burst that bubble when he used Homer's Iliad to find Troy? Evidently, the scientific and historic communities don't read their memos.

What arrogance to think that man has reached the zenith of human development and achievement with their technological marvels without considering what was written millennia ago -- a lot of millennia ago. The Sumerians knew more about the makeup of our solar system over 7000 years ago than NASA and its predecessors have discovered in the past fifty years. Although no one has been able to identify who Homer actually was or whether he was a construct, his stories have been handed down intact for thousands of years and everything he wrote appears to be true. And now the stories about the Amazons (Homer wrote about an Amazon warrior in the Iliad) are proving to be true and there is DNA evidence to show that their descendants continue to live a nomadic life. Guess Herodotus told more than fairy tales and confabulated facts after all. What's next? Is it possible Plato got it right when he wrote about Atlantis and the scientists tagged the wrong place in choose Thera for Atlantis by scaling everything down? Arrogance, plain and simple!

Historians and scientists discount anything that seems like a fairy tale and call it mythology when it may well be historical fact handed down, the names changes to fit the dialects and countries where the stories were carried. There are griots, living genealogies, throughout Africa who carry the names and wars and places of generations of history in oral tradition, and they're not just names, but the deeds and lives that connect to modern people. Alex Haley found that out for himself when he went looking for the origins of Kunta Kinte's tales of bolongs, family and a gold hunt that made it possible for his mother to wear a cow on her head. We may well find that the stories we call mythology are not prehistoric men creating tales out of the world around them to tell around the campfire in the night, but based in fact.

Modern men may have reached a zenith, but not the zenith. Civilizations and risen and succumbed to the weight of their own arrogance and decadence over and over throughout the history of this planet and just because we cannot find proof of their existence, doesn't mean they didn't exist. It could well be we are looking in the wrong place or these people lived such green lives that their remains are shrouded in the very makeup of this world.

One thing that intrigues me most about the PBS special is that no one mentioned the Siberian Ice Maiden. Her clothing and grave goods point to a women of wealth and position. She had a high peaked hat and was buried with six horses. Her clothing and her soft leather boots are very similar to those worn by the Amazons found in kurgans throughout the steppes in Eurasia. The fierce warrior women written about by Homer and Herodotus and ascribed to myth by historians did exist and the DNA and their own bodies and grave goods prove they were much taller than the norm 2500 years ago. What else might we find if we open our eyes and take off the academic blinders to embrace mythology and legends as truth?

There are several cults of warrior women throughout history, women who defied tradition and took up arms and fought against and side by side with men. They are not myth nor are they some feminine longing for control over one's life and the freedom to be more than chattel and property. They were real and now they are fact.

As for me, I am off on another bug hunt. I feel stories deep down bubbling toward the surface. They are a bare glimmer, but it won't be long before they step fully armed and realized into the light not like Athena from Zeus who had swallowed her pregnant Titan mother in order to prevent her birth because it was prophesied that any child born of Metis, Athena's Titan mother, would be greater than her father Zeus.

Decadence, physics, walkabout

Getting hooked on Lost was not my idea, but I caved out of curiosity. I'm glad I did. It's a great show with a lot of subtle threads woven into its fabric that is just now becoming clearer, but I was hooked the moment the show opened with a shot of Jack's eyes opening. I've hung on through thick and thin and remain utterly entranced, which doesn't happen often. I usually figure out the killer or mystery early on and then spend the rest of the time bored and reading emails or cruising the net or just simply shut it off out of disgust. That is the case with Heroes.

One thing that was evident from the beginning is that Lost is based in quantum physics and that is one of my favorite things to read about and discuss. I'm working on the background for a series of novels based on quantum physics and the possibility of changing the past. Don't ask. I'm not going to say any more about it. Very hush hush.

In the meantime, I'm ordering some new books on physics and plan to spend as much of my upcoming vacation as possible with my nose buried in the books or my fingers busily typing out words for the new books. I've even decided to take myself to a secluded spot to perform these acts so that I won't be bothered by phones, visitors or my Internet addiction. Keep that in mind when I'm missing from March 19-30. I've decided that seeing the sun rise in Chaco Canyon, as I've been promising myself for four years, is the best plan for using my refund this year. My little retreat is on the way back in a wooded area along the banks of the Colorado River. Breakfast delivered to the door, followed by a walk along the river into the woods and back and right into writing and reading mode, although I will probably do the reading outside in the fresh air with the music of the river and the conversation of animals and trees as background. My car battery isn't the only battery that needs recharging.

I will still spend my nights sleeping with physicists, philosophers and authors of all sexes and persuasions; there are some habits I am unwilling to break.

That is all. Disperse.

Global warming debunked

My connection to the Internet went down at 3 p.m. yesterday. I went to bed early with Atlas Shrugged after spending a couple of hours on a Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni. I recently read a review of Moaveni's previous investigative memoir, Lipstick Jihad, which seemed more about promoting herself than about real journalistic fervor and reporting. I'll reserve my judgment on this until I've finished and am ready to write my review. Nothing like a trip to Iran to make things more interesting.

I do find it interesting that in reading Atlas Shrugged I have come to the part where the scientific community, in this case a scientific institution funded and its policy dictated by the government, is in violation of scientific principles. Science is supposed to be politically neutral and yet it is being used as a political tool to drive the last remaining functioning engines of growth and change and prosperity out of business to fuel a socialist agenda. And then this morning I received an email about a stunning piece of environmental science news that Japanese scientists have broken with the IPCC and publicly stated that "...recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue.

Choosing the link to the UK newspaper, The Guardian, is deliberate since many people will claim that it is a conservative agenda. I had many links to choose from but I doubt anyone will take the time to search them out and this news will likely be conspicuously absent from liberal news sources or soft pedaled.

In essence, the recent global warming "crisis" is due not to man made greenhouse gases but to the recovery of the earth from the mini ice age that spanned from 1400 to 1800, reaching its height in the 17th century, which was a direct result of a Maunder Minimum, a period of minimal, or near nonexistence, sunspot activity on the sun, something that we are about to experience once again. Sunspot activity has been diminishing since the end of 2008 and it shows no signs of cranking up with the new cycle.

What this all boils down to is that scientists with a political agenda, or co-opted by politicians and liberals, have lied. They knew their data was spotty and that they had not included all the factors that go into the warming and cooling cycles of the Earth, but they opted for half-baked ideas with no valid scientific proof and began scaring the world with their doom and gloom predictions. The three Japanese scientists who came forward and said it has all been a lie and that temperatures have been falling since 2000 instead of rising as current climate models indicate have just highlighted and underlined what Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged. Science should be apolitical and not subject to political agendas. Scientists who use data for a political agenda or stand aside and allow their work to be used to further political ends are looters.

Say what you will about Ayn Rand and her objectivist theories, but she was right and the future she eerily predicted is happening before our very eyes. Increasing welfare states. Bailouts. Science being corrupted by politicians. Failing economy. Crumbling infrastructure. Taxing the engines of industry and a healthy economy out of existence. If the liberal left agenda is allowed to continue, we are going to see Atlas shrug in person and the results are going to be ugly and lasting. It's time to stand up and be counted, protest and throw the liberal Left's tea in the harbor or we will soon find our freedoms disappearing one by one and we, like the frog sitting in a pot of water on the stove, won't realize the heat has been rising all along.

That is all. Disperse.

Feminization

I've enjoyed what I've read of Michael Montaigne's essays, but the one I read last night was disturbing. He wrote about three kinds of relationships: friends, women and literature. The disturbing part came when I read that he believed women were out of their depth as intellectuals and should stick to what they do best -- provide ornamentation. He wrote that it goes against a woman's nature to put herself in the midst of intellectual discussions and that logic should be avoided. A woman is beautiful and provides a man with what he needs most -- calm, relaxation and romance. I doubt Montaigne would have appreciate the women of today who speak their minds and consider them the equal of men. He would, however, appreciate women who live for fashion and beauty and concern themselves with pleasing men. He was, after all, a man of his time.

I can see some of his point and it's one that I have mentioned before. The woman's liberation movement has removed a vital part of the feminine arsenal by competing with men as equals. That is not to say that women and men aren't equal -- in some respects -- but that we all are equipped with abilities and skills that, until recently, were specific to gender. That was before women's lib and the feminization of the male species by increasing amounts of chemicals that raise estrogen levels. You mean you haven't heard about this?

In the animal kingdom -- yes, Virginia, humans are animals, too (biologically speaking) -- more and more species are becoming either hermaphroditic or more female than male. With frogs that's not such a bad deal because when the frog population dwindles, males become females and begin laying eggs. It was a fact that Michael Crichton used in Jurassic Park to explain why all the dinosaur species they bred as males were able to lay eggs; they used frog DNA to fill the breaks in the retrieved dinosaur DNA. The influx of chemicals into the environment that either mimic estrogen or raise estrogen production has produced generations of males with smaller penises, undescended testes and feminine characteristics -- and it's happening among the human species as well.

I doubt, however, that the feminization of the male half of homo sapiens will change the rampant testosterone poisoning that fuels wars and corporate pissing contests any time soon, but it may have a long lasting impact on our continuation as a species. Males may become as rare as hen's teeth and females will have to compete for their sperm.

Did I mention that male births are down? Once upon a time, males outnumbered females 2:1. Not so long ago, the ratio was 1:1 and now it is falling the other way. It doesn't take as many males as females to produce the next generation, but higher ratios of males ensure that homo sapiens does not end up in a genetic cul de sac.

Considering how Montaigne felt about preserving the differences between males and females, I'm sure he would have been appalled at the recent increase in females who should think more about beautifying the world and the dwindling numbers of males to carry the logical and intellectual burdens that fuel civilization's growth. If this trend continues, and we follow Montaigne's advice, society will become more beautiful and less able to think it's way past the obstacles to restoring the male-female balance.

That is all. Disperse.

A little science and wonder

This is my latest editorial for the ham club newsletter, Ø-Beat (zero beat for non-hams):

Ever since I was a child, rainbows have fascinated me. I was awed by the arcing bridge of colors floating up in the sky like a promise of adventure, but I had no idea that not all those varicolored bridges are rainbows. Some of them are circumzenithal arcs (CZA). Now, say that three times fast. They’re also called ice halos and can be best seen when the sun is low on the horizon. It looks like an upside-down rainbow with the center of the bow like a cup beneath the sun and the red arc always on the outside.

In science class, I learned that the prismatic effect of sunlight through raindrops is what creates rainbows. In my recent searched through the Internet I discovered that sunlight reflected through ice crystals floating through high clouds produces just the right conditions for CZAs. With all the snow we’ve been getting lately I wonder that I haven’t seen a CZA yet, but maybe I’m not looking at the sky at the right time. But the magic and color show doesn’t stop with CZAs. There’s more.


Ever hear of sundogs? I didn’t until I stumbled across a picture of the Mongolian CZA. Sundogs are those bright circular spots, solar halos, that looks like miniature suns but are a sort of mirror effect from the same icy cirrus or cirrostratus clouds drifting through the cold gray sky. In my opinion, it’s just one more reason to love winter – besides the cold.

And then there are circular rainbows, that most elusive and rarest of sights. Several years ago as I came out of Radio Shack, I saw a circular rainbow hovering in the rainy gray sky. It was a perfect halo of light and color and I couldn’t stop staring. I stopped people on the sidewalk and pointed to the sky like Chicken Little, except I wasn’t trying to convince anyone the sky was falling. People moved away from me like I was a lunatic, but I kept my eyes on that rainbow even after I got into my car to drive back to work, following that rainbow all the way across the west side of Columbus, Ohio. I pulled into the parking lot at work and shared my news to the whole office. Most of my co-workers shook their heads and went back to work. The rest followed me outside to see . . . nothing. The rain gathered strength and pelted us with icy drops and I stood there alone looking up into the sky, hoping for a glimpse of that circle of brilliant color.

The physics of how and why rainbows exist doesn’t lessen the magic for me, rather I appreciate rainbows more and now I know when and where to look for circular rainbows, circumzenithal arcs and sundogs. I know what the combination of weather and the sun can do, as not only a feast for the eyes and the soul, but also how it affects propagation and radio waves and our ability to reach out across town or across the world and hear voices.

The sun has gone through some changes since last month, putting on a bit of a show. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) reported, “…a solar prominence gracefully [rising] up above the surface[. It] spun around a little, formed an arc, and eventually dissipated along magnetic field lines over a two-day period (March 22-23, 2008). Powerful magnetic forces that emerge from below the Sun's surface generate these prominences. The charged plasma spins along these magnetic lines, revealing them in extreme UV light. Sometimes these prominences erupt and break away from the Sun - this one seem[ed] to elongate and disappear.”


According to K7RA, the combination of a nearly two-week run of sunspots and the spring season make for very good HF conditions. Sunspot activity peaked March 26-29 and has dropped back to zero, but don’t despair. We have had a slow start, but sunspot activity is following the predicted pattern and will increase to a phenomenal high in 2011. You don’t have to wait that long to benefit from the sun’s effect on our skies. There are always sundogs, circumzenithal arcs and circular rainbows. Check out the web version of the Ø-Beat and feast your eyes.

And there is more news on the spring horizon, and I don’t mean the fact that if you look outside spring is getting ready to bust out all around us.

If you haven’t been checking the PPRAA reflector, you may have missed the news of recent changes. Jim Harris ABØUK has retired from the scene and all club activities and Ken Sheehan KGØADV has stepped down as Vice President, both due to health concerns. Jim received the PPRAA Lifetime Achievement Award last year for all his hard work and for his exceptional volunteer contributions over the years, setting an example for those who will follow him and try to fill his shoes. Ken distinguished himself early as an avid proponent of the PPRAA, urging members to get involved. Jim and Ken’s input leave a void.

One thing you won’t see on the reflector is the news that on April 23rd Jess Miley KØTAA, a long time fixture in the Colorado Springs amateur radio community as a technician and business owner, celebrates his 80th birthday.

The last bit of news is my own. After 2-1/2 years of editing this newsletter, I have decided to step down and let someone else run the show. I had originally intended to stick around until the end of the year but my schedule is filling up with personal appearances, readings and interviews for two of the eight books coming out this year that include my stories. The first two, Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers and Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul, are already available online and in the bookstores. The books are collections of stories from more than fifty other writers, like me, who share a little piece of their lives and experiences. I have agreed to pop in every occasionally with a column, so I will be gone but hopefully not completely forgotten.

During my time as editor, I have made some changes to the newsletter, and hopefully to the way you think of and feel about the PPRAA. I have hounded, begged, cajoled and blackmailed some of you to get articles to fill these pages. If you doubt me, talk to Shel Radin KFØUR or Steve Williams KØSRW about how tenacious I can be in pursuit of content to fill the newsletter. Of course, as editor, I couldn’t just accept their words without adding a bit of spit and polish to make them shine. Admittedly, I didn’t have to use a lot of spot or polish, but I did feel I needed to earn the title of editor by actually editing.

My last column as editor (I can hear the celebrations and corks popping already) will appear in the July issue of this newsletter. By then I look forward to meeting the new editor and offering him my assistance to make the transition easier. Whoever the editor is, I do hope you will give him the same attention and assistance you have given me over the past 2+ years.

Being editor of this newsletter has been an experience I won't soon forget. It has given me a chance to display my ignorance of electronics with a smile and to get to know some of you better. I will continue as a member of the PPRAA and the VE team, but will watch quietly (most of the time) from the sidelines while the rest of you take up the torch and keep it burning while you run with it. Without you, nothing continues and I would hate to see the Ø-Beat go the way of the Mountain Amateur Radio Club’s newsletter and be consigned to oblivion. Editing the newsletter takes a considerable amount of time and effort, but it is worth it because this newsletter, and all the amateur radio club newsletters like it, keeps us connected and reminds us that things are not so different anywhere else in the country, or in the world. We are all licensed amateur radio operators who work hard when it’s needed, volunteer when we can and keep people communicating in times of trouble and disaster. We are the silent minority who, out of curiosity and a love of science and adventure, stride out into the world and push the boundaries of technology, and I am proud to be one of you.

73 as always…
Jackie Cornwell ACØCA
Editor
PPRAA Ø-Beat

Procrastinating no more

I don't have a writer's block problem so much as a procrastination problem. I like to avoid unpleasant things, such as not having anything to say when I have a couple of pages to fill. Then I get going, writing off the top of my head (Gram always said that was the fertile part) and finally pull something together. No one is more surprised by what comes out than I am.

This time I started with a discussion I have been having through LJ with about the environment, global warming versus cooling, sunspot numbers, Maunder Minimum and the sun. He's a self professed information junkie and I'm just plain curious. As a non-engineer type ham radio operator I have a basic knowledge of how the sun's radiation affects high frequency, which we use to make the radio work by riding the frequency waves (so to speak), but not much beyond that. I do have a good bit of historical knowledge, but after talking with I knew I needed more information. I was intrigued and in bug hunt mode. For those of you that are just tuning in, bug hunt mode is my term for being in research mode to satisfy my greedy curiosity. Okay, back to the issue after I get another spoonful of peanut butter. Yummy.

The whole global warming issue, as put forth in An Inconvenient Truth (something I've written about before and recently) is that because of the excess of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and the way it keeps in the sun's rays, trapping them in the Earth's atmosphere (like a greenhouse), we are headed for a greenhouse effect. The polar ice caps will melt. Coastal areas will flood. Arable land will turn to desert as the water supply dries up and we will live in the land of Soylent Green where people may become the next item on the menu when plankton sources die from the heat as the seas evaporate. (I always did wonder what would happen to all that water if it evaporates. It has to go somewhere. Even greenhouses trap moisture, which is why you raise the windows to vent things or you end up with a steaming jungle. But that's another topic for another time.) That is the premise that Al Gore sold to the people and to the Nobel prize committee. Turns out the inventor of the Internet might not know as much as he wants the rest of the world to think.

Yes, the movie was awful -- or so I heard -- and it showed polar bears clinging to melting ice floes as the polar ice caps shrink and fall into the sea. Greenhouse gases (CO2) abound in the air. We are polluting ourselves to the edge of extinction where a nuclear war will finish us off as countries battle for the last sources of food and water before turning on their own population for food. Bullshit! Yes, you heard it here. Bullshit! And I don't apologize for what I say. If I say it, I mean it.

There were much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere during the age of dinosaurs and the world was a hot house, a jungle, a rain forest -- if you will. There were much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere during the early 17th century at the advent of the mini ice age, about which I have written before, and the levels continued to rise as people burned more coal and wood to keep warm. The levels now aren't quite so lethal. Of course, that doesn't address the issue of polluting our rivers, streams, lakes and ocean or the pollution that is poured into the soil to make crops grow better and keep away the weeds that soaks into the water table.

The inconvenient truth is that we may very well need the CO2 in the atmosphere in order to maintain the airy envelope that surrounds Earth and keeps us from frying up like Venus or turning into a frigid world like Mars. The real interaction between solar radiation and CO2 is not as well understood as scientists -- and Al Gore -- would have us believe, and messing with the balance, even to bring it down, may put Earth on the road to Venusian Hell or Martian Ragnarök.

What some scientists -- not the popular ones screaming the sky is falling -- now know that the sun has been hotter over the past 50 years than it has been in recent memory and that is what has caused the temperatures to rise, the weather to be wildly erratic and the winters in the Midwest to be milder than previously. Since the sun is hotter and much more active, it bombards the Earth with higher levels of radiation that could have turned us to a cinder by now if not for the cushioning effect of CO2. Since December when a new solar cycle began (the sunspots changed direction and polarity), we have had very few sunspots, going for days without any activity, which is probably also responsible for the very cold winter we have had worldwide, the complete opposite of Al Gore's claims. It is doubtful we are headed for another ice age -- yet -- but it is possible, far more possible than a runaway greenhouse effect and cries of "Soylent green is people!" It may be that the sun has been having hot flashes or just a temper tantrum for the past 50 years and will return to more normal operations soon, although the solar scientists (the ones Al Gore doesn't talk or refer to) believe we are in for a very busy period of sunspot activity once this cycle gets cranked up. That means more solar winds headed towards Earth, longer period of Aurora Borealis activity that will be seen nearly to the southern United States, more cosmic radiation bombarding the Earth and a probable increase in skin cancer if we don't have sufficient CO2 to protect us from the effects.

In effect, the inconvenient truth is that we may be doing ourselves more harm than good because we don't have enough experience or knowledge or understanding to know how much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will hurt -- or help -- us. We're like children with a little bit of knowledge: we are dangerous to ourselves and to our planet. As it stands, we are more likely to be faced with another mini -- or full blown -- ice age than we are of becoming food for the masses when we die and are ground up into soylent green, and then the CO2 levels will climb as we burn whatever we can to keep warm. I know what you're thinking, I write too much. You're probably right.

That is all. Disperse.

Pride and Prejudice

And I don't mean the books by Jane Austen either. I'm talking about the pride and prejudice that skews historians' and scientists' views.

I used to get a lot of flak from the entrenched historians and scientists that refused to believe in the theory of diffusion as the reason behind why there are pyramids (for instance) all around the world; they stood four-square behind the theory of parallel development and consider stories about Mu or Atlantis or Egyptians and Phoenicians traveling the entire world and bringing cultures from one place to another and yet the more we uncover the more wrong historians and scientists turn out to be. For instance, Mystery Hill, the American Stonehenge, is rife with hieroglyphs that have been traced back to the sea-faring Phoenicians and there are Celtic symbols and petroglyphs in southeastern Colorado that predate the Spanish conquistadores. The most recent information coming to light proves that crops grown in South American 10,000 years ago are similar, and even the same species, as crops grown in Mesopotamia, which is considered the cradle of agrarian civilization. Now isn't that strange?

I never could understand how a might sea-faring nation like the Phoenicians would limit themselves to the Mediterranean when artifacts from their civilizations are found all over the world or how they could have missed the great land masses of the Americas and Antarctica, among others. It's impossible that mankind, being the curious and adventurous type, would stop traveling over the next hill because it was too far away.

Too often, scientists and historians take their modern prejudices and ideas and push them off onto earlier civilizations and call it understanding the primitive societies, societies that rivaled our own with technological marvels we still have not been able to duplicate or explain. One such example is the belief that Hatchepsut, the God King of Egypt, and a Pharaoh in her own right, was murdered by her stepson, Tuthmoses III, because he chafed her under her rule. Looks like the Egyptologists and historians were wrong again. Hatchepsut has been discovered and her mummy shows that she died of natural causes -- if you can call an abscessed tooth on top of diabetes natural. She was 50 years old and she was not murdered, as has been written. The fact that most Egyptologists, and those who fabricated the story of Tuthmoses III's assassination of his stepmother, wrote that Tuthmoses III wanted Hatchepsut dead because she was a woman who had no right to rule or control him says more about the Egyptologists' male chauvinism and their personal issues than it does about the truth of history. Scientists and historians continue to look down on the past with a jaundiced eye and have missed seeing the truth beauty and grandeur of a world not caught up in the need to denigrate and belittle powerful women or the mythologies that have become little more than a way to prove ancient civilizations were simple and unsophisticated.

It looks as though mythology has more to offer than quaint and simple stories about gods and goddesses and their involvement with mortals and more about how the Universe was created. Mythology is religion, but only on the surface; religion was a way devised to keep the information intact for future generations. What mythology is really about astronomy and the beginnings of the Universe. I can't understand how all those scientists and historians missed what was right in front of them -- like diffusion and globe sailing Phoenicians and the Creation of All. Guess pride and prejudice blinded them and got in their way.

That is all. Disperse.

West vs East

Whenever I see a movie that has been remade from a foreign movie, I like to check out the foreign version to compare how the story is different. Premonition is one of the recent movies I've seen that came from a Japanese movie: Yogen or The Newspaper of Death. The only thing the two movies have in common is knowing about a death before it happens.

In the American version, a woman is told her husband was killed in a car accident the day before and she remembers seeing him off to work that morning, except she is out of time, living her life out of sequence. Throughout the movie she jumps back and forth in time, living different endings and different events as she searches for a way to change the outcome.

In the Japanese movie, Hiroshi Mikami picks up a newspaper from the floor of a phone booth and reads about his daughter's death in a car accident before the paper disappears. His daughter dies moments later and he cannot convince anyone that he read about her death before it happened. Five years later, he and his wife are separated and his now ex-wife has dedicated her life to finding out about the newspaper that keeps appearing to predict future events. Her husband, unable to deal with his daughter's death, begins to have premonitions of other deaths and finds himself unable to stop them before they happen. The wife finds her ex-husband and together they search for answers only to discover Hiroshi's only future is not bright. He will either go mad or, if he changes the future, will disappear slowly and painfully, taking on the burden of the deaths that were meant to be.

The basic premise is changed between the two movies, but that's just on the surface. Beneath that is a fundamental difference in ideology and perceptions. In the American version, there is an underlying sense of hope and the belief that the future is not set in stone, that the Fates do not rule us, we rule our own fate. The Japanese version offers little in the way of hope unless a high price is paid, one life for another, in order to keep the Fates balanced. The I is sacrificed for another and Fate cannot be countered without madness or painful death. Fate rules.

Another difference lies in the treatment of extraordinary happenings. In the Western mind, magic is nothing more than science misunderstood and everything boils down to science. In the sophisticated and westernized East, magic and science can be mixed, but there is a deeply rooted sense of magic that underlies everything. It is as if magic is a part of their genetic makeup while westerners tend to hold magic at a distance, separating it from reality and seeking to quantify it in saner terms, in terms of science.

In every foreign movie I've seen, Fate is the final arbiter and magic is inextricably bound to the way they see and experience the world. In the Western world, science underpins everything and the only magic we accept without question is Hope, the hope that we create our own future, that we can win against Fate and predestination if we believe hard enough and fight hard enough.

That is all. Disperse.

Parallel worlds

Einstein was one of the greatest scientific minds of our age but he had a personal life, a very rich one, by all accounts. He was head over heels in love with his wife and he never really got over her. I wonder if he sussed out the probability of parallel worlds created by a single different choice, a fork in the road or something done or undone so he could live with the loss of his beloved wife by imagine them living happily together in another time line. For some people, religion provides a happily ever after with heaven or paradise, an end to suffering, a place where no one grows old and there is no pain. The Greeks called it the Elysian Fields. Einstein called it a parallel world. Fairy tales ended with happily ever after, leaving the reader to imagine a place where time stood still and the bliss and oneness of the first blush of love continued on forever.

We all cling to some form of happily ever after, inventing parallel worlds, paradise, heaven or Elysian Fields where it's always benevolent, always warm and sunny, where the rain falls like a soft and soothing balm, and those we love are ever with us. Atheists prefer to find happiness here and now in every single breath of every single day...or in the mathematical perfection of parallel worlds where the mistakes we make can be undone.

That is all. Disperse.

See?

This is just one more reason why I prefer to use natural organic ingredients to deal with my body's needs and problems.

That is all. Disperse.

Genesis

Ever since Darwin wrote his Origin of the Species on Nov. 24, 1859 he has provided people with the fuel to jump start their brains and should probably be called the Father of Science Fiction. His writing was not based on science fiction but on his voyage in 1856 on the HMS Beagle and sparked by Gregor Mendel's work with pea plants. Mendel was a little known Central European monk who experimented with what farmers and herdsman have always known about breeding and cross breeding.

Out of this quest for knowledge begun by Descartes who believed that nothing in nature could not be recreated by Man comes the science fiction watched and read everywhere these days. The roots of the Human Genome Project are deep in this fertile soil which gives fruit to speculation about the evolutionary track Mankind will take. Enter the X-Men and Mutant X and now Heroes.

My subscription to the Sci Fi Channel's newsletter made me curious about the new show, Heroes, and after a brief struggle of several weeks I gave in and downloaded all seven episodes. Now they haunt my dreams. The show is interesting and gives reality to what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created in 1963 with the X-Men, a comic I avidly devoured in my formative years. Not to take anything away from the movie versions of the X-Men, but Heroes is the embodiment of those ideas and people without the strong, gentle guiding hand of Professor Charles Xavier. However, once again life hangs in the balance as these models of natural selection and genetic mutation figure out what is happening to them and why and what they must do with their powers. The show's narrator says that change is violent and there is certainly violence in what is happening to these ordinary people who are beginning to understand just how extraordinary they really are as they head towards a cataclysmic clash with destiny.

What I want to know is whether or not Mendel and Darwin should be compensated for their work? The heirs of the protohuman who discovered how to make fire certainly didn't get his share of the residuals.

That is all. Disperse.