Event Horizon

Bewitched by the kitch of the slow pitch twitch in the drainage ditch...

2007-10-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

The Orbiter Discovery docked with the ISS this morning. STS-120 was stowing more than just the Harmony node. The prop used as Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, in the original Star Wars movies also flew aboard this mission. It's supposed to remain safe, sound and unopened in cargo and given back to George Lucas after returning to Earth. Comemorates the 30 anniversary of Star Wars. I can only recall a few things about my younger childhood. I do remember seeing Star Wars in 1977, at the impressionable age of 6, then seeing the sequels repeated as they were released over the next 6 years. The first movies I bought, way back when BetaMax was in fashion and tapes cost like $40 a pop, was the Star Wars trilogy. I suppose that and a healthy obsession with Star Trek (then and now) is what honed me to be fascinated with outer space.

A press release this week mentions that astronomers using the Chandra X-ray space telescope have found a very heavy black hole in Messier object 33. The black hole is part of a binary system which also includes a gigantic star. The two are orbiting around each other at a very high velocity. The system as been titled M33 X-7. The importance if this is that scientists need to re-evalute models of black holes. Why would one massive star so close in proximity to another massive star collapse before the other? The star of this binary system is huge, about 70 times larger than our Sun, so the star that created the black hole must have been massively huge. The parent star's radius must have been larger than the distance between the two stars, so when the star collapsed into a singularity, it must have pulled the other star closer. The rapid orbit of the star and singularity cause the star to eclipse...this is the first recorded instance of a blackhole eclipse. M33 is a galaxy that is three million lightyears away from Earth, so this event is happening fairly close on a cosmological scale.

-A

Shooting from the hip with a well aimed quip...

2007-10-23T11:24:00.002-05:00

The Space Shuttle Discovery launched into orbit this morning. STS-120, the 120th shuttle mission had a successful lift-off at about 10:38 CST, on her way to the ISS to deliver the Harmony section and bring Nebraskan astronaut Clay Anderson back to Earth. I never get tired of watching those lift-offs. Amazing that a vehicle carrying humans can ignite and 9 minutes later is in orbit with engines roaring at over 6000 mph. Then once in orbit, over 200 statute miles in space the Orbiter is doing 17,500 mph, watching 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours...now that's fast.

-A

Long curls and swirls and twirls from the girls tongue song flung on the wrong wrung...

2007-10-16T10:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a pic from the Hubble telescope of a galaxy called I Zwicky 18. This galaxy was found about 40 years ago and thought to be young by cosmic standards. Now scientists have found data pointing at older stars in the galaxy, so the galaxy could be youthful in appearance but up to 10 billion years old. See scientists have open minds and are willing to change them when research shows new evidence...nothing at all fundamental about that.

The mindset of a grand creator being, blinking all of this into existance in six days, and being so gracious as to will it all to humans to steward and have control over, seems not just a tad, but hugely preposterous. If this is were the case each human on earth would own, have complete dominion and be responsible for at least sixteen galaxies. Delusions of grandeur. On this planet alone humans cannot even agree on one god figure...which you would think would not be a difficult task at all if a creator were so. Now imagine at least one planet in each of the millions of galaxies, that might have developed lifeforms that are appearently conscious of their own indiviuality. So conscious of themselves that they think they have an immortal soul and a greater purpose than just being born and taking care of themsleves and loved ones before dying. A greater purpose meaning...what happens to them after death? What? If all of these galaxies worshiped that one god, and were indeed on the proper path to a blissful afterlife...imagine the logistics of heaven and hell. Heaven/Hell would be so incredibly overpopulated. Maybe souls do not take up time and space? But what about saving all of those pro-life embyros so that the unborn souls have a fleshy vehicle waiting for them. So souls do take up space? Imagine all of the souls in the universe taking up space? With only two possible places to go, that would make for one crowded eternity. There seems to be an endless supply of souls in limbo just waiting to be injected into a mommy's tummy...where are those kept? In Heaven? Hell? A staging area? That would meean there are three possible places for an immortal soul to be kept. Even if Earth were the only planet with animals bearing souls, the eternal logistics of where to store them are simply nightmarish to contemplate.

Humans are the only animals that have the appearent brain malfunction, that when recognizing (unexplainable to them) patterns in nature put a supernatural explanation to them. Do bees worship a bee god that brings them fresh flowers anually? Do salmon dance around a maypole or fashion fertility idols? No, they swim upstream.

I am continually impressed and awestruck by these deep space Hubble photos. Look at all the galaxies that are in just this one view of the universe. Hundreds of evolving galaxies can be seen just from the Hubble Telescope concentrating on one postage stamp sized camera field of the universe. Amazes me for sure.

-A

PS: Here is a movie I have been meaning to watch...so I finally watched it. If you can get past the electronic music and trippy computer effects, it is very informative IMHO. In the vein of Aaron Russo's AFTF movie. Russo sound bites are even in this one too. Done in three parts...paraphrasing here...Religion=Astrology, 9/11=Fear, International Banking=One world government...a'la GW Bush's NAU. Zeitgeist.

A motion for potion that washes the gollashes and shines the equine...

2007-10-12T14:01:00.000-05:00

Very eye-opening documentary...America: Freedom to Facism.

If I was ever to vote for a republican...can't believe I'm even entertaining that notion...Ron Paul has some platforms I sort of agree with, mainly dismantling the IRS.

-A

Black hole blues in the lack of soul in your boogie shoes...

2007-10-11T12:29:00.000-05:00

I am by no means a great fisher, but I enjoy doing it. Catch and release is extremely fun to me. I also like spending time outside by the lake water, listening to birds, frogs, insects and fish flop...and I'm obsessive when I do something I enjoy. I have a few rods and reels, nothing really spectacular as fishing gear can get really expensive really quick. I have a two light set-ups - a BPS jigger and BPS baitcaster for panfish/crappie/etc. A couple medium set-ups for bass/trout/etc. - a Shimano spinner and Abu Garcia spincaster. And a couple set-ups for catfish - a Shakespeare Tiger and Zebco 808. I even keep all of my tackle segregated depending on what I'm going after. That way I can travel light and be mobile since I only shore and dock fish.

I've been lusting after either an Abu Garcia Ambassodore or one of the Quantum casters, but the prices are steep compared to what I normally fish with, paying for the brand and the better quality. Well I found a deal on a Quantum 1310 I could not pass up...but I did pass it up since I had to save up. In my quest to find that deal again, I stumbled upon a deal for a Quantum 1420mg with an Affinity rod for the same price as the 1310. So I snagged it this time around. My first foray into upper scale gear. Of course the sky is the limit when bass fishing, if you can afford it, but a dependible Quantum will suit me and my budget just fine. Pic of a 1420mg above. I also have some new mono-line and salt injected tubes, I'm ready to go.

Found a neat fishing weight estimater...

Fish Calculator

Looks like the 27 inch long catfish I caught, was around 11 lbs.

-A

The ballyhooed lude and rude and their half-brewed feud over crude...

2007-10-09T13:05:00.000-05:00

I found this small session very interesting. Richard Dawkins, Johnathan Miller and Norman McCleod.

Part One...

Part Two...

-A

Being polite, upright and contrite to fight the spite of fright and blight...

2007-10-05T11:06:00.000-05:00

I was trying to think of something to write about today as I drove in to the office. My mind was wandering since it was a very pleasant morning, the window was down and left arm out. I had Grateful Dead music cranked as I rolled through the farmlands. Thanks to road construction going on all but one route for me, I have to take the scenic way in to the urban sprawl. Which is quite nice but a longer drive, more miles and time. The morning was dewey, so the farm grass smelled nice...amazing how sometimes even equine and bovine piss doesn't stench off all that bad. High clouds with the Sun's intrepid photons busting through whispy gaps. Inspiring on a totally natural basis. The night skies have been big for the last few days, autumnal atmosphere seems to give a good showing of stars...again a sense of awe even with trace surface light pollution.

These types of circumstances just drive home in my rationing that nature is absolutely wonderful. A sense of inspiration and awe does not need to stem from an imaginary consoling father figure...as a matter of lack of evidence it surely does not. No need to close your eyes and wish really hard, that talking to yourself makes things turn out better. Not even finger crossing or tossing salt over your shoulder can change anything. Humanity can change, can indeed make things better. If not, then nature moves on regardless. There is so much beauty that most take for granted. The cosmos is nearly incomprehensively fantastic, a mystery that defies and requires no supernatural explanation. Music, night sky, sunlight, clouds, a painting, a hug, smell of grass and rain, might sound like a wishy-washy-hippy to admittedly fully appreciate such things, but they are there to be experienced, and are tangibly real.

-A

The general anesthetic purgury of diuretic parthenogenetic prophetic bugulary...

2007-10-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

Not too much to say today...so I thought I'd post Richard Dawkin's latest documentary. This aired a few weeks ago on BBC. He tackles all of the hullaballoo, supernatural, new age, horromojo-stuff in this one...

Enemies of Reason - Part 1

Enemies of Reason - Part 2

If you like these films look up the God Delusion on Google Video...or better yet just buy them from his website. I have it linked in my link-o-rama section. However...the vids can be downloaded on Google Video and ripped to DVD-R. Enjoy.

-A

Coordinated prison rules for newly arisen insubordinate preschool fools...

2007-10-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

Race weekend is over...

What an interesting NNCS race...lots of weather, cautions and controversial finale. As much as I ridicule team Hendricks drivers, when I talk out loud with other race fans, I must admit yesterday they showed some class. Being at the race without a scanner, means you are not getting the whole story. I watch scannerless, so I was in the dark, like the track was, at the finish. After the speakers announced Biffle won under caution without a green/white restart, what spectators that stuck it out during the three hours of rain delay, flooded the stands in a mass exit...before Biffle even crossed the stripe. So I had assumed NASCAR ended the race before cars crossed the stripe. Which I thought, that's odd, what a let down. Kansas is a track without lighting, so the sunset cut the race short...no normal restart. Once I got home and kicked off my mud covered shoes, I watched the race recaps. I indeed left my seat too soon...Biffle ran out of gas, and Bowyer (my driver) crossed the stripe first! This happened under caution, Biffle could not keep pace with the safety car, and diverted his machine to the logo painted lawn...the cars behind him kept paced and crossed first! However, NASCAR made another judgement call which allowed Biffle to keep the victory. Johson and Gordon showed some class, and have my respect, they both congratulated Bowyer on the victory. Bowyer, showed calm and a lot of confusement on the cameras. He and his team thought he had won too. After watching the replays, I agree, Bowyer won his hometrack race, it is obvious, look at the picture above. The Black Jack wins!

The understanding of the rule has been, under caution the running order is frozen. Keep pace with pace car, no passing. Then earlier this year at the Montreal NBS race, Robby Gordon was caught up in a NASACR rules snafu. Which led teams to understand that he did not fall in line and did not keep pace and was penalized for that. The confusement is over pace. Some teams appearently albeit wrongly thought that keeping pace was the key. I wish that NASCAR did not keep the rules so open ended and secret from the fans...then again, if a race team can't keep them straight and NASCAR keeps editing them, maybe they are better left unknown by the general public.

-A

Scholastic youth bit the iconoclastic sleuth with an uncouth sarcastic tooth...

2007-09-27T09:13:00.000-05:00

A little less than three hours ago, NASA's Dawn Mission launched into space via a Delta II Heavy Lifter and is on it's way to the asteroid belt. The Dawn spacecraft is NASA's newest deep space explorer on the first interplentary mission in history. Dawn will slingshot around Mars, testing it's framing cameras, measuring x-rays, gamma rays and infra-red imagers as it leaves the red planet's orbit...and zooms on to Vesta, the first of two asteroid belt objects to study.

Dawn is also the first spacecraft to use Ion engines. Dawn has three Ion engines, which is one more than a George Lucas imagined TIE Fighter. Each Ion engine weighs about 20 pounds, has the diameter of a basketball and only functions in the vaccum of space, running very swiftly and thriftly on Xenon fuel. Xenon is a gas that is four times heavier than air. The Ion engines are designed for at least 5.5 years of functioning. Dawn's power source are the solar panel arms, fully extended at 54 feet, these panels will collect energizing solar rays as the space craft jets further and further from the sun. The asteroid belt objects Dawn will explore are about 3AU distant, give or take a couple thousand miles...these solar panels are NASA/JPL cutting edge tech.

Dawn has 112 levels of incremental throttle, over the next few days it's throttle will increase to level 28 as it rights itself from the launch spin and gains velocity. Slowly and deliberately Dawn will gently increase it's speed, over the next four days it will go from 0-60 mph...the follwing days 60 more mph...after 12 days in it will cruising at 180 mph. This puts less stress on the ion engines and conserves xenon. as the 2,600 lb spacecraft rockets through the solar system. After about a year in space Dawn will reach 5,500 mph...at 5 years in it's speed will reach 23,000 mph.

Absolutely interesting stuff. Space history was made today.

-A

PS: It's NASCAR weekend here in Kansas! I will be out at speedway for majority of the next three days watching my favorite drivers blow the quarterpanels off the competition. Won't be writing on here during that time.

The population's inspiration and elation with lactation is a fascination and creation of frustration...

2007-09-26T09:03:00.000-05:00

The e-news must be slow today...Yahoo has a story about satellite imaging being able to find downed planes or lost hikers in remote areas...so why not look for bigfoot populations and sea monsters. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about cryptozoology. I do think that the mind can play tricks on a person, as the synaptic sparks in the brain try to make sense of shadows and peripheral vision. The mass effect of delusional folklore, superstition and hysteria still tuns rampant through society. I also know that thanks to evolution there seem to be new species, however large or small discovered on a regular basis. Humans even make new breeds or domesticated animals through artifical selection. Just look at all of the funky-less-than-natural dogs that are available for people to sink money in to. I am however skeptical of everything, yet one can have "faith" without having belief in the supernatural, new age, hollistic, paranormal. One can be scientific and natural and still have to take things on what can be termed faith. I have never seen an atom or it's nucleus. I have never stepped foot on the moon but know it is more than just a flat paper disk rising and setting in a pin pricked sky. Due to the lifespan of the human animal, I could never know 100% for sure that the universe over 13 billion years old. However, many respected sources with many scientific models have variably tested and proven these things to be the best of factual knowledge a human can understand. So without the means to actually look for yourself, it could be termed a faith of a sort. However you could also switch the word to trust...which I like better, since it cannot be misconstrued to have and alternate magical meaning. Nothing should be taking on faith, when it cannot be imperically measured, meaning that when science has reached it's boundry, that improbable supernatural answers are the only possible explanation. That cannot be without proof, and the absence of proof does not make it real. The scientific mind can change, can evolve, can adapt to new information.

So now using satellite imaging could it be possible to find fantastical creatures lurking just out of reach of human contact. Will there be dragons found? Unicorns? Merfolk? Bigfeet? A plesiosaur swimming deep in a European lake? Creatures that have evolved or survived through minimal breeding habits? There must be more than one of such creatures. Why else would they be so engrained in folklore? How difficult would an image be to authenticate? I myself can make very convincing bogus images using Adobe Photoshop. Scientists have yet to establish concrete evidence and serious study of such things. Yes there are socities that devote time to searching for cryptozoological animals, but nothing conclusive as of yet. The back-from-extinction coelacanth has somehow survived and remained fairly elusive to humans. Could a missing link between the human ape and the primate ape be sustaining it's population deep in a dense forest somewhere?

-A

An electroshocked and mocked pickpocket flocked to the retrorocket's flippity-flopped windsock...

2007-09-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in Missouri- November 30, 1835 and died - April 21, 1910 of a heart attack. Clemens became one of the first and one of the most prolific American writers under the name Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens is one of my all time favorite authors. I am far from close to have reading his entire cannon of material, however its is a goal of mine to read as much of it as I can while I'm here. I have read his mainstream classics, as well as a few not so mainstream, I have also read just about all of his short stories. My fascination with Mark Twain does not end there...he was born in the time of United States history that particularly interests me, and he was fairly local to where I myself have lived my life one hundred years later. Clemens was an extremely accute critical thinker and his philisophical and political opinions and ideas were very cutting edge for his time and his esteamed place in society. Later in life after gaining life experiences through world travel, Clemens could even be labeled a revolutionary. He was a supportor of the labor-movement. He was anti-imperialism, which in and of itself was an un-Amercian way of thought for a turn-of-the-century individual, with political aquaintances. He even became VP of the American Anti-Imperialism League. Clemens was a very vocal social critic, that gave lectures on his opinions. He was an abolitionist and an opponent of racism. He was for the ethical treatment of animals and himself a vegitarian. One of the most controversial aspects of Clemens criticism was how he felt about orginized religion. His opinions and writings on that subject matter was kept in the closet, so to speak, by the surviving members of his estate, these publications were not truly marketed by publishers and kept from the mainstream until the early 1960's. Those are still not the Mark Twain books you will find readliy available for purchase when shopping your average local bookshop. There is a quite sizable collection of works published posthumously.

I do share many of the same opinions that Samuel Clemens held. That is why he is one of my, if not my favorite author of the late 19th and early 20th century. I am continually impressed by his personal views on life and the cosmos and his way of inventing fictional characters that seem incredibly lifelike.

-A

None of the one nun's sons had a ton of fun with a stun gun hunting water moccasin...

2007-09-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading Martin Rees book "Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others". He makes mention of an interesting illustration of the span of our Sun's main sequence age. If you started a cross country walk on a beach New York (Sun turns on) with the destination being a beach in L.A. (Sun goes red giant), taking just one step every 2000 years, in comparisome with the current age of The Sun, your hike would have you placed somewhere in Kansas right now. The sun being just a bit under middle age...4.5 billion out of a 10 billion year main sequence. Rees' book so far is quite enjoyable, sort of in the vein of Hawkin's "Brief History of Time", as cosmos theory for the common person. What I like about Rees is that he chooses to leave all supernatural references out, yet still however reluctantly includes mention of unproven hypotheticials for information purposes. Difficult not to mention both books together, since Hawkins and Rees are colleagues with similar educational background...yet each ended up having a different approach.

Scientists have discovered that Neptune has a huge temperature differential. Being that it is furthest planet from the Sun, it only recieves 1000th of the sunlight that the Earth basks in. Neptune is a gas giant and composed primarily of helium and hydrogen, yet the methane in it's atmosphere makes it reflect blue. Neptunes year is 165x that of Earth, so it's seasons last quite long. The southern pole is currently pointed at the sun, and has heated up during this 40 years of summer. The average temperature on Neptune is -392F, but at the south pole it heats up to around 18F degress. There is more on this on the Nasa.gov site.

-A

Behold the head cold is instead conjolled in the rolled gold of a bread mold...

2007-09-17T13:18:00.000-05:00

This evening at Glenwood Arts Theatre in Metcalf South Mall (Overland Park) at 7:40pm there will be a screening of a film called "Kansas Vs. Darwin", which is a documentray of the evolution hearings in Kansas that happened back in 2005. A couple years back the Kansas state school board was neck deep in the intelligent design legal debate which would have allowed creationism taught along side evolution in biology classes...infringing on the constitutional law that seperaes state and church. The ID supporters wanted to promote christian biblical creationism while reducing Charles Darwin's in depth science of evolution and natural selection to a mere whistful theory. More here...

http://www.kansasvdarwin.com/default.asp

I really wish I could attend this screening...however I am preoccupied.

-A

YES! Clint Bowyer won his very first cup race at Louden this weekend! Leaping four places upwards in the chase for the cup championship. That black and white JD car looked fantastic in victory lane. Bowyer did such a hard set of burnouts that he killed the car and it had to be pushed onto the checkered floor in front of the stage. One down nine to go for team RCR.

The sour cream color scheme of the meteor stream made the theme team scream...

2007-09-13T10:50:00.000-05:00

Is there life on other planets? With the notion that the Earth is just one planet attached to the Sun, a star. That the Sun is a star among a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and that there are quite possiblly a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. The likelihood of life elsewhere would seem very probable. The fact that our solar system is a third of the age of the universe, means that lifeforms and species on non-earth planets, even quite possibly in our very own solar system, may have come and gone. Species have come and gone even on the Earth, just within the current 4.5 billion years, a fraction of time since the big bang of 13+ billion years ago.

NASA and SETI are constantly searching for signs of life. Scientists are studying extreme environments here on Earth hoping to understand life that could posssibly exist on other planets or their moons. Water, seen as ice on extra-terrestrial surfaces could house ancient microbial life. That life too could be in the process of constant evolution to adapt with an ever changing environment and weather system.

Jupiter's moon Europa is extremely bright when viewed through a telescope, due to the icy surface. The theory is that surface is constantly fed with fresh ice due to the pull of Jupiter's gravity which constanty opens and closes fissures in the ice which brings new liquid water to the surface...so there is liquid water hidden below. Water is the great diluder of building block elements that put evolution in motion. Could there be microbial or other aquatic life under Europa's crust?

Saturn's moon Titan is covered in a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane. The conclusion drawn by an atmosphere such as this, is that Titan could have hydrocarbon lakes...hydrocarbons being a staple component of life. Titan could be home to lifeforms than would even defy the wildest imagination here on Earth.

On Earth we have thousands of creatures than have evolved and adapted to the harshest environments. Aquatic life that never sees sunlight. Life that exists in small microbial scale buried under ice. Tube worms that thrive on elements in boiling water being ejected into the ocean by vents that extend into the depths of the Earth. NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover discovered bacteria and fungi that have lived under the icy Alaskan tundra for 32,000 years. Carnobacterium pleistocenium has thrived where no other species could in subfreezing temperatures and in total darkness.

So the likelihood of eventually finding or being found by off-planet life seems probable, but still has yet to happen.

-A

The Persian cat and a Norway rat had an eschat chat with a faithless fruit bat...

2007-09-12T09:06:00.000-05:00

NASA's Dawn mission has finally made it to the launch pad. The mission was originally scheduled to take off in July but was postponed so NASA could give 100% attention to the recently completed STS-118 mission to the ISS. A Delta II 7925-H (heavy lifter) has made it to launch pad 17-B and the Dawn payload is atop of it. The mission's launch window starts September 26th and closes October 15th...the next Shuttle missioon STS-120 is slated for an October launch. The Dawn spacecraft will zoom off to the asteroid belt to study two of the largest objects orbiting there, Ceres and Vesta.

Ceres has a spherical body about the size of Texas and was recently dubbed a dwarf planet, in the same recatagorizing that eliminated Pluto from the classification as an outer planet. Vesta was the fourth object discovered in the belt and is about the size of Arizona. Scientists estimate Ceres could be composed of up to 25% water, which takes form as ice buried under a surface of space dust, and could quite possibly have polar ice caps...on the other side of the spectrum Vesta appears to be composed of basalt rock, frozen lava which would indicate resurfacing and an early history of volcanism. Vesta is nearly spheroid in shape except for a huge impact crater at it's south pole. It is estimated that about 5% of the meteorites found on Earth originate from a massive impact in the asteroid belt, much like the one that ejected debris out of Vesta's crater.

The Asteroid Belt orbits the Sun in between the orbital paths of Mars and Jupiter. The four largest objects in the belt, including the two listed above and Pallas and Hygiea comprise almost half of the overall mass of the main belt. The rest of the objects range in sizes from a grain of sand to a mountain.

The Dawn spacecraft is scheduled to reach Vesta in September 2011 and study the asteroid until April 2012...at that point it will make it's way to Ceres by February 2015, with the primary mission coming to an end in July 2015. I would assume that like most successful NASA exploration missions, Dawn will continue on much longer than the projected timeframe.

-A

The demeritted ferret inheritted the parrot in the beret's carrot...

2007-09-11T15:51:00.000-05:00

One the most difficult to digest and highly unlikely things that people of christian faith tend to believe in is a second coming. At some point in the last 2000 or so years someone with a vivid imagination included "revelations" into an edition of the book. These revelations tell of prophetic occurances supposedly yet to happen. Now being that I was forced to go to a fundementalist AoG church as a child, I was warned on several occasions about the soon-to-come-to-pass rapture. What I thought was most strange was that I was also told as a child that if anyone claimed to have supernatural powers, like fortune telling or predicting the future, that they must be of the devil or a witch or satanist of some sort.. Then of course the bible has a whole chapter of Nostradamusian predictions, and the very fact that they claim Jesus to have had magickal powers seemed strange to me that they held a prejudice against modern people claiming to have a supernatural touch. The church I attended thought astrology and horoscopes were devilish. How hypocritical to have a "my superstitions are holy but your's are not" attitude? Anyways...for hundreds of years those of christian faith have used the "end times" routine into scaring heathens into worshiping their god. The dispensationalists of 190 years ago even plotted out a chart of what they think will happen. They even invented a person called the "Antichrist" as someone to point the prophetic finger at. Far as I can tell the Antichrist person isn't even mentioned in the revelations chapter. It all never set well with me. As a young child it scared the shit out of me, just like it was supposed to...but it never made sense. However a whole bunch of people all over the world actually believe in a coming apacolypse. Like a nuclear war, which could indeed happen, but not by a supernatural cause unless you count that the switch was thrown by a faith-head. These people even welcome it. They believe that it will be the grand finale when Jesus flies down from outer space and lands in a cloud to collect all of the buried skeletons, rotting corpses and cremated remains (good luck gathering up all of the dust JC), up into the clouds with him. Then all of those true believers will vanish and instantly fly up, up, up and away into outer space or wherever they think the afterlife is staged.

Several other religions have their own version...

1)The jewish think that they will finally strike all of their enemies down (get revenge), then ressurect the dead, then the messiah will come down to Earth and be crowned king.

2) The mormons think that Jesus will come back to the planet and land in Missouri. They will have his landing pad clearly marked as a yet to be constructed temple, relax, they have plenty of time. The mormons think that people on Earth only have 7000 years to exist, being that we live in the 6000th year, they have another 1000 or so to build a couple temples. The mormons then think that all wicked non-mormons will perish in fire. After that all that will be left are those that believe in mormon ideology.

3a) Suni Muslims think that Jesus will come back but will fool everyone since he is a false messiah (anitchrist figure)...only the true muslims will know the difference. Then a true muslim will gather an army to fight the fake-jesus. The "real" Jesus will only come back after they start fighting the fake-jesus. The second-second-coming Jesus will general an army to stomp out the bad guys...but that's not all, the sun will then rise up in the west and kill anyone that's left...then it's judgment day.

3b) The Shia muslims predict a whole bunch of political actions, a fake messiah and quite a few of them dying in Iraq. Then someone will rise up make a speach, raise an army and kill off the bad guys...then there will be peace, once everyone is using true islam as their religion...then after a while the dead will pop back up and be judged.

4) Zoroastrians think that there will be a great final battle, where the bad guys lose. Then for just three days leftover sinners will be punished, then forgiven as judgement day goes into full swing.

5) The norse think that all of the gods will fight it out, and rip the Earth and Universe apart, whatever is left of the planet will be ruled over by two gods and a ressurected one.

6) Heaven's gate followers thought that their two leaders arrived from heaven in a UFO in these end times...and that they would follow them back up to heaven in a UFO hidden in a comet's tail...most of them killed themselves trying to catch up with that comet.

7) Branch-davidians thought that David Koresh was a prophet and that he would be able to impregnate a girl to bring forth the "Chosen One". Koresh claimed to be the voice of god, so the ATF raided his compound and burned it. Have faith though, branch-davidians think that Koresh will return (second coming) 1,335 days after his death...well that second coming was supposed to happen in August or October of 2000, since it did not the davidians now think Koresh will come back to life in March 2012.

Of course I'm paraphrasing and abridging all of this, all religions have tried and proven source material to base the facts on.

In case you are a sinner and the christian god or Jesus leaves you behind, I found a survial manual that explains all of the horrible things that are going or about to go down, for the full effect don't watch this until Jesus comes back....

-A

Part time mime without a dime commits prime time crime for key lime slime...

2007-09-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Decent weekend was had. Harvick made the championship chase. I was really sweating that. Didn't like seeing him and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the fence like that...but if I had my drethers, which it turned out I did...Happy made it. Matter of fact just about all of my favorite drivers made it in this year. I cannot wait for the Kansas Speedway race weekend.

The Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have detected nine very small galaxies, very far away. Gazing deep into space and back into time, scientists in the USA and China have discovered snapshots of these young galaxies that are forming just a mere billion years of the Big Bang. These nine galaxies have stars that are only a few million years old and are still using Big Bang elements in formation. The galaxies are quite small in relation to the Milky Way since they are not fully grown.

-A

"There’s flies in the kitchen I can hear ’em there buzzing
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say."

-John Prine - "Angel From Montgomery"

The ironic shift of tectonic plates is the chronic gift that every masonic debates...

2007-09-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

I recently found a copy of a quite revealing BBC Two documnetary on google. Being that I was born and have lived in Kansas all but one year of my life, I am quite familiar with the disgusting shenannagins that the Phelps church puts on. I have actually witnessed one of their picket lines in Lawrence Kansas around the univeristy campus. As horrible as I thought the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas are, the reality exposed in this documentary still amazed me. How can a religion be interpreted, twised and corrrupted in this fashion? Then again, maybe they do have the ulitmate interpretation of the bible, afterall the bible does chronicle an extremely wrathful "worship me or else" god. The church members honestly believe that everyone but the 70 or so members of the church are going to spend an eternity burning in hell. They laugh out loud at the notion of god's vengence. They are not only the most hated family in America, but also the most hateful...

-A

A riddle of noncommittal whittle of a tasty tittle of peanut brittle...

2007-09-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

The History Channel's broadcast of The Universe has come to an end with an excellent program on The Big Bang, or rather beyond it. This episode was two hours long and focused on several theories and where the ideas of the theories come from. In the end the concept of the Universe actually having a starting point, as an incredibly compact atomic sized cosmic egg was proven to be the scientific theory of choice, once scientists could record and measure the leftover heat signature from the incredibly high velocity expansion that happened about 13.5 billion years ago.

The episode showcased several theories of the cosmos and also how a certain religion has been trying it's best to stiffle "heretic" scientists for the last 400 years. The conflict between supernatural improbable faith and natural fact driven science is definately not a modern issue. Once Galileo Galilei decided to aim his spyglass upward instead of out to sea started the ball rolling. Though Galileo was a practicing catholic, he could not ignore his discoveries even though they went against his personal faith based convictions. The church sort of took his scientic revelations in stride until he tried to make sense of scripture by reinterpreting it to fit his science...hmm...seminal intelligent design...maybe. Well the church could not tolerate a scientist trying to rationalize the bible, so they labeled him a heretic and sentenced him to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Too late to silence him for his emperical work was already opening the eyes of the public...paving the way to a factual scientific pursuit of the cosmos. Galileo's telescope proved Copernicus' heliocentrism model...the church did not like to ponder the fact that the Earth is not center of the universe.

The concept of geological time is often times difficult for someone to grasp, let alone cosmological time. The Earth is over four billion years old...think about one billion years...now mulitply that by four and then add a several more million years. Wow, staggering. Humans and their trackable primate ancestry only go back about 85 million years. Mountain ranges have come and gone. Oceans have come and gone. Species have come and gone....billions of years. Now think of The Universe, it is estimated to be at least three times older than our solar system. So in that time stars have come and gone, planets have come and gone. Ancient stars and planets are being destroyed by gravity and new ones forming by gravity even as I type this.

To even try to wrap your mind around the age of the cosmos look at the cosmic walkway illustrated at the Hayden Planetarium. The downward spiral walkway is as long as a football field. The era of dinosaurs spans about a foot of that distance...the era of Humans is no wider than the the width of a strand of hair in that cosmological display. I'd wager that is likely a generous assumption, after all the timeline needed to fit into a building.

-A

An unpatriotic despotic found the robotic aquatic neurotic quite exotic...

2007-09-04T14:07:00.000-05:00

1) Back from a long weekend. Actually had four days off in a row, very nice....four days on / four days off / four days on...I could get used to that schedule. Didn't do much of anything, except watch the races and watch some of the Universe marathon. Also rented The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie...funny without the censor bleeps, but the format works better as 10 or so minute long segments IMHO.

2) Been a year already since naturalist Steve Irwin died. He is/was one of my heroes. He was one of the greatest animals to walk the planet. A tragic loss to the Earth indeed. He did so much to bring the wonders of wildlife and reveal the mysteries of the natural world into public awareness. I was truly saddened this day last year. Too bad his existance was cut short, but he seemed to have lived a life worth living. Steve-O left a well-placed footprint in history. I miss him.

3) Scientists have discovered a huge hole in The Universe, in the constellation Eridanus there is a "cold spot" where the concentration of detectable galaxies severly decreases. This is not a black hole by any means, but a void that stretches almost a billion light years across. NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe satellite measures the Cosmic Microwave Background that is an imprint left by The Big Bang...and it shows an expansive void, that does not even contain dark matter or cosmic dust or stars...just space. Could this be empty shell of the first three minutes?

-A

A guerrilla flotilla sails by the villa of the killa gorilla and vanilla chinchilla...

2007-08-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

It is scientific theory that our star, The Sun only has about 5 billion more years of main sequence left in it. So within that timeframe life on planet Earth either has to find more hospitable environs or face comsic demise...but time on this planet could be even more short. The Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are on a collision course. Scientists say that our closest local spiral galaxy neighbor Andromeda (Messier object 31) at 2.5-2.9 million light years away is headed straight for the MIlky Way galaxy at 62-87 miles per second. The exact velocity is difficult to pin down but the galaxies will collide in possibly 3 billion years, to form a giant eliptical galaxy. At that time the stars and gasses of Andromeda will be highly visible and likely very beautiful in the Earth's night sky. Simulations reveal that once the colliosion occurs, the two large galaxies will make several passes at each other, likely increasing velocity as the super massive black holes at the center of each spiral play tug of war with each other...finally coming to together in a giant formation once of the stronger of the two singularities wins the match.

It is a possiblity that our Solar system will feel little effects of this. If our system is ejected out onto one of the cosmic tidal tails during the joining. The result would be a spectacular view, billions of more stars in the sky. However stars can and do collide with other stars, if our solar system just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Keep in mind space is extremely vast and there is ample elbow room for wiggling and spreading out, even with the influence of extreme gravity.

Our local group of galaxies consists of about 33 galaxies, the two largest ones listed above, one more large one called The Triangulum galaxy and roughly 30 other smaller galaxies make up our cluster.

-A

PS: Sometimes I just can't get a song out of my head...more often than not it's a Zappa tune. Been mentally and audibly obsessing with this one for a couple days now...Enjoy some Napi and an incredible Zappa solo!

Jack Krack attacked the black yak's plaque with a sack full of knick-knacks...

2007-08-29T08:46:00.000-05:00

1) Alternative fuel source news...Abengoa Bioenergy, an energy company from Sevilla, Spain has chosen a Kansas town to be the site of a new ethenol plant. Hugoton, Kansas will be the place for the $400 million biorefinery that will convert lucious Kansan cornstalks and switchgrass into fuel. The US Dept. of Defense has underwritten $76 million on the project, that will be the first of several such biorefineries, other plants are planned to be built in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho and California. Good news for Kansas and the environment. I even heard Dave DeSpain of Speed Channel doing a soapboxing of sorts for Nascar to move towards more environmental conscious fuel sources. Which I am totally behind. I do like the roar of the combustion engines, but I realize that's a lot of emmisions. It's not just Nascar though, there are several racing circuits, and you also have to consider sporting events that converge on a more regular basis than racing. They draw more fans that drive more cars. So you can't blame it all on the sport of racing stock cars.

2) There was a total lunar eclipse yesterday morning...but the midwest USA did not get full vantage of it. The best place for the viewing was on the west coast, which literally lives in the past...different timezone. The east coast could have seen it too had it not been that they live in the furture...eclipse happened after after sunrise. I will paraphrase Charles Shultz now, "Don't worry about the world ending today, it is already tomorrow in Austrailia"...what a peanut.

3) History Channel's The Universe focused on the search for extra-terrestrial life. Lots of thought provoking ideas about ET life, of course nothing backed with hard science, since as far as we know now we are alone. Concepts were based on speculative "best guess" science. There are at least a couple of places even in our solar system that have enough likeness to Earth, that it is posssible at some point to have sustained life...maybe still do on a microbial level. The Sun is expanding, growing larger and hotter, at some point billions of years ago, it is quite possible that other planets and moons surfaces and atmsopheres were different due to a the star being smaller and possibly cooler. Even in it's infancy stage Earth likely was not ideal for the human animal as it is today...we (all life) existed as simple cells and microbes in statically charged goo. The evolution of the cosmos has taken quite a long span of time, yet our Solar System is less than half as old as the greater Universe. Life forms that have sprung up elsewhere could be more highly evolved coming from planets/moons that developed before the Earth. No reason to presume that out of a billion galaxies each with a billion stars that life is unique to our planet. It is completely obvious that the Universe was not created just so humans could have something to look at, it is in and of itself a life form of sorts, evolving and expanding all on it's own. Okay not biological like Earthlings catagorize life, but it's out there working on itself with gravity and cosmic geology whether humans exists or not. The Universe has been a great progam, next week is the final episode...The Big Bang.

-A

The commissioned magician's exhibition caused a thermal emmision from the mathematician...

2007-08-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm having a real quandry here...I do know what I want to do about it but I'm thinking that I need to be delicate.

My daughter recently tried out for a softball team in Olathe. It is an ASA sanctioned league as far as they use ASA umps. The team is geared to teach young girls the proper techniques to play softball, and works with them towards honing their skills at a young age with aims to play at the collegiate level. There is another issue...I don't think that colleges should give full rides for sports...I think since the USA is a society that has to pay huge amounts of money for furthering education, then scholarships should be given to students based on academics alone. But since the USA puts a far higher premium on entertainment than intelligence, the system is flawed in my opinion. University tutions are bound to skyrocket in the next ten years, so I guess trying to use the flawed capitalist system for collegiate sports scholarships is an avenue to pursue...but that is not the moral issue at hand.

For some audacious reason her new coach has supposed that my daughter is a christian. Without talking to me or my wife to ask permission, the coach requires that 8 and 9 year old girls bend a knee and pray before and after practice. Being that I am an Atheist, I have a huge problem with this. The thing is my wife is not an Atheist. So we are conflicted on this. I am not raising my daughter to believe in one certain thing. I think it is flat wrong to pass religion on to little kids. Religion should be a personal choice made when someone can truly contemplate it. A parent forcing their supernatural dogma onto a young child is not fair. Sure my daughter was given a couple little kids bibles as baby shower gifts, and she likes to read them just like she likes reading Harry Potter, but I have also informed her that is just one way that some people believe. I have told her about other world religions. She even tends to think reincarnation is the neatest of the options...which it certainly is most compelling, but that does not make it so.

My daughter still acts like she believes in the tooth fairy, santa claus and the easter bunny...so I've figured it's okay at her age for her to be exposed to the grandest fairy tale of them all...god. So it has not been that big of a deal. I've bascially told her where I stand on it, and that I have just one of many opinions on the issue. But now I have a softball coach forcing my kid to pray to an imaginary cultist thing. For now I'm simmering on the issue, due to the fact that my wife is on the fence and we are both parents. Plus I also don't feel it's right to force my rational perspective on my child. My child has her own mind.

I just keep reminding her that there are thousands of religions and that no matter what anyone says evolution DID happen and is still happening. I am doing my best to keep the wonder of science and naturalism instilled in her. I do not want her to fall into a cult, but if she does I want it to be her own informed choice, not because her parents or a softball coach wants her to. I guess the quandry is should I step in and confront the coach on his unethical supposition, as I fear that my daughter will immediately get kicked off the team. The coach proclaims on the team's website that one of the prerequisits to be on the team is to give [his] god glory. The problem is my daughter loves to play softball, and there are very few "serious" team openings...damn that flying spaghetti monster.

-A

See...

Tossed and lost in criss-cross of the embossed permafrost gloss...

2007-08-27T10:03:00.000-05:00

Took a little hiatus from posting...sometimes I just run out of things to write about.

My wife brought up that crazy god warrior woman from that realty tv show Wife Swap over the weekend, so I thought just for giggles I would look her up on google video. Well I found her in her full-on-flipping-out-in- jesus-name-I-pray glory...Enjoy!

Yikes, she is frightening. A true sample of how fundamentalist dogma can twist the weak minded.

-A