On Regaining Respectability

Thirty-two years ago the Rolling Stones came out with the song “Respectable”. Respectability is something we should all be striving for. That means both moral as well as intellectual respectability. I know I’m never going to be a “George Washington’s Blog” but at the same time I know that I need to have my facts down pat because if people sense a lot of mooshiness or “play” in my intellectual steering wheel, they will cease to regard what I say and my writings will be dismissed and set aside and I won’t be any the wiser. Today is the warmest day we have had all week. The news is kind of in an endless loop rerun with the same stories being talked about near obsessively by Stephanie Miller and Randy Rhodes. Among the few new items are the Authorities closing down those drag races out in the desert because eight people were killed in last weekend’s accident. Naturally if you weren’t one of the ones killed you wonder what all the fuss is about. After all these is kind of a doctrine of “implied concent” otherwise known as common horse sense in attending that kind of a race and standing in such close proximity. If people go through life knowing that “actions have consequences” and are at peace with the “sensible risks” they are willing to take in life, then the nanny state Government will not have to step in and micro-manage our lives. They have commenced furlough days in state offices. I need to get to the Department of Motor vehicles because my license has expired and also I think it’s high time I switched affiliations from the republican to the democratic party. That enchanted cat is in the news again. This is the cat that snuggles up to people in convalescent hospitals and the cat in this way has been amazing in foretelling the next patient to die. Prior to this I had always heard that a cat was one animal that would not hang around the home of someone why is dying. Well, somebody is wrong. Today I had a diet cherry-cola and guess what- - after forty years those things still taste like bourbon. Tomorrow is the day that Iran’s reactor goes on line and it appears I was wrong about Israel bombing the facility before that happens. I don’t think it hurts to mention a “probability” or hunch, even if it turns out to be wrong. Cops pursue hunches all the time- - and quite often they pay off.

Back when I was in elementary school, when they still chizzled on stone tablets, they had something called “American Heritage” which was instituted by the local school board. My feeling about it was “history is history- - why give it a fancy name”. Then five or so years later, when my politics had moved considerably to the left, there was a song on the radio “The Green Barrettes”. Personally I regarded the song ad evil incarnate propaganda from the other side. All that stuff about “Put silver wings on my son’s chest- - after I die” so he can follow in my footsteps. All went well for a number of years until the Viet Nam war ended in early 1973. Then we had all those prisoners of war returning from North Viet Nam. I was hoping they’d be filled with communist propaganda and say how humanly they were treated and all. Instead they just talked about how wonderful it was to be back in America with old glory waving in the breeze. And then America went through the post Watergate malaise and finally as 1984 dawned and Reagan announced it was “Morning in America” – we had the Olympics in LA and there was to me an almost gingoistic return of the American spirit. Actually the whole thing with our athletes winning in the Olympics became conflated with Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign. But Ronnie Baby may just owe that election victory to Jimmy Carter. Because if Carter hadn’t pulled the US out of the 1980 Olympics (a move the Republicans were against) than Moscow wouldn’t have pulled out in 1984, a move that was actually predicted in my 1980 prophecy book. I didn’t like Oliver North testifying before congress. I have a low regard for psychopathic liars who say, “I confess – Ronald Reagan is responsible for everything”. Oliver North betrayed both his President and his country. And then we come to 1991. I remember contemplating going to a pro life rally down the street in late January. But when I saw all the people wearing “Operation Desert Storm” shirts and hats, suddenly I felt out of place and I went on back home. It was on a Saturday in May, perhaps on Armed Forces Day, they had a big blow-out military parade down Sunset Blvd. which celebrated Bush 41’s version of “Mission Accomplished”. It was a nice, easy little engagement that sure boosted Bush 41’s standing in the polls, at least for a little while. And then we have September 11, 2001 - - and what I guess I regarded as a sporadic disease now became an ongoing chronic condition. Now suddenly out president’s words were like Holy Writ handed down from on high. And that leads us to yesterday when President Obama announced that the combat engagement in the Iraq theater was now completed. The troops were really going home and jubilantly celebrating. And this is fitting, if he’s really happening. Somehow I doubt this. This is one area where I wouldn’t mind being wrong one bit, but we are so war obsessed in this country- - I don’t think we can live without it. President Obama has of his own volition made himself into a War President. And he’s committed thusly. We still have 50,000 troops in Iraq. People say that anytime we leave there will be a bloodbath. So naturally we’re looking for signs, the slightest hint of turmoil. And when we find it we will end out planned withdrawal and jump right in with both feet. That’s how I see it.

Franklin Graham says that President Obama was born a Muslim because his father was a Muslim. Being Muslim is not like being of the Jewish people. There is no assumed limiage either passed on through the mother (as in Judaism) or by the father. Islam is a religion of faith and profession - the first of the "Five Pillars". Islam is a religion of faith and not of race. To even have to mention these things is almost an insult to the intellect. Franklin Graham has lost intellectual respectability. They say a substantial percentage of the American People, more if you're a republican, believes that President Obama is Muslim and not a Christian.

In the song “Dogs” by Pink Floyd, there is a line “- - and it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around”. Somehow I think of Rush Limbaugh when I hear this line. In the movie “All About Eve” I think it’s Bette David that engages in a bit of philosophizing thusly, “You know, you have to be careful who you walk all over on your way up the carrier ladder, because you’ll meet the same people again on your way down”. This is good advice. What goes around comes around- -and the golden rule is a good principle to live by. One of David’s sons, Absolem, turned against him and waged Civil War against him. And it looked as if David’s troops were done for. Absolem’s chief counselor, Ahithaphel (played by Jim Morrison in my movie version) gave Absolem the good advice to strike while the iron was hot and to pursue David’s troops. But David’s side somehow tricked Absolem by “turning” an aid of Ahithaphel against his own side. And this aid was sent back to Absolem and told Absolem “Thy servant Ahithiphel sent me to tell you to halt the pursuit because you need the time to get the people on your side, that your cause may prevail”. In this way Ahithaphel’s sound advice was circumvented. Absolem listens and halted and David’s side regrouped and came back to beat the hell out of him. David’s general, Joab (somehow I always picture Deforrest Kelly from Startrek) slew Absolem as his long hair got caught in a low hanging bough as he rode his horse and Joab slew Absolem. David mourned for his lost son to such a great extent that Joab came to him and said “I get the feeling you would rather that our whole army lost the battle, if I could bring back your son to you alive”. As such Joab has a bad rep for being an overly bloodthirsty general in many Sunday ser-mons. This is an assessment I disagree with in that Joab was only good at doing his job.

And now our geeky science corner. People with an education in the field of special relativity understandably take exception by my little “looking glass” chart and want mathematical justification accepted by others. Let me offer the following side step. I was talking about a relationship to an alltogether imaginary but theorized entity. This entity would be such an unknown that their relation to us or us to them cannot be quantified. It would be like talking about a relation between ourselves and the Cardassians. (No, I didn't know Cardassian was an Armenian name.) I know the actual formula for addition of volicities and have performed numerous experiments with various numbers on this in Excel. At the risk of excessive detail let’s just say certain “things” become apparent. For instance 100 plus 0 remains 100. But 100 plus one equals 1. In fact any number plus 1 including 1 always yields a sum of 1, or the speed of light. A whole number added to a sub-light speed number will yield a number greater than one. A whole number added to another number greater than one will always yield a sub-light or less than one number. Two equal numbers will always yield a smaller sum than a great big number and a little bitty number. The bigger the first number is, the more adversely the second number- whatever it is- - will affect it. What we can conclude from all this is that- - I am not the only one who somehow invisions “small numbers” on the hyper-space side of the ledger. Not only this but it would appear that numbers can become negative by huge factors of a hundred or more. Carried out logically it would mean that masses can go negative and time can run backwards- - - really fast out in “La – la” land. Of course I “Jail Broke” Einstein’s formula because you “aren’t supposed to use this formula with anything greater than one”. When Apple owns the right to Einstein’s works I’ll start to worry. In terms of time going backward- - I used certain terms in recent postings where I showed, shall we say, a lack of discretion. I used terms such as “light dragging” and “light chasing”. You all may have seen the cartoon where Sylvester goes over the water fall and then tweety bird turns off the flood gates and Sylvester is now desperately trying to climb up the vanishing supply of water. I’d like to reintroduce the terms “fast light” and “slow light”. “fast light” is red shifted and “slow light” is blue shifted. Now if you are listening to a radio transmission from red shifted light- - the message will be really slowed down. If you equal the speed of light the message will freeze and should you exceed the speed of light- - hypothetically you’ll hear the message begin to go backwards the other way. It’s that time “slows down” in telescope (red shifted) light or “speeds up” in (blue shifted) Christmas ornament light- - even here on earth if you’re looking at people thusly distorted in vertical (front to back) space- - it looks like time is sort of slowing down. If you are in a space ship that is headed from east to west- - you will see nothing or not our kind of “space” ahead of you. You will be in that hyperbola kind of Universe. And hyperbolas will always trail you in "actuality" but in appearance the hyperbolic view will be in front, to the west. Being out of our ether what is ahead of you will be in that hyper-space realm. You will look as if in a mirror to the west, ahead of you – and see the sky behind or to the east of you. And this image will indeed not only spacially mirrored but also time mirrored "chasing light" so you will see it in reversed time. But you will be looking west- - as I say, as if in a mirror ahead of view viewing objects behind you. If Leo Le Port is reading this I hope he benefits from this updated version of Saturday morning.

But if you are viewing from the ground stationary in our ether time won’t be reversed, so I want to clear that up. I’ll explain just a little more. Let’s say you’re on the ground and the space ship is moving west- - OK. The light starts off moving down and east but the ether wind blows it- - it’s a constant backward vector- - and blows it west. Think of it as a tail wind. Now you have one more question I’ll address right now. First of all tie time thing. Why doesn't time reverse? Because unlike our hypothetical "radio waves" example you aren't "chasing light". You're seeing sort of a mirror effect caused by the ether. And now your other question. And that is how does all this hyper-light speed satisfy Einstein's equation about the constancy of the speed of light? Think of the "scale" control in Sketch and you adjust the axis of travel gradually less and less and then the image becomes a single line and then the image gradually expands back into shape in a reversed image. First the image is squashed. Then it is normal (at twice the speed of light) and after this it becomes elongated in the reversed direction. In this manner we can manipulate the units of measurement. This should satisfy Einstein’s axiom “At all cost- - the speed of light must always be 186,000 mps.