Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Alpha to Omega


Mike Walker's play, is about a computer so all-knowing that it appears to have an independent life of its own. It is, thus, an abomination for those who believe in a Supreme Creator...





John Stone is a civil engineer, building what is going to be the world's tallest tower -- a "visionary city" above the cloud line over London. He is a man happy in his work and supported by a loving wife and daughter. Then John discovers faith. He does so as a result of what is plainly a miracle. But did a miracle really take place? What if John's whole life is a fiction?

Monday, June 28, 2010

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of Duration.


Is Lionel Wallace brave enough to turn his back on the world he knows for a better life? HG Wells' tale, read by Anton Lesser. Whats the difference between victims of circumstance, trapped in lives they didn't ask for, and masters of choice, leading lives they can change at? Victims are helpless and Masters aren't. Choice is an enchanted blade, with an edge that shapes lifetimes. Yet if we're afraid to choose anything but what we've got, what good is choice? Might as well leave choice wrapped up in its box, don't bother to read the instructions. Even though you do everything that everyone expects you to do: you're a law-abiding citizen, you're the perfect husband and father, you vote, you give to charity, you're kind to animals. You live what they expect and you die and so what. because you never chose your life you never asked for change, you never asked what you loved and you never found it, you never hurled yourself into the world that mattered most to you, never fought dragons that you thought could eat you up, never inched yourself out on cliff-sides clinging by the tips of your skill a thousand feet over destruction because your life was there and you had to bring it home from terror! Choice! Choose what you love and chase it at top speed.



A diligent policeman discovers how a multi-millionaire businessman beats his rivals. Peter F Hamilton's tale read by Sam Dale. CELLULAR MEMORY INTUITION is the mind going back in time. Ultimate reality can be apprehended by analyzing the cipher keywords used by the rational part of the mind, ie: OPEN SESAME (THE FRIENDS 'SIMA SEESAW'), and breaking through the barriers to your unconscious id's instinctual intuition. Enlightenment about the nature of ultimate reality comes not by simple rational examination alone but in combination with your intuition. Left brain is CAIN, the builder, who resides in the brain. Right brain is ABEL, the artist, who resides in the spine. When both work as a team they achieve perfect speed. Abel never dies--he, the Id, only goes into the closet and hides itself from public view. Creation had intended Cain and Abel to be fully integrated, and thus, openly visible to all. Secret societies are for control freaks who lack any serious sense of self worth. Members give up their unit of political power in exchange for instant gratification....Security and Sovereignty or Sex and a Sandwich.




Astronaut, Jack Westermark, is the only survivor from a mission to Mars but is a changed man.

From Here to Eternity!!

Let's say we're here for the sport of learning choices that bring us long term positive consequence. It's a tough sport, a hard game to win. But if living's a game, then whats true about living? You have to show up ready to play, reason married with intuition is absolutely essential. If we don't do that then we can't play on earth. An all knowing expression of perfect Life has to reject all knowingness and claim five sense only. Then we have to agree to limit even those five, perceive certain frequencies and no others. Hear frequencies, from twenty cycles to twenty thousand cycles per second and call it sound; see the spectrum between infrared and ultraviolet and call it light; accept past to future linear time in three-dimensional exclusive space in the body of a surface dwelling carbon based upright biped land mammal life form adapted to a solar energy system on a Class M planet orbiting a single Class G star. Now we're ready to play. And a game has some kind of playground. A board or a field or a court. It has players, or teams, without us no game. A beginning a middle an ending. And Roles, every game we play, slip into a role, a game identity with which to play. We decide we're rescuer, victim, leader-with-all-the-answers, follower-without-a-clue, bright,brave, honorable, crafty,dull,helpless,just-trying-to-get-along,diabolical, easygoing, pitiable, earnest, careless, salt-of-the-earth, puppet-master, comic, hero. . .we choose our choose our role by whim and destiny, and we can change it anytime we want. Now try looking at the games from a higher altitude and you'll notice there are a lot of them going at once. Different rooms, different courts, different fields, different cities, different countries, different planets and galaxies and universes and different times! Players can play game after game, watching from above you'll understand. We can play on different teams, play for fun or play for keeps, play against somebody easy to beat or go up against somebody there's no chance to win, the harder it is the more fun. If there were no risk, if you knew you couldn't lose, if you knew the ending, would the game still be fun?

Lets say you and someone you know dying from an illness are playing chess in a beautiful house, lots of different rooms. In the middle of the play your friend sees how its going to end, he can't figure any way out, he resigns the game and goes off to explore the house. Does he/she think what happened was a tragedy? Is it a tragedy to you when he/she leaves? Now zoom back down to the chessboard but instead of playing the game you are the game. The chess pieces are named you, me, him, and her and instead of wood they are made out of flesh and blood and you've known each other all your life. Instead of squares there are houses and schools and streets and stores. Now the game turns so that the piece called "your friend" is taken. He/She disappears, completely off the board. Is that a tragedy? So the closer we get to the game and the more caught up in it we are, the more loss feels like tragedy. But loss is tragedy only for players, only when we forget it's chess we're playing, when we forget why, when we think our board is the only one that exists. The more we forget it's play, and we're the players, the more senseless living becomes. But life on earth is the same as baseball and fencing, as soon as the games over we remember I play because I love the sport! When you forget, all you have to do is float over the chessboard and look again.


Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of Duration.


Nature's acts are all cyclic and periodical, and her movements can best be described by moving circles ever returning on themselves. Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita refers to Himself as "Time matured" and speaks of the Universal Wheel of Time. But what is Time? We cannot see time; we cannot hear it, or smell it, or taste it; we cannot touch it! And yet no one doubts that time is and that it dominates our lives. Our every move is dictated by this most elusive and illusive factor—the time element. Its mystery has haunted human minds down the ages.

We speak of saving time and also of wasting it. We say time flies or time drags. And yet most people cannot say what time itself is! Our age is one of speed. We are constantly inventing mechanical devices to hasten all tasks and to traverse distances in space with ever-increasing speed. In a system based off of money people want to go faster and faster because they want to "save" time. The story is told of an old man who failed to respond enthusiastically to the glowing accounts of the speed of air traveling. He listened unmoved, and then asked: "But what will you do with the time so 'saved'?" It is not merely saving time that makes for progress, but how we utilize it.

However, while time is imperceptible to our sensorium, we can measure it. From the remotest antiquity men have sought ways and means of measuring time and found in Nature the basis for such measurements. Because astronomical events ever recur cyclically they were chosen to measure that unknown factor, time. We really measure the interval between the occurrence of an event and its recurrence. And so we have come to regard time as the interval between events. For us mortals time is measured by the journey of our earth through space. Our planet's trip around the Sun, the monthly orbit of the moon, and the daily rotation of the earth on its axis have given us our year, our month, our day. But while we measure the passage of time, time itself remains unknown.

In modern physics it has been found convenient to use "events" instead of "points" in describing physical phenomena, and so to the three dimensions of space, viz., latitude, longitude, and altitude, has been added a fourth—Time. Thus, if we want to describe the position of a moving object we measure its three dimensions in space and record the exact time of our observations. This is one of the key ideas in Einstein's theory of relativity. Time was regarded by Einstein as a fourth dimension. In his theory these four dimensions are so intimately related that they are referred to by one single expression, "time-space." Einstein's theory of relativity increased our knowledge about time, but did no reveal how to control, check, or direct it. We still remain the subjects of time.

What lies behind the passing flow of time? When we say this day has passed away, what do we really mean? Where has it gone to? We speak of the past, the present, and the future, but these exist only in reference to the consciousness of the one who experiences them on this plane. Madame Blavatsky offers this definition in the form of a question: "What is Time, but the panoramic succession of our states of consciousness?" (The Secret Doctrine, I, 44). And in that same work, in the second volume, explaining that humanity is the child of cyclic destiny, she concludes with the following quotation from a Sage:

THE PRESENT IS THE CHILD OF THE PAST; THE FUTURE, THE BEGOTTEN OF THE PRESENT. AND YET, O PRESENT MOMENT! KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT THOU HAST NO PARENT, NOR CANST THOU HAVE A CHILD; THAT THOU ART EVER BEGETTING BUT THYSELF? BEFORE THOU HAST EVEN BEGUN TO SAY "I AM THE PROGENY OF THE DEPARTED MOMENT, THE CHILD OF THE PAST," THOU HAST BECOME THAT PAST ITSELF. BEFORE THOU UTTEREST THE LAST SYLLABLE, BEHOLD! THOU ART NO MORE THE PRESENT BUT VERILY THAT FUTURE. THUS, ARE THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE, THE EVER-LIVING TRINITY IN ONE—THE MAHAMAYA OF THE ABSOLUTE IS." (The Secret Doctrine, II, 446)

The above gives us the metaphysical key to solve our problem: Behind time, lies Eternity. Time belongs to the world of conditioned existence, the world of constant change. It begins at any given moment in reference to a particular event or a particular phenomenon. But behind that beginning, Time which is infinite and measureless already was because it ever is. Thus, conditioned time, which can be measured, which begins and ends, arises out of Timelessness or Eternal Duration. And that is why the present, the past, and the future have validity only in this world of relativity. They cease to be valid when we transcend that which pertains to the world of changing phenomena. This is suggested in the mystic title given to Parabrahm, Kalahamsa, "the swan in and out of time."

Can we transcend the illusion of time? All mystics and sages answer in the affirmative. Meister Eckhart refers to the illusion of time as hindrance which must be overcome if one is to hear the voice of SELF). He says:

Whoso will hear the Wisdom of the Father dwell deep and abide at home, and be at unity with himself. Three things hinder us from willing our own will. The first is instant gratification, the second is distraction, the third is the illusion of time. If a man could get free of these, he would dwell in eternity, and in the spirit, and in solitude, and in the desert, and there would will the will of CREATION.

"Accept the woes of birth," says The Voice of the Silence, and Lord Buddha taught as the first of the Four Noble Truths: "Sorrow Is." Have we accepted this central fact? Not merely passively, but with understanding? Rising above it will not be possible before intelligent acceptance. The first step in learning Ultimate Reality is to UNBEE. But such resignation must be a dynamic quality rooted in our perception that the Reality is always present, here and now, and can be apprehended amidst the moving, ever-fluctuating stream of time. The establishing of an orderly and rhythmic pattern of life in harmony with Nature's laws, the observance of punctuality(perfect timing), the unfolding of skill in action—these have been declared by all Teachers of Life to be the means of realizing the presence of the Eternal and the Uncreated within our own selves.

We have the power change the past, present and future with choice. We are unable to anticipate the future but we can decide in what direction it will go because the present is ours. We can always decide what happens to us, inside of ourselves, what our attitude should be, how we deal with whatever may come to us. When all is said and done it is our own response to life that counts and that transforms the world for us. We should live neither in the past, nor in the future, but in the Eternal Now.


Sunday, June 27, 2010

Creation is Outside of Principle

There are two kinds of killed. Anybody can kill the appearance of me. Nobody can take my Life away, not if Life is. In the Real world Life is. Nothing destroys Life. Appearances are appearances, nothing destroys Life. Leaning on other people for understanding is like leaning on doctors for healing. We can only benefit when they're right . . . . when they're gone or wrong we're out of luck. But if instead we spend a lifetime learning how to understand what we know, that knowing self is always with us, and when it's wrong we can change it till it works every time, almost. The reason I'm here is not to convince you, or convert you, or to make you into me. I have a hard enough time making Jerd into me. I'm nobody's leader but my own. I would frankly feel better if you stopped caring who I am and what I believe and why I'm different from you and everybody else. I owe you information, and an answer to your curiosity. I do not owe you a conversion to my thinking which may all be lies. I think that Life is expressed in Appearance the same way that numbers are expressed in space-time. Lets take the number eight for example.

We can print an eight in ink on paper, we can cast eight in bronze, we can chip eight in stone, arrange eight dandelions in a row, stack eight dodecahedrons carefully one on top of the other. We can express the idea eight endlessly. But wait, we can also burn the page, melt the bronze, turn stone to dust, blow dandelions to the wind, crush dedechedrons to a splintered mass. We can destroy the appearance of numbers in space-time. We can create appearances, we can destroy appearances. But before time began, and right this minute, and after time and space have washed away, the reality of the idea eight stands, indestructible by appearances. When the Big Bang has turned into the Big Crunch and all matter is crushed to a particle so small that it no longer exists, the idea eight floats serene, perfect and absolutely uncaring. So my body is no more the real me than a written number is the real number. I don't care whether you believe what I'm saying I care that you understand. The idea of any number is unique, there is no other idea like it in existence. The entire Principle of Numbers depends upon dear eight, and without eight the whole Principle would collapse. Don't think so? Let's say we've managed to destroy the number eight. What's four plus four? Six plus two? Ten minus two? An indefinite number of numbers, each number different from all the others, each as important to the Principle as the Principle is important to every one. The Principle needs every number! Real, indestructible, Life beyond appearances - yet any number can be expressed simultaneously in any of the infinite worlds-of-appearance that it wishes.

Once we're in space-time, we're free to believe that we exist alone and unconnected, we're free to say the Principle of Numbers is nonsense. The Principle doesn't notice space-time because space-time isn't. So the Principle doesn't hear anguished prayer or wicked curse, there's no such thing as sacrilege or heresy or blasphemy or impiety or irreverence or abomination. The Principle builds no temples, hires no missionaries, fights no wars. It is heedless, utterly unaware when symbols of its number are nailed to crosses, hacked to pieces by other symbols and burned to ash. It doesn't notice the games that matter so much to us. Try it now. Turn so that your back is to the Infinite Principle of Numbers, to the Immortal Reality of Numerical Being. So we can ignore the Principle, we can hate it, curse it, crusade against it, we can make fun of t. No wrath from heaven, nor the faintest frown on high. Why not, because it isn't listening BUT WE ARE! When we turn our back on the Principle of Numbers, what happens in our arithmetic? Nothing adds up. Answers come out different every time, business and science dissolve in tangles. Abandon Principle and it's not the Principle that suffers, it's us! But remember Principle, and that instant everything works again. No apology required, It couldn't hear one if we shouted. Nobody's on probation, nobody's punished, no scoldings from the Infinite One. Remembering brings sudden healing through all our sums, for even in the imaginary playgrounds of appearance, the Principle is real. Now lets say instead of the Principle of Numbers, the Principle of Life. Pure Life Pure Knowing is Pure Self. Let's say that each of us is a perfect expression of that Principle, that we exist beyond Time, that we are immortal, eternal, indestructible. So we're free to do anything we want except two things: we can't create reality and we can't destroy it. So before time and after, through every moment, Life is and We Are.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Earthquake in Canada felt in Toledo


Epicenter near Ontario-Quebec border at 1:41 p.m.


By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER

From Maine to the Straits of Mackinac, the vibrations were no fluke.

A magnitude 5.0-earthquake with an epicenter near Canada's Ontario-Quebec border struck this part of North America at 1:41 p.m. Wednesday, an event that is certainly not as rare as many people believe but not business as usual.

Chris Holland, secretary for Toledo Police Chief Mike Navarre, said the vibrations were strong enough inside downtown Toledo's Safety Building to move her feet and her computer screen.

"It was very noticeable. It was enough to move my feet," Ms. Holland said, adding that the sensation seemed to last only five or maybe 10 seconds at most.

Donald Stierman, associate professor of geophysics in the University of Toledo's environmental sciences department, said some students taking a quiz in UT's Bowman-Oddy Laboratories felt the vibrations.

Mr. Stierman, a California native who studies earthquakes, said it was the fourth largest earthquake strong enough to be felt in his 25 years in the Toledo area.

Several others have been felt in northeast Ohio in recent years, including one or two this year, he said.

"It's a source of information," said Mr. Stierman, who said the event could help him and others unravel clues about the Earth's crust.

Robert Vincent, a Bowling Green State University geology professor and co-founder of OhioView, a remote sensing consortium of Ohio's 10 largest public research universities, said in a 2008 interview that Ohio typically records at least one detectable earthquake a year - but that the tremors are usually so small that many people don't notice them.

According to a 2003 paper by Michael C. Hansen of the Ohio Geological Survey and Larry J. Ruff of the University of Michigan, it is "difficult to convince citizens in the eastern half of the United States that earthquakes are a threat in some areas to both people and property" because of their infrequency and milder intensity in comparison to high-profile California quakes. But the paper said Ohio has had at least 170 earthquakes since 1776, at least 15 of which caused mild to moderate damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said yesterday's earthquake shook homes and businesses from Toronto to the states of New York and Michigan.

The Associated Press said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Scientists for the U.S. Geological Survey said the quake occurred at a depth of about 12 miles.

It was originally described as 5.5 magnitude, but later reduced to a magnitude of 5.0.

Officials said the earthquake lasted about 30 seconds, rattling downtown buildings and homes in Ottawa and Toronto, as well as government offices across the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Quebec.

Several buildings in Toronto and the Ottawa region were evacuated.

In Ohio, people reported the sound of plaster cracking in Cleveland and buildings in Cincinnati gently swaying.

In Cleveland, James Haselden says his office in a renovated 19th century brick building swayed and he heard plastic cracking but saw no damage.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Canadian quake was felt by some residents in the western Pennsylvania area.

In Michigan, residents from suburban Detroit to Port Huron and Saginaw reported feeling the earthquake.

Detroit police spokesman Yvette Walker told the Associated Press that police personnel on the upper floors of the downtown headquarters building reported feeling the quake.

Information from The Blade's news services was used in this report.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Arthur C. Clarke

Freemasonry is a System of Morality Veiled in Allegory and Illustrated by Symbols



Arthur C. Clarke - All the Time in the World

Arthur C. Clarke - The Parasite

The Wall of Darkness

The Nine Billion Names of God

Crusade


When the mysterious space object known as "Rama" appears in the solar system, the crew of the SV Endeavour is sent to investigate.


What is the secret at the heart of the space object known as Rama and why, years after the event, has Commander William Norton never spoken about what he found there?



Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

Dramatized for radio by Tony Mulholland. Directed by Brian Lighthill with music by Jeff Mearns.

Alone many miles above the Earth, Jan Rodricks, the last surviving human, is witnessing the end of the world. As he watches, he records for the benefit of history how mankind was doomed...

The massive spaceships appeared over every city on Earth, bringing the Overlords, a seemingly benign race vastly superior in technology and intelligence. Led by the enigmatic Karellen, they promised a new age of peace and prosperity, and with the help of UN Secretary General Stormgren, they eradicated poverty, disease and war. But contentment has its price...

As the years pass, culture, science and religion start to die, and there are those who question the road down which the Overlords are leading them. For it seems the apparently benevolent and omnipotent masters of the Earth are themselves only the servants of a greater power: a power they have no choice but to obey...


Part 1 - Beginning
The world is at war. Self-destruction seems inevitable. Then the overlords arrive, but what is it they really want?

Part 2 - End
The Overlords have remained unseen, ruling the world from a distance, for over fifty years. Now they are about to reveal themselves.


Monday, June 21, 2010

Isaac Asimov


Two witty tales by master sci-fi storyteller Isaac Asimov. Hell dimensions, time travel and robots are on the menu.




"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was reprinted in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973) and Robot Dreams (1986), as well as the retrospective Opus 100 (1969). It is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. It is possible that the date 2061 was chosen since Isaac Newton predicted that the end of the world would take place no earlier than 2060. ( from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question )

In a thought-provoking story, Isaac Asimov proposed an answer to the fundamental question - can entropy be reversed?...

Read by Henry Goodman.

"The Last Question"



Where does man's sense of humour come from? Discover the answer in this intriguing story by sci-fi master, Isaac Asimov.

Read by Henry Goodman

A 'Grand Master' asks supercomputer Multivac why jokes exist...



Caves of Steel
By Isaac Asimov, adapted by Bert Coules.
Staring Ed Bishop as New York cop Elijah Baley and Sam Dastor as his robot partner Daneel Olivaw.
Directed by Matthew Walters

Caves of Steel





Thursday, June 17, 2010

Ray Bradbury

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

by: W.B. Yeats

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

How they do it

To create a brain dead slave, one who will not rebel unless specific information is fed to him, one must create language. This is done by eradicating original language and constructing a programmed one. By feeding him a sequence of composed information, and understanding his logic, the slave will bee-hive in the desired manner. Such techniques have been known since before the ice age. Reinforcements are built in. The Persian Magii knew this well. To dominate, visual distortions (illusions) must be performed, the mind tricked into seeing something which does not exist, or/ and by allowing him to come to the only conclusion his/her programming will permit. This necessitates intensive work on only one generation, which then will program its own offspring. Once programmed the victim is ab-original, unable to reach rational conclusions on his/her own. For instance Zarathustra/Zoroaster created a priesthood which managed to dominate an entire people. They forgot that fire was for heating and cooking and began worshiping it. Earthly fires became manifestations of the Big Fire (the Sun) and in no time the intermediaries (priests) had taken over the wealth and daily routines of the people. Zoroaster said, "Right you all (ritual), this is the way it works." He then produced a long list of taboos called Sins and in pictographic language described the horrors of eternal damnation. Life became a battlefield between two deities. The good guy was called Ahura-Mazda (Ramada and Ramadan), representing all that was politically correct, the bad guy was called Angro-Mainyus (from which we derive the word anger-angry man), later known as Ahriman. So many laws were enacted, the average person could help but break a few each day. After bombasting the 'sinner' with vivid descriptions of eternal torment, he priest would then offer the solution, "However, for a small fee, I may be ABLE to intercede on your bee-half, how many cows you got?" "Three," replied the groveling ab-original, lifting his face from the dirt and spitting sand. Looking suitably grave, the priest raised his face to the sun, muttered some gibberish, sighed and said, "O.K., gimme two, and remember, I'm doing you a favor by letting you go off so lightly. "From this con derives the word solicitor, better known in North America as Lawyer. Now it never occurred to the ab-original that this priest wore women's clothing. Come to think of it, so do Kings, Politicians, Priests, Judges, Lawyers, Doctors, Scientists, Arab Emirs, Scots and selected University Professors and Graduates ~ MBA, PHD and LLD but it must all be coincidence right?

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Tollegaters

Thug, meaning a "cheat," is the name of a religious brotherhood in India, which in honor of the goddess Kali, commits murder and lives chiefly from the plunder got from its victims.(see IRS-Tollegaters) The Thugs usually band together in gangs of from ten to fifty or more, and travel, if wealthy enough, on horseback with tents, under the guise of traders. Each gang has its jemhadar, or leader; its guru, or teacher; its sothas, or entrappers; its bhuttotes, or stranglers, and its lughaees, or grave diggers. They inveigle travelers to join them on the plea of safety, or lie and wait for them. When the victim is strangled and robbed, his body is buried in an out of the way place, and sometimes mutilated. The Thugs also infest the rivers of India. They are very superstitious and never commit murder unless all the omens are favorable. It was not till 1831 that energetic measures were taken to stop these practices, and thugee, as it is called, has not wholly disappeared.

Piracy is robbery on the high seas and although considered a crime at the present time by all nations, formerly the sea rover was as much a pirate as a trader. Thus the Phoenicians combined piracy with lawful seafaring enterprise. In the days of Homer, piracy was considered a respectable or even dignified calling, and the Greeks had a natural genius for it. Cilicia was the headquarters for Mediterranean piracy, until in 67 B.C. Pompey made his memorable expedition against the pirates(pie rates) with great naval and military forces. The Norse Vikings were the terror of western coasts and waters from the 8th to 11th centuries. The Hanseatic league was formed for mutual defense against the Baltic and other pirates. Later the Muslim rovers scourged the Mediterranean, commingling naval war on a large scale with peddling, thieving and stealing slaves.

Algiers was a stronghold of pirates till well into the 19th century, and in the 17th century the English channel swarmed with the corsairs, Algerine pirates. In 1635 they actually entered Cork harbor, and carried off a boat with eight fishermen, to be sold as slaves in Algiers. The buccaneers preyed mainly on the Spanish commerce with the Spanish-American colonies. Captain Kidd, who was sent out against pirates in 1696 by a private company in London, was found to be playing the game of pirate himself, was arrested and tried for piracy and murder, found guilty and hanged May 24, 1701. The original of Scott's pirates John Gow, who, though bold and successful under the guise of friendship, was proved to be a great villain, and with nine of his men were executed. So late as 1864 five men were hanged in London for murder and piracy. The African slave trade was not considered piracy by the law of nations, though the United States and Great Britain declared it to be so by statute, and after 1841 Austria, Prussia and Russia made the same declaration. The home of professional piracy is now confined to the Malay peninsula.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Chronophasia



Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater self awareness and overstanding. At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge. The episodes are very allegorical and usually explore some type of conflict through a stylized, surreal lens. The boys appears to be from an older, More immortal, and powerful race. This boy(HAL), who exists outside time, brought himself into being by thinking of himself "before" he existed(he could do that since time is meaningless to him). This is supported by him saying that the dead were "unborn" and that he was waiting "forever", and that he was "always" waiting for Aeon(The One Beginning to End). The virus Trevor talks about is intuition and a way of thinking(non-linear) the way original people viewed the world and time which was in its entirety, as opposed to western man's linear short sighted fatalistic view. Everything Changes but Nothing Changes. There were many interesting remarks in this episode, one of them was when the boy was shown the picture of the mutant baby girl(clan mother) with the sharp teeth (Desdemona) (presumably kept prisoner underground) gives a demented laugh because he is responsible for what was done to matrial clan mothers then goes on to mention that she still remembers her function while all the rest have forgotten(look around you ).What the Flame does not consume will consume the Flame(water) One of the interesting allegories in the Aeon Flux series is that here you have these two sides, one, Trevor Goodchild representing the Orwellian scientific establishment and Aeon Flux representing the the anarchist rebellious side meanwhile they are both in bed together, that should tell you there are no sides. What the boy said is true, and time really is in the mind, then we all have the ability to time-travel, meaning when you go into your internal archives(intuition) to make decisions, and figure out problems etc. For me its tedious explaining every single allegory so OBSERVE~ANALYZE~CONCLUDE .....and to the world shall you give as you have received. Give to all who yearn to know the truth from whence we come, the reason for our being, and the course that lies ahead on the way to eternity.



A long time ago I learned that everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb is on our table not only as a reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because we have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions. Everything has a reason and the tiniest detail is a clue. Do you know at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity if you so desire?

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Giant Sinkhole Swallows Guatemala Homes


A 30-story-deep sinkhole appeared in Guatemala City on February 23.

Photograph from Reuters, illustration by Paul Hannan/National Geographic Digital Media

Ted Chamberlain

National Geographic News

February 26, 2007

SEE 2010 UPDATE—new sinkhole, new picture: sinkhole in Guatemala 2010.

After rumbling for weeks, part of a poor Guatemala City neighborhood plummeted some 30 stories into the Earth on Friday.

The reportedly 330-foot-deep (100-meter-deep) sinkhole swallowed about a dozen homes and is so far blamed in the deaths of three people—two teenagers, found floating in torrent of sewage, and their father, who was pulled from the chasm.

Rainstorms and a ruptured sewer main may have caused the sinkhole, officials in Guatemala told the Associated Press. After the collapse, the seemingly bottomless depths gave off tremors, sounds of flowing water, and the scent of sewage.

Sinkholes can occur when underground rocks that can be dissolved by water—such as salt, gypsum, and limestone—are inundated. The removal of groundwater can also leave gaps underground that can lead to sinkholes.

While the cause of the Guatemala City abyss remains uncertain, it's effects are undeniable.

Police established a 500-yard (457-meter) no-go zone around the sinkhole, and nearly a thousand people were forced to evacuate—some perhaps forever.

"Last night a friend had to take my handicapped wife out on motorcycle," 15-year resident Antonio Fuentes, 50, told the Associated Press. "Now I'm leaving for good, never to come back."