More Are Making Plans To Counter The Effects Of “Man Made Climate Change”

As many of my readers know, I have a real issue to those whom deny and voice their feeble arguments against “Man Made Climate Change.”

Just last week I was called by my insurance agency that has my home insurance, (I was in good hands with this insurance) as they wanted to go over some home insurance changes that came about from the head office. When I sat down in the local office, the agent went over some small issues. This national insurance is no longer going to insure Florida, and all coastal areas in states like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, South and North Carolina, Virginia, etc. and Maryland. But because I live in the middle of the Delmarva Peninsula, they are still going to insure me but at a slight increase in premiums….an extra $20.00 per year about.

You may ask why this national insurance company is deciding to refuse to insure homes in these areas. In the insurance agent’s own words, because of the “Climate Trend Changes” these areas are going to be effected with sever flooding, and damaging weather occurrences. The insurance company decided if it were to insure these areas, it would cause “Sever Financial Hardship” to the company in the short term and near future.

Yes this “National Insurance Company” has reviewed the “Climate Change Facts” and made a conscience decision not to insure these areas of our country.

I would also like to add another story of a local TORNADO event here on the shore. My daughter is on the track team for the local high school. While at a meet last week, she took a picture of a TORNADO with her cell phone that developed on Kent Island right at the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay here on the Delmarva Peninsula….we never get TORNADOS!!!! Hurricanes yes, TORNADOS NO!!!!

If we can see the changes here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I don’t know why anyone else can deny the changing events.

Nation wide there have been over 900 Tornados in just the months of April and May...twice as many as anytime in history for this time period!!!

I decided to complement this story by passing on more information of organizations making plans to be ready for the INEVITABLE events caused by “Man Made Climate Change.”

February 1, 2010
Pentagon released their report, “Climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.”

The Pentagon’s primary planning document addresses the threat of global warming, noting that it will accelerate instability and conflict around the globe. In the report is language requiring the Pentagon Department to consider the effects of climate change on its facilities, capabilities, and missions to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. The Department of Defense’s, “Quadrennial Defense Review,” officially released discusses the department’s “strategic approach to climate and energy”:

Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Although they produce distinct types of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked. The actions that the Pentagon Department takes now can prepare us to respond effectively to these challenges in the near term and in the future.

The QDR notes that climate change affects the Department of Defense “in two broad ways”:
First, global warming impacts and disasters will “act as an accelerant of instability or conflict.”
Second, military installations and forces around the globe will have to adapt to rising seas, increased extreme weather, and other effects of global warming:

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.

The military is working on not just responding to the impacts of global warming, but also mitigating the threat by reducing global warming emissions. Increased use of renewable energy and energy efficiency not only lessens the military’s enormous carbon footprint, but also delivers immediate security benefits:

Energy efficiency can serve as a force multiplier, because it increases the range and endurance of forces in the field and can reduce the number of combat forces diverted to protect energy supply lines, which are vulnerable to both asymmetric and conventional attacks and disruptions.

The consequence of the Pentagon's failure to prepare could result not just in lost dollars but also in lost lives.
There are five key areas in which effective military planning can be undermined by uncertainty over when and how the major carbon-emitting countries combat climate change.

First, climate change poses a threat to fragile states that lack the capacity to adapt to environmental shifts. The Pentagon needs to know if the military will be called upon to operate more often in countries that have collapsed or are on the brink of doing so. The risk of a regional conflagration sparked by global warming is particularly severe in east Africa and south Asia. How urgently should the Pentagon begin planning for such contingencies?

Second, the US military needs to know how significantly to expand its capacity to act as a first responder in times of natural disaster. Climate change will increase the frequency of large-scale disasters over the next three decades. But the scope of this threat will vary depending on what action is taken to minimize emissions. Although some of the emergencies created or exacerbated by climate change may be managed by the UN, the US military has an unrivalled capacity to act as a first responder in these situations.
Recall the Indian Ocean tsunami that struck a little more than three years ago: only the US could or would so rapidly have deployed and sustained the 15,000 troops, two dozen ships and 100 aircraft needed for the mission. But if the US military anticipates being called upon more often to respond to such disasters then it needs clarity about how soon it should invest more resources into planning such missions.

Third, the US military will have to conduct traditional missions in increasingly adverse weather conditions. Planners must decide how soon to invest in equipment that works better in storms, floods and other hostile climates.

Fourth, rising sea levels and other climatic factors could threaten the viability of bases on islands or low-lying coastal areas. The US military must know how urgently it needs to plan to protect or, in extreme circumstances, compensate for the loss of bases in strategic areas. The Diego Garcia atoll in the Indian Ocean, which serves as a major hub for US and British missions in the Middle East and is vital to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, may be at risk from climate change.

Moreover, expanding existing bases or creating new ones is often expensive and politically challenging. If the Pentagon had a clear sense of what steps were going to be taken to combat global warming, it might choose to invest more in developing its own offshore "sea basing" platforms that do not require host-country consent.

Fifth, the roles of the army and National Guard will need to evolve according to the degree of global warming. National Guard troops are responsible for responding when necessary to domestic natural disasters, but this may not be viable if their deployment overseas leaves the US short of troops and equipment at a time when extreme weather occurs more often at home. The Pentagon might need to begin helping to create a state-level home guard to take over domestic disaster duties from the National Guard.


May 20, 2010
National Academy of Sciences urges strong action to cut greenhouse gases.

The National Academy of Sciences released their report findings on the “most comprehensive report ever on climate change” suggests taxing carbon emissions. It also raises the possibility that global warming might make it necessary to shift vulnerable populations away from coasts.

In a sharp change from its cautious approach in the past, the National Academy of Sciences on Wednesday called for taxes on carbon emissions, a cap-and-trade program for such emissions or some other strong action to curb runaway global warming.

Such actions, which would increase the cost of using coal and petroleum, at least in the immediate future, are necessary because "climate change is occurring, the Earth is warming ... concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing, and there are very clear fingerprints that link these effects to humans," said Pamela A. Matson of Stanford University, who chaired one of five panels organized by the academy at the request of Congress to look at the science of climate change and how the nation should respond.

What is so hard for me to understand that many in my Republican Party will believe that Man Walked With Dinosaurs, the Earth is only 10,000 years old, Evolution is not real, and will even point to the increase of hurricanes, tornados, coastal flooding, that these are all caused as a sign from God of the Earth’s near end. But if you show them the science facts of “Cause and Effects” of these occurrences, they will parrot the nonsense from conservative talk radio and Fox programming that this is not proven nor the case. “It is just made up stuff and has not been proven.”

National Insurance Companies are canceling policies for home owners against wind and flood damage along the coastal areas, and in some cases whole states, because they have looked at the science facts and realized the odds of more and drastic occurrences of weather damage in the near future.

The Pentagon has been convinced enough it needs to know what kind of environment to prepare for to allocate its vast resources efficiently. Planning for future contingencies is a long-term process, as force structure and weapons systems have to be co-ordinate at least a decade in advance to make combat reaction plans to compensate and take into consideration that “Man Made Climate Change” will affect everyone in every country around the world.

National Academy of Sciences has collected the data and has scientifically proven that “Man Made Climate Change” is occurring.

But for the lemming dumb asses who choose to believe Rush Limbaugh or any of his like, or their local Fundamentalist Preacher, that “Man Made Climate Change” is not occurring….I am speechless as it is just incomprehensible for me that people are so ignorant.

But I see wearing a “T” Shirt makes it so for some!?!?!?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Allies Charged With Sorcery

Here we have a currant day example of what happens when people allow a religious government rule a country. Many in this country want to have religion play a dominate role in U.S. Government and below is what can happen. My comments to these people are there was a very good reason our founding fathers impressed “Separation of Church and State.”

Today in Iran there is a power struggle between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader sees arrests and claims of undue influence of chief of staff.

Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using “Supernatural Powers” to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the President and his Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "MAGICIANS" and invoking DJINNS (SPRITS).

An Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several to call for the President to be impeached.

On Sunday, Ahmadinejad returned to his office after an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest over Khamenei's reinstatement of the intelligence minister, who the president had initially asked to resign.

Ahmadinejad's unprecedented disobedience prompted harsh criticism from conservatives who warned that he might face the fate of Abdulhassan Banisadr, Iran's first post-revolution president who was impeached and exiled for allegedly attempting to undermine CLERICAL POWER.

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a hard-line cleric close to Khamenei, warned that disobeying the supreme leader, who has the ultimate power in Iran, is equivalent to "Apostasy from God."

But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi, the revered Savior of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the “Second Coming of Jesus.”

So here is the perfect example of allowing Religion too much influence in Government. Religious Fanatics propensity abilities to accuse someone of the superstitious crimes such as “Witch Craft,” “Going against God’s Will,” their convenient interpretations of “Bible Teachings” etc. when decisions don’t meet with their approval.

House Republicans Voted To Kill Big Bird

Yes the Republican led House of Representatives had the numbers as a block, by a vote of 235-189, to eliminate the funding for public broadcasting threatening millions of citizens throughout America with the loss of services that they rely on, especially parents and children.

“PBS and independently owned and operated public television stations is America’s largest classroom, available to all of America’s children including those who can’t attend preschool,” said PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger. “PBS' educational programming, as well as our training resources and tools for teachers prepare children for success in school and opens up the world to them in an age appropriate way and builds critical skills in young students. Costing about one dollar per person per year, public broadcasting is an effective, efficient use of leveraged tax dollars a public private partnership that delivers far reaching services that Americans trust and value.”

But in retrospect, just a few weeks ago we handed out tax deferment rewards to corporations by renewing the G. W. Bush’s 2000 tax cuts. This was money the country and tax payers did not have and it was this same tax cuts of 2000 that contributed greatly under funding the operations of the government and left us with the large deficits we are experiencing today.

It is not only the children missing out on educational and learning programs during their earlier years but are we to omit adult education and exposure to facts? Yes these Rush Limbaugh fawning Republican’s future hope of keeping political control is to make sure that the Adult U. S. Population is not exposed to programs like Frontline, BBC News, PBS News Hour (the only TRUE fair and balance U.S. News program), Nightly Business Report, Independent Lens, American Experience, Nova, Nova Science Now, Science Frontiers, Need To Know, well I could go on and on but you get the idea.

An example comes to mind of the Ken Burns documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” If voting-age-adults were not educated and reminded of the uniqueness of our National Parks passing on the fact that each and every citizen is an owner of these Parks, the Republicans could sell them off to their cronies to be developed for their own financial benefit.

Would anyone really think that private financed programs expose their own corruption or even ask embarrassing or probing questions? No!! It will be exactly like an Orwellian prediction of steady streaming the “Corporate Company’s Line.” Are we to become a, “Company Nation,” much like what was described in the poem written by Carl Sandburg titled, “Company Towns” written at the turn of the century? You know, back in the Good O’l Days!!

Company Towns
By Carl Sandburg

You live in a company house
You go to a company school
You work for this company,
according to the company rules.

You all drink company water
and all use company lights,
The company preacher teaches us
What the company thinks is right.

This poem written over a hundred years ago still speaks true today. With the consolidation of the dying newspaper industry by the one voice of Rupert Murdock, and talk radio under the guise of religious, conservative programming; one has to ask themselves, who is purchasing the advertising keeping these program and papers going. Is it the trade unions, the voice of the working class, the masses who pay the bulk of the tax base burden, or is it the same corporations that have recently participated in more and more labor abuses and environmental crimes that are now evermore going unpunished even though the laws are still on the books. Should one of these media venues report negative facts about one of these companies, they will quickly pull the advertisement funding, economically shutting down the programming and reporting from the source. Even in the late 15th century, Niccolo Machiavelli noted that, “Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.”

Are we to produce a whole generation that only repeats these corporate “Rush Limbaugh” sound bites without giving any thoughts behind them?

Here’s a better thought, “Let’s Repeal Those Corporate Tax Cuts And Let’s Vote To Keep U.S. Citizens Well Educated!!”

Did You Know?

Here is a very sobering video clip with information that will make people in the U.S. realize that it is not our world anymore.


Your comments and thoughts, much like John Nash's, "Game Theory" is to be entertained to identify all the scenarios and how they would play out.

Sarah Palin's Weird WTF “Sputnik” Story

On Wednesday night, Sarah Palin attacked the “Sputnik Moment” line from President Obama's second State of the Union address.

Sarah went on to say, “That was another one of those WTF Moments, when he so often repeated this Sputnik moment that he would aspire Americans to celebrate. And he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that race to space, yes, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union.”
!?!?!

Sarah Palin in her Tea Party’s counter point rant, wildly misconstrued the president's argument, which was not about emulating the Soviets in the 1950's but instead about the Americans who responded to early Soviet success in space exploration by educating themselves and out-innovating the Soviets. I am seriously doubtful that Sarah could comprehend or more to the fact that did she even listen to the speech?

But let's pretend that wasn't Obama's point. The Soviets didn't have an empire-draining debt problem until some 30 years after Sputnik passed over America. And when they did, it was in large part a result of massive overinvestment in heavy industry, which supported Soviet military pretensions (Much like Bush and Cheney did). None of this is to argue that the Soviet economy is anything we should emulate. But let's at least get the basic facts right when we criticize it.

It's a fair guess that Palin thought she was borrowing her "insight" from the mythology of Ronald Reagan, who massively increased America's spending (Which took the U.S. from being the largest Creditor Nation to the largest Debtor Nation running up the largest record U.S. debt at that time. A fact the many self proclaiming Conservatives conveniently forget.) to spur the sort of competitive expenditure that contributed to the ballooning of Soviet debt in the 1980's. According to many conservatives, this was a crucial factor that catalyzed the Soviet collapse.

But in claiming that the Soviets incurred their consequential debts long before Reagan was president, Palin ends up arguing that the Gipper wasn't nearly that responsible for the USSR spending itself to death. If a reverence for Reagan's anti-Soviet spending inspired her narrative in the first place, then this is incoherent. If she's just making this all up, then she's really also claiming that the “Reagan Brought Down The USSR” narrative is overstated.

Palin appears to be lazily checking a lot of Fox News boxes. She wants to criticize Obama's State of the Union address, so she grabs hold of the Sputnik line. She wants to make a point about debt, so she invents a history in which the USSR had a debt crisis decades before this inference could have made much sense. Even better -- her argument sounds like an implicit vindication of Reagan, but that really just makes it either self-contradictory or hostile to Reagan's legacy.

Even worse, it seems that Palin planned her rhetorical disaster; as she goes on to discuss the "Spudnut Shop," a bakery in Washington State that's succeeding without government support.

Sarah Palin’s latest demonstration of her personal lacking qualities are yet more evidence that her judgment in both what she says and who she has vetted, is pathetic. It's not even cleverly manipulative. It is just sad and speaks volumes of those Tea Party members who follow her!!

Scientists New Study Affirms Climate Change Is “Undeniable!”

Scientists from around the world provided more evidence of global warming in the annual State of the Climate report Wednesday.

The past decade was the warmest on record and the past 50 years have been getting hotter, the researchers said, citing 10 main indicators, including surface and ocean temperatures, the amount of sea ice and glaciers and levels of humidity.

Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, the report said analysis of 10 indicators that are "clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable."

The research was led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is based on new data that wasn't available to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its report for 2007, which has been attacked by skeptics.

Concern about rising temperatures has been growing in recent years as atmospheric scientists report rising temperatures associated with greenhouse gases released into the air by industrial and other human processes.

"The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet," said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of the data center.
"Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common," he says.
Last month was the warmest June on record and this year has had the warmest average temperature for January-June since record keeping began in 1880, NOAA reported last week.

But yet we have the Neo-Con Blowhards reporting with all authority from the aspect of “No Education In Science” at all assuring their listeners that Global Warming is just a “Big Conspiracy Hoax.” Thank God they are there to set us straight.

Hubble Maps Matter Of Universe And Finds Further Evidence Of Dark Energy

Today’s posting we will go from science here on earth to science in space. Using the widest galactic survey ever conducted by Hubble, researchers think they've independently verified the existence of dark energy tugging at the cosmos, as well as reinforced tenets of general relativity theory.

Results from the largest and most ambitious survey of the cosmos ever undertaken by the Hubble Space Telescope are in, and the findings are suggesting dark energy is indeed real, and the general theory of relativity holds up even under larger intergalactic scrutiny.

The survey covered more than 446,000 galaxies and captured by 575 slightly overlapping images of the same corner of the universe taken by Hubble over nearly 1,000 hours. The researchers also tapped into redshift data from ground-based observation instruments to measure the distances of the galaxies surveyed.

The data, when pulled together an analyzed, allowed researchers to paint a detailed picture of matter distribution in space over great distances by looking at the distorted shapes of distant galaxies, a phenomenon known as weak gravitational lensing. The resulting data gave researchers unprecedented views of the shapes of distant galaxies that in turn lend further clues to how the universe is expanding.

The study suggests that indeed the universe's expansion is accelerated by a mysterious component known as dark energy, adding credence to a handful of other independent studies that suggest the same.

The weak lensing method of measuring the galaxies also further proved out Einstein's general relativity theory, as the theory predicts accurately how the lensing signal depends on redshift to get accurate readings of distant bodies.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Atom Smasher Achieves 'Big Bang' Collisions

This posting is a follow up to the earlier posting on the Large Hadron Collider. Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN said today, March 30, 2010, that they had conducted the first experiments at conditions nearing those immediately after the creation of the universe by colliding protons at record power, mimicking conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.

This is physics in the making and the beginning of a new era with relationship to the energy levels achieved as the detectors recorded the collisions of beams of sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of light.

It is also worth noting that today’s experiments did not destroy the world as some in the uneducated religious community said it would. Go Figure?!?

Large Hadron Supercollider "Atom Smasher" Restarts

Last year, various religious organizations and gullible alarmists forecasted the end of everything. The world would soon come to an end, it was asserted, and it was all due to the collective scientific stubbornness and meddling stupidity of scientists at the CERN that were adamant about conducting experiments to prove that the Higgs Boson Particle, the so-called, "God particle," actually exists. No one knew what would happen when the supercollider actual reached its full working capacity. Some believed that a miniature black hole would be created, one that would, due to its very extreme nature of attraction, gobble the world up in short order. Some religious organizations had even attempted to stop the experiments by going to court, but they failed.

But what reason and religion and courts could not or simply did not stop, outright mechanical failure did. Large Hadron Collider (LHC) went off-line for repairs just nine days after it first powered up in September 2008. It was found that an electrical failure had released liquid helium into the supercollider's tunnel, a massive conduit 27 kilometers or 17 miles long). The repairs bled into more repairs and regularly scheduled shutdowns until November, when it was successfully tested and ran millions of particle accelerator collisions through December, when it was shut down again for technical maintenance.

In August 8, 2009, CERN restarted the Large Hadron Collider. They hope the higher energy will enable them to see particles so far undetected, such as the elusive Higgs Boson Particle, which in theory gives mass to other particles and objects and creatures in the universe.

Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And they still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and particle mass they want to answer with CERN's new collider.

They hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly.

On February 28, 2010, the Large Hadron Collider was restarted, and it seems that all systems are go again. This time the scientists will be looking for the Higgs Boson also referred to as the "God" particle and attempt to resolve whether or not "dark matter" and "dark energy" actually exist and / or have defined properties. Finding the God particle would help scientists understand how atoms acquire mass.

Will it be the end of the world? Doubtful. Just like the Linear Particle Beam Accelerator at Stanford (which I have seen personally) that smashed atoms and discovered the sub-atomic particles, like quarks, did not end the world, the LHC will not either. Now there will always be the group of people like those who say the planetary alignments could cause a disruption in the gravitational equilibrium of our little part of the universe. Of course if it does not, the perennial doomsayers and those always looking for an apocalypse will have to, and undoubtedly will, find another “END OF THE WORLD” scenario event, cascading series of incidents, or whatever is necessary to continue their “Godly Apoplectic” predictions grasping for a sudden end to it all.

A Pivotal Moment In Human History

We are today now living in a pivotal moment in human history. New technologies and theories are allowing us to see our world and universe like no one before could have ever imagined. Over recent years we have viewed and realized for ourselves a sense of the world and universe that is much richer than any one could have conceived in the past.

Those who have not kept up educating themselves with science facts are still living in an imagined universe where space is simply emptiness, stars are scattered randomly, and God views us all from this vantage point. Even the most liberal of this group can just picture the universe as shooting stars, spiral galaxies, maybe an ember red moon rising over an unknown planet. This of course does not represent the universe as a whole any better than a single atom would represent your own face. Yet every pre-scientific culture had their own idea of the world and cosmos in which they had a central and significant place.

Pre-scientific people had developed what they thought were believable answers to big questions but have become impossible to support with answers once someone started to demand scientific accuracy.

Many people today in this country hardly even ask such fundamental questions anymore or appreciate how the answers affect not only how we live but what we believe is possible. Ours is probably the first major culture in human history with no shared picture of reality. Many of humanity’s most dangerous problems arise from our fifteenth century way of looking at our world and the universe, which is at odds with the principles of science that we use in countless technologies today. The main threat to sane thinking is a result from the almost total disjunction between the power of our technologies and the wisdom required to use them over the long period and to what effect it has on us all during a lifetime.

The last time Western culture shared a coherent understanding of the universe as a comforting cosmic dwelling place was in the Middle Ages. For a thousand years, Christians, Jews and Muslims believed that the earth was the flat, immovable center of the universe, and all the planets and stars revolved on crystal spheres around it. The idea that God had chosen a place for every person, animal, plant and thing in the Great “Master Plan” Chain of Being made sense of the rigid medieval social hierarchy of the time. The Church, Kings, Lords, Peasants, Slaves, etc. But then came early scientists like Copernicus and Galileo who discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe after all and the cosmic hierarchy lost its credibility as the organizing principle of the universe.

Then came Newton who developed the picture on physics that explained accurately the motions of a single star’s planetary entourage. Newton became a targeted threat from the Church because he had developed mathematical formulas explaining gravity’s effect on an object.

Pre-scientific people always saw themselves at the center of the world and universe no matter what their world was at the time. The human instinct is to experience themselves as the central object being reflections based on their own independent viewpoints relative to everything else around them. Yes man is naturally a very narcissistic animal as a whole.

The true difficult task for many religious people is to free themselves from the limits of man’s own five senses, which evolved to work in our earthly environment. An example being of the concept of Dark Matter where one cannot see it from their back yard but it makes up the largest part of our universe. This is a threatening and insecuring thought for many of these type of people. I personally have known deeply religious people who are even afraid that this Dark Matter, when spoken about, is the Devil's influence within our world.

Just as Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”

Intelligent life is neither incidental nor insignificant but has a place in our world and universe so special it could not have even been imagined before the invention of modern science, their discoveries therein, and cosmological concepts throughout. By understanding the world and universe in which we live, we begin to understand ourselves.

Engineer of Knowledge Quote:
“The Liberal thinking mind is the evolution of man’s breaking the restrictions of the Conservative status quo viewpoint mindset.”

The View from the Center of the Universe

Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos

I have just been made aware of the book called, “The View from the Center of the Universe,” and I think that it will be on my short list for reading very soon.

In The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, Joel Primack, a leading cosmologist and professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his wife Nancy Ellen Abrams, a lawyer, writer, and musician, tell us that this cosmic alienation has its roots in the Copernican and Newtonian revolutions and a Faustian deal brokered by René Descartes and Francis Bacon.

This very important and fascinating book powerfully describes the scope and depth of human connections to our universe. Primack and Abrams make clear the revolutionary concepts and implications of the modern understanding of time, space, dark matter, dark energy, eternal inflation, and the stardust filling our bodies, and how that knowledge can affect our feelings about ourselves and our future. Drawing lessons from the history of creation myths in many cultures, and from the changing perspectives of science over the centuries, they use many complementary approaches, including images and symbols, to paint a comprehensive picture of the value of our place in the universe as we now know it, and our opportunities for action in this critical century. Their well-supported admonition to "think cosmically, act globally" can be a vital guide to build a "sustainable prosperity." This topic demands the attention of nearly every thoughtful adult at a time when our impact on our home planet is rising dramatically, as are conflicts between science and religions. So far, scientists have not succeeded in helping most people sense meaning or purpose when considering the vastness of space that astronomy has revealed over the past few hundred years.

We humans occupy an insignificant place in the grand scheme of things, and there is no evidence that the universe has taken or should take note of us. I suspect many other scientists, as well as nonscientists, have had a similar experience. Carl Sagan summed it up well: "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that orbits a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy"—and he said it before dark matter and dark energy were discovered and were found to account for 96% of the stuff in the universe.

In the wake of Galileo's bad experience with the Catholic Church, scientists adopted a policy of noninterference with religion, dividing the world into the material (realm of science) and the spiritual (realm of religion). This division allowed science to flourish unfettered. And flourish it did with profound advances in our understanding of nature, from quarks to the cosmos, and dramatic advances in our quality of life, from electricity and medicine to science-based agriculture and today's quantum-based information economy.

Yet Primack and Abrams argue that the bargain had a significant downside: the severing of humankind's connection with the universe. They also contend that the present revolutionary period of cosmic discovery is the right time to re-establish a widely shared cosmological myth that connects us to the universe. Reconciliation 400 years after a messy divorce is not easy; but with their complementary backgrounds and a decade of jointly teaching a course on cosmology and culture at Santa Cruz, this husband-and-wife team is well qualified to start the conversation.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is a review of the cosmological myths that preceded the divorce of science and religion, from the cosmology of ancient Egypt to the heavenly spheres that survived from Ptolemy to the Middle Ages. The second part is an exposition of our present understanding of the universe; it focuses on recent breakthroughs such as inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. The third part is an exploration of how we might take advantage of this quantum leap in our knowledge to reconnect with the universe, and even learn lessons from the universe. In the authors' words, "think cosmically, act globally."

The discussion of contemporary cosmology is built around five simple and engaging questions: What is the universe made of? What is the "center of the universe"? What size is the universe? Where do we come from? Are we alone?

The Holy Oak Tree's Old Time Religion Hymn

As sung by Joseph Campbell

Chorus:
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
And that's good enough for me

We will pray to Aphrodite
Even tho' she's rather flighty
And they say she wears no nightie
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with those Egyptians
Build pyramids to put our crypts in
Cover subways with inscriptions
And that's good enough for me

O-old Odin we will follow
And in fighting we will wallow
Til we wind up in Valhalla
And that's good enough for me

Let me follow dear old Buddha
For there is nobody cuter
He comes in plaster, wood or pewter
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with Zarathustra
Pray just like we useta
I'm a Zarathustra booster
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with those old Druids
They drink fermented fluids
Waltzing naked thru the woo-ids
And that's good enough for me

Hare Krishna gets a laugh on
When he sees me dressed in saffron
With my hair that's only half on
And that's good enough for me

I'll arise at early morning
When the sun gives me the warning
That the solar age is dawning
And that's good enough for me

Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol,” Book Review

I have taken some time tonight to pass on my review of Dan Brown’s book, “The Lost Symbol.” As many know it is about the influence of the Freemasons, whom many of our founding fathers were members of, had on the foundation viewpoints of the creation of this country. The ideas of “All men are created equal, pursuit of happiness, religious freedoms, etc.” are all viewpoints of Freemasons and were the bases of what this nation was founded on.

1. No matter at what station or stratification of birth one person had, all are viewed as equal within the Freemasons.

2. Every man has the right to pursue the truth of what is within ones own soul and the evidence obtained from science facts. (The Age of Enlightenment…i.e. Illuminati)

3. No matter if you are of the Jewish faith, Muslim faith, Christian faith, all are well accepted into the Freemasons.

So “NO,” this country was not founded as a Christian Nation as many of the ignorant claim today!


I have enjoyed many of the books Dan Brown has written and as I too am a Freemason, I took great interest in this book.

As many whom have been familiar with my writings in this blog and contributing to others, I have made it very well known how I have spent my life straining to be heard above the din of ignorance.

Below is an excerpt from the book, “The Lost Symbol,” that I found profound, speaking for my thoughts, and saw value in passing it on.

Page 327, 3rd. chapter from the top.
“From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to American politics, the name Jesus had been hijacked as an ally in all kinds of power struggles. Since the beginning of time, the ignorant had always screamed the loudest, herding the unsuspecting masses and forcing them to do their bidding. They defend their worldly desires by citing Scripture they did not understand. They celebrated their intolerance as proof of their convictions. Now, after all these years, mankind had finally managed to utterly erode everything that had once been so beautiful about Jesus.”

This passage taken from the book sums up current events so true today.

So in conclusion, I highly recommend reading this book, I found it enlightening, educational but keeping in mind it is still fiction so don’t take everything as verbatim of everything that is within the Freemasons. A good easy read and will make a very good movie in the future.

Finally, Responsible Leadership From The White House Announcing A $250M Effort For Science And Math

Many of my readers have known for years that I have always said that the wealth and security of our nation is dependent on the education of our citizens. Those who are trying to deny science fact with religious myths within our education system are doing more harm to our country than any Al-Qaeda terrorist.

I am now proud to announce that the White House is making $250 million in public and private efforts to improve our science and mathematics instruction, aiming to help the nation compete in key fields with global economic rivals.
With funding from high-tech businesses, universities and foundations, the initiative seeks to prepare more than 10,000 new math and science schoolteachers over five years and provide on-the-job training for an additional 100,000 in science, technology, engineering and math.

"Passionate educators with deep content expertise can make all the difference," President Obama said in a prepared statement, "enabling hands-on learning that truly engages students, including girls and underrepresented minorities, and preparing them to tackle the “Grand Challenges” of the 21st century such as increasing energy independence, improving people's health, protecting the environment and strengthening national security."

The initiative effectively doubles, to more than $500 million, a philanthropic campaign called “STEM” education that Obama launched in November. I am proud to say that my youngest daughter is in this STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) program with our local high school.

Business and government leaders have sounded alarms over science and math education in recent years as concern has mounted that the United States may be losing the technological edge that fueled its economy in the 20th century. The nation's universities are still known as world leaders, but the performance of its K-12 schools has come under scrutiny. International math testing in 2007 found that U.S. fourth-graders trailed counterparts in some areas of Europe and Asia and those U.S. eighth-graders lagged behind those from a handful of Asian powers. Similar results were found in science.

The government spends about $700 million a year on elementary and secondary education in the STEM fields through agencies such as NASA, National Science Foundation and the U.S. Education Department. It is well noted that in a time of rising budget deficits, it's unclear how much federal spending can be grown.

I am glad to see private companies such as Intel Corp. are committing $200 million in cash and in-kind support over 10 years for expanded teacher training and other measures.

Private institutions such as The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will expand a program that places math and science teachers with advanced degrees in hard-to-staff schools in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. With $40 million in foundation and state funding, the program will train 700 teachers over three years, many of them in Michigan, which has been pummeled in the economic downturn.

With this announcement I can see the ship of our nation being turned around after too many years of neglect in education, national leaders padding their own pockets with “No Bid Contracts,” and religious fantasists trying to expunge true science in our public school systems. I have said many times that if we're going to be economically competitive and continue to innovate and create jobs in this country and bring the “Value Added” manufacturing back into this country, we have to get much better in science and math and the “STEM” education program is the first step in educating the next generation to take up this torch and move forward.

There is now a huge sense of urgency being recognized in this country and that is a good thing.