The Plural of Apocalypse

Well, we're here. The Serpent rises tomorrow at 11:12 UTC (so close!), 6:12 AM in God's Time Zone, EST. First, I made it - a victory in and of itself! Second, it's bullshit. But I believed in it a long time ago, half-ironically, but alas, half-seriously. No longer, but the damage is done. So I will use tomorrow as you should: re-dedicate yourself towards self-improvement, and the improvement of your family and community. Further, one - you! (and me!) - should strive to expand your notion of family and community. I view all of life as my community, and try to live with that mindset. It's tough, of course, but it's necessary for all of us if we are, collectively, going to rise above our primate instincts and become fully and truly, Human. We want that, right?

It's easy to look back into history and see the flaws of all the failed nations, empires, religions or societies over time, and equally hard to look at our own society or nation and see those flaws. The very same flaws that could lead to our own destruction. Since it is unlikely that the world will end tomorrow, let us instead focus on a more localized definition of apocalypse, which is societal. Societies rise and fall, over time. Some are more successful than others for a variety of reasons, but nothing lasts forever. The apocalypse is the end of your society. The ancient Maya. The Assyrians. The folks on Easter Island. Rome. Westernized Persia.

Iranian college kids in the early 70's. Look like typical 70's college kids, right? No longer. That society is gone. Destroyed.

Famous Iranian actors from the early 70's. Skin and hair, showing! No longer. Westernized Iran is gone, replaced by Mullahs and religious police. And this is a theme in many different apocalypseseses - the rise and triumph of religious fundamentalism. It's the scourge of our species and we need to fight against it at every junction. Alas, we appear to be losing.

Behold! There once was a time when Israel promoted tourism in Palestine. And why not? A beautiful land with metric tons of history. But alas! After getting tantalizingly close to real peace in the late 90's, this area has... degraded.

The reality today, with little reason to be optimistic for the future. Sad, and only getting sadder.

So count your blessings while you can, and appreciate all that is good with your society. And the things you find wrong with your society? Address it. Organize. Get involved. Speak up and out. Religious fundamentalism is always a minority movement that wields power far beyond their numerical representation in any given society. People power works, if the people get out on the streets.

So don't accept your apocalypse! Fight it, every day.

Peace be upon us all. Good luck, and good night.

Posses Inside

Sadly, it is no isolated incident. Killing children either by crazed loner with guns or nations with armies, or gangs with lust, or tribes with madness in their minds, kids have been victims for as long as there have been kids, which is forever. We're getting better, overall, we really are! It's just hard to accept that fact in times like this - when kindergarten children are shot repeatedly in the face with an assault rifle for no possible reason at all. Unlike the reason above, right? These are the children of Lidice. Read and weep.

But then rejoice, for we are alive, and our kids are about, and life is good despite all the shit. Never forget your absolute blessing in being here in the first place! Hug those nearby in celebration of all your success, which again, is existing. Life is the gift without equal and we all revel in the giving. Love, and let the hate fall by the wayside.

Let us give thanks

C'mon on in! Water's fine! Don't mind Brutus here, he's an old family friend and sweeter than hell! Grab some more beers first though, wontya?

Seriously. It's an awesome story. Here.

For reals. Brutus often eats at the table, and most definitely does for big events. Best let him have the wishbone though. No pulling.

A memory of a dream remembered

Shamelessly stolen from l.e.s.t.e.r. Ex post facto OK, brah?

This was the dream I lived, twice. On a lake with a canoe and a keyboard, a hoe and boots for working and hiking. A dog - Kennedy (above) - by my side through the woods deep and wide, over beaver dam into the Wastelands, no where was off limits to a boy and his dog in the Summer of 99. Good times. But just a dream, and in that dream fashioned another dream, far off into the future, one day to build a castle of stone and wood high on a mountaintop. Lo! And so it has come to be, a sizable financial commitment to an idea birthed in the heat of fantasy lived, for a season or 4.

Check it: I used to canoe way out to the other side of the lake (a mile or so) where there was this sweet little island of cliff and pine. I made a soft seat of the fallen pine needles and spongy ground between three pines overlooking the lake and mountains, and read Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces". From late spring to early fall almost every other weekday afternoon, weather permitting, of course. It was magic, and I reminded myself then to remember it, now. And so here it is. Thanks for the pics, l.e.s.t.e.r.

Model of the Universe

So, this here is a LITERAL model of the Universe. First, there's God - that's the hand, as in He has us all in His hands. Next, of course, is a turtle, as everything rests on a turtle, not only all the way down, but get this, all the way up too. And also, God loves turtles. Next is the Earth, here represented by a frog since Earth is made up of both land and water, and only frogs can live in both. Finally, there's an evil spider, representing wicked mankind. God hates spiders, as every child knows, and He hates Sin, and so since mankind was born into Sin because of that terrible Eve, we are unto spiders, hideous creatures scuttling about hiding from the light of Truth.

My goto guy Jonathan Edwards said it best:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

So wise up, wicked Sinners: We are but Spiders sitting on Frogs riding on Turtles, all held in the shaking hand of a terribly Angry God. Repent now!

Or soon. Whatevs. It doesn't matter, since the shit's all Predestined anyways. Am I right Calvin?

The Story (as of today)

Here it is:


A long, long time ago there was something like a point, but not really, of infinite mass and zero space. And then it began to expand, and then really expand (Inflation Theory), and in those first few moments, all the building blocks for our Universe were created in a crescendo of matter-antimatter collisions, with but .00001% of matter surviving, and that small remainder is everything. 


With ever further expansion came cooling and with that matter condensed out of energy, and then matter joined with matter to make a nucleus, which caught an electron, and an atom was born. Hydrogen and Helium filled the universe in great clouds, swirling and twisting with the currents of energy rippling through space, and over hundreds of thousands of years these great clouds condensed down into hot swirling points and BAM! The first stars were born, giant monsters living and dying in a few thousand years and then BAAAMMM! A massive explosion, and the first stellar Black Hole is born, and begins eating, pulling everything towards it. And this relentless pull pushes more clouds of hydrogen and helium to condense, creating stars and stars and ever more stars, some of these giving birth to more Black Holes, which start to merge, growing ever larger, ordering more and more clutches of stars in orbit around them, and the first galaxies were born.

Stars of hydrogen and helium create ever heavier metals, like carbon and oxygen, nitrogen and lithium, and this second generation of stars creates ever more heavier metals, like Iron, and in the biggest explosions of stars, everything denser than Iron is created in an instant - gold, silver, uranium, etc.  And we - life - is made up of these heavier metals. Iron courses through our very blood, and there is only one place in existence where Iron is created: A star.


Life spawned on one planet orbiting one star in a vast sea of billions of stars in billions of galaxies in maybe billions of Universes, and spread from the sea to the land. Evolution relentlessly shaped forms and functions through success and many millions of years later, here we are, you and I, contemplating it all. Brains made of up of hundreds of billions of neurons communicating electronically over a galaxy of connections, producing these very words that I type, you read, you and me - made of this very Universe, with a mind able to wonder why.


We live in an infinite sea of realities, dimensions and times beyond our comprehension and yet still, we can strive and imagine, this fantastic existence we call ours: Blessed to live in this, the Golden Era.


For our future is grim; the earth will be burnt and destroyed hundreds of times over; our galaxy will merge with Andromeda, sending each into a chaos lasting a billion years, and many, many billion more, space will be so stretched out there will be no stars in the night sky, as all matter is so far apart from other matter that there is, nothing. Stretched to infinity, cold and dark and eternal, as time will stop, motion will stop, the credits will say: Fin.


But that is all meaningless other than in a poetic way: We are here, now, alive and able to ask, Why? And "Why?" is the most powerful force ever released in this grand play.

Caught between the Moon and Sun

Lookee real close here - that's a sunspot, and an International Space Station (Click for big). Did you know that a full solar eclipse is entirely co-incidental? That is, a full solar eclipse depends on three factors: The size of the moon, the size of the sun, and the distance between the eclipser and the eclipsee. That is, the moon, right now, is the perfect size at the perfect spot to completely eclipse the Sun, perfectly. In a couple of hundred million years, as the moon moves ever further away, full solar eclipses will no longer be available on Earth. As a matter of fact, we - right now - might be one of the only, if not the only, spots in our galaxy that experiences full solar eclipses. Cool, huh? Maybe it was Jeebus.

Anyways, theme:

ISS in front of the moon. What's big is small, what's small is big. Size is 100% relative.

Both these photos were taken by the same guy - Theirry Legault. And he got both pics in the span of a few weeks, traveling the world to do so. Ultra cool!

Phases of water

These are Japanese Macaques, or Snow Monkeys. They live in the cold mountains of Japan, and in the winter, they spend a great deal of time in volcanic hotsprings like the one above. Interesting fact about Macaques: They wash their food before eating it, like humans and raccoons and no other animal in this wide world (that we know of, yet).

But that's not why I'm here. Rather, I'd like to point out the phase transitions of water taking place in this picture - you see all three: Liquid, solid, and gas. These are the three states of matter we are very familiar with on this Earth. There is a 4th state, the most common in the universe in fact: Plasma, i.e. what makes up stars (superheated gas phase changes into a plasma). Plasma does not exist on Earth except when we, Godlike, make it. Still, it only lasts for a few moments and then reverts back to a gas.

Phase transitions, as you know, are a function of temperature - that is, each element or molecule will go through a transition of phase with a corresponding temperature change. Hotter temperatures will lead to gases and plasmas, cooler temperatures to liquid and solids. Liquid is the weak leg in these transitions, as there are very narrow bands for each element/molecule where it can exist as a liquid. Solids and gases exist in a far wider range of temperatures. So, consider yourselves blessed beyond belief that we live on a world where water can exist naturally in a liquid state - the foundation of life, in fact (or so we believe for now).

I bet these monkeys appreciate it.

GOD!

I'm as atheist as they come, but even I've been conditioned to feel shock when I saw the Guaranteed Overnight Delivery truck zooming by. Isn't that blasphemy? Then of course joy, in the blasphemy.

Without sin, yo

If one does not believe in the concept of "sin", is one sinless? Certainly seems so, on the same principle as when one does not believe in the concept of the Sacred Religious (Psst! The Kaaba is just a meteorite, which is cool in and of itself), then one cannot blaspheme whatever sacrosity some propped up holy man wants to sell you. Right?

Less than 1%

I would never use the word "miracle" lightly, and I would certainly never use it in the religious sense. Rather, I think the word can apply when something happens that is so against the odds, so improbable, that the fact of it occurring is a "miracle".

In this light, we are miracles - everyone of us. In fact, every iota of life on this planet, from microbe to blue whale, is a miracle. Because it is so very, very improbable.

Consider, for us to be here, right now, in this way: First, the Big Bang (or whatever) had to have happened precisely as it happened. Any derivation would cause massive changes over time. This is the first miracle.

Then, over the millenia, the various interactions of energy and matter had to happen exactly as they happened, or once again, large changes would have developed over time and none of us would be here.

Then, a star somewhere near by either had to so supernovae, or expand in such a way as to seed our area of space time with the various elements -- especially the heavier elements - that would later congeal into our sun and solar system.

Then of course our sun had to form, and in this process, of course, everything had to happen in the way it did, or we would not be here -- consider, if the Earth were just a bit further from the sun, liquid water might be a rarity, and life may have never taken hold.

Then, the Earth needs to get hit by another planet -- this collision created the moon, and the moon is absolutely critical to all life on earth.

I could go on and on, but only now are we here on Earth, with the first shoots of life emerging. But a-ha! There have been multiple mass extinctions on Earth so far (off the top of my head, 6 or 7), and during these extinctions, over 99% of all life on the planet was wiped out. And this happened multiple times.

Think about it -- every iota of life that exists right now is a descendant of the lucky few lifeforms who have managed to survive these mass extinctions. And not just one, but many.

This is just the big picture of course, as there are an infinite amount of other variables that could change the whole equation.

But I hope my point is clear: To merely exist, to live, is a miracle. If only we could remember this.

Behold our future awareness

Not sure why this isn't getting bigger play, or maybe it has and I was out of the country (as I often am).

Regardless, behold, an actual picture of an actual star (not ours) with actual planets in orbit thereabout. 3 of them, see?

Each of these planets is way bigger than Jupiter (fun fact: The size limit of planets is considered to be 13 times the size of Jupiter, for, bigger than that, and our friend Fusion starts up and the planet is then a star), and they orbit 2 times further away than Neptune does our Sun - so they are very far out from their star, yet huge. Odd.

This is just the beginning. Our tech will race ahead and twenty years from now we should be able to read chemical signatures of most planets orbiting most stars in our general vicinity (50 plus light years perhaps). Inevitably, life will be found on one these planets, or, more likely, soon enough on another hunk o rock in our solar system.

The next expansion of human awareness is ready - just a world among an ocean of worlds, islands in a great sea. And with the discovery of life on these other worlds, one would hope our Trekkian future soon awaits.

Also, kinda looks like a cellular photo, no? I mean, yes?

Blessings

We are all blessed, of course, because we are alive, here, reading this presumably. To be alive is the greatest blessing you could ever conceive of.

And yet, we take most, if not all, blessings for granted, and instead are on the look out for any situation where we feel aggrieved, or cheated, and then moan and wail about these situations, forgetting the blessing that is our very existence.

There are many other blessings that are bestowed upon us that are also quickly forgotten. I could go on and on in this category, but for the purposes of this post, let us focus on the Blessings of Those Not With Us.

Case in point, in some terrible alternate universe, right now we could have as President this:











And as Vice President, this:













Do you realize how Blessed we are -- the entire world is -- that we do not?

Let us take a moment to appreciate this.....