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i could have written an article about how the Beginning of the 3rd Millennium will not immediately LOOK that much different from The Dinosaur Era from which we’ve just begun to accelerate after these last few thousand years. i mean, after writing my last Glad Announcement, i switched to the tv to hear Bush announcing his “surge”! i took a (not nervous) pee and got back in time to hear that the surge is probly a step towards an attack on iran.
but those things do not surprise me.
first, it’s all dinosaurs can do, and Bush will be swinging wildly around as long as he’s there. it’s BECAUSE they can’t transform that they have to go. forever.
secondly, with full heartfelt apologies to all those who will be killed and maimed (just remember that this has been the median slaughter behaviour for thousands of years now) NOTHING BETTER COULD HAVE HAPPENED than that the hardcore Dino element in western society has chosen to HANG THEMSELVES OUT TO DRY before the planetary public (now including the Great Hitherto Unmoveable Mid West of Yankeeland). remember, the majority in every sphere of the planet is publicly against this surge (and everyone knows this) and people will be vehemently unforgiving when it crashes. they will watch and learn every night on their tv sets WHY WE CANNOT ALLOW THIS SOCIOPATHY ON OUR PLANET ANY LONGER NOR EVER AGAIN!!!!
thirdly, all this stuff about iran is empty braggadocio by a Dead Man Walking – why, the army themselves would probably rebel if they were so ordered, and bush arrested as a “breakdown”, that’s how far the Dinos have pushed themselves in the public eye of even their own supporters.
but, instead, i’ve decided to publish someone else’s article to show, if nothing else, how the ideas i’ve been promulgating are starting to percolate elsewhere. it’s from the good Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman)...
The Self-Impeaching President - Just Add Sunlight and Watch the Grassroots Grow
by Steve Bhaerman
George (“You’re either with me or against me”) Bush has drawn his line in the Iraqi desert sand. He is only willing to continue as Chief Executive on his terms. Unless he is allowed to rule by his own rules, he just doesn’t want the job. He hasn’t exactly said so, but actions speak louder than words. His recent tack of firing big shots until he finds military leaders who agree with his approach -- and his making threatening gestures towards Iran -- indicates that he intends to act as the one-and-only Commander-In-Chief until he is relieved of his command.
And with a surprising number of Republican Senators just saying no as an immediate response to his speech, perhaps there is a sense of panic that if he is allowed to occupy the seat of power until the bitter end, the party of Lincoln and Ford will go the way of the Edsel. Consider the remarks made by his brother Jeb last month when a Spanish language radio station asked about his future after being termed out as governor of Florida: “No tengo futuro”
Add Jeb’s scurrying to distance himself from the implications of his bitter blurtings to the elder President Bush’s breakdown in sobs at Jeb’s farewell dinner, and you’ve a strong indication that having the name Bush will become a bigger political liability than having the middle name “Hussein” in the near future.
Think of it this way. Have you ever heard of a political candidate named Fred Hitler? You haven’t? I rest my case.
Nancy Pelosi was absolutely right in declaring impeachment off the table. Before impeachment comes investigation and - despite those “dress-stain patriots” 8 years ago - impeachment cannot be a partisan endeavour.
>> a crucial point. the Dinos must be extirpated by ALL sides of the New Mainstream that’s how it must be done!
But the tables are turning quickly, and hopefully will turn quickly enough to avoid a military attack on Iran by either us or Israel.
Someone who’s been analysing the election results for the Democratic Party told me they’d concluded that what pushed the Democrats over the top were independent voters who understood that electing a Democratic majority was the only way in our political system to give a sitting president a “vote of no confidence. ”
From everything I’ve been hearing, reading and sensing there are influential people at all levels of government who are no longer willing to participate in a government run like a criminal enterprise. The key factor in activating this “air support” at the top is a groundswell of “ground support” at the grassroots.
UP!
.. contents...
p.03 New Rave, New High Street Fashion – “London once again will take the crown for the most amazing city in the world - you watch.”
p.04 French Marchers Say 'Non' To 2007
p.05 Global Warming Claims First Inhabited Tropical Island
p.06 An Inseparably Interrelated Field Or Continuum – the Hopi Indian take on cosmology.
p.08 MANY Readers’ FEEDBACK on Goddess Crete & Biocosm
p.15 Life Force & The Master Plant Teachers.
p.16 IRAN: 'THE MOTHER OF ALL CONFERENCES’ – but what did they actually TALK about?!
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Get
UP! Stand
Up For Your Rights! (and
everybody’s too of course! :)
u can’t
understand the world without innerstanding yourself
UP!
241 // 17 01 07
LA-
LA- LA- LAP-TOPPLING DA SYSTEM!
u
cant innerstand yourself without understanding the world
Get UP! Don’t
Give Up The Fight! (only
we don’t mean violence, ok? :)
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Robert Anton Wilson, the libertarian novelist, journalist, humorist, and philosopher, slipped his mortal coil @ 4:50am on Thursday 11 January, Pacific Coast time. He was just a few days shy of his 75th birthday.
The last thing he wrote (we think!) was posted on his blog last Saturday:
“Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between 2 days and 2 months to live. I think they’re guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
“Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.”
Beloved by the e-liberty Internet hordes, magicians, dope fiends, conspiracists and other political artists, RAW’s death was immediately noted by Boing Boing, Reason, 10 Zen Monkeys and not a single newspaper or wire service.
That’s to be expected. Wilson was a cult writer’s cult writer with the kind of fans who re-read his Cosmic Trigger and Illuminatus! series as an annual ritual. He was also a Discordian pope, Crowley scholar, Playboy Magazine editor, and California gubernatorial candidate.
He was and is a principal proponent of a kind of techno-hippie-mystic-2nd Amendment libertarianism, yet was incredibly influential in Silicon Valley and electronic media. And unlike the “political thinkers” who clog Washington’s green rooms on Sunday mornings, Wilson was hilarious … on purpose.
UP!
Hail Eris! The Muse Passeth!
What a marvellous journey!
How we all laughed!
O such lovely companions
On this splendid old craft!
Here's to bold Captain Wilson
Who jumped ship last night
Amused to the end
By his share of the Light!
Hail Eris! Hail Arlen! Hail Schrödinger’s Cat
Hail Robert Anton Wilson
Wherever you're at.
Nick Herbert.
UP!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/obituaries/13wilson.html?ref=obituaries
UP!
New Rave, New High Street Fashion
“London once again will take the crown for the most amazing city
in the world - you watch.”
The Sunday Times reported this week that High Street chain stores including Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridges are copying the ”bonkers attire” of the new rave scene for their upcoming new season, and predicted ”expect the High Street to light up like a glowstick.”
"Come spring, the stores will be full of acid-coloured tees (T shirts), animal-print leggings and bright. Bold accessories." The Times' Style section added, "The original new ravers are mortified."
Original new raver, DJ and Gauche Chic promoter Niyi wasn't mortified at all, he told Skrufff, beyond feeling ”a slight pang” when he first read the article. "I think it's spot-on that the mainstream is copying everyone from the clubs," Niyi explained. "I don't think anyone of us ever set out to be a tiny niche that no one gets or understands. That's why we used such obvious references. The scene is all about fun and individualism and the world needs a big dose of that right now."
DJ Mongaloid, resident DJ at key new rave club Anti-Social also agreed: "I think this scene has the optimism and the same euphoric vibe that old rave had which is really cool. It's a reaction that comes when the world's in a mess and people want to ignore all the bullshit, grab some glow sticks and dance."
>> Stage One.
Mongaloid was keener than Niyi to distance himself from the new rave label, however, pointing out, ”the high street, like every magazine, sees whatever comes along then they embrace it and then the minute it's not hot anymore they move on. But you have to move on, you can't hold on to something.”
"That's why I don't want to be labelled new rave. With new rave, some people are aligning themselves to it really closely which is a dangerous thing to do because the minute that's over, you might get tossed in that heap as well as last season's jackets."
Mongaloid said he already prefers to be known as 'futurist' ('you can't beat the future') while Niyi said he's happiest encouraging flamboyant dressing, full stop.
"I think to wear ridiculous clothes takes a very specific headspace,” he mused. "But I think it's in this headspace that people are most creative, and most open to new ideas. London once again is going to take the crown for the most amazing city in the world - you watch.”
http://www.myspace.com/molaroid (DJ Molaroid)
http://www.myspace.com/niyi (Niyi)
http://www.myspace.com/namaleelovespop
[skruff.com]
UP!
French Marchers Say 'Non' To 2007
Hundreds of protesters in France have rung in the New Year by a protest, calling on governments and the UN to stop time's "mad race" and declare a moratorium on the future.
BBC News Jan. 1, 2007
UP!
STILL IN FRANCE...
'Les Enfants de Don Quichotte'
In France, as speculation about the housing crisis and homelessness is rising, more and more impressive ‘protest’ actions are occurring. Old friends from DAL have organised another spectacular squat in Paris and built the “Ministry For Housing Crisis”. New groups and movements, especially the “Children of Don Quichotte” have organised camps with homeless.
Thanks to the campaign for presidential elections, these movements have achieved remarkable political reactions within the past days: the conservative government plans to establish a legally enforceable right to housing! This would be the first in Europe (with the exception of Scotland). Meanwhile the socialist candidate Ms. Royal promises a huge social housing programme, intervention in the markets and even effective requisitions.
The French and even the German press are full of these astonishing news stories which fly totally against the main trend in Europe.
May this become a year of breakthrough for an "enforceable right to housing" and for regulation on speculative markets!
Knut Unger, Germany.
UP!
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the
UP!
is a global
edutainment round-up, broadcast weekly to =[14,536]=
Alternative//
Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age// Peace folks
recommended
to the Parallel
YOUniversity//
Megatripolis Dance Dept
as
"showing
signs of life". Since
recipients forward it widely to their own lists & sites
we
conservatively estimate 50,000+
direct
recipients.
A further 40,000 read it on the YOUniversity's
site.
And, because
of
its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content,
it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites
worldwide,
making an estimated total weekly readership of
=[275,000]=
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Past And Future Intricately Connected In Human Brain: Study
Physorg.com, January 2, 2007
Washington University researchers, using advanced brain imaging techniques, have shown that remembering the past and envisioning the future may go hand-in-hand, with each process sparking strikingly similar patterns of activity within precisely the same broad network of brain regions.
"Results of this study offer a tentative answer to a long-standing question regarding the evolutionary usefulness of memory," says Kathleen McDermott, an associate professor of psychology. "It may just be that the reason we are able to recollect our past in vivid detail is that this set of processes is important for being able to envision ourselves in future scenarios. This ability to envision the future has clear and compelling adaptive significance."
UP!
THE POST-DINO SOCIETY
"Early rumblings of an anti-war movement sounded in Washington this week as several progressive groups joined forces to press the Democratic Congress to use its power of the purse to stop the latest escalation of the conflict in Iraq. Unlike their often scruffy and unshaven Vietnam predecessors, these activists are well within the mainstream in their appearance as well as their politics.” Newsweek's Eleanor Clift.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011307Z.shtml
>> they ARE the mainstream. the society has changed – tho the agony i mean the melody will linger on for some time.
UP!
Global Warming Claims
First Inhabited Tropical Island
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent UK.
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas.
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities, like New Orleans.
The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented. It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence when they saw it had vanished from satellite pictures.
Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about 8 years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.
Refugees from Lohachara have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.
UP!
The DNA So Dangerous It Does Not Exist
Boise State University researchers are searching for "primes": DNA sequences and chains of amino acids so dangerous to life that they do not exist. They have identified more than 60,000 primes of 15 nucleotides in length and 746 protein "peptoprime" strings of 5 amino acids that have never been reported in any species, and that represent the largest possible set of lethal sequences.
The next step is to test 20 of the peptoprimes in bacteria and human cells to see whether they have any effect such as causing death or provoking an immune reaction.
NewScientistSpace Jan. 3, 2007
>> another proof of A) a Friendly Intelligence behind all this and B) An Antibiotic Stupidity teetering on the edge of Satanic.
UP!
An Inseparably Interrelated Field Or Continuum
Our Hopi guide Bertram Tsavadawa asked us to stop at a place he described as where the Hopi mystery and prophetic stories would be told through ancient symbols and petroglyphs. We came to a large semi-circle cliff face about 40 feet high and stretching about 100 yards in length which was literally covered with Hopi petroglyphs.
Bertram had received permission from the Hopi elders to take us to this place and tell us their stories which began at the top of the cliff about 6,000 BC or about 8,000 years ago. The stories began when the predecessors of the Hopi came up from below(Latin America) and progressed down the cliff to the most recent level which portrayed the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors shown with horses and beheading the Hopi people.
Each level of the story cliff carried elements of a spiritual progression throughout the ages. When asked about strange round headed images, Bertram was quiet for a time and then said that they were images of beings from another place, the star people, who came to teach the Hopi. Also evident were mandala type portrayals of discs, somewhat like those currently called orbs. Bertram referred to them as signs of spirit.
Our group was then invited to visit the Hopi village of Old Orabi, a place still following the old prophetic teachings about not using the wires in the sky (electric and telephone lines). What looked like a run down shanty town turned out to be a rich and pleasant cultural community.
We were greeted by Bertram’s Hopi elder grandmother, who we found out was one of the real leaders of the people, the elder women being the reflection of the earth in the Earth and Sun based cosmology. Her face was beautifully lined with strong character and deep wisdom and we were honoured to be accepted by her in her community.
Bertram took us into his home which was full of his carved kachinas, or crafted spirit dolls depicting various powers and attributes for being in the world.
Probably the most noted authority on the Hopi, the author and scholar Frank Waters, says: "A kachina is a spirit of any kind -- a star, mountain, plant, animal, or invisible force. So is the man who impersonates the spirit... wearing the sacred mask and costume which invests him with its power.
"Academic considerations, however, are invalidated by the basic truths and meaning of the kachina ... In its conception the Hopis have created a form for the everlasting formless; a living symbol unique in the world for that universal and multifold spirit which embodies all living matter; which speaks to us, as only the spirit can speak, through the intuitive perception..."
It is a consideration that Frank Waters’ exceptional work “Book Of The Hopi”, published five years before Carlos Castaneda's first book, was read by that young anthropology student interested in the southwest. There are numerous similarities with Castaneda’s writing. For more information visit http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorations/book_of_the_hopi_by_frank_waters.htm.
"That these Hopi have revealed their conceptual pattern of life to us now, for the first time, imparts to their gift strangeness unique in our national experience... They reassert a rhythm of life we have disastrously tried to ignore. They remind us we must attune ourselves to the need for inner change if we are to avert a cataclysmic rupture between our own minds and hearts."
"Nor will the Hopi view of the universe as an inseparably interrelated field or continuum be quite palatable to those who tacitly accept the role of man as a rational entity created to stand apart from nature."
From our enlightening experience with the Hopi our expedition moved on to the magnificence of the Grand Canyon.
http://www.greatmystery.org/newsletters/musings_hopi.html
UP!
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TEXT
JOCKEY
// TJ
PHRASER (Fraser
Clark) & THE MEDIA
EVOLUTION
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FEEDBACK
Hi Fraser,
Just a quick line to say how stimulating I am finding the article on Cretan Civilisation in the latest UP!; my first issue BTW.
I look forward to reading the rest of this one and all further issues.
Peace,
Kev, Lancashire, UK,
up!
Hi fraser
happy arbitrary date point. let’s make 2007 a year to remember.
reading the intelligent creation story with some interest & thought i'd chip in my twopenneth worth with a rather odd experience i had a few years back.
OK, i'm in bed doing a spot of meditation before sleep - always a good way to unwind - & not under the influence of any mind altering substance. i find myself drifting off to a point in time & space before humans as individuals exist. the universe is there all right but humanity is a single collective consciousness. as such, we collectively decide to set up this new game on a planet called earth as a kind of experiment in Being - the situation in which we now find ourselves as "individuals" participating.
the funniest thing about this was that we made the decision to do this primarily out of a sense of cosmic ennui! well, that just cracked me up.
so, not only is the universe a product of intelligence but our particular portion of the cosmos was crafted by us for us. sounds daft eh?
>> IMPORTANT ADVICE: DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED BY YOUR LIFELONG
CULTURAL CONDITIONING THAT THIS KINDA STUFF IS BEYOND YOU. THE OPPOSITE IS THE CASE. YOU ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS THAN SOME SCIENTIST IN A WHITE APRON LOOKING INTO A COMPUTER SCREEEN. HONEST.
DON’T LET THEIR LANGUAGE INTIMIDATE YOU :)
it’s as good a story as any i reckon...
>> absolutely. and, since ‘Science’ refuses even to consider this area of motive (being unable to measure it they deny its existence), they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say onnit. (20 years till they get there)
personally i’ve always fancied that God Hisself was bored one day and decided to create a separate world in which he could hide himself and thus encounter surprises. is wot i’d do in Hir position – which is a very useful method of finding your way through this kinda stuff.
but, slightly more seriously, if there’s to be a moral involved, that our world was designed for Learning, then i reckon the Reality is this gigantic construction that fills up space and is supported (FREELY!) by every single entity in existence who, if he gets bored or impatient with always being a mere unity in somebody else’s design, has the option to come down here and see what happens when everyone expresses his own personal ego desires.
anyway, like all good games, its got to come to an end before we decide what to play next. welcome to this point right now.
big love to all,
jake, brighton, uk.
up!
Hi,
I'm a journalist with the Daily Mail in the UK, a national newspaper with a circulation of around 3 million. I write extensively on the paranormal and spiritual matters, and I've been an avid reader of your site for some time.
Many of my paranormal (and animal welfare) stories now appear on a site I set up with a fellow journalist a few weeks ago. I thought your readers might be interested in my stories. Would you like to link to them and to the site? www.newsmonster.co.uk
>> monster? why? izzit daily mail tongue in ass? :)
Please let me know what you think. In the meantime good luck with your site.
Danny Penman, London.
up!
GOD BY THE NUMBERS
Coincidence and random mutation are not the most likely explanations for some things.
Charles Edward White | posted 3/01/2006 12:00AM
Math and theology have had a long and chequered relationship. The Babylonians and Mayans both associated numbers with God. In fact, both societies named their gods with numbers. The Mayans used 13 and the Babylonians used 60. In the Greek world, followers of Pythagoras prayed to the first 4 numbers and thought they were the creator. On the other hand, in the 18th century, the French mathematician Laplace told Napoleon he had no need of God even as a hypothesis, and in 1744, John Wesley confessed: "I am convinced, from many experiments, I could not study either mathematics, arithmetic, or algebra without being a deist, if not an atheist."
No one knows what Wesley saw in 18th-century mathematics that he feared would lead him away from the God of the Bible, but today, many Christian mathematicians think that numbers point to God. Three numbers in particular suggest evidence for God's existence. They are 1/1010123, 10162, and eπi.
>> we’re not going to cover this one as it leaves even us baffled.
Fine-Tuning The Universe
The first recent number that points to God is 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123. This number comes from astronomy. Oxford professor Roger Penrose discusses it in his book The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind. It derives from a formula by Jacob Beckenstein and Stephen Hawking and describes the chances of our universe being created at random. Another approach to the same problem involves the fine-tuning of the universe and the existence of habitable planets.
The fine-tuning of the universe is shown in the precise strengths of 4 basic forces.
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Gravity is the weakest, with a relative strength of 1. If it were slightly stronger, all stars would be large, like the ones that produce iron and other heavier elements, but they would burn out too rapidly for the development of life. On the other hand, if gravity were weaker, the stars would endure, but none would produce the heavier elements necessary to form planets.
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The Weak Nuclear Force which holds the neutron together. It is 1034 times stronger than gravity but works only at subatomic distances. If it were stronger, neutrons would decay more rapidly, and there would be nothing in the universe but hydrogen. However, if this force were weaker, all the hydrogen would turn into helium and other elements.
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Electromagnetism is 1,000 times stronger than The Weak Nuclear Force. It binds atoms to one another to form molecules. If it were either weaker or stronger, no chemical bonds would form, so no life could exist
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The Strong Nuclear Force, which keeps protons together in the nucleus of an atom, is 100 times stronger yet. It overcomes the electromagnetic force and allows the atomic nucleus to exist. Like the weak nuclear force, changing it would produce a universe with only hydrogen or with no hydrogen.
So, if even one of these forces had a slightly different strength, the life-sustaining universe we know would be impossible.
In sum, without planets, hydrogen, and chemical bonds, there would be no life as we know it.
Besides these 4 factors, there are at least 25 others that require pinpoint precision to produce a universe that contains life. Getting each of them exactly right suggests the presence of an Intelligent Designer.
The second component to be considered when calculating the likelihood of this life-supporting universe is the presence of habitable planets. In addition to the fine-tuning of the whole universe, there needs to be a carefully specified place where life can reside. Life as we know it can only exist within certain limits. There are at least 45 parameters, from the size of our galaxy to the mass of the moon, which permit the presence of life on a planet. A huge galaxy erupts with too many stars and thus disturbs planetary orbits, but a tiny galaxy does not produce enough heavy elements for a planet to form. At the other end of the spectrum, too large a moon destabilises a planet's orbit, while having no moon or one that’s too small permits a planet to wobble as it spins and disrupts the planet's climate.
From these 45 planetary characteristics alone, Hugh Ross, in his chapter in Mere Creation, calculates there is less than 1 chance in 1069 of habitable planets occurring at random.
The fine-tuning of the 4 physical forces and the presence of one habitable planet are just two of the components that would go into a formula to predict the probability of a life-supporting universe. The first one to try to calculate this number was Frank Drake in 1961, when he listed fewer than ten factors. Coming at the same problem from a different direction by calculating the entropy of black holes, Penrose says the number is 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123. This number is beyond human comprehension. To write 10 to the 10 to the 3 in one line would extend beyond the bounds of the universe. If Penrose is right in calculating the odds of a life-supporting universe at 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123, then a strong case for a Creator emerges.
Not Enough Time
The second number that points to God comes from the field of biology. William Dembski, in The Creation Hypothesis, suggests the following argument.
Darwin thought that all life, including humans, arose from a one-celled organism. But to get from a one-celled organism to a human being with a least a trillion cells, there would have to be many changes. Darwin says these changes were produced at random, but they would have had to occur in the right order. It doesn't do any good to give an organism a leg until it has a nervous system to control it. Even if we limit the number of necessary mutations to 1,000 and argue that half of these mutations are beneficial, the odds against getting 1,000 beneficial mutations in the proper order is 21000. Expressed in decimal form, this number is about 10301.
10301 mutations is a number far beyond the capacity of the universe to generate. Even if every particle in the universe mutated at the fastest possible rate and had done so since the Big Bang, there still would not be enough mutations.
>> now didn’t you know that in your heart of hearts? i did.
There are about 1080 elementary particles in the universe. The fastest they could mutate would be Planck time, or 10-42 seconds. Planck time is the smallest unit of time and can be approximated as the time it would take two photons travelling at 186,000 miles per second to pass each other. If all 1080 particles in the universe had been mutating at the fastest possible rate (1042) since the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago, it would produce 1080 x 1042 x 1017 or 10139 mutations. But to have a chance at even 1,000 beneficial mutations takes 10301 tries. Thus, the chance of getting 1,000 beneficial mutations out of all the mutations the universe can generate is 10139 divided by 10301, or 1 chance in 10162.
For Darwin's theory to have a chance of being right, the universe would have to be a trillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion times older than it is. Because the universe is so young, Darwin's argument fails, and William Paley's contention that design presupposes a designer becomes more persuasive.
Charles Edward White, professor of Christian thought and history at Spring Arbor University, Michigan.
up!
I read the "Biocosm” article with interest but the more I read it the more I thought it was mis-titled. Mr Gardener discusses at great length how our universe is just right for us to exist in, but he only makes very vague references to WHY he believes these conditions are 'created' by some form of external intelligent agency.
He states "What if Life were not a cosmic accident but the essential reality at the very heart of the elegant machinery of the universe? What if Darwin’s principle of natural selection were merely a tiny fractal embodiment of a universal life-giving principle that drives the evolution of stars, galaxies, and the cosmos itself?" But just because something is real does not mean that it is non-accidental.
>> dear astronaut, put it down to m y fault but mr gardener is on your side re NO CREATOR, it is MY packaging of his article, designed to show how close Science is coming to admitting Higher Intelligence, that’s making u think otherwise. his article is one of those wrigglings that scientists are being forced thru as they reach (inevitably) the outer and very hard edges of the Bowl in which we have been immersed :)
I
waited for him to come up with the argument I was contemplating and
eventually he took it on:
"To most
scientists, offering the tautological explanation that since human
observers inhabit this particular universe, it must necessarily be
life-friendly or else it would not contain any observers resembling
ourselves is anathema. It just sounds like giving up."
Maybe, but it just sounds like giving up what? Because he has already made up his mind that the universe is a product of intelligent design
>> no no! he’s DENYING such, with the facts staring him in the face! :)
he decrees that anyone who thinks differently is "giving up"?
One problem with intelligent design/creator theories is that you then raise the question of 'who designed the designers?'
>> funnily enuff, the last xmas card i found and bought this year bore the caption: “I WAS AN ATHEIST UNTIL I REALISED THAT I WAS GOD”. inside i added: “AND THEN I REALISED EVERYONE WAS GOD. AND THEN I KNEW THAT ONLY GOD CAN BE AN ATHEIST.”
I'm not saying that Mr Gardener’s opinion is categorically wrong, but I couldn't find anything in this article that really challenged the tautological approach.
>> i agree. what’s so wrong with that? but anyway i think it’s a false dichotomy. whether you think there’s a Huge Intelligence behind it all or not, both will (naturally) want to explore their world. the reason i wonder if God just sketched it in initially and is being forced constantly to fill in the greater detail as ‘scientists’ probe further and further is because this ‘scientific enquiry’ is healthy. as a stage, i mean, at a certain point you can move on and not need this kinda detail to make up your mind and proceed from there.
Personally I believe in Mysticism, the belief/experience that everything is interconnected in oneness.
>> the question you should ask is: does everything add up or do things get lost in the youniverse as u see it? if u don’t see the youniverse as “adding up” then where’s you Oneness?
The idea that the universe can only be explained by reference to some external agency does not sit well with me.
>> it’s not separate. we are either Goddess or fractals of Hir. no?
I think because he sees life as something separate from matter (he talks of "the heroic power of mind against the brute intransigence of lifeless matter") he ends up projecting that split outwards on a cosmic scale.
>> i agree, that’s how HE sees it.
As the Super Furry Animals sing: 'Rocks Are Slow Life'. Despite his perspective he still comes up with a sort of extended Gaia hypothesis of the universe as a living organism, so I won't give up on him just yet!
>> yeah, he’s seeing Life as gigantic and breeding and exploding in baby worlds all over the place and at all levels and we humans might be a very slight fractal of that. so WE’re not creating the world we live in but Life in the bigger sense IS. for me it’s just a half step from seeing that WE ARE GODDESS. hard to put in words of course :)
And funnily enough I actually agree with his conclusion: "Under the theory, the emergence of life and increasingly competent intelligence are not meaningless accidents in a hostile, largely lifeless cosmos but at the very heart of the vast machinery of creation, cosmological evolution, and cosmic replication."
I just think that there is a huge conceptual leap from that to the Intelligent Design hypothesis. That these are not meaningless accidents but MEANINGFULL accidents!
>> he’s not making it, i am :) he’s trying to AVOID the leap, only it’s a leap that’s disappearing with every new discovery.
To me it appears that the Goddess didn't create life, the Goddess is life.
>> words. problem of. but i still refer u back to that question :)
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Steve Astronaut, UK.
p.s. I found your interjection fascinating: "Art, interestingly enough, always presages technological change." More on this theme?
>> i was mostly referring to a very early sci-fi classic called The Rose where there’s this world of the future split into 2, with the underground one supplying all the creativity and experimentation for the overall society, and equally well paid for doing so. very difficult to find tho.
up!
“Human beings are a part of a whole called by us the “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Einstein
Best Wishes for 2007
dave mackie, UK.
up!
Hi Fraser, I read UP! with the greatest appreciation.
I always wonder why the cosmic scientist refrain from proposing the simplest answers to these fundamental problems. How can anybody stuck inside a test-tube doubt that the world has hard boundaries, slightly reflective but essentially transparent, and rather higher than wide?
It seems obvious to me that the cosmos is exactly as you view it, even to the nature of it being mysterious where it doesn’t fit with what you already think. The simplest alternative is that it complies with your own myopic viewpoint even to the level of mathematics you have to make it comply with. Whereas, a religious person has a cosmos dependable on a magnificent God or Goddess who is either beneficent or wrathful, guiding or demanding obligatory compliance. An atheistic view might have a sharp but violently black end to life, at least one’s own. Each one of these must be right or wrong depending on the position being occupied. The simplest solution is that everybody is right, created by the way it is perceived.
>> but, outside that, there would be a Creator, who had planned things this way.
Thus, from this point of view, we are not interpreting a reality as much as projecting it outward and reviewing what comes back to us. Then, it surely becomes evolutionary as every new bit of knowledge is acknowledged until it is replaced by another bit of new knowledge. From this perspective the cosmos doesn’t actually exist at all. Every instrument that is used to measure it is indeed designed to measure that specific, and in the process becomes part of the creative force that produced it in the first place. Only cosmologists can create instruments to measure the cosmos, while doctors are looking for new diseases and bacteria and viruses, and so on. This would explain why psychologists are most likely to be the most fukked up group, looking for a solution to mental problems while bankers are busy stashing away as much cash as they can. The worst part of this scenario happens when you study politics and politicians.
Coming from a small population like New Zealand, we can study our political forces pretty easily, at least up until now. Whenever there’s been a Prime Minister who’s essentially a farmer in disguise, we have had policies that favour exports, and fiscal policy is towards keeping our dollar low in comparison to our trading partners. This favours, you guessed it, the farmer. Then we shift and elect an Accountant. An accountant PM tinkers with the economy, and with the swift boldness of a sharpened pencil cuts every bit of slack out of the voting economy. The country’s infrastructure, at least anything that turns a profit, is sold off to private enterprise, and in return one gains large donations for the party’s funds for the next election. Accountants tend to stay in power for protracted periods, or at least until all the assets have been sold. Next come the lawyers. These PMs meddle with the legal system. You can expect to see an explosion in new laws that determine what you are allowed and not allowed to do. Because laws tend to tighten the freedom of business to operate, lawyers tend to be replaced sooner rather than later. The final group are the political scientists. These are perhaps the most dangerous of all. They tend to meddle with social policy. Social systems respond rather rapidly and with high energy, such that any amount of meddling is highly destabilising. The results are ever more policy meddling to try to rebalance the initial changes. These people can stay in power for a long period because in a destabilised system nobody knows who can put it right again, perhaps only the farmers.
That’s all I wanted to add. Keep sending.
Francis Evans – Holding a banner down under – New Zealand
up!
[this may be a satire. but i don’t think so. and even if it is that’s fine :)]
Far out! Check this: God’s allowance is so great that He permits undermining of His will. George Washington’s apocalyptic vision at Valley Forge in 1777 was of American victory by Divine Intervention.
Long ago Human spirits escaped a decaying universe & entered this Universe where we took on physical forms & colonised many galaxies & planets including this Sol system. We lived peacefully alongside intelligent Reptilians until predator spirits from the previous universe possessed Orion Reps & made them envious of our Human civilisation in Lyra. Unholy Dragons attacked our human ancestors in the Lyra star system and devastated three worlds instantly killing 50 million. We returned to this solar system, the Pleiades, Sirius, & many other systems.
Reptilians fail the test of being forced to speak the word ‘KININIGIN’, specialised blue-cobalt lenses can reveal shape-shifters, as well as over-oxygenation or cold temperatures.
Pleadians are manoeuvring Merope to attract Earth and Sirius closer to the Pleiades. Civil war erupts in Sirius as attempts are made to prevent the Draco armada from leaving their system. Three Rigelian ships from Sirius B came into the Sol system hiding in the tail of Hale-Bopp comet, only to jump ship as the comet was swinging around the sun, taking up orbits around Mercury. Along with Andromedan, Pleadean,
Procyonese, and Tau Cetian forces involved in the Solar blockade, a force from Capella also assisted in the blockade. Capellans are a reptilian yet female-dominated society, once slaves of the insectilian white Greys from Epsilon Bootes. Many incoming enemy vessels were destroyed as a result of the bravery of these blue warriors from Capella. Draco-Orion forces are using the frozen protostar Nemesis as a cryogenic holding place for many Draco warriors. Nemesis has sent and continues to send asteroids into the Sol system (including 1620-Geographos). The Martian moon Phobos is home base of 2000 original Greys capable of egg-reproduction, which serve as the genetic source for the millions of grey clone-drones. These asteroid-carriers are used as staging bases for planet earth’s subversion, and for abduction. Fear not alien implants, rather reverse-infiltrate the Draco-Hive & sing them lullabies.
The spirit of the Goose has blessed humanity to inherit this Sol system & the Spirit of the Butterfly has welcomed us back into the Milky Way. The photon belt we are now entering is a huge torroid shaped object composed of photon light particles 2,000 solar years or 760 trillion miles thick. Earth is now completing a 26,000-year cycle with this photon belt & Sirians will be making mass landings on Earth to help us through the experience.
Going through the Photon Belt we enter the null zone which alters the body type of all living things & halts the operation of any electrical device for a few days. When the collapse of the planet's electrical and magnetic fields occurs it will allow all atoms on Earth to be changed and we will have physical & psychic gifts that we were meant to have as we return to having 12 strands of DNA. Our unique meta-gene will serve Love!
In 2012 on the Winter Solstice our sun will have disappeared from view & even cats won’t see light, the atmosphere is compressed & everyone will feel bloated. After a day of Earthquakes the atmosphere is dimly lit like dawn and a new energy warms & permeates the planet. Our solar system will be put into a position about 3 light years from the Sirius star system. The accompanying wobble of the Earth occurred in the original nuclear blasts of the warfare of the Annanuki Reptillians, which shifted the poles instantly & caused a minor ice age. The sun shall appear upon the same horizon in spring as in fall & shifting the poles back to their original location shall occur in a short 300 years rounding Earth’s oval orbit shortening a year to 12 moons instead of 13.
We will now be 5th dimensional bearers of Light, Yay Krishna! Radhe!!!
jason, miami.
UP!
The Right Wing’s $3 Billion Propaganda Organ
The American Right achieved its political dominance in Washington over the past quarter century with the help of more than $3 billion spent by Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon on a daily propaganda organ, the Washington Times, according to a 21-year veteran of the newspaper.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122706A.shtml
UP!
Life Force & The Master Plant Teachers
by Peter Gorman.
Suppose for a moment that all matter has a life force, that all matter - and probably anti-matter too for argument’s sake - is sentient, and has will, personality and the ability to make choices.
Suppose also that all matter - and anti-matter for too - dates from the first moment of time. That you and I can trace our lineage back to that moment, even if we were just cosmic dust balls billions of years from becoming slime creatures and millions of years further away from coming out of the primordial soup and clambering up onto land.
The same would hold true for a mountain, a rock, a flower. Everything we know, and millions of things we don’t know, trace back to that first moment when matter exists. If we were to look at a mountain, for instance, and apply the first supposition, imagine what that mountain has gone through since the dawn of time, imagine what it has experienced, and now imagine what it would be like to be able to communicate with that mountain about those experiences. It’s my belief that that’s doable; it’s my failure that I don’t know how to communicate with that being, its will, its personality. But that doesn’t mean it’s not doable, just that I fail at it.
Imagine the same for an ocean, for a fish that’s just been bitten by a predator, for a plant.
Plants, like everything else, are our co-dwellers in the universe. But man has a special relationship with plants. They provide, and have since the beginning of time, the bulk of our food, our clothing, our shelter. Some provide us with the loveliest scents; some with extraordinary colour. They’re the source of our medicines, their roots work with soil and stone to keep the surface of the earth intact. They go so far as to take the poisonous carbon dioxide that humans exhale and turn it back into human-life-giving oxygen. That’s some relationship. Of course it may be that plants only invented us to distribute their seeds, so I’m not suggesting they live to cater to us. But they do provide us with much of what we need to exist.
Among the flora of the world as we know it, several plants are not just allies, they are considered Master Plant Teachers. You might extend that to read: Master Plant Teachers of Man. These plants might be considered gate keepers. These plants are the plants that allow us humans to slow down enough to communicate with the mountains; to speed up enough to communicate with a hummingbird, to visit the other realms past present simultaneous that are here but that we don’t ordinarily see or hear within the bandwidths of our senses.
Other realms that are already here? Other realities that co-exist with ours. Imagine a dog whistle. You blow it, you hear nothing. Your cat hears nothing. Birds hear nothing. But blow it close enough to a dog and the dog will yelp in pain at the sound.
Now the dog hears it but you can’t. But it was still there. Your hearing just didn’t have a broad enough band. Now what I’m suggesting the Master Plant Teachers do is broaden the bands of your senses so that we see, hear, feel, touch, taste and sense things we can’t under ordinary circumstances.
Now the Master Plant Teachers include - and they are frequently called the 7 Master Plant Teachers - include Datura, Iboga, San Pedro cactus, Peyote, Ayahuasca, Amanita Muscaria…. and I always forget the seventh, though I believe it’s Ololuqui, used by the Mazatecs and other indigenous groups in Mexico. There are undoubtedly others whose existence man has either not yet discovered or whose existence is being closely guarded by the peoples who use them.
There are a number of minor Plant Teachers as well, among them cannabis, Salvia divinorum, a number of species of mushrooms, coca, opium poppies and so forth. All of these are vital and can help alter the perspective of man, but what separates them from the Master Plant Teachers is the depth of their teachings, the power or knowledge they are capable of imparting to man.
These teachers all have, I believe, the will and have made the choice to be teachers to mankind. They all, also, have built in mechanisms that ensure that mankind has to want to ingest them, has to want the knowledge they can impart once they have opened the gates they guard for us. Most of them prevent frivolous or accidental use simply by being physically difficult to ingest. One might pick a peyote button and eat it with little difficulty, but to eat the 30 - 50 or 500 one would need to have the spirit of Peyote convinced that you want to learn what he has to teach is a very difficult thing. Similarly, the vile taste of datura or ayahuasca, coupled with the intense purging - often from both ends - that accompany the drinking of these teas, makes frivolous or accidental use almost impossible.
So while the rose suggests we come to her to bathe in her glorious scent, the Master Plant Teachers warn us away from them. You pretty much have to want what they have to offer, and be willing to prove it with physical discomfort, before they will share.
But once they do, well, when those gates are once opened they will never quite close all the way again. Your broadened band of senses will never quite be ab