Chronicles in Ordinary Time

2022 Doomsday Clock Statement
Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.

To: Leaders and citizens of the world
Re: At doom’s doorstep: It is 100 seconds to midnight
Date: January 20, 2022

Last year’s leadership change in the United States provided hope that what seemed like a global race toward catastrophe might be halted and—with renewed US engagement—even reversed. Indeed, in 2021 the new American administration changed US policies in some ways that made the world safer: agreeing to an extension of the New START arms control agreement and beginning strategic stability talks with Russia; announcing that the United States would seek to return to the Iran nuclear deal; and rejoining the Paris climate accord. Perhaps even more heartening was the return of science and evidence to US policy making in general, especially regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. A more moderate and predictable approach to leadership and the control of one of the two largest nuclear arsenals of the world marked a welcome change from the previous four years.
Still, the change in US leadership alone was not enough to reverse negative international security trends that had been long in developing and continued across the threat horizon in 2021.
US relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts—including China’s apparent large-scale program to increase its deployment of silo-based long-range nuclear missiles; the push by Russia, China, and the United States to develop hypersonic missiles; and the continued testing of anti-satellite weapons by many nations. If not restrained, these efforts could mark the start of a dangerous new nuclear arms race. Other nuclear concerns, including North Korea’s unconstrained nuclear and missile expansion and the (as yet) unsuccessful attempts to revive the Iran nuclear deal contribute to growing dangers. Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time

My 70^th birthday is next month. I graduated from high school in 1970. I was born in 1952. I don’t remember knowing anything about the Doomsday Clock in 1953, 1969, or 1971 [see above]. I mostly ignored politics and the world in general during these years of my life. I voted Republican because my parents were Republican and raised me in the American Legion. Consequently, I voted for Nixon, twice; I voted for Reagan and believed his magical ‘trickle down theory’. I stopped voting Republican when George W. uttered the words, ‘Preemptive Strike’. The Iraq War was built upon a lie. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. They were expected, because the US, by way of the CIA, were financing Arab Rebels for years.
Beginning with 1998, the Doomsday Clock continually loses time before Midnight…

As of January 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 203 critically endangered mammalian species, including 31 which are tagged as possibly extinct. 3.5% of all evaluated mammalian species are listed as critically endangered. The IUCN also lists 60 mammalian subspecies as critically endangered.
Of the subpopulations of mammals evaluated by the IUCN, 18 species subpopulations have been assessed as critically endangered.
Additionally, 900 mammalian species (15% of those evaluated) are listed as data deficient, meaning there is insufficient information for a full assessment of conservation status. As these species typically have small distributions and/or populations, they are intrinsically likely to be threatened, according to the IUCN. While the category of data deficient indicates that no assessment of extinction risk has been made for the taxa, the IUCN notes that it may be appropriate to give them “the same degree of attention as threatened taxa, at least until their status can be assessed.”
This is a complete list of critically endangered mammalian species and subspecies evaluated by the IUCN. Species considered possibly extinct by the IUCN are marked as such. Species and subspecies which have critically endangered subpopulations (or stocks) are indicated. Where possible common names for taxa are given while links point to the scientific name used by the IUCN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_critically_endangered_mammals

Of the seven animals portrayed below, four are already considered extinct. In the case of the Northern White Rhinoceros, there are two animals left. They both are female. IVF has failed.

On my Instagram page [ https://www.instagram.com/mjartscom ], you can see my list of 134 of the 203 Endangered Mammals.
Close to half of the politicians in the House and Senate are not taking Climate Change seriously; nor are they taking gun violence seriously.

“Before a man killed at least four people Wednesday at a hospital in Tulsa, there had already been 232 mass shootings this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. It is the twentieth since last week’s shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., left 19 children and two teachers dead.
“Mass shootings, where four or more people — not including the shooter — are injured or killed, have averaged more than one per day so far this year. Not a single week in 2022 has passed without at least four mass shootings.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/mass-shootings-in-2022

While I am inclined to say that we, as a nation, must do better, it’s clear that we, as a nation, don’t intend to do better. Apparently, we aren’t even close to agreeing that we must do better.
The son of a politician facing criminal charges said that the problem wasn’t the gun; the deaths could have occurred with a baseball bat. It’s difficult to be in 19 places, swinging a bat and killing children. Some politicians make very strange comments.
The answer brought forward by some politicians is that we need to have armed police at every school in the nation. In Uvalve, Texas, there were over a dozen armed officers inside the building while shooting continued and children died. Apparently, no one was in charge.
An 18-year-old bought the assault rifle he used, that very same day.
An 18-year-old in Texas cannot buy beer but can buy an assault rifle.
Nineteen children killed, two teachers killed, and 17 people wounded. Apparently, it took about 90 minutes for the hundreds of rounds to be fired. Armed police were on site for 40 minutes before they entered the building [the stories keep changing].
In the end they had over 100 police officers on site. The children still died.
Armed police aren’t the answer to the problem.

May 24, 2022
TEXAS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SHOOTING
19 children and 2 adults dead

The Washington Post has spent years tracking how many children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999.
Beyond the dead and wounded, children who witness the violence or cower behind locked doors to hide from it can be profoundly traumatized.
The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Post pieced together its numbers from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports and calls to schools and police departments.
While school shootings remain rare, there were more in 2021 — 42 — than in any year since at least 1999. So far this year, there have been at least 24 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day.
The count now stands at more than 311,000 children at 331 schools traumatized by gun violence.
The Post has found that at least 185 children, educators and other people have been killed in assaults, and another 369 have been injured.

I see headlines every day where ‘conservative’ politicians claim to be protecting the country from the Radical Left [aka social justice]; and now they are bringing ‘god’ into the message with greater force [at a time when the largest denomination in the country has admitted “that leaders falsely claimed they could not maintain a database of offenders to prevent abuse when a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors had been compiled. No action was taken to ensure the accused ministers were no longer in positions to do harm.”
These people need to leave Creator and Jesus out of these cultural crimes, until they have actually read Jesus’ teachings with the intent of following them.

The graph below proves that Gun Violence is entirely preventable.

All that is required is the will to stop the violence

“These are the principles for the development of a complete mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science…Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
“The greatest deception from which men suffer is their own opinions”
Leonardo da Vinci

America is incredibly complicated. Maddingly complicated.
Complicated almost beyond belief.

I am a child of immigrants. Approximately 3/4 of my ancestors lived in Scandinavia. Immigrants who traveled from Norway and from Finland, in search of a better life. My Grandmother talked about traveling with her three young daughters across the country on a train. She had never seen a person with brown skin before; she could not speak English, so as to learn about these strange people. She told of how kind the brown-skinned people on the train were.

In humans, Melanin is the primary determinant of skin color. Melanin is an effective absorbent of light; and is believed to protect the skin from UV radiation. Three-quarters of my DNA comes from Scandinavia. The need for Melanin as skin protection is fairly low in the places where the sun doesn’t shine that often, and the place where the nights are long. Parents having a dozen children, who all have a dozen children in their families. Those long nights…

There is only one Homo Sapien Race in our world—the Human Race—we all have similar DNA. Even when Melanin is more active, darkening the skin to protect against UV radiation, we are still One Race. There are a lot of people in this country who have a difficult time understanding this fact.

I finished watching “Ken Burns’ Country Music” again. I’m not particularly fond of twangy music; I am fond of bluegrass and the stories the series tells. Similarly, with “Ken Burns’ Jazz”. The music that is by definition American mostly comes from the Deep South. The banjo came from Africa, work songs came from Africa and the Caribbean. The Blues came from brown-skinned people dealing with the struggles they endured primarily because pink-skinned people wanted brown-skinned people to be kept something below pink skin.
Politicians today want to pretend American history in the South did not occur; and refuse to admit it continues today. Ban a textbook, ban a library book because, sadly, the ‘song’ they are singing is something different than ‘three chords and the truth’—the foundation of County Music.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all.
Our country’s founders — who were of different religious backgrounds themselves — knew the best way to protect religious liberty was to keep the government out of religion. So they created the First Amendment — to guarantee the separation of church and state. This fundamental freedom is a major reason why the U.S. has managed to avoid a lot of the religious conflicts that have torn so many other nations apart.

https://www.aclu.org/other/your-right-religious-freedom
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Recently, HD1 was discovered using space telescopes.

The Universe had a beginning. “330 million years after time began,” in astronomical terms, is fairly short. Shortly after HD1 was discovered, another signal from about the same distance was discovered; astronomers have no idea what the newer discovery is.

“To hear Charlie Duke tell it, his life’s most important moment did not come 50 years ago today, when he became the 10th and youngest of 12 people to walk on the moon. It came six years later, as he sat behind the wheel of his parked car alongside State Highway 46 in New Braunfels, Tex.
“He felt lost by then—unhappy in his marriage, emotionally distant from his two young sons, unfulfilled in his post-NASA career selling beer. But that day, he and his wife, Dotty, finished a weekend Bible study retreat, and in the car afterward, he became a born-again Christian.
“If his conversion story ended there, he would have plenty of company. But Duke would, in time, embrace a literalist interpretation of the Bible that contradicted all he accomplished as an astronaut and scrambled his expert understanding of the heavens…
“The expedition also collected some especially old moon rocks. On the second of their three days exploring Descartes, Young picked up a four-pound chunk of bright white stone that turned out to be anorthosite, a remnant of the moon’s original crust. Sample 60025, as it’s known, is among the most exactly dated prizes of the Apollo campaign, at 4.36 billion years old.
“The next day, Duke bagged a dust-covered 10-ounce rock on the rim of the vast North Ray Crater. It was a breccia containing a nugget of anorthosite that apparently crystallized 4.46 billion years ago…
“Today, Duke says he believes Earth to be only about 6,000 years old, and the rest of the universe with it — which is to say, he holds that the scientists overstated the actual age of that rock by 4.459994 billion years.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/04/21/apollo11-astronaut-charlie-duke-reflects-on-mission-and-god/

Religion in America has become cruel. This country has never been a Christian nation. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of worship; and under some forms of worship, abortion is viewed differently from the Christian church.
In reality, people who claim to be Pro-Life are really Pro-Birth; if they were Pro-Life, they would be concerned about unwed mothers who cannot afford health insurance, and consequently pay for Neo-Natal Intensive Care [if needed]. To really be Pro-Life means to be concerned about the welfare for the child after the child has been born. All that ‘Radical Left’ stuff…

ATLANTA — Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday that the judiciary is threatened if people are unwilling to “live with outcomes we don’t agree with” and that recent events at the Supreme Court might be “one symptom of that.”
Thomas, speaking to judges and lawyers at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference, did not speak directly about the leak of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a colossal breach of the court’s procedures.
But he referred a couple of times to the “unfortunate events” of the past week, and in a question-and-answer session led by a former clerk, he said he worried about declining respect for institutions and the rule of law.
“It bodes ill for a free society,” he said. It can’t be that institutions “give you only the outcome you want, or can be bullied” to do the same, he said.
The court’s longest-serving justice said he also worried about a “different attitude of the young” that might not show the same respect for the law as past generations did. “Recent events have shown this major change,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/06/clarence-thomas-abortion-supreme-court-leak

This is the same Supreme Court Justice whose wife was directly involved with the Capitol Riot on January 6^th of last year. The reporter of the words above was ‘playing softball’ rather than ‘hardball’. Justice Thomas should recuse himself from any Supreme Court cases involving the Capitol Riot. Based on past performance, he probably won’t.
This same Institution has a sitting Justice who was accused of rape during his Confirmation Hearings and was never investigated. The FBI was directed to investigate by the Trump Department of Justice, but the alleged criminal in the Oval Office ordered the FBI to stand down.
This same Institution has two sitting Justices who swore under oath that they would not attempt to overcome Roe v. Wade because it was settled law. These two justices, on the leaked report, are voting to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The 45^th President told over 13,000 lies while in office, paid hush-money to avoid criminal charges while sitting at his Presidential Desk in the Oval Office, was impeached twice and was found ‘not guilty’ by the Republicans in the Senate, even though the evidence was clear. He is also the instigator of the Capitol Riot.
I am no longer young; and I do not share the respect for the law that my parents had. Their respect for the law came from their life during the Great Depression and World War II; times that predated Nixon and Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of FIVE proponents of Civil Rights in the 1960’s. Times long before our Endless War in the Middle East; the one that began with the misinformation presented to Congress that Saddam Hussein had [never-found] Weapons of Mass Destruction. These weapons had been provided to Afghan forces by the CIA, to prevent the Russian Army from doing what is happening in Ukraine. History repeats.

“In psychology, the holding of two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time is known as cognitive dissonance.”

https://www.navigatethechaos.com/post/how-often-can-you-hold-two-opposing-ideas-in-your-mind-at-the-same-time

I believe that Creator entering Time and Space in the form of Jesus was the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to one who is drowning. Humanity sucks, and always has. The Biblical account of Adam and Eve [I don’t believe this is a statement of what occurred] explains it, but people don’t see it that way. Adam and Eve gained an understanding of the difference between Right and Wrong and were consequently kicked out of Eden. Humans have been choosing Wrong ever since.
For over 40 years I’ve wandered through Evangelical Christianity never understanding how the Church has survived, while being so dense. People asking the question, ‘how could god allow this to happen?’ I think they ask the question because they only selectively remember history. Six or seven Millennia of eventually-recorded history, demonstrating every single day how horrid humans are to each other; senseless, meaninglessly disgraceful behavior toward people sharing the same space, based on the amount of Melanin in their skin, or their understanding of what it means to be human.
The real Question is why Creator allows humans to continue our existence. Creator knows what shitty people we are. Our Selfishness, our Callousness, our Crimes Against Humanity. We are our own worst enemy. A couple Millennia ago, in what Believers called ‘the right time’ [there really is no explanation of why it was ‘the right time’] the Creator of the entire Universe entered Time and Space in the form of a single cell, embedded in the womb of a teenage girl. That cell joined with one of her cells, and in 9 months, a boy was born. The only reason Creator entered Time and Space was to share Light and Life to people who would never deserve the Gift. Yeshua/Jesus did not die so that you could go to Heaven—clearly written in John 3:17, where it states that:

For God did not send his Son into the world that he would condemn the world, but that he would give life to the world by him. [Aramaic Bible in Plain English]

People stop at 3:16 because their intention isn’t scholarship; their intention is to make a religious point.
Jesus either accomplished his goal—giving Life to the entire world, or Jesus failed.
It’s that simple. I prefer ‘accomplished’.

Ascension Day is the 40th day of Easter and commemorates the ascension of Jesus into heaven 39 days after resurrection on Easter Sunday. Ascension Day 2022 is on Thursday, May 26…

9 And when he had said these things, as they saw him, he was taken up and a cloud received him and he was hidden from their eyes. 10 And as they were gazing into the sky, as he was going, two men were present standing with them in white clothing. 11 And they were saying to them, “Galilean men, why are you standing and gazing into the sky? This Yeshua, who was taken up from you into Heaven shall come in this way, as when you saw him going up into Heaven.”Acts 1 Aramaic Bible in Plain English

No one really knows how this will work. Biblical literalists will find their literal interpretation as an explanation in itself. Followers of Jesus know that Jesus never left. His body left—although, when the risen Jesus walked through walls, one has to question the nature of Jesus’ visible body. I’ve taught myself, more times than I can count, I cannot walk through walls.
This has always been my favorite depiction of the Ascension. “And as they were gazing into the sky, as he was going…”

From Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari:
“Species that evolved from a common ancestor are bunched together under the heading ‘genus’ (plural genera). Lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars are different species within the genus Panthera. Biologists label organisms with a two-part Latin name, genus followed by species. Lions, for example, are called Panthera leo, the species leo of the genus Panthera. Presumably, everyone reading this book is a Homo sapiens—the species sapiens (wise) of the genus Homo (man)
“Homo sapiens, too, belongs to a family. This banal fact used to be one of history’s most closely guarded secrets. Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan bereft of family, lacking siblings or cousins, and most importantly, without parents. But that’s just not the case. Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother…”

Religious people hate/will hate this book, because the book runs afoul of one the foremost traits of Evangelical Religion: that we are created by God in his likeness [Creator looks like a human], and that we are created for a purpose: “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” as written in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, written in the mid-1600s.

The only way the Evangelical Religious person can come to this understanding is by rote instruction in the teachings of the Evangelical Religion. Which is why, in nearly 48 of my 70 years, I have never been able to understand the Evangelical Religion. I have attended and served a number of Evangelical churches over the decades and have realized that many religious ‘truths’ are deemed true only because people have been taught that they are true.
I became a father 7 years after I found Faith. I was still learning; and had no idea how I was supposed to teach children the truths I was learning in my twenties. So, I wrote these things down in books that I created for my children. There were flaws in the execution of this project. I assumed that Sunday School teachers were taught what to teach children about Faith. This failed in execution, also. Sunday School teachers I’ve encountered simply volunteered. The outcome would have been better if I’d made better choices

Metaphor is often misunderstood by people.
Doctor Who is my favorite metaphor

A mythical person, created in 1963 [4 years before Star Trek] to fill-in a half-hour gap in the BBC scheduling. A show aimed at children, intended to be educational, and to be Produced by the BBC’s first female Producer, Verity Lambert; directed by the BBC’s first Indian Director. The Doctor would travel through time and space in a somewhat magical ‘ship’—the TARDIS [Time And Relative Dimension In Space]—a device with a malfunctioning Chameleon Circuit that, when working correctly, enables the TARDIS to blend in with the landscape. It broke in 1963 London, where one of the most visible landmarks was a blue Police Box—a telephone booth for a Constable On Patrol, as well as a temporary holding cell. The concept of a regenerating Doctor was not intended from the beginning. William Hartnell, the actor playing The Doctor, became ill and needed to leave the show, which had [unexpectedly] become very popular. So, the plot device of ‘regeneration’ allowed the BBC to cast a different actor in the role of The Doctor, while keeping the narrative. The 13^th Doctor is the first female-appearing Doctor; although not the first female-appearing Time Lord. Time Lords are not part of the family Homo Sapiens.

Doctor Who is a metaphor.
What one might desire to be true in a heroic figure.
Earth is Protected by the Doctor. While the Doctor does not resort to violence, the Doctor frequently turns a potential invader’s war efforts back upon themselves. Consequently, the Doctor uses wits rather than weapons.

The Marvel Universe hasn’t figured this out. Their heroes are flawed, for dramatic effect. The modern world has trouble believing that heroes don’t need to be flawed, like the rest of us, in order to be heroic.

Back When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Superman was one of the first superheroes to be found on the small screen. He was one of my babysitters. While Superman was weakened by Kryptonite, he was not weakened by character flaws. George Reeves, the actor, found the role of Superman to be crippling to his career. While I never heard about it while a child, George Reeves died by a bullet. How the bullet got that far has never been determined.

I don’t know that I can say that without George Reeves, there wouldn’t be Christopher Reeve as Superman. I believe that it’s true. Reeve didn’t read Superman comics, but he watched the television show. Christopher Reeve enabled the taglines to be fulfilled:

The movie that makes a legend come to life. You’ll believe a man can fly.
“What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that’s how I approached the part.
“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. I have seen first-hand how Superman actually transforms people’s lives.  I have seen children dying of brain tumors who wanted as their last request to be able to talk to me and have gone to their graves with a peace brought on by knowing that their belief in this kind of character is intact. I have seen that Superman really matters. They’re connecting with something very basic: the ability to overcome obstacles, the ability to persevere, the ability to understand difficulty and to turn your back on it.”

Christopher Reeve

I grew up believing that heroes exist. Granted, my heroes were found in books, television and movies. It was hard to keep believing in heroes during the Vietnam Police Action era [as with Korea, there was no declaration of War].

I hadn’t given much thought to making children; I thought more about the ‘planting’ aspects than the ‘nurturing’ aspect. I realized that I didn’t have role models—I never liked my family all that much—there was nothing bad about my family, the problem was mine. When our children started being born, I had to start finding role models. I was fortunate enough to find role models, who would probably be embarrassed to be considered in that light. Frank and Jeanette lived across the street for most of my life at that time, Stan and Diana were people we met at church, as well as many others. Rolland and Molly were mentors for me, sadly, the relationship ended badly—again, my fault.  

My goal in these Chronicles is to explain Faith—understanding Creator—as well as the inexplicable nature of the Universe, in terms that aren’t religious. One does not need religion to explore that which we cannot fully know. One does not need religion to interact with Creator. The reality is that in this life we will not know how life as a concept intersects life as we live. We search for answers that only Creator can explain, and the explanation won’t happen in our life here on Earth. Humans are incapable of understanding.

It will be marvelous and horrible if we learn that the other life forms on this Earth actually do know the answers; and that we humans have simply been too full of ourselves to learn.

I came to Faith in my third year of college, having been raised outside of religion. I had learned about Metaphor while in high school and in college. The notion that a series of writings from thousands of years of history would be collected into two separate volumes [Old and New Testaments] by religious leaders in the Third Century and translated into a variety of languages by a number of different translators, all the while remaining Literally True never crossed my mind. The writers of the Talmud—the collected interpretations of difficult passages in Torah [the Hebrew Bible]—rarely considered Torah to be literally true. It’s an evangelical concept that probably began two to three centuries after Jesus came back from the dead.

So many religious people get caught in the words used in Biblical texts, and don’t see the metaphor. Christians get caught up in the Crucifixion, believing that death and resurrection was the point of Jesus walking the earth. There came a point in Jesus’ life when he knew he was not like other people; and there was a point where he realized what was ahead. There wasn’t any surprise on his part. We read about three years of his life; he probably was the same guy for the decades before then. No one bothered to write it down. There are legends in which Jesus, while young, molds clay into the form of a bird, and it flies away… Jesus was born so Creator could be here himself. To exist in the lives of those created in the image of our Creator.

“The Buddha taught that we have a tendency to get caught in five kinds of wrong views. The fifth kind of wrong view is being caught in the outer form of rites and rituals. We think that if we avoid doing what is forbidden and follow all rules and regulations, we will be liberated. We are content to follow rules and perform rituals without understanding their significance. When we are caught in rituals, we can also be caught in the various rules and regulations which are attached to these rites and rituals. When studying the precepts and putting them into practice we need to be careful not to fall into the fifth kind of wrong view, by being caught in the outer form of practicing the precepts. If we keep the precepts but are caught in their outer form and do not understand their deeper meaning, our practice cannot lead to liberation, purity, peace, and joy.
For example, we may think that the more we invoke the Buddha’s name, the more holy and pure we will become. Yet if we invoke the Buddha’s name without mindfulness and concentration, it will not bring us any benefit. We can repeat the Buddha’s name thousands of times a day but if we are still carried away by our irritation or unhappiness while we practice then we are caught in the outer form. Or suppose we eat a vegetarian diet but we do not enjoy it. It makes us suffer and we always think of how nice it would be to eat meat. This is being caught in the form. We do not touch the essence of the practice of protecting life, of not harming living beings. When we practice the content, the essence of the precepts, we receive the benefit of peace, clarity, and freedom right away.”

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh October 11, 1926-January 22, 2022

The above is what Jesus taught. He used different words.

Creator is not responsible for COVID, nor cancer, nor any other disease. Creator is not responsible for War and death by War. Religious people justify war by quoting from Scripture, never figuring out that War was not ordained by god; war exists because we are broken. They delight in quoting Scripture they happen to like; there’s a whole lot of Scripture they don’t like to quote.

“I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man’s Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world’s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Welcome to my new visitors. I appreciate your time.

The Strange World of the Future-Reprise

Somehow, the human race cannot translate the technological accomplishments of the 21^st Century into making a better society. And we seem to be unable to stop destroying this world. Mega-Billionaires who have prospered enormously during the Pandemic, apparently can’t envision their place in history, as the people who, by themselves, stopped hunger and homelessness across the world while remaining Billionaires. Instead, they play space tourist. It’s sort of like Superman deciding that reading the Daily Planet is the best he can do, before making another orbit around the world.

I have given up on politics as a means of rescue. I will vote, as I have, for the last 50+ years. I’m grateful that I live in Portland, Oregon, where there may not be many churchgoers, and there are a lot of Progressive Liberals. My ‘Give a Damn’ was broken on January 6th of this year when members of various police forces attempted to protect The United States Capitol in its first invasion since the War of 1812. A large portion of our elected officials are saying that the deaths of police officers in their attempt to protect the safety of said politicians was similar to a visit by a regular tour group… An allegiance to a criminal who told the world that COVID is a hoax; and the world believed him. Not because of his credibility as a human being, but as some devotion to an American Religion.

Consequently, I have returned to Science Fiction to find sanity.

The first law of thermodynamics states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another but can be neither created nor destroyed.

Think about this:

You are a brain with a body. All of you that exists, your body, your ideas, your dreams, these happen in your brain. Your body provides transportation and nourishment to your brain. You theoretically are reading this on something that looks like a piece of paper. You do not have a screen in your brain. You cannot see a piece of digital paper. As far as your device is concerned, it’s all ones and zeroes translated into machine language. The light contacting the retinas of your eyes sends electrochemical signals to nerve centers in your brain. What you are reading is a scientifically created illusion.

Take it a step further. Suppose that our current scientific understanding of the brain is missing what I believe is the key element: you are Energy. According to the first law of thermodynamics, you can be transformed; but cannot be destroyed. There is a YOU that is crafted by Creator and exists outside of our limited understanding of Life. I use the word ‘soul’ as many other people do. There are people who do not believe that the Soul exists because there is no evidence to prove it.

I have been following the Faith Walk, the Spirit Walk for 48 years. I cannot prove the existence of the Soul, but lack of proof does not mean lack of existence. The biggest problem I’ve had with my Faith Walk is religion. I have served in a variety of capacities in a number of denominations, and I am continually amazed at how people can take a few sentences out of their context, and then build a religious belief. I have also learned that I cannot change the minds of people whose minds are closed. The most I can do is provide an environment where change can occur, when someone wants to change.

You can be transformed; but cannot be destroyed.

This messes with the religious beliefs of many people.

I can’t help that.

Short Religious thought [Mark 9]:

Jesus [‘Yeshua’ in Hebrew] takes Peter, James and John to a high mountain. As Jesus is standing apart from the three, He is “transfigured” [think superhero] Jesus’ “garment was shining and became very white, like snow, in a manner by which men on earth are not able to whiten. 4 And Elijah and Moses appeared to them as they were speaking with Yeshua.”

1. There were no cameras in Jesus’ day, nor centuries earlier in Elijah’s and Moses’ time. How did those with Jesus know who the newcomers were? The images from Egypt were probably the most sophisticated of the time. Very few, if any, portraits in Egypt [Moses was in Egypt before the whole ‘parting the Red Sea’ stuff].

7 And there was a cloud and it was a shelter about them, and a voice from the cloud which said, “This is my Beloved Son, hear him.” 8 And suddenly afterward, the disciples gazed up, and they saw no one except Yeshua alone with them.

• Creator identifies Jesus; and the three with Him continue to think Jesus is some sort of prophet…

9 And when they descended from the mountain, he commanded them that they would tell no one anything that they had seen until after The Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 And they seized on that statement in their souls and they were inquiring, “What is this statement, ‘When he rises from among the dead?”

• Jesus and his followers knew that Jesus would end up crucified; they had seen, every day, of their lives what Rome did to troublemakers. Jesus was a troublemaker. He didn’t bother the Romans—Jesus wasn’t sent to the Romans. Romans officially believed that the Emperor was something like a god.

It seems to me that if Jesus came to die on a cross so that Jews could be saved from Hell [Jesus was Jewish], He might have mentioned the concept of being raised from the dead. His closest followers had never heard about Jesus being raised from the dead.

Creator entered Time and Space in the form of one cell implanted into the womb of a young girl. That young girl gave birth to a boy named Yeshua, who apparently entered into the trade of his ‘foster’ father. Yeshua became a carpenter. I read somewhere that an ancient writing talked about plows made by Yeshua. Yeshua came to teach people how to live—what to do with the Energy that we all contain—Energy that can be transformed; but cannot be destroyed. This messes with the religious beliefs of many people. I can’t help that.

So what do we do with this unbreakable Energy [soul] within us? We try to make the world better.

Get Vaccinated. Nearly every COVID death that has occurred since Memorial Day was avoidable. If you fear the practice of Vaccination, I would remind you that every child in America, under the care of a medical practitioner was vaccinated for Measles, Mumps and Rubella. If you’ve ever been to an ER to patch up a hole in your body you created with a tool, you were vaccinated for Tetanus. I did a lot of that in my years building/repairing houses.

If you are afraid that the government is injecting you with some sort of device that can track you, wherever you go, you should stop listening to Conservative news sources, and throw away your cellphone. You show up on tracking of some sort every time your cell phone gets turned on.

My personal recommendation is that you should stop using QR-Codes with your phone. You have no idea what is programmed via a QR-Code. They were developed by the automotive industry because the format can transmit data better than a bar code. If you are scrupulous with passwords, but accept any QR-Code you see, you might as well give up on passwords.

However, I was born When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

Hanford: … You some kind of a pacifist, Driscoll?

Paul Driscoll: No, just some sick idiot who’s seen too many boys die because of too many men who fight their battles at dining room tables… and who probably wouldn’t last so long as twenty-five seconds in a REAL skirmish if they WERE thrust into it.

Hanford: …I take offense at that remark, Mr. Driscoll!

Paul Driscoll: And I take offense at “armchair warriors” like yourself – who clearly don’t know what a shrapnel, or a bullet, or a saber wound feels like… or what death smells like after three days on an empty, sun-drenched battlefield… who’ve never seen the look on a man’s face when he realizes he’s lost a limb, and his blood is seeping out. Mr. Hanford, you have a great enthusiasm for “planting the American flag deep, high, and proud.” But you don’t have a nodding acquaintance with what it’s like for American families to bury their sons in the same soil!

*********************

Paul Driscoll: We live in a cesspool, a septic tank, a gigantic sewage complex in which runs the dregs, the filth, the misery-laden slop of the race of men: his hatred, prejudices, passions, and violence. And the keeper of this sewer: man. He is a scientifically advanced monkey who walks upright, with eyes wide open into an abyss of his own making. His bombs, fallout, poisons, radioactivity everything he designs as an art for dying is his excuse for living. We live in an exquisite bedlam an insanity. Maybe all the more grotesque by the fact that we don’t recognize it as insanity.

Narrator: [Opening Narration] Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century. He puts to a test a complicated theorem of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further – or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present – one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone No Time Like the Past (1963)

I Sometimes wonder how Rod Serling would write the story of today’s political environment. People dying at horrendous rates because they listened to a handful of politicians and preachers who say that the worst worldwide Pandemic in over a century is a hoax; despite the urgings of epidemiologists for people to simply get vaccinated against the virus. But, no, a corrupt politician has more clout among the religious and political leaders of today, and as a result, over two thousand new cases presented themselves to Oregon hospitals, over this last weekend. Not last month or last week; simply last weekend. Florida has set a new national record for COVID cases.

I have given up on politics as a means of rescue. My ‘Give a Damn’ is broken, ever since January 6^th of this year when members of various police forces attempted to protect The United States Capitol in its first invasion since the War of 1812. A large portion of our elected officials are saying that the deaths of police officers in their attempt to protect the safety of said politicians was similar to a visit by a regular tour group…

Consequently, I have returned to Science Fiction to find sanity

I enjoyed Netflix’s “Lost in Space” and am waiting for Season 3 to appear. What I find strange is that Maureen Robinson, as the main engineer/science person in the show, apparently has never read Science Fiction. She, and everyone except Will Robinson apparently can’t comprehend the idea of a sentient artificial intelligence. She cannot comprehend that Robot can make a vow regarding behavior; and cannot comprehend that Robot feels grief at the death of four-legged friend.

Sentient artificial intelligence is a concept that has run through Science Fiction since the 1940’s. She also hasn’t watched any OLD television episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which must be in some future historic database.

In the episode entitled, “The Measure of a Man“, the future of the android officer Lt. Commander Data is argued in a courtroom. The rights of Lt. Commander Data are threatened by a scientist who wishes to dismantle him in order to produce replicas of him. Captain Jean-Luc Picard argues in a Starfleet court for Data’s right of self-determination, rather than being declared mere property of Starfleet. Picard turns the discussion to metaphysical matters of Data’s sentience. Picard points out that Data meets two of the three criteria that the scientist uses to define sentient life. Data is intelligent and self-aware, and Picard asks anyone in the court to show a means of measuring consciousness…

The measuring of consciousness is getting closer…

As a result of neuroimaging of the human brain scientists have established that a network of interconnected brain regions known as the default mode network disintegrates in anesthesia and after brain damage, causing disorders of consciousness.

They found that across pharmacological (sedation) and pathological (disorders of consciousness) consciousness changes, the source of dopamine in the brain, called “ventral tegmental area”, disconnects from the main hubs of the default mode network.

They also found that the severity of this disconnection was associated with default mode network disintegration, highlighting the relevance of dopamine for consciousness. They therefore propose that dopaminergic modulation may be a central mechanism for consciousness maintenance.

Exploring the neural bases of consciousness

Humans make decisions based on supposition when they can’t find facts, or when they simply don’t want to make the effort to learn. Learning takes effort; humans don’t particularly like effort. Consequently, humans do stupid things and then try to cover them up.

Seventy-six years ago, this week as I write, The United States of America, having firebombed Tokyo to dust in March of 1945… 

The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. Of central Tokyo 16 square miles were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.

…and then preceded to wipe the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the face of the earth.

The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

Wikipedia

The ‘shadows’ of humans in the images below, aren’t conventional shadows. They are all that remains of human beings blasted by the atomic blasts; permanently etched into adjacent structures.

Many Americans believe that this destruction was justified because these actions kept the number of American combatants from becoming a horrid number.

The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians

a.k.a. the elderly, the infirm, women and children

Waging War against the elderly, the infirm, women and children is shameful. Where are the admissions of guilt?