Has anyone seen a good explanation or even just a decent discussion about "time?" I have read that the current popular scientific view of time is that the past has no more "existence" than the future. Is time like the pages of a book, that we could potentially re-read, as in "time travel?" Are there some huge number of quantized pasts? Or is it something altogether different in kind? I've read or heard about as much on this foundational subject as I have o...
I loved the movie, despite its disjointedness, and it was only today, over a week later, that I realized why the scenes were set up that way. The entire movie was IMHO shot to match up with a planned theme park. Too many mis-mixed pure fantasies with hard science. Way too many scenes clearly shot with something other than the plot in mind. But the thing that really caught my attention was when I typed "to" into Google and got back a whole set of "TomorrowLand" ...
11/14/2015 As a reward for all my good work - I have to assume - I now have 2 (TWO) separately numbered ballots for the KPFK election of the Local Station Board. Or, it could be a test of my honesty, so I better play it straight. Or, it might be entrapment, as this election cycle resulted from some intense legal action, I've heard, involving, I think, Federal Judges, WHO are not likely to be amused at seeing all their work to provide a fair election subverted. One ba...
I feel as though I've suddenly been dropped into Orwell's 1984, where actions are masked by words whose meanings have been carefully contorted to match a hidden PC standard. Any subject matter that does not fit the purposes of the puppet masters is excluded via marginalization. My central thesis, part A: There are ways and means to get at the truth in nearly every situation. First, you have to be free to consider the possibilities regardless of ...
A used paperback book from 1970 - http://www.amazon.com/Explorations-hypnosis-Dave-Elman/dp/0840211430 - selling for $160 should convey something. I bought my copy way back when from either Ayn Rand's organization or from the related organization of her former lover, the recently deceased Nathaniel Branden, whose unique contribution to moral theory is reflected in my other blog here entitled "On Morals." Busy - Sorry... Back soon - at http://www.kurzweilai...
Not for enjoyable reading: About a year ago, I was approached one of my supervisors at work with a proposal. I had had full-coverage insurance from ABC (Anthem/Blue Cross) and was signed up with what used to be Talbert Medical and now was reborn as Health Care Partners. Everything was paid through deductions from my pay check plus an employer contribution. There were co-pays, but never anything outrageous. But, I was getting to SS retirement age and...
I'm suddenly deluged with a flood of posts on my FaceBook page regarding anarcho-capitalism, a term that I still apply to myself - privately. Publically, I am more likely to use anarcho-commonist. My own redefinition has come about from two logically entwined realizations. First, that Auguste Comte is fundamentally correct in one major sense: That we each individually must own up to the fact that everything we own, every thing of value to us, is largely the product of ot...
As to the amazing bright spots. I cast my vote for bleach. As in sun-bleach. If you have a sublimation going on continuously for eons, then the stuff that get's kicked off is anything that can absorb a photon vs reflecting it. Hence the high albedo for the moon. The dark molecules absorbed energy until they got hit with enough to kick them into a slightly different position. This is a natural selection process that inevitably results in bright spots where the sun shines, while...
http://www.wenningadvice.com/?tag=federal-reserve-board Back around 2008, I posited that the U.S. was going exactly backwards, bailing out the crooks while ignoring the victims, the millions of people who lost their retirement or their homes. Surprise, surprise, the crooks are now doing fine, while the victims are often still struggling to recover and, in many cases, failing. All reflected in the recent focus on financial inequality, of course. I suggested back then that a real pro...
(03/28/15) I bring up below the issue of scientific religiosity and give some examples related to critically important research that is being blocked or ignored by a religious scientific orthodoxy right out of Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," sadly including Michael Shermer - the Skeptic, whose inept and misleading "Scientific American" piece on "scientific morals" does him little credit - altho it did trigger this blog entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_...
There was a time when libertarianism seemed to make sense. It explained so much, so clearly. It was, briefly, the darling of the media and major politicians such as Reagan paid lip service and appointed officials based on their libertarian creds, long before the radical right of the Tea Party demonstrated how to leverage commitment into influence. Reportedly, major corporate funding financed grants and college endowments aimed at proving and proclaiming the wonders&nb...
A recent study out of Yale indicates that cold air really does cause colds. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30685732 Turns out that about 1 in 6 people carries the common cold virus even without an active, symptomatic cold. But when the air temperature drops, it causes a drastic drop off in immune response in the nasal passages, so the person with the low-level constant infection suddenly starts broadcasting bigtime as the virus multiplies without an effective immun...
http://www.genescient.com/research/genes-to-network/ Just this morning, I thought about the recent finding that allegedly demonstrates statistically that about 2/3 cancers are random occurences, typically involving a mistaken stem cell differentiation. Thus, perhaps only 1/3 of cancers, overall, are preventable via diet or environmental or lifestyle. Genescient may have some answers to this, or the potential to develop them, as their general theory sounds very robust. M...
BIG NEWS!!! http://www.kurzweilai.net/feeling-virtual-objects-in-mid-air-using-ultrasound Update: December 10, 2014 Still calm on the ebola front, if only because the action is taking place off camera, as in the reported hidden epidemic in Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, yesterday at work, it suddenly occurred to me that there was indeed clear evidence that perhaps the radical feminists are more on target than I have been wont to credit. Probably subliminally refl...
This is a work in progress. (At least I hope so...) Notes from a thread on fb: https://www.facebook.com/DonnaLHaney "As to autism, I suspect a complex brew of factors. There are definite changes or deficits in major neural pathways that explain or correlate to various types of autism. Some people are simply blind to the emotional states of others. Some people are blind to their own emotional states. Some people are very good at reading the emotional state of others, but absolutely do...