Moonage Spacedream

Which came first, Christians or Greeks?

The View is a tv show that has offered the world all kinds of insight into what really goes on in the world.  A while back we learned that fire can’t melt steel.  I need an image here:

Now, we learn that Christians predate Greeks thanks to Sherri Shepherd:

“Keep in mind that probably when [Epicurus] was around, there was no Jesus Christ stuff going on,” said co-host Whoppi Goldberg said.

“They still had Christians back then,” Shepherd interrupted.

“They had gods,” Goldberg said.

“They had Christians,” Shepherd insisted. “And they threw ‘em to the lions.”

“I think this might predate that,” Goldberg said.

“I don’t think anything predated Christians,” Shepherd shot back.

Behar then piped in.

“The Greeks came first, then the Romans, then the Christians,” she said.

“Jesus came first, before then,” Shepherd said.

“No, not on paper,” Goldberg sadly said, meaning the Bible.

Just for chucks and giggles, a timeline of the great civilizations prior to the assent of Christianity:

By their definition, there were approximately thirty-something “great” civilizations before 1AD.  1AD is the year Jesus was born.  Now, she can take most people’s word for it, or she could just visit Rome or Athens and see some of the stuff that’s there.  Even the source of her confusion, the Bible, clearly refers to the Romans throughout the entire book.  Therefore, it would seem, that the Romans HAD to predate Christians since the Bible is the documentation of the Christian revolution.

I just can’t wait to read about the next amazing piece of logic The View will offer.

Hunting Season is upon us

Yesterday marked the opening of hunting season.  The tally so far, 1 dead, 3 injured.  And that’s just the hunters.

I’ve seen this coming for a while.  With the booming population of deer, they’re no longer hard to find.  Rather than scouting for hours before finding one, it’s a target shoot these days similar to a video game.  Because of that, hunters are probably shooting a lot more often.  More bullets, more injuries.  I mean, how difficult really is it to step out on your front porch and shoot a deer?  The problem I see is before too long, after too many beers, someone else is going to be targeting that deer as well.  Now, I know that’s illegal……..

But, I know too many hunters.

Bottom line, hunting deer is not what it used to be.  They are like rats these days.  We don’t need a “season” where everyone rushes out to shoot a bunch at the same time.  If they could be hunted year round, then I think we could control WHERE they are hunted a lot better.

Ever wonder how far a condom will stretch?

Me either.  But this guy apparently did.  This is how he came to a logical conclusion:

Where does THAT fall into intelligent design?

What is intelligent about drooling mongoloids?

Nearly four billion years of biological evolution failed to prevent local man Dale Haynes from accidentally drooling all over his pant leg while sitting in his cubicle Monday.

“This flaw in Mr. Haynes’ control of basic motor functions, certainly uncorrected since the dawn of hominids and very possibly before, allowed a strand of spittle to emerge from the oral cavity without producing a single neural response,” anthropologist Raymond Hull said. “Perhaps over the next 50 million years, humans will evolve a mechanism to prevent random discharges of saliva from hanging briefly from one’s lower lip before pooling onto the crotch area of one’s khakis, making it appear as though one has pissed oneself.”

Hull noted, however, that Haynes did possess the evolutionary advancements necessary to untuck his shirt and cover the wet spot until it had dried.

Although purely satire, The Onion does a fabulous job of pointing out yet another one of those useless functions accompanying a farily common useless body organ.  Four billion years of evolution and intelligent design and we still have mongoloids drooling on themselves for no apparent reason.  If intelligent design were a fact, they would never have existed in the first place.  Even evolution can’t overcome this one. 

More signals of a problem in higher ed

Global Warming fails Adrian Flanagan

SOME people have been telling us for a while that the ice is melting at the poles due specifically to global warming.  Al Gore says so too.  Based on that information, Adrian Flanagan set out to do what no man could have done before, sail the North Pole.  However, he’s hit a snag:

A BRITISH yachtsman attempting the first solo Arctic sea passage across northern Russia was examining his options after heavier than expected ice blocked his route, his manager said.

So, he’s got a Plan B:

Adrian Flanagan is discussing with Russian authorities the possibility of using a nuclear-powered icebreaker to lift his boat out of the water and carry it round the most icebound stretch of Russia’s Northern Sea Route.

It’s rumored he’s having to keep an eye on global warming endangered polar bears while he figures out how to get out of the mess he’s in.

I really don’t know if he set out to prove global warming is that much of an issue or not.  It does make for a hoot of a story though.

Arthur Clarke and plasma life

Better turn down the lights and pour yourself a strong one, this post is DEEP.

OK, ready?

I have been a huge fan of Arthur C. Clarke, particularly of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Most people are familiar with the movie.  I consider it the greatest sci-fi movie ever made.  However, it is somewhat vague in what is going on.  However, the book does explain what’s going on.  Not in profound detail, but in little snippets that told us of our future.  Debit cards, video conferencing, using gravity to slingshot around planets, all kinds of little bits telling us what was to become.  And, in some cases, trying to explain where we came from.  He doesn’t say evolution is the rule, he just laid out how evolution occurred.  And, sometimes, when that evolution wasn’t progressing appropriately, how it got a little help from a god-like being.  The help was in the form of a simple shape.  It wasn’t a cross, but even simpler, an obolisk.  However, the “being” had more religious overtones.  Digressing a little, all of the main religions of the world today expect a belief in “God”.  This “God” can neither be seen, touched, or heard.  In other words, it is a being purely of energy and no matter.  When one communicates with “God”, it is purely by an energy force.  There is no audible sound.  This omnipotent “God” created our universe as we know it.  Clarke morphed this faith in a non-matter God into 2001 and gave it some definition:

And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic.

In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.

Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rusty

Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea.

And they still watched over the experiments their ancestors had started, so long ago.

What Clarke states here is that “life” doesn’t have to have matter.  It can be pure energy.  Without the confines of matter, physics as we know it completely changes.  Being of matter, I don’t see how Man can travel at the speed of light.  Therefore, visiting far away galaxies is impossible.  However, without the confines of matter, traveling at the speed of light is simple.  Traveling throughout the universe is simple.  Manipulating matter is simple.  The power this entity would have is mind-boggling.  Convincing a very simple animal that you are God would be simple.

All of this ties into today’s events in two forms.

First, we have the creationist vs evolution fight going wild right now.  Neither side is in any mood to compromise or even try to understand the other’s reasons for believing what they do.  What they are both doing is struggling to understand how all this came to be.  Arthur C. Clarke I think struggled with those two concepts long ago.  He came up with a unique answer.  “Our” universe is limited by what we can see and understand.  For some people, “our” universe is limited to matter.  For other people, “our” universe is not limited to matter.  There are things beyond matter that they don’t want to try to understand.  They just know something is more powerful than matter.  That something to them is “God”.  That “God” to Arthur Clarke was a being no more wise than the average man.  He did however, have the power to change entire worlds simply to amuse himself.  He was however, a product of the universe.  He was both a product of evolution and subsequently creationism.  Since I read the book, I have been more a believer in Clarke’s understanding of “God” than probably any other.  Both the creationists and evolutionists expect me to believe they know the answer to a question that is extremely profound based on nothing but limited evidence and a faith in what they are saying is correct.  I don’t work that way.  I don’t think the two theories are totally exclusionary.  Neither did Clarke.  I’m in good company.

Secondly, all of this sounds pretty damn crazy I imagine.  I’m OK with that.  Start by reading the actual 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Then, read this:

Electrically charged specks of interstellar dust organize into DNA-like double helixes and display properties normally attributed to living systems, such as evolving and reproducing, new computer simulations show.

But scientists are hesitant to call the dancing dust particles “alive,” and instead say they are just another example of how difficult it is to define life.

Put me on Arthur Clarke’s team on this one.

The heavy religious overtones continue throughout 2001.  Clarke definitely had “the Dawn of Man” on his mind when he wrote this.  So, I see no coincedence here at all.  However, what he did not have in 1967 was access to plasma. Maybe, if Clarke is correct, we’re getting our first glimpses at something we’ve never understood before.  And, it could get rather profound.

Greenpeace destroys the environment to promote the environment?

This is just nuts.

Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat – where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood – in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.

Turkish and German volunteer carpenters are making the wooden ship on the mountain in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. The ark will be revealed in a ceremony on May 31, a day after Greenpeace activists climb the mountain and call on world leaders to take action to tackle climate change, Greenpeace said.

“Climate change is real, it’s happening now and unless world leaders take urgent, decisive and far-reaching action, the next decades will see human misery on a scale not experienced in modern times,” said Greenpeace activist Hilal Atici. “Those leaders have a mandate from the people … to massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now.”

OK, this is just too stupid for me to even know where to begin.

• First of all, the primary greenhouse gas they’re complaining about is CO2.  Trees LOVE CO2.  Cutting CO2 emissions will just starve the trees.
• That doesn’t really matter since they’re KILLING THE TREES!  What would those trees have done if they had not been chopped to death with an axe for the sake of Greenpeace?  They would have been eating up the greenhouse gases Greenpeace is so afraid of.
• How freakin big will this wooden ark have to be to handle two of every animal known to man?   How many trees will have to die?  How much damage will be done to environment once they have stripped Turkey bare of all trees to build this behemoth WOODEN ark that will go nowhere or accomplish anything?
• Have they done an environmental survey to examine the rare species of animals and plant life that will be displaced or possibly thrust into extinction once their habitat has been destroyed in order for Greenpeace to build this wooden ark that can only hold two of them and go nowhere?Do they not realize that in order to enough water to return to Ararat to float their boat that destroyed the environment, we’d have to have an ice age?  Pushing global warming by destroying all the trees won’t accomplish that.
• Have they considered the consequence of what would happen to the world’s environment, and climate, if people all over the world decided to do as they are, thereby destroying the entire planet’s ability to absorb CO2 emissions and causing runaway global warming.  Or what future aliens will think of the human race when they visit Earth to find a scorched planet covered in arks?

These have got to be stupidest, most self-absorbed collection of people on the planet.  PETA’s right up there by thinking man will rise in protest at the site of red-hot babes getting naked, but that doesn’t do any real harm.   This one does.

I guess they’ll just do carbon offsets for all the damage they’ve done by giving cash to the Arbor Day Foundation?  Now, there’s n environmental group that does it right.

Watching tornadoes

I think given the mass marketing of tornado chasing over the last few years, more and more people have lost the God-given sense to flee in terror in lieu of thinking they can make some money filming the most destructive winds on Earth. Not sure how much these people made, but here’s a couple of good ones:

and

Now, regardless of how much might be made when recording one of these wonders of the world, I’m still running!

Daylight Savings time adds to global warming?

Saw this via Urban Legends:

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning ofthe last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN, Hot Springs

Now the really sad part:

Connie really did send that comment to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Some people really do think daylight savings time adds one hour to the day.