Well hello everybody, I trust you all had a wonderful and uneventful holiday season.
I have undergone several bouts of viral infestation, and in fact am fighting one off right now. Thus is the joy of working in hospitality and having a 5 year old in preschool!
I had a couple of interesting things happen in the past several weeks. The first is that my sister had quite a serious cancer scare. During a routine follow up for her hysterectomy the technician thought that he saw several shadows that could have been tumors.
The second is that I have been involved in more than one rather heated discussion about my skepticism, my lack of faith, and my distrust of religion. The one question that all these had in common was, “what’s the harm if someone believes in that”?
Let’s take a look at that.
Well a very clear example arises this year with the touting of Jenny McCarthy. Yes, that Jenny McCarthy. If you are not aware, she has a son that was born with Autism. This is a terrifying thing for any parent to go through, and I would imagine what a strain it would put on a person. Well, Jenny first found comfort in a group called the Indigo Children. This group believes that children born with Autism are a next step in human evolution, and that they are “removed“and “anti social” because they exist in several planes of reality. After leaving that group she discovered some very poor research and pseudo science that tried to link vaccines with Autism. Before we go on I feel that it is important to point out that there are some very real and documented problems with vaccines, they are by no means perfect, and in fact my brother contracted Gillian Burre syndrome which rendered him totally paralyzed for about 6 months, from a flu vaccine. But percentage of persons with complications is almost nonexistent faced with the potential millions that would die otherwise. It would seem that Miss McCarthy has now publicly joined the anti vaccine campaign and had done a multitude of interviews speaking against vaccines. Well this mis information has now taken its toll, in small communities across the US there has been a unprecedented spike in Measles cases among unvaccinated populations. Her belief in this nonsense is now killing children. Can you imagine the effect small pox would have on today’s population? To put this in perspective let’s look at The Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919. This flu killed more people than the First World War, at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. So “What’s the harm”?
I recently heard an interview with the actor/ politician/ economist Ben Stine (Buller, Buller) where he was promoting his new movie on education and creationism called, Expelled. In these interviews he said that “the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed. That is where science in my opinion leads you” and “love of god and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place and science leads you to kill people”. Hmmmmm, love of god, like Israel and Hamas? Perhaps the Catholics and the Protestants? Possibly Islam and the western world? Perhaps this god he is speaking about is a different one than the one that commanded Abraham to kill his only son to prove his love for him? And just perhaps the science he speaks of is not the same one that that has saved countless lives by developing penicillin? I think it would be very safe to say that the amount of human suffering and death that was caused by misguided pseudo science (eugenics) is nothing as compared by the amount brought on by religion. So again “what’s the harm”?
As many of you know my sister is very much a proponent of homeopathy and naturopathy, primarily because she is terrified of the medical community at large that she perceives as killing our mother. I have respected her beliefs for some time. Well, her first reaction to her discovery of the possibility of cancer was to ask the family for money in order to receive a Homeopathic remedy for her cancer. Needless to say we exchanged some very heated words on the subject. I started to feel guilty that I had not been more supportive of her methodology. But then I realized that we were talking about her life. Homeopathy and Naturopathy have long been debunked by multiple scientific studies. It is very well established in the scientific community that Homeopathy and Naturopathy have absolutely no benefit and in some cases can be very harmful. The case of the father in Australia recently force feeding his daughter with heart disease homeopathic vitamins and inflicting permanent brain damage upon her, comes to mind. It took a family intervention instigated from my father to finally get my sister to see reason and see her Oncologist. As it turns out, the shadows were most likely non cancerous. I can’t imagine the anxiety, the damage to her body, receiving a treatment that she didn’t need. “So what’s the harm”?
We are all participants in this society; we are all responsible of the actions of our society. And yes, this includes 9-11, George W. Bush, and our present economic crisis. Our inaction, our ambivalence has brought this world into being. We created it. I think it is time we start to take responsibility for our society; it is time to call out the lunatics, to let people know that racism is unacceptable, that ignorance is unacceptable, and that blind faith and religion are outdated and unacceptable. We live in a world where pseudo science and religious fervor rule. And for the first time in human history, we really do have the power to destroy all human life on earth. I fear that the hour is late, but I want to my son and his generation to at least know that someone stood up and said “what’s the harm? Well let me tell you………”
Monday, January 12, 2009
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Science squishes me!
Well I really wanted to get a new blog out, I really did. But you see a funny thing happened to me on the way to the computer.
Reason.
That's right folks, I had this great theory about human nature, elegant in design, well thought out. All shiny and optimistic. And I promised to shelf it until I found more studies.
Well I didn't have to wait long.
Last week CNN published an article about the famous Milgram experiments (http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/19/milgram.experiment.obedience/index.html),
well damn! I forgot about that one! and they just reproduced the original 1960's experiment with the same results.
And then this....(http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-there-such-thing-as-human-nature.html)
And this...( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/science/23angi.html?_r=2)
So what's the point? Well, science is the point. You see I had this theory, and instead of making the data fit what I thought, I looked at the data and had to change my theory. Sounds simple, well trying doing that with something you are really passionate about. Or a hypothesis that you have been developing for years.
I remember years ago my ex wife worked for a large research operation that was studying the effects of carbon dioxide on coral growth worldwide. One day she came home in disgust and announced that she had to quit. It seems that the lead researcher was changing the data to fit her hypothesis. It makes you question just how much science is tainted by human ambition.
The Scientific Method is probably the most important concept in human history. As the late Carl Sagan once said "it is the candle in the darkness".
So, I will start over; form a new hypothesis, for it is the process of discovery that intrigues me!
"Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough." - Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965–1039)
Post Script: I just wanted to take a second to sincerely thank the several people that donated to charity in my name. I am greatly humbled and moved. Thank you.
In addition, thanks for all the positive and negative comments, keep em coming!
Reason.
That's right folks, I had this great theory about human nature, elegant in design, well thought out. All shiny and optimistic. And I promised to shelf it until I found more studies.
Well I didn't have to wait long.
Last week CNN published an article about the famous Milgram experiments (http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/19/milgram.experiment.obedience/index.html),
well damn! I forgot about that one! and they just reproduced the original 1960's experiment with the same results.
And then this....(http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-there-such-thing-as-human-nature.html)
And this...( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/science/23angi.html?_r=2)
So what's the point? Well, science is the point. You see I had this theory, and instead of making the data fit what I thought, I looked at the data and had to change my theory. Sounds simple, well trying doing that with something you are really passionate about. Or a hypothesis that you have been developing for years.
I remember years ago my ex wife worked for a large research operation that was studying the effects of carbon dioxide on coral growth worldwide. One day she came home in disgust and announced that she had to quit. It seems that the lead researcher was changing the data to fit her hypothesis. It makes you question just how much science is tainted by human ambition.
The Scientific Method is probably the most important concept in human history. As the late Carl Sagan once said "it is the candle in the darkness".
So, I will start over; form a new hypothesis, for it is the process of discovery that intrigues me!
"Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough." - Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965–1039)
Post Script: I just wanted to take a second to sincerely thank the several people that donated to charity in my name. I am greatly humbled and moved. Thank you.
In addition, thanks for all the positive and negative comments, keep em coming!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Dec. 21, 1968
Good morning and welcome back to the Rational Protagonist.
Well I had grandiose ideas about this weekend’s blog, but unfortunately for me my son, doing the bidding of his viral overloads, saw it fit to cough in my face last week, thus completing the life cycle of acute viral nasopharyngitis. In other words, I caught a cold.
It was my intention to do a blog on the question wither human nature was inherently good or bad, and I had come up with some pretty interesting stuff, but that will have to wait. Instead, I looked at the date today and remembered one of the most amazing human accomplishments happened today, 40 years ago.
It was the fall of 1968 and the arms race and space race were in full swing. On launch pad 39a the Saturn V rocket that contained the Apollo 8 space craft sat silently, almost pensively, waiting to unleash hell. Miles away the crew of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, were just informed that the mission that they trained for, to take the command module into low earth orbit and run some tests, had just been scrubbed. This would be the first manned Apollo launch and mission control wanted to run it a bit conservative after the crew of Apollo 1 died horribly in a fire the year before. Instead the crew was informed that they would be doing just the opposite, they would be taking the risk of a lifetime. There new mission was to fly to and orbit the moon. This was to be the first manned voyage to achieve a velocity sufficient to allow escape from the gravitational field of planet Earth; the first to enter the gravitational field of another celestial body; the first to escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and, the first manned voyage to return to planet Earth from another celestial body. Sounds simple? Remember they were flying an untested spacecraft for the first time, not even 10 years after the first man went into space, to a destination 384,403 km away.
December 21st, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 sat atop the Saturn V rocket 360 feet high, hissing like some gigantic bomb, filled with liquid oxygen, hydrogen, and Kerosene, and waited. At 7:51 am the monstrous engines shuttered to life, each producing more thrust then the three space shuttle engines combined. The five F-1 engine equal 160,000,000 horsepower, about double the amount of potential hydroelectric power that would be available at any given moment if all the moving waters of North America were channeled through turbines. More people worked on the Saturn V rockets than built the pyramids.
And they were on their way.
At about 55 hours and 40 minutes into the flight, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to enter the gravitational sphere of influence of another celestial body. And at 69 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds after launch the SPS ignited and burned for 4 minutes and 13 seconds, placing the Apollo 8 spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. It was the 24th of December 1968. They were a scant 50 miles from the lunar surface.
As the crew settled down and spent their time observing the barren lunar surface, an event happened, something that no one foresaw, but what should have been obvious. An event so powerful that it would change the way humanity viewed itself forever.
At the limb of the lunar horizon a shape started to form, a blue white blob, barely larger than your thumbnail at arms length, started to detach itself from the horizon. They were the first human beings to ever witness an earthrise. Each struggled for a view, photographs were taken.
Archibald MacLeish wrote : "To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know that they are truly brothers."
Now 40 years later I wonder, how has this changed us? The plaque left by the Apollo 11 astronauts reads “we came in peace for all mankind”, not for America, not for North America, not for Christianity, or Judaism or, Islam, but for ALL Mankind.
I should only hope that in my son’s life time, just perhaps, he shall see people that are made of such stuff.
"We close with good night; good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth."
Well I had grandiose ideas about this weekend’s blog, but unfortunately for me my son, doing the bidding of his viral overloads, saw it fit to cough in my face last week, thus completing the life cycle of acute viral nasopharyngitis. In other words, I caught a cold.
It was my intention to do a blog on the question wither human nature was inherently good or bad, and I had come up with some pretty interesting stuff, but that will have to wait. Instead, I looked at the date today and remembered one of the most amazing human accomplishments happened today, 40 years ago.
It was the fall of 1968 and the arms race and space race were in full swing. On launch pad 39a the Saturn V rocket that contained the Apollo 8 space craft sat silently, almost pensively, waiting to unleash hell. Miles away the crew of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, were just informed that the mission that they trained for, to take the command module into low earth orbit and run some tests, had just been scrubbed. This would be the first manned Apollo launch and mission control wanted to run it a bit conservative after the crew of Apollo 1 died horribly in a fire the year before. Instead the crew was informed that they would be doing just the opposite, they would be taking the risk of a lifetime. There new mission was to fly to and orbit the moon. This was to be the first manned voyage to achieve a velocity sufficient to allow escape from the gravitational field of planet Earth; the first to enter the gravitational field of another celestial body; the first to escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and, the first manned voyage to return to planet Earth from another celestial body. Sounds simple? Remember they were flying an untested spacecraft for the first time, not even 10 years after the first man went into space, to a destination 384,403 km away.
December 21st, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 sat atop the Saturn V rocket 360 feet high, hissing like some gigantic bomb, filled with liquid oxygen, hydrogen, and Kerosene, and waited. At 7:51 am the monstrous engines shuttered to life, each producing more thrust then the three space shuttle engines combined. The five F-1 engine equal 160,000,000 horsepower, about double the amount of potential hydroelectric power that would be available at any given moment if all the moving waters of North America were channeled through turbines. More people worked on the Saturn V rockets than built the pyramids.
And they were on their way.
At about 55 hours and 40 minutes into the flight, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to enter the gravitational sphere of influence of another celestial body. And at 69 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds after launch the SPS ignited and burned for 4 minutes and 13 seconds, placing the Apollo 8 spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. It was the 24th of December 1968. They were a scant 50 miles from the lunar surface.
As the crew settled down and spent their time observing the barren lunar surface, an event happened, something that no one foresaw, but what should have been obvious. An event so powerful that it would change the way humanity viewed itself forever.
At the limb of the lunar horizon a shape started to form, a blue white blob, barely larger than your thumbnail at arms length, started to detach itself from the horizon. They were the first human beings to ever witness an earthrise. Each struggled for a view, photographs were taken.
Archibald MacLeish wrote : "To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know that they are truly brothers."
Now 40 years later I wonder, how has this changed us? The plaque left by the Apollo 11 astronauts reads “we came in peace for all mankind”, not for America, not for North America, not for Christianity, or Judaism or, Islam, but for ALL Mankind.
I should only hope that in my son’s life time, just perhaps, he shall see people that are made of such stuff.
"We close with good night; good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth."
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Perception
Welcome back to all of those that did not sent me hate mail or drop me after my last blog. Well, hang on, especially welcome back those of you who did send me hate mail! Keep it coming!
As promised this week I’m going to be talking about human perception. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well read on!
What is perception? Well Webster’s defines it as : the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding. That pretty much sums up the point I wish to make, Our perception is a construct created by our brain in order to perceive the world around us.
I think it important for a minute to look back in time and see where we come from, (I will NOT debate to fiction that is creationism here, as stated in my last post, I have checked out of that world view). We evolved the senses we did in order to survive the environment around us, that is this world and time scale. To quote Richard Dawkings “our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed in which our bodies operate”. We also, as a species, took evolution into our own hands after we created societies and cities through concepts of beauty and what and given society found important ant any given time, but more on that later.
It is also important to look at how the brain works. If there was ever a more amazing or complex structure than the brain I would have no idea what it is! What an adaptable organ it is! As you are reading this you are probably not at all aware that you have two rather large blind spots in your field of vision. It basically they correspond to the 2 ‘clock and 10 o’clock positions. Hold up your hand in one of these positions, what do you see? Well your hand of course! Now hold of a piece of paper with two large dots on it about 5 inches apart, look at the lower dot and place the other in your blind spot. After about 20 seconds the upper dot will disappeared. Why,? How is that possible, I saw my hand! Well your brain is VERY good at filling in the gaps, wither they are visual, auditory, sensory, or intellectual. There are many studies that illustrate this amazingly well. Phantom limbs and alien hand syndrome are just two.
So what do we have? A brain that evolved to survive in a specific world and that is very good at filling in the blanks.
So now lets apply this to our world and see what happens! Physicists have been struggling to figure out the quantum world (very very small) for about 80 years now. We don’t seem to have a problem with things that operate in our world of perception, such as the theory of relativity or Newtonian mechanics, but when we leave that realm out understanding breaks down. The reason that quantum mechanics seems so ungrassapable is because it is beyond out realm of reason; we never evolved in the sub atomic world. Our perception is clouded by our biology. We can imagine them, devise theories, but they will always somehow be imperfect. And hence the struggle to unify the world we live in (Einstein’s theories) with that we have no experience in (quantum theory). Is it any wonder that our math is 10 biased? Our brains are structured to think that way.
This can also be applied to religion as well. Early mans brain confronted a world he could not understand (the night sky, death) and created a reality in order to survive. Unfortunately this outdated philosophy still exists today.
I have to wonder, on a side note, just how many unexplainable events (ufo’s, ghosts) are just the brain coping with the unknown. I do consider myself quite the skeptic, but I do break on the skeptic society on this one point. To categorically dismiss all unusual events is missing the opportunity for some really interesting research! So let’s just say you do see a ghost, and let’s just rule out the obvious, that the dead are communicating with you and that is some mass hallucination. The question remains, what stimulus is causing the brain to create this illusion? What psychological mechanism is at work? And why can more than one persons experience it at once?
Well I hope you are enjoying my brain droppings and thanks for all the supportive emails, frak, I even got one from my father! Just remember, you are all going to be behind me when they come for me with the pitchforks, right? Right? Until next time…….
Simon
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-Arthur Eddington
As promised this week I’m going to be talking about human perception. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well read on!
What is perception? Well Webster’s defines it as : the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding. That pretty much sums up the point I wish to make, Our perception is a construct created by our brain in order to perceive the world around us.
I think it important for a minute to look back in time and see where we come from, (I will NOT debate to fiction that is creationism here, as stated in my last post, I have checked out of that world view). We evolved the senses we did in order to survive the environment around us, that is this world and time scale. To quote Richard Dawkings “our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed in which our bodies operate”. We also, as a species, took evolution into our own hands after we created societies and cities through concepts of beauty and what and given society found important ant any given time, but more on that later.
It is also important to look at how the brain works. If there was ever a more amazing or complex structure than the brain I would have no idea what it is! What an adaptable organ it is! As you are reading this you are probably not at all aware that you have two rather large blind spots in your field of vision. It basically they correspond to the 2 ‘clock and 10 o’clock positions. Hold up your hand in one of these positions, what do you see? Well your hand of course! Now hold of a piece of paper with two large dots on it about 5 inches apart, look at the lower dot and place the other in your blind spot. After about 20 seconds the upper dot will disappeared. Why,? How is that possible, I saw my hand! Well your brain is VERY good at filling in the gaps, wither they are visual, auditory, sensory, or intellectual. There are many studies that illustrate this amazingly well. Phantom limbs and alien hand syndrome are just two.
So what do we have? A brain that evolved to survive in a specific world and that is very good at filling in the blanks.
So now lets apply this to our world and see what happens! Physicists have been struggling to figure out the quantum world (very very small) for about 80 years now. We don’t seem to have a problem with things that operate in our world of perception, such as the theory of relativity or Newtonian mechanics, but when we leave that realm out understanding breaks down. The reason that quantum mechanics seems so ungrassapable is because it is beyond out realm of reason; we never evolved in the sub atomic world. Our perception is clouded by our biology. We can imagine them, devise theories, but they will always somehow be imperfect. And hence the struggle to unify the world we live in (Einstein’s theories) with that we have no experience in (quantum theory). Is it any wonder that our math is 10 biased? Our brains are structured to think that way.
This can also be applied to religion as well. Early mans brain confronted a world he could not understand (the night sky, death) and created a reality in order to survive. Unfortunately this outdated philosophy still exists today.
I have to wonder, on a side note, just how many unexplainable events (ufo’s, ghosts) are just the brain coping with the unknown. I do consider myself quite the skeptic, but I do break on the skeptic society on this one point. To categorically dismiss all unusual events is missing the opportunity for some really interesting research! So let’s just say you do see a ghost, and let’s just rule out the obvious, that the dead are communicating with you and that is some mass hallucination. The question remains, what stimulus is causing the brain to create this illusion? What psychological mechanism is at work? And why can more than one persons experience it at once?
Well I hope you are enjoying my brain droppings and thanks for all the supportive emails, frak, I even got one from my father! Just remember, you are all going to be behind me when they come for me with the pitchforks, right? Right? Until next time…….
Simon
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
-Arthur Eddington
Monday, December 15, 2008
Work last night
Work last night
Dec. 13th, 2008 | 12:29 pm
So I was sitting in my office last night, looking up articles for a coworker to read on the atrocities happing in Africa (see my earlier post). She seemed so concerned that it was the same religion that she belonged to that was causing this. At the same time she was checking her email and came across a missive tilted “God Saves” In it was a photograph of a truck that had jumped the guard rail on a highway and dangled precariously above what appeared to be a 200 foot chasm. She called over sever other people to look at the photograph and the all exclaimed, almost in unison, I guess god gave that guy a wakeup call, or god saved them for some higher purpose, or some such thing. I thought about this for a moment as I looked at the articles’ and photos of the thousands of little children being killed in Africa in the name of that very same god. All of a sudden I started to get sick to my stomach, my head started to spin.
I was surrounded by a world view, where god would save the life of this one person, for whatever reason, in the richest country in the world, who upon later inspection of the email, was drunk, and will let thousands of children in Africa die by burning, mutilation, dislocation of their limbs, starvation, forced lobotomies, etc. in the name of the same god.
I walked away in disgust, there was nothing I could say. I don’t want to live in that world, a world where a loving god, a god of mercy, of compassion, will save the life of some drunk stupid redneck in Arizona and will let six million jews die in concentration camp in world war two, let alone the genocide in Darfur, or Rwanda, or any thousands of examples .
The logical flaws are just staggering, as is the insensitivity to humanity. Of course these are the same people that will try to kill you if you are pro abortion.
Well perhaps those little children were not faithful enough, perhaps they did not take jesus into their hearts fast enough. Or just perhaps god does not like black people. Just tell the thousands, no millions, of people suffering, dyeing, calling out for mercy from god, that their god had a higher purpose for Joe the redneck. Go ahead, I dare you!
For whatever reason as of today I officially check out of that world view forever. Their god can take his doctrine and shove it up his a**!
I’m done now.
Simon
(bring on the pitchforks, after all that is how religion usually deals with the truth!)
My World View
My world view
Dec. 11th, 2008 | 07:29 pm
Hello all,
Well after my last blog in regards to the children of Africa and some of the responses that I received (some good, some bad, some indifferent, some asking to be deleted from my blog), I think that I want to turn this blog into a regular thing. At this point in my life I feel that I don't have a whole lot to offer society with the exception of my voice and art.
So what makes this silly looking dork qualified to speak on anything, you may be asking? Well, nothing really. I almost got a BA from NAU in arts Management. I have studied Astronomy, Quantum mechanics, comparative religions, Philosophy and history at great length. One might say that I am a bit obsessed by these. That and I am a human being.
So to understand some of the social issues that I will discuss later I feel it is necessary to know our place in the universe, as it seems to be important to any future blogs.
My world view:
The visible universe is a sphere with a diameter about 93 billion light-years. A light year is the amount of time it takes light to travel a year at 186,000 miles per second, about about 5,878,630,000,000 miles. A number that If I were to write out here would take me a very, very long time.
The largest structures in the universe are superclusters, which are large associations of galaxies that can extend over distances of more than 100 million light-years. The largest supercluster is the Sculptor Supercluster, which is nearly 1 billion light-years away, and extends roughly 250 million light-years from end to end.
The diameter of a typical galaxy is only 30,000 light-years, and the typical distance between two neighboring galaxies is only 3 million light-years. As an example, our Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars up to giants with one trillion stars, all orbiting a common center of mass bound together by the gravity of a massive black hole. Galaxies can also contain many multiple star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. For most of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created by fusion processes in stars. This includes the matter that we are made of. In a very real way we are made of star dust. We can estimate the number of stars in our galaxy alone as roughly 100 billion. Our Sun is so large that it would hold 1.3 million Earths.
Earth, our home planet, is the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life - life that is incredibly diverse. All of the things we need to survive are provided under a thin layer of atmosphere that separates us from the uninhabitable void of space. Earth is made up of complex, interactive systems that are often unpredictable. All the millions of lifeforms on Earth seek energy and food while generating waste heat and materials. The most successful animal species, in terms of biomass, is probably the Antarctic krill, with a biomass of about 500 million tonnes. However, as a group, the small aquatic crustaceans called copepods form the largest animal biomass on earth. Humans comprise about 100 million tonnes of the Earth's biomass, domesticated animals about 700 million tonnes (1.0%), and crops about 2 billion tones. The total biomass of bacteria is estimated to equal that of plants
So beyond that we enter the realm of the very small……..
A molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable electrically neutral group of at least two atoms in a arrangement held together by very strong chemical bonds. Molecules make up all living and non-living things. Molecules are so small that there are more molecules in your body than there are stars in the universe! Molecules in living things are made from only about 25 of more than 100 known atoms in the universe. Molecules are made from as few as two atoms to hundreds of millions of atoms. Each molecule has a unique shape that allows it to interact with other molecules.
All Molecules are made up of elements which are fundamental substances which cannot be broken down by chemical means. There are 92 elements that occur naturally. The elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are the elements that make up most living organisms. Some other elements found in living organisms are: magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium. Remember that all these elements were created in a super massive star billion of years ago, spewed out, and coalesced into our solar system, planet and us. Molecules are made up of even tinier particles called atoms.
All elements are comprised of atoms in specific combinations. An atom is comprised of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and electrons in a shell surrounding it. A hydrogen atom is only about a ten millionth of a millimeter in diameter, but the proton in the middle is a hundred thousand times smaller, and the electron whizzing around the outside is a thousand times smaller than that! The rest of the atom is empty. When you touch the table, it is the electron fields in your finger interacting with the electrons in the table, not you physically touching it. It is your brain and the nerve pathways that give the illusion of touch. But more on that later…..
Protons and neutrons are comprised of quarks. A quark is a fundamental particle which possesses both electric charge and 'strong' charge. They combine in groups of two or three to form composite objects (called mesons and baryons, respectively), held together by the strong force. Protons and neutrons are familiar examples of such composite objects -- both are made up of three quarks.
So I've talked about how big the universe is, but how old is it?
The Universe is probably 10-20 billion years old with Our Solar System 4-5 billion years old.
If we were to compress the time since the Big Bang into one year, and make the time of the Big Bang January 1,
• The Earth was formed in mid-September.
• The mammals appeared on December 26.
• All human prehistory (from the first known stone tools) and history have occurred in the last 1/2 hour of New Year's Eve.
And here is a simple timeline of life on earth.
• 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),
• 3 billion years of photosynthesis,
• 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),
• 1 billion years of multicellular life,
• 600 million years of simple animals,
• 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans)
• 550 million years of complex animals
• 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
• 475 million years of land plants,
• 400 million years of insects and seeds,
• 360 million years of amphibians,
• 300 million years of reptiles
• 200 million years of mammals
• 150 million years of birds,
• 130 million years of flowers,
• 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,
• 2.5 million years since the appearance of Homo,
• 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,
• 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.
• 60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens appear.
• Roughly 13,000 years ago the first settlements appeared and 7,000 years ago the first cities.
Thus, all of human history is but a fleeting instant on the cosmic timescale.
So what does this all mean to us? What does it mean to me? Well, think about this for a moment, in the entire universe, in all the galaxies, stars, planets, in the 15+ billion years the universe has been around and for all the time left, there has only EVER been one of you. You are totally and completely unique to this universe. No one has ever been exactly like you, nor will any one ever be. There are more combination's of neurons in your brain than stars in the universe. In a very real way, we are a way for the universe to know itself.
To me this world view is infinitely more powerful than any religion or creation myth. It is based on science. How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world." What does that really mean? Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. Not guessing, not faith, not "cause god said it was so", but observation of the world around us. Perhaps the most general description is that the purpose of science is to produce useful models of reality.
So I am sure I have "stirred the pot" with my heretical beliefs, remember now, people have been killed, tortured, driven out, because this world view was not convenient to those in power.
So If I am not burned at the stake, next week will be about human perception! Until then,
"You're born, you live and you die. There are no do-overs, no second chances to make things right if you frak 'em up the first time. Not in this life anyway. Like I said, you make your choices and you live with them. And in end you are those choices." --Kendra Shaw
The Great Dictator.
The Great Dictator.
Dec. 13th, 2008 | 12:51 am
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men (cries out for universal brotherhood) for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think and what to feel! Who drill you — diet you — treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your heart.
Don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the kingdom of god is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
-Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940)
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