Who, What, Where, When, Why, & How

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I'm completely exhausted. I spent all morning putting in a comma, and I spent all afternoon taking it out.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Souls Dancing Without Feet

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it!
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
All day and night, music,
a quiet, brightreedsong.
If it fades,
we fade.

~ Rumi

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Are You Sure This Wasn't Written for The Onion? Dept.

CHINA. In an extraordinary edict designed to undermine Tibetan Buddhism, the Chinese government has introduced new rules that, in effect, ban the religion’s tulkus, or living Buddhas – including the Dalai Lama – from reincarnating without permission of its atheist rulers.

Monday, July 16, 2007

To Tinker with the Thinker

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

~ Don Marquis

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Solar Sails

We have been sibling and best friend,
Made each other smile in the end
As we keep on moving through time.
"Damn time," you say. "There's neither rhyme
Nor reason to this division."

The indifferent precision
Of the universe is austere,
And can make it hard to steer
The ship of one's own soul aright
Through the heavy, turgid night
That drags against low-riding hulls,
And its Siren song that lulls
Us into staying in the port,
Taking no risk and no retort.

But a quiet disquisition
Would lead us to a resolution
Between time and tide, and what pulls
And pushes between bears and bulls.

We would no longer feel the stress
That thrusts us under hard duress.
We would just have our just-so tales,
The kneaded wind to fill our sails.
We would set sail into the sun,
Knowing that time had just begun.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

This Be the Verse Dept.

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness."

~ Bertrand Russell

Monday, April 23, 2007

Transcend the Toxically Emotional and the Reflexively Ideological

Climate change is in the air. The climate of planetary goddess Gaia, and the climate of human minds and emotions, too, as it relates to tensions over the fact of our changing weather trends. For those of us in mid-to-northern climes, Winter came generally late this year, but when it came it was vicious and it lingered on for a good month into what should have been Spring. Summer was hot, but punctuated by days and nights of lower, cooler temperatures. The only constant in life and weather is change; but the more that these change, the more they remain the same.

It's interesting to learn that scientists are turning to those unicorns of the sea--narwhals--to help with studies that can determine what's going on with the important winding ribbon or belt of the ocean that helps to regulate climate and weather for areas north of the equator, especially places like northwestern Europe. This is the current that flows through Baffin Bay, between Canada and Greenland. Researchers tell us that a global warming trend would slow down the waters flowing through this area, and by their slowdown would come about a colder Europe and north (more cold water would be in the way of the warm waters brought up through the Gulf Stream from the Equatorial regions). The narwhals dive down deep to go bottom fishing--as deep as a mile. Three of them have been fitted by researchers with temperature sensing and satellite equipment, and already have returned over 400 temperature measurements and positions of measurement. The narwhal project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Ocean Exploration and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

There aren't any conclusions yet from the narwhal data, but I expect it to talk of impending climatological doom and gloom. We're either going to burn or we're going to freeze. The destruction of our world comes by fire or by ice, you know. That's what we keep hearing.

But, if we really listen, we don't hear it from everyone. Not even close. The media messiahs make it seem like there is an overwhelming consensus on "global warming"--the inaccurate, intellectually lesser term for climate change--and the consensus is that mankind's wicked ways are destroying the very atmosphere that gives us life. Sounds apocalyptic to me. Are people so weary of the world that they desire the End Times, and try to make such times' image writ large in the skies above?

We don't even understand clouds well enough to make these assertions.

I write these words this way because there is no scientific consensus that mankind has much, or anything, to do with the changing climate. What's more, the scientific approach to interpreting the observations and the data about the matter reveals that the "global warming" theory is problematic at best.

To return to Canada--studies have been carried out by Canadian researchers in southern Quebec on Canadian Summer temperature data over the last 60 years*. During this time, according to global warming advocates, there should have been a steady increase in heat waves, especially over the decade of the 1990s and on into the 21st Century. Canada is predicted to experience enhanced warming as compared to much of the rest of the scorched world, as it is in those mid-to-northern climes where extremes in weather are being generated (so we hear) by global warming. As the researchers start off saying, “Transient climate change simulations performed with both Global Climate Models (GCMs) and Regional Climate Models (RCMs) suggest increased frequencies of extreme high temperature events and decreases in extreme low temperature events for the 21st century.”

These are not to be found. In contrast, the researchers did find that heat waves and temperature extremes in southern Quebec have “shown no significant trend over the course of the 20th century (1900–1998) for the higher percentiles of daily summer maxima" and they have “concluded that the number of extreme hot days showed little change, in spite of the increase in mean annual temperature by 0.9°C between 1900 and 1998.”

God, but facts are so damnably pernicious!

Another fact is interesting with regards to climate change, too. Methane is far, far more potentially harmful than the CO2 that we always hear about. Given an atmospheric concentration of methane as compared to an equal atmospheric concentration of carbond dioxide, the methane would heat our world 23 times more than the carbon dioxide. With the polar ice caps melting like they allegedly are, we should tremble in fear as the time for the rapid, rampant release of a flood of bound methane in the ice is released and spurs runaway, rapid global warming. Crops shall die, the seas shall rise, mankind shall burn. Except in places like northwest Europe, where mankind shall freeze under a suffocating whiteness of unmitigated snowfall, Gotterdammerung come upon us at last.

But a team of researchers from Oregon, publishing in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, have found that “methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled over the last century, raising concerns that it is contributing to global warming and will continue to do so in the future. Although these past increases were alarmingly rapid, subsequent measurements showed a persistent slowdown in the trends to nearly zero at present.” I.E., methane is not increasing in concentration in the atmosphere. It increased to a certain point and then stopped increasing.

Did we stop it somehow? The global warming theorists, those harbingers of storm and stress, say there's no way we have done enough to stop the concentration rise of methane. They are right--we haven't stopped the methane trend, because we did not set off the methane trend.

Scientists who are advocates, for whatever reason emotional, professional, or religious, of global warming theory engage in a lot of manipulation of statistics; this has been demonstrated. Statistics is a fascinating aspect of mathematics; but, as they say, there are lies, there are damned lies, and then there are stastistics. Statistical results can be painfully twisted in their application to practical reality, while data can be utterly manipulated by statistical procedures to be shoe-horned into the preconceived mold of a researcher. So, you have to think for yourself when you're considering statistical results. Just ask the Swiss scientists who thought, and who had others thinking, that they had made a major breakthrough with research into how plants know when to blossom.

An outstanding site on the Net to go to gather statistics to think about, and to see discussions of statistical analyses, is Rapid Intelligence. "Rapint" has had a hot discussion going on in their forum about climage change, or "global warming" theory.

Join the fray!

________________________________________

* Khaliq, M.N., P. Gachon, A. St-Hilaire, T.B.M.J. Ouarda, and B. BobeĆ©, 2007. Southern Quebec (Canada) summer-season heat spells over the 1941–2000 period: an assessment of observed changes. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 88, 83–101.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Available Space?

It used to be the terrifying, glorious, too-beautiful unknown; the final frontier; the end and the beginning of all things. It is now the proposed next step in merchandizing. It is outer space. Can capitalism, born on the pale blue dot tucked away in a corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, conquer the final, infinite frontier?

Perhaps a more relevant question is, do we want capitalism to be such a conquistador of the stars?

Well, when you really think about it—why not? Capitalism and its accompanying free market are driven by advertising and marketing, and while these can include the good, the bad, and the horrifyingly mediocre it is the way that all of the wondrous and exciting products that we are sometimes overwhelmed by but generally enhance our lives beyond telling are first delivered into our cognizance. No marketing, no advertising, no awareness of your offering and hence no money for you. We desire, overall, for our space-related endeavors to become more and more privatized, and that inevitably means more and more commercialized (it goes without saying that there are many who do not actually desire that latter thing, but based on everything that we know about economics it is an unavoidable outcome of the former thing). The people and institutions that would operate the privatized and more accessible space-faring endeavors would need to eat and be able to have their families taken care of and they might enjoy dressing nice from time to time, too, and they aren’t going to get government stipends as their salaries. They would have to advertise their products and services. The government might not “besmirch” its endeavors to establish a Moon base or a Mars base with shameless self-promotion—it does not need to, it just raises your taxes and sells government bonds to get its money—but then again the government is notorious for being financially wasteful and practically inefficient as compared to the ruthless, shamelessly selfish efficiency of the private sector. And in the end, what we really like, what really sets us free, is efficiency of delivery of goods and services that we the people decide that we need or desire.

But perhaps the question that truly cuts close to the bone is, how should this advertising with regards to the exploration of space get carried out? Clever advertising is appreciated, albeit often subconsciously, as something of an art form. The Chicago White Sox have a particularly clever marketing campaign going on now whereby they start all of their home games at precisely 7:11PM (day games clearly excepted) in order to promote 7-11 Market stores. 7-11 Markets is paying the Chisox half a million dollars in exchange for the subtle reminder of their existence. But we know that we despise advertising that is in your face.

The question is raised because of a recent article written by Andy Pasztor of The Wall Street Journal. In the article, he tells us of the proposed program by Republican Representative Ken Calvert of California, a member of the House Science subcommittee that oversees NASA programs that would be aimed at providing money to space-exploring entrepreneurs. Pasztor writes that Calvert proposes a bill that would make “NASA space assets available for commercial advertising and marketing opportunities.” If that ever becomes law, companies and universities might be able to market themselves by plastering logos on equipment or sponsoring equipment such as cameras on the International Space Station.

Calvert likens his proposed program to those used by public radio and The Smithsonian Institute, whose advertising he calls “dedicated and tasteful”. He also says that he thought up his idea to make the public more aware of manned programs for exploring space while not having to tax people more in order to make them so aware. His objective is to get the fund up to $100 million and then, it seems, give it out piecemeal in the form of prizes for ideas about exploring space.

While this is a noble cause, does it really further the end of bringing space exploration under the aegis of the private sector? A question that is raised is whether this law would really promote space-related entrepreneurship or whether it would glorify government involvement in space programs even more—while promoting big corporations that are conceived of as sleeping with big government or the universities where the curricula are more about politics than thinking. There are plenty of people in the public who would be turned off by this starry marriage, seeing it as just one more way that influential companies get the federal government to help make them mind-boggling profits at the expense of the diminishing middle class. This concept would just be thrown into stark relief to many Americans by an initiative that calls for $100 million sponsored by an agency that commands many billions of dollars annually for its own programs.

Moreover, it has to be asked whether this would have the opposite effect from that intended, as so many federal government programs and promotions do. Instead of making the American public more interested and excited about exploring space than it has been since the 1970s, might it not leave a bad taste in a significant portion of the public’s mouths? NASA, despite its flaws and its frequent short-sightedness, is a heroic symbol to many Americans, one of the shining and noble spots in a federal government that is generally seen as ominously inimical to individual rights and a bungler on important action. NASA’s spacecraft and astronauts are seen by many as advertisements in their own right—advertisements to other nations of the might and grandeur that still can come out of the United States. Americans are turning to satellite radio subscriptions to remove commercials from their airwaves while a government representative is proposing a way of putting it right back in a different place. I think it’s a very telling dichotomy.

Again, while motivated by a noble notion, I don’t think the proposed program would go over well—because the public is fed up with the blatant mixing of politics and business.

Monday, April 16, 2007

A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing

Here's another open Rush commentary by moi. Some guy who loves Rush and lives in France had some harsh criticisms to pay as tribute to "les hommes trois". He mentioned drinking beer in his post...

We have been assured that Alex Lifeson does two things on this album: make extensive use of acoustic guitar,and play a substantial amount of solos. There IS a solo in "Far Cry", as even Neil describes and 'splains in his "A Prize Every Time" essay, but aswe all know by now (even Kyle, if he's been reading) it's another "minimalist" solo and not the stuff of guitar solo dreams that Alex rips out with on "Turn the Page" or "Red Barchetta" or "Marathon" or even, to loop back to Frenchie's mention of a possible acoustic solo, the mandola solo on "Half the World".

I have not listened to "Malignant Narcissism" yet, but it's apparently lacking in a Lifeson guitar solo. This one does not worry me, as I read Neil's essay and I did not expect that piece (by the way, just so we all get on the same page before turning it, a "piece", in music, consists of music that be a song except there are no words...I have been shocked at Neil's cavalier use of "song", as it is impossible for an instrumental to be a "song", but perhaps that's his personal nod to pop music culture) to contain an Alex solo.The album will be released in just a couple of weeks(Stateside), and after I give a thorough listen if there are few guitar solos then I will have my first harsh criticism of said album. I did not appreciate King Lerxt's lack of guitar solos on VT and I will be outraged at such a lack if it extends to a second consecutive album (of original studio material).

There is absolute zero doubt in my mind that one of the cream of the crop guitarists of rock still has an unlimited amount of brilliant guitar solos in his fingers. If this album turns out to deceive us and lacks guitar solos in the end, then I will indeed be pissed off about that fact. However, thus far the album sounds brilliant. Again, I do my best to listen scientifically to a Rush album at first, rather than gratuitously. I always give them the benefit of the doubt about what they are attempting and go from there in my reflections.

That does not mean that I always end up agreeing with what they do. Indeed, I agree with Neil's assessment in 'Roadshow' that Rush have recorded "hits and misses".I find they have far, far more hits than misses, but they aren't perfect.Remember, only the mediocre are always at their best.Rush leave nothing on the cutting room floor. They give us EVERYTHING they got on every album. Who can ask for anything more?

And by the way, it's SHREDDING solos! Damn drunk Frenchman!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

When the Inkwell Runs Dry

There are times when the inkwell runs dry for the writer. The ink from the artesian springs just isn't welling up to the surface. There seems nothing you can do about it. I've been having this happen to me of late. Well, when you're a writer, shit happens. But even worse, sometimes it does not happen.

What will you do when you're just not seeing well? The lesson that was so hard for me to learn, and a concept that I still have to wrestle with like Jacob wrestling that angel, is to just do it. I don't mean force it; forced creativity bears no fruit. I mean, just begin it. Just start writing something. This just-do-it technique is usually the needed magic wand. That does not mean that it brings about instant results; for that is not how writing works, at least not more than one percent of the time. Even in those few and far between moments, the "instant" result is really an illusion, like a musician's improvisational solos; in other words, there's no spontaneaity of substance without very careful preparation and technical study before the moment of release, when you juggle everything you know into a great swirling mass of manifest creative energy.

There are times for me when I simply have too many thoughts, feelings, or ideas "stuck in the neck of the bottle". Just starting to put something down with pen, or with keyboard, works wonders. In fact, that was the method that I used to write this blog.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Words, Words, Words Dept.

Well, to my vast readership, I do apologize. I've been spending the last couple of days churning out articles the way a widget factory turns out widgets. Haven't been able to blog. But I'll be back. I always am.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Worship of the Green Gods

I've made an open commentary to Judge Roy Bean (as he styles himself) with regards to his all- too predictable commentary (I had foreseen it) on a board attached to a well-written essay about that loonie fundamentaleftist in Manhattan who believes that mankind can live without making an impact--a net impact, anyway--on the Earth. Why would you want to do that? People truly are dis-eased, and so many have a death-wish, desiring to disappear. Or, they think they can walk on water (I'm using that phrase and image here as a metaphor for making no net impact on the Earth).

But back to Judge Roy. He preceded his silly Man-Made Global Warming polemic (albeit it was a brief one) by comparing the government figures and outspoken climate scientists who rant about how mankind is responsible for global warming to Incan high priests who were believed to be able to make the sun come back with their rituals and incantations. Beanie was using the "sun coming back" as a metaphor for steadily increasing global temperatures.

I despise superficiality even more than I despise stupidity. But I guess they walk hand in hand, most of the time.

"That said... you do realize you have just admitted that the warming is real, and is man-made?"

Ah, I knew that the religioso, Reverend Beanie, would not be able to resist posting!

Mark admitted no such thing, you twit. The evidence against man-made climate change (and yes, please, let's be accurate: it is climate change, not "global warming"; kind of like how Indians live in India and Native Americans live on the American continents) is overwhelming in fact. With every passing day and every newscast, the fanaticism of people like yourself becomes more and more rarefied and more and more set in relief against the clear-headed rationality of those who realize that "it's the sun, stupid" (just ask the Martians, who have no factories and make no CO2 emissions). You talk out of both sides of your mouth, like all religious fundamentalists.

The "High Priests of Global Warming" are ineffectual, but you have true religion, while they have mere "magic" (used in the disparaging sense of the word). And the green gods forbid that we faithless unbelievers discourage the faithful from attending to your message of fire and brimstone and sin and doomsday.

It's disgusting. I mean really.

Friday, March 30, 2007

You Can Make a Fortune in Lies

I cannot believe how pretensious, how obnoxiously pretensious, some people are. But I say that only rhetorically, because in fact I can believe it.

So, the mystery of how the Great Pyramids were built has once again been solved. Yes, of course. But of course by a French architect this time. Mais naturellement!

The slaves of the megalomaniacal pharaoh used little copper saws and, of course, ramps. Yeah. Not just one ramp, either. There were both an outer and an inner ramp.

It has already been determined that the ramp concept is ridiculous. The workers would have needed to use more material to build the ramps than they did to build the Pyramids. Get that through your thick skull, Frenchie (and the rest of you ramp-theorists, too).

If it is so obvious that ramps were used then why are there scientists and researchers who study the Pyramids who cannot conceive of the ramps? Why was there a theory posited several years ago now that says the Pyramids were built by using kites to lift the blocks? As crazy as that sounds (the theory was based on a hieroglyph and some minor tests that seemed to confirm that kites could carry heavy, heavy stone blocks for short ways upward given the right tensile leverage), it is just one of several theories that have had to be put forth because the conventional ramp-and-pulley theories are crap.

The idea that those blocks were hoisted up on ramps and fitted into place with such utter perfection by people using copper saws is ridiculous. That the Great Pyramids were even conceived by the Egyptians, given that their knowledge of mathematics was what it was, which has been determined to have been on about a modern fifth-grade level, is even more ridiculous. And, if they could build those two, why did they stop? History suggests that they forgot how to build them. WTF?

The machinest and honest man Christopher Dunn has been to the Pyramids and concluded that it's beyond even the shadow of a doubt that the Egyptians used power tools including something like a diamond-tipped drill in order to carve some things like the non-coffer in the main upper chamber of one of the Great Pyramids.

If it were a simple matter of ramps, then we would be building Great Pyramids now. Just because we could. Does nobody use their brains these days?

Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Game of Snakes and Arrows is On Again

Thanks to the great art of Rush, Snakes and Arrows is seeing the light once again. You probably played "Chutes and Ladders" in the dim and distant past (that is, in your early childhood), and that modern game is the watered down British version of the ancient Indus Valley Hindu-Buddhist game (or maybe "ungame") of Snakes and Arrows. "Chutes and Ladders" was sometimes called "Snakes and Ladders", in fact. But, you know, those Victorian Christian Brits weren't going to allow snakes to figure so prominently in someone's destiny, even though they were still an undeservedly negative symbol.

In the game of Snakes & Arrows, the player rolls a single die. This die roll is supposed to be influenced by the roller's personal energy that has been brought about as the consequences of said die roller's sum total of actions and deeds in the present as well as in past lives. The purpose of the game is not really to "win" but to come to a window on self-awareness or self-fulfillment. If you know where you are then you know where you are going or can begin going to. Arrows take you higher, while the Snakes bring you down. The structure of the game is such that it is meant to mirror the path of obstacles and insights that one encounters on the road of self-development.

Like the stock market on the way to bringing investors profits, the soul experiences highs and lows, ups and downs on the way to "self-actualization". The repeated encounters with arrows here and snakes there eventually let the player see through his own illusions about himself or his take on the world around him (always intertwined) and come to know how to act with dharma, or the principal of actively doing what is right (right as in correct and as in ethical). It is very interesting that to the Hindus, who directly preceded the Buddhists and out of whom the Buddhists emerged, Dharma is the body of written works of correct teachings, while to the later Buddhists it is the principal of correct action. I guess correct teachings bring about correct actions, huh?

If you know the dharma, then you have achieved self-actualization. What other Heaven could you really desire or need?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Snakes and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune Dept.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears; when benevolence is lost, right conduct appears; when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

~ Lao Tzu

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Tame that Shrew Dept.

Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.

~ Stratford Billy

Being So Full of What is Right, Can You See What is Good?

So. I had a great evening, out with a group of friends from ancient days, for The Irish Endlessly Rock Day (that's St. Patrick's Day) at Chickie's & Pete's sports bar. ESPN says it's the third best sports bar in the nation. Whoah. I had never been there before. I had a whiskey and a few beers, along with my crab fries (never had them before, but I think I could eat them almost every night) and roast beef and cheese sammich. On the way home it snowed; what glory!

So. This morning I found some more commentaries in our Rush Group, which by the way I happen to know actually gets its posts read by the members of Rush themselves. One guy, whom I will call "Mac", really tore the band's new song (and new album, as yet unheard but for the one song) to shreds with a firey polemic the other day, and a few of us kinda took the firehoses to it. He then issued an apology, not for his opinion but for his ferocity. Then another guy said that he did not need to apologize. So. Here's my essay in response to alla that.

It's true that "Mac" is certainly entitled to his opinion. But, as he himself pointed out, his opinion was expressed in a way that even he himself, upon reflection, realized was not objective in certain ways. He was frothing at the mouth and at the keyboard, and I think some of his own spit got caught on his screen and blurred his vision.

He also opined that this whole album would suck based on this one song that he does not like. Again, Mac himself is saying that he knows that was not objective, just ranting.

All that we were really trying to say is that the ranting clouded his expressed perception of what he heard. If he still does not like the song, then so be it. He does not have to like the song. He can hate the song.

Personally, I don't understand most of the criticisms that anybody (not just Mac) has expressed about "Far Cry" thus far. I went and listened to the song another dozen times yesterday (I bought some new headphones), and I love it. I am a classically-trained amateur musician and a professional writer who has had poetry published, so I am listening and thinking with an informed perspective. I don't house any illusions that that makes me perfect and I don't think the members of Rush are perfect, either. However...

The song is not as simplistic as it's being made out to be. As far as the lyrics go, how can they be at once pedantic and too simple? They're not the most philosophically abstruse that Neil has ever written, but they're not even close to being feckless either, and given the subject matter I think they're a hand-in-glove fit.

I consider that Rush are trying deliberately to come up with a musical expression for the typically unreflecting faith and enthusiasm of people that would be aligned with the Christian Right, the kind of people who wrote about Rush being Satanic years ago. Neil wrote the lyrics to reflect an apocalyptic and a social-Christian perspective on how the world is not developing along the lines that the faithful were always so sure that it would with their values at the helm of the ship. This is an emotionally charged theme in a world where the music has turned raw; I consider that the song is meant to reflect the emotions of the theme.

Even I personally would rather have heard a "Turn the Page" style wicked-bad solo from Alex; but I don't think that his whammy-bar sustained precious few solo notes are as easy for a cat to play as has been made out.

My point is not that Mac or anyone else has to like the song, and Mac is free to never, ever want to hear that song again. But I do think that first comes an attempt at understanding and appreciating what Rush is maybe trying to get across musically and poetically, instead of coming off sounding like one of the typical so-called "rock music critics" who's in his cups.

"To each his own" is only a half-truth and, like reasoning, it's partly insane. I think we need to be careful in this present "almost glowing" world not to confuse our rights with what is right, just like we need to be careful not to mistake the goods for what is good.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Open Letter to Andy Lloyd, Dark Star Theorist

Hi Andy,

I would like to propose a new theory about why the Anunnaki needed the gold. There were multiple reasons, such as using it as a super-efficient electrical conductor and for making solar cells as just two of them, but there were two major reasons.

One of these major reasons indeed was for making repairs--but, not to repair the planet Nibiru's atmosphere by suspending gold flakes Goldschlager-like in the planet's atmosphere (I frankly find the science behind that quite dubious and always have). It was, instead, needed to repair the hulls of the Traveling Star Habitat in which the Anameabi (my Sumerian-derived name for the "gods"--that is, the "ones invoked" or the "ones sacrficed to"--before they become the "Anunnaki" or "Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came") came to Earth from Nibiru in accord with your (I believe) sound theory that Nibiru actually never crosses into the Solar System proper. This Traveling Star Habitat, akin to a Starship but more like an utterly gigantic space-faring city (the "Island in the Sky" that some Native Americans say in their legends were the gods' original homes) is what the Egyptians called by the untranslatable name of Sunt, which (as Sitchin says in The Stairway to Heaven) "crosses the sky nine times per night". Just as the original planet Marduk (the true "Nemesis"?) became conflated with Nibiru, and Nibiru with the Home World in your theory, so I say that further conflation happened where the Traveling Star Habitat became conflated with all of those, too. So the "atmosphere" that was being repaired with gold by the Anunnaki was not that of Nibiru but the artificial one of the Habitat.

I have ample scientific evidence that we human beings are not responsibile for the changing weather nor for the "global warming" anyway. Sitchin clearly is interpreting ancient texts; as you point out at your website, back in 1975-1976 there were no fears of global warming, but in fact fears of the equal opposite. But he then puts the "repair our self-damaged planetary atmosphere" spin on things into the LBOE nearly thirty years later.

The second major reason was for their own youthful longevity, Jedi-like mental powers, and "immortality"-- the alchemical process of changing the gold into a substance that could be digested as an elixir (and also, perhaps, put on as a cream to make the skin "perfect" and
" shining").

At any rate, I hope this makes some sense to you.

Best Regards,
Brant

Madmen Speaking in Tongues

I have now heard "Far Cry"...I downloaded it and listened to it for nearly two hours straight. It's endlessly rocking!

All of those crazy Rushians who have heavy-handed criticisms of this song need to get some Q-Tips and then disembark from that train to Bangkok, as they've already had far too much of "the best".

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

It's a Far Cry from What They Expected

Wooooo Hoooooo!

There's new Rush! Yyyeeeaaaahhh!

The new Rush single, called "Far Cry", is on the waves and on the Net. The new Rush album, Snakes and Arrows, is coming early May.

Sorry I haven't written anything new in a little while--I had some traveling to do and some arrangements to make.

So. I am part of a Rush group--this is like Mensa except it's about Rush (and sometimes about Rush offshoots, like rock music, politics, artworks, music gear, life stories...). This new Rush album is lyrically and conceptually inspired by something like "faith vs. rationality" and "religion vs. life". That's why it's so appropriate to house a talk about it here at Astral Trajectories. Not that I would not write about it anyway--it's Rush!

Now. Rush fans are the most loyal fans that any rock band could ever hope to have. On the flip side of that same coinage, Rush fans are the most critical people of the band they love. Even more critical than rock music critic journalists, who are jerks. So. At the Group, we've got dissenters who don't like the new song and are already down at the mouth and crestfallen. This was what I wrote to them...

You know, all of these criticisms sound just like the same ol', same ol'. Every time Rush release a new single, there's about a 65/35 split amongst the Rushians. 65% think it's incredible and they are excited, while the other 35% are all over it with criticism worse than a Rolling Stone review.

Then, months later, after they see Rush in concert, many among the 35% are converted and fall in love with what they previously disparaged. Sometimes this also comes about through continued listening and getting used to yet another "totally inconsistent" Rush album.

Then there is the 'single factor'. When was the last time Rush released the most original song on their latest album as the first single? MP (and I don't want to hear how "dull" "Tom Sawyer" is; it's one of their greatest songs so put a sock in it. If you don't like that song, then you are suffering from Overplayitis). Even as far back as PW, "Spirit of Radio" is not the best song on that album. You might say, "it's still a great song, though"; but that piano at the end fucks up that song. Nick Raskulinecz has promised, the band has promised, that Neil is all over the place on this album, that there are plenty of Lerxt solos, that Geddy has wailing Ban-Shae moments on this album. There are 12 other songs, people, including a mental instrumental on the forthcoming album. "Far Cry" is the first single. Singles are meant to garner airplay which then garners interest in the album and tour. Rush still try to make their leading single a quality song, but it doesn't necessarily sound like the rest of the album technically. Remember when you first heard "New World Man"? I bet half of you here lost your minds with grief (sorry, I bet 35% of you here lost your minds with grief). Now, most of you who became depressed and downtrodden because you heard "New World Man" a few times on the radio own copies of Signals and you love it (at least the album if still not that song). I remember when I first heard "Dreamline". I thought it was a simplistic song including lyrically compared to what I expected and I felt let down. While that song is still not my favorite on RTB, I now realize that it is a good song with some fine lyrics. (RTB is not a "dubious" album, either....er, except for Face Up. That song is awful, a complete throw away. Oh, and except for the lyrics I am not at all a fan of the mid-section of the title song.)

Aw, does it disappoint you that Rush release singles to make money? Do you want Rush to stay around for as long as possible? Then you need to let them make some money.

Raskulinecz is a savvy producer; do you really think he was going to let the boys get away with not doing a song or two that could be digested by today's alternative (to music) audience?

By the way, I have not heard the song yet, I will later today. Then I'll make up my mind who has been telling the truth and who is full of "they didn't write the song I would have written" horseshit.

Rush fans should know by now that the band saves the real treats for the full album. Rush fans should know by now that you have to listen to a new Rush album for at least a week and perhaps many weeks before you can even begin to make up your mind about how you feel about it.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

What is It?

I'm having shipped to me some monatomic gold products by a friend of mine who lives in Singapore. One is an elixir and the other is a skin cream. This will be my first experience with any products of this nature, and I'm very excited. I've been wanting to get into using these types of products, to see if they work and how well they work.

The monatomic gold was called the "what is it?" by the ancients. This was the "manna" that Jews and Christians think was some supernatural mystic food that God threw out of the sky. It was really the shem-an-na, the "what is it", the moof-koot-zee (MFKTZ). And that "shem" refers to a sky ship. *wink, wink*

The monatomic gold was accidentally re-discovered in the middle 1970s by a wealthy agricultural farmer named David Hudson. Over the last 30 or so years, lots of research has been conducted and the results seem favorable. People are learning about the monatomic gold and starting to use products made from it.

So, I'm looking forward to receiving my package.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Of Crop Circles and Mankind

The best laid plans, you know, gang aft aglay.

Do the best laid crop circles ever get made off-center?

I can't believe some of the crap I have to read about crop circles. And I have to read it written by what I consider to be bright, openly-considering minds who know something about the topic.

The current trend in beliefs tends toward this: They're all made by off-the-cuff but "practiced" human beings for psychologically strange reasons, human beings who pay farmers for the rights to come on their land and wreck their crops. These human beings might be under the influence of "Tulpas" or they might be under the influence of government black-ops.

We've got node-blowing and changes in growth rates of seedlings. We've got added hardiness (or, when the timing is right, consistent near-sterilization) and iron nodules and microwave radiation signatures. We've got expressions in cereal crops of the Beer-Lambert principle.

We have observations of the "spontaneous" formulation of crop circles within a half-hour's time and we have theories concerning plasma chemistry and physics introduced to account for the crop circles' existence put forth by none other than chemists and physicists. Human "fakers" just figure out how to create all of these complex and "weird" phenomena?

Are all ETs (who might well be the creators of all of the crop circles that are not demonstrably "fakes", that is, the works of human hands and feet) mere archetypal images in our minds? If they are, then how did they become originated in our minds?

There aren't any advanced entities who could be visiting us via any means who need to make disguised appearances. That is, there aren't any of them who need to force our minds into illusions about them being of "acceptable" shape and form, let alone is it a matter of their being "mere" archetypes. "Little green men" are not the continuance of "leprechauns" from Elizabethan and Victorian into modern and post-modern 20th century memes.

I know that I am getting patchy here, but can you see what I mean? Can you feel the sense of what I've knitted in my "wrong ended" threads of thought?

I'm sure I'll have more on this matter very soon. These I've written just comprise my "rough draft" of thoughts for the nonce.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Slow on the Draw

So. Today, all day, was spent in writing (for business). SEO writing and copy writing.

Damn that comma...

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The Power of Gold

Well, I received an interesting comment to my li'l essay of yesterday. Alvin Miller has some unique views. And I 'm going to read his unique views in more depth shortly, even though I can already tell I will probably be gainsaying many of them.

But before I do, I need to write another li'l somethin', as when I began reading at Alvin's site I read where he made a very interesting comment. He asserted that the King James Bible mistranslated "making potions" into "sorcery". Needless to say, the Bible is not favorable toward sorcery.

Sure enough, a little literary archaeology in the fields of the Net yielded me this hidden gem:

Galatians 5:19-20 includes a list of "acts of the sinful nature", or "works of the flesh". One of these is, in the original Greek, "pharmakia." The English word "pharmacy" is derived from it. "Pharmakia" is the practice of preparing poisonous potions in secret, to harm or kill other people. This is often mistranslated as witchcraft in some English versions of the Bible. Other versions translate it as: sorcery, magic, magical arts...and participation in demonic activities." [The bold italicized word is my doing.]

I have read elsewhere in stuff written by practicing witches that pharmakia does not necessarily mean preparing "poisonous" potions (witches tend to know the word "pharmakia"), just the preparing of potions for some kind of "magical" effect. "Pharmakia" can refer to creating a love potion, according to the pagan witch practitioners.

So. We know that the bible doesn't like people "messing with the magic" that only Gawd and his angels are supposed to be allowed to use--or bestow on Christian priests and ministers as the case might be. And that's what any supernatural or seemingly supernatural capability is--it's magic. Except that when this magic is practiced in the "right" way by your church, especially if your church is a state's dominant church, it's called "religion". In Christendom (and in the realms of Judaeism and Islam) we always have religion, and the wicked ones who are "they" always have magic.

So. We know this, so why am I spending time with it? Because Alvin made me realize that what the bible is specifically prohibiting are chemistry and, even more importantly, chemistry's forerunner and direct rootstock, alchemy.

So. What is wrong with alchemy, specifically? Well, it's rooted in the creation of manna. Yes, that's right. The "what is it?" The white powder derived directly from gold.

This white powder, this "what is it?" of ancient lore, made right and taken right, can bestow what are called "extrasensory" abilities and profound anti-aging effects upon its takers. It's being made today, but I don't know whether it's being made "right". The bible doesn't want people seeking their own powers and longevity. Specifically, the Gawd who mainly (for there was more than one) inspired the biblical writings and very specifically the Gawd who chose the people of Israel does not like human beings seeking immortality, greatness, or even for that matter erotic love (which thus leads to sexual reproduction).

The making of this powder is the root of alchemy. They (the ancient practitioners) were not trying to change the base metal lead into the precious metal gold; they were trying to change the precios metal gold into something that gave longevity so long as to be essentially immortality, and superior mental powers. They were not interested in making limitless supplies of money; they were interested in making limitless supplies of youthful years (imagine being 22, physically, for a million years).

We should be, too. If we can tear down the walls of our religious temples, then we'll get to that point.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

End the End Times Already

Jesus Christ on a bike, but I am sick and tired of all the "End Times" blathering! UFOs are harbingers of doom, or they are figuring out how to implement an NWO , or they are demons in disguise (I've already done a Brant Rant that included some philippics about that concept).

Or, UFOs are more or less ignored as errors of perception or government black ops, and the Christian fundies get all Dispensationalist and talk about there being signs of the times--that is, End Times, the End of Days--everywhere you turn. I heard one Christian couple proselytizing to someone about how they are happy that the end times are nigh--they want Jesus to come back, to come sailing back in his spacecraft...um, I mean, "cloud"; yeah, that makes perfect sense...and if we have to go through this process of the present darkness and all these wicked deeds by big government and big money and all this death and depression, well, so what? JAIZUS is comin' back!

Then that sort of people typically goes off about the Rapture. If there even were going to be a literal, face-value set of events take place like that which is supposedly described in the Revelation, the Rapture is not found there. The Rapture was invented by a Scots woman named Margaret MacDonald in 1830. She told her belief to a couple of Christian church leaders, the Apostolic Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren. They embellished the invention, said it was scriptural (funny how no-one in history had ever thought of it before if it is so scriptural), and promulgated the idea. Period.

The appeal of the Rapture is one of pride. Christians who study about the Rapture and become convinced that they know they'll be taken away before the Tribulations are haughty as hell and they know it. Then again, the Rapture also appeals to fear. "I'd better be squeaky clean or I won't be raptured, and then I'll have to suffer through the Tribulations, and then I won't know for sure how I'll be judged!" Ick. Ugh.

The UFO End Times thang means we're either being put back under the thumb of the Anunnaki, who are going to tell us, "put down your cell phone and pick up that pickaxe!", or that an earthly Paradise is going to be set up by them, with all major suffering eliminated by technology and super-high levels of self-awareness, and super abundant love (Does that include the "free love" of the 1960s and 1970s? Hey, Earth girls are easy!) for us, every one. Nobody who believes in that version of the End Times can prove which one of these scenarios is the correct one.

There are certainly many highly strange, and highly scary, things happening all around the world. But, there always have been. We just never had the media explosion before that we have now with the Net, cellular phones, and our ever-increasing collection of orbital satellites. Transfers of information move so fast now that many people feel they are being pulled under by the wake. People are stressed, and people collectively now have access to technologies and activities that greatly outstrip our collective wisdom. We also have fundie Islamics who want to murder and destroy everyone and everything that is not or won't convert to Islam with its sharia law.

We also have more misinformation about more things being promulgated--thanks to the Net. I love the Net, and I never want to see it restricted. All the same, it has become democratized, and that which becomes democratized inevitably becomes cheapened on the whole. There are too many blithering idiots on the Net now, and they have far too much of nothing to say. Remember, if you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a hell of a lot of garbage into it. A mind is like a hand: one that cannot both open and close is broken.

If these end up being "End Times", it will only be because of our own doings. Yes, the Anameabi--those who when on Earth are the Anunnaki (same beings, different name)--are real. However, so are our own wills.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Misinformation

Someone read the following Sumerian text and concluded that Enlil had his own private stargate and that this stargate was contained within the E-Kur inside the city of Nibru (Nippur). An E-Kur was the god/dess' dwelling at the top of a ziggurat.


He has taken up residence in Nibru, the lofty bond between heaven and earth. [...] The front of the city is laden with terrible fearsomeness and radiance. [...] Its interior is a wide sea which knows no horizon. In its ...... glistening as a banner, the bonds and ancient divine powers are made perfect. [...] Its brickwork is red gold, its foundation is lapis lazuli. [...] Enlil , holy Urac is favoured with beauty for you; you are greatly suited for the Abzu, the holy throne ; you refresh yourself in the deep underworld, the holy chamber. Your presence spreads awesomeness over the E-kur, the shining temple, the lofty dwelling. [...] Its fearsomeness and radiance reach up to heaven, its shadow stretches over all the foreign lands, and its crenellation reaches up to the midst of heaven. [...] He alone is the prince of heaven, the dragon of the earth. [...] Enlil , your ingenuity takes one's breath away! By its nature it is like entangled threads which cannot be unraveled, crossed threads which the eye cannot follow. And this is from Enlil and Sud, another ancient sumerian text: At that time Enlil had not yet been given a wife in the E-kur; Ninlil's name was not yet famous in the Ki-ur. After travelling through Sumer and to the ends of the universe, he ......; in his search throughout the Land, Enlil, the Great Mountain, stopped at Erec. And one last one from "Enlil and Ninlil": Enlil approached the man of the Id-kura river of the underworld, the man-eating river.

Now...let's set the record straight.

The front of the city is laden with terrible fearsomeness and radiance...Its interior is a wide sea which knows no horizon.

The city of Nibru is what is referred to here. There is no mention of a stargate in the E-Kur. And Nibru does not contain this "wide sea" without a horizon: it is describing the very intererior of the city itself. "Its interior is..."

So. What you need to claim is that the city of Nibru, the "place of the crossing", was nothing but a giant stargate with a city wall around it. I'd love to know how that could have been, since Nibru (Nippur) was a very important religious center to the Sumerians, whom we know did not spend a great deal of time walking or sailing through stargates. But, this city would indeed have contained some high tech stuff that would blow human minds. Like, a whole bank of communications devices from end to end that could send messages through the "infinities" of space, and receive them, perhaps? And outer space was "the celestial waters" to the ancients. So, the intererior of the city of Nippur is receiving all these images and sounds and holograms and "VR" interactions from the depths and expanses of the celestial waters. The signals do not merely stop and start in Earth's atmosphere, they come from the great beyond (outer space). That place which is beyond the horizon. The "sea" (of super-advanced communications devices) within the walls of Nippur "knows no horizon".

It also does not say in the texts that Enlil has any "private stargate" at all. It says that he is "greatly suited" to enter the Abzu.

By the way--I am a proponent of at least some parts of the "stargate theories" such as those put forth by William Henry.

I am not at all a proponent of continued, and seemingly deliberate, misreadings of texts and images.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Burnt Offerings

Welcome back, sports fans!

So. What's going on with the cattle mutilations, hrm?

I would say that what I am most skeptical about with respect to cattle mutilations and ETs has to do with the common ET theories and speculations. What's so common about ETs? Nothing--nevertheless, there are common ET-cattle relationship theories amongst the topic's "intelligentsia".

There are those that say that ETs are taking tissue samples from the cows. Why they would need these things is beyond me, and why they would take the samples by using such brutal methods is even farther beyond me.

Then there's the idea that the ETs are doing all this, but disguising their activities in order to deliberately make it seem as if it's being done by humans with a secret agenda. Whenever I hear about ETs doing anything at all and then trying to cover themselves up by making their actions look like human actions, I cringe. They aren't going to do that. They won't need to do that. That's in the same vein as a fundamentalist babbling about the pagan god/desses or the Ancient Astronauts "really" being fallen angels who are trying to tell us they are something else. Pa-leeze! ETs can and will do whatever they want to do and do it straightforwardly.

Then why do they tend to stay away from us (assuming they are here)? Is that not disguising or at least hiding? No, I don't think so. I think they just go about doing what they do--minding their own beeswax. Sometimes the beeswax has something to do with a human being and then there's a close encounter of the third kind. But, typically, they are following their own trajectory. If you're a little child, you might get it into your head that when Daddy goes off to the office, he is hiding from you or trying to disguise his activities. But he's not doing either one of those things; he's going to the office for business reasons. You are too young, too immature, to understand what he does at the office. You're too young and immature to understand how he makes the car take him to the office, too. Our minds, here in the Space Age and the 21st Century C.E., are as little children's minds compared to the ET minds.

Then we have the theories about government black ops behind the cattle mutilating. They're testing some weaponry, or even seeing how people react to the madness. Maybe. The tricky part concerns how they do these things. Our government has to have some really super-advanced transportation technology that is tippy-top secret if it's the culprit. One cattle rancher and farmer out in Colorado says, "The grass around their legs was still upright, still tall. When an animal dies it usually thrashes around and disturbs the ground. This was like the cows had been gently laid down in the grass. Like they'd been lowered." He's talking about the mutilating of two of his cattle--both had parts of their faces, the exact same swath of face from the left cheek on each one of them, removed with some sharp, precision-cutting instrument. The sheriff investigated and said, "That grass breaks. It's easy to see a footprint. No one came anywhere near those cows. So I don't really know what happened."

Nevertheless, there have been police investigators who have concluded, independently of each other, that the mutilations are the results of covert government studies that aim to track diseases in livestock. Independent researcher Peter Jordan reached that conclusion through a remote viewing study he conducted in the late 1970s. A majority of his remote viewers perceived perfectly terrestrial light helicopters being unloaded from the backs of trucks by people wearing hazmat suits. They had a constant need for fresh animal samples for some reason. The "UFO" sightings that are almost always around the area of a recent mutilation are, in this scenario, deliberate mis-information being put out there by the black ops crews.

Although the god/desses do love their steak ("burnt offerings"), I think I have to go with human, all too human black ops for now.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Close Encounters of a Telluric Kind

~Cincinnati, OH and Rancocas Woods, NJ, Summer 2006

Connie, in Cincinnati, and I, in Rancocas Woods, had a plethora of thoughts, feelings, experiences to catch up on after an accidental silence of 16 years. One missed telephone call, one message not taken by Connie's sister, and two lives flew apart on opposite trajectories. But the Net and Connie's diligence had brought us abruptly into contact once again. She had come upon my email address; as a writer, I can at times be Googled and found, and she had Googled my name now and again for several years.

I wrote her back. "I can say that I am no longer an even remotely Christian person (I suppose I never really was to start with). Indeed my thoughts returned, in force, several years ago to the concept of the Elder Race and/or Ancient Astronauts. In fact one of my novels is all about it. I study religions intensely still, but with no acceptance of any of them at all, pagan or otherwise."

Talk of an Elder Race upon the earth in the ancient days, talk of religions with words and images considered but which were permitted no rental space in our minds, breathed the breath of life into a story that Connie never told, but now had one of her life's dearest--and most eccentric--friends to receive.

One night about 10 years ago, Connie was sleeping, minding her own business, dreaming her dreams to herself, when suddenly those dreams were cut short by what she considered to be an invasive night-vision. Unlike most of her dreams, it was very vivid and clear. Connie found herself running into the yard of her house and stopping near the front porch in the budding, foggy light just before dawn (not dream-fog--at the time, she lived near a river and it was always foggy there in the morning). She had been following her niece, who was now running and hopping in the yard, pointing at the sky with frantic motions. Her husband was walking out onto the porch, looking up, so Connie, too, looked up, and saw an enormous disk of gold emerging over the treetops, filling the sky above their house.

She yelled for her niece to come into the house. Her husband said something Connie can no longer recall (it has been 10 years now, after all). Then her dream was over as suddenly as it had begun.

The next memory she had was of waking, but she woke with a start, the dream fresh in her mind. Her husband woke at the very same time, sat up in bed, and said, "I just had the most bizarre dream!"

He described his dream to his wife and it was exactly identical to hers, except that his perspective had been from the porch, looking down on his niece and wife, and he remembered the disk as silver, with the light of the rising sun on its belly. Every word spoken in Connie's dream he repeated back to her verbatim. The time of day and direction from which the disk came were identical in both persons' dreams. The order in which they came into the yard and the places where they were standing were identical, too.

Their niece was staying at their house that night, and when she woke they asked her if she remembered any dreams from the night before, but she did not (she was six at the time).

Connie would never have believed her husband if she had told him her dream and he had said he dreamed the same thing. He has a mind given to falling into fantasy, whereas she is much more practical; but she had told him nothing about her dream until he had already described it in full. She expected no one to believe her, and she certainly can't prove it, but she knows it can only be one of two things: she was either able to share dreams with her husband telepathically, or they had encountered a U.F.O.

She has never dreamed about a U.F.O. before or since that morning.

Upon reflection, I am certain that a U.F.O. contacted Connie's household and the electromagnetic energies were picked up by her and her then-husband. The reason for the very slight differences the two of them experienced in the dreamland perspective and U.F.O. color detail is, for me, simply that all people put their own interepretations, born from the stuff of their conscious mind with its subjective takes, into the forming of the audiovisual formatting of received information, information which is deliberately and/or by its very nature sent to the subconscious mind. I don't know if the contact was deliberately targeted at Connie and her household or if it was incidental. That is, she and her husband could have been in the path of a radiated swath of EM [electromagnetic] energy and there was nothing personal about it. "These events are extremely Tricksteresque; very hard to know in most circumstances what was targeted and what was collateral," I concluded in an email to her.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

A Poem

http://www.dailywriting.net/McLaughlinRaven.htm

Here's a link to a poem I published over two years ago (by all the gods, I can't believe it's been that long!). It says a lot about mankind's true origins...if you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Welcome, Sports Fans!

News and weather are headed your way here soon, just as soon as I figure out what they are doing with themselves for the time being. By the time I figure that out, the time will have passed.

What do you all think--is there a gestalt warming trend going on in the blogosphere? Should we be disturbed, and try to pass measures to limit the amount of misinformation that we throw up?