A LONG WINDED REPLY TO MY READERS OF YOUTUBE COMMENTS

I home school in the sense that I listen to what my kids tell me they are being told in school and give them alternative view points. I try to stress critical thinking as opposed to just believing anything someone who has a piece of paper and letters after their name says.  I give them math problems all day long since I enjoy math. Such as when we are playing a game on the XBox and the match is over and they have their score like a Win Loss  ratio I ask them to tell me the ratio as a percent and then tell them how to do it quickly.  Such as lets say we are playing a game like Call of Duty Black Ops and they "Killed" the enemy 25 times and "Died" 11 times. I ask them to tell me their "KD" before the game does. I point out short cuts like obviously 11 goes into 25 twice leaving 3 and 3 /  25ths is the same as asking how much is a 25th and multiply that times 3.  So a 25th is .04 and times 3 is .12 so their KD is 2.12.  I do this constantly whether on games or other things. I guarantee my kids know the value of Pi to at least 4 places where as most kids don't even know what it is or stands for.  And while playing a game like Black Ops sounds contrary to a "harmonious" nature in fact it takes something that evokes one set of feelings such as aggression and violence and turns it into something analytical. I try to get the most mileage I can out of everything.

I know I am successful when I hear my teen boys actually expressing empathy for the other players such as when they realize the other person probably should have got them first but must have a bad connection because they realize they should have lost a gun battle. Which also happens to us.  I know they realize its just a game and as such sometimes it is the skill of the player and sometimes it is just the consequences of the "universe" they are playing in. Of course when they realize the other player has a bad connection they exploit it and when it is our turn to get "screwed" they adjust their tactics such as trying not to be out in the open too much.  Strategy and Critical Thinking.

Almost anything can be a "teachable moment".  I approach my job, my budget, and such things as watching these videos the same way.  Even Sal Sean, who apparently has developed a fixation with what I say, is actually just helping me refine my arguments and my thought processes. It would be better if they actually challenged my content and even found flaws that I can mull over but I've been doing this for years, all the way back to the AOL days when I lost arguments a lot but unlike most people I don't freak out. I learn from my errors. I rarely find anyone who will actually challenge the substance of my comments.

I'm fairly good at guessing how things work.  I have seen my ideas echoed eventually by science. As I discuss in my blog I have had moments of revelation going back to my early teen years that I later saw verified or at least given credence by so called "mainstream science".  One of the first was reading The Cosmos by Carl Sagan. By the time I had finished the book I was becoming good at predicting where he was going next in his thought process. Small example is the idea that a moon, like Jupiter's moon Io, acts like an electric circuit which is evidence by radio bursts. The technical aspects are just barely within my range of understanding of such things but the Big Picture idea itself is not. I would suggest you Google "electric potential of Io" if you would like to read about this very fascinating phenomenon.  So anyway I came upon this idea as I was reading about Io and Jupiter and just prior to reading it spelled out by Sagan I guessed it because I already had fore knowledge of how electricity is produced in a generator. A conductor passing through a magnetic field.

And this is where I developed an actual methodology to take one idea and magnify or disperse it out across multiple 'fields".  So I take this idea and look around the Solar System for where this might occur elsewhere.  The sun has a pretty powerful and far reaching magnetic field. The Voyager spacecraft have shown that it extends out pretty far and one has even reached where the Sun's field butts up against the radiation coming from the outside universe.  Recently the world of science and science novices have read about the "granular" nature of the Sun's various emanations where they meet the outside influence of other stars and the radiation emitted by other bodies outside our solar system coming toward us.  So for instance we know that the Earth's magnetic field protects us from the Sun. Now we learn that the Sun while toasting some of the planets because they don't have a magnetic field on a larger scale protects our little Solar Island our Solar System from the Cosmic Radiation that exists all over.  While the Sun kills some planets simple magnetic influences protect ours and in turn the Sun protects us from the outside universe.

Then you get into thoughts such as the distance and relative emptiness between galaxies and wonder what life out there would be like say at the very edge of our galaxy where the abundance of radiation is coming at us from the core out and much less coming from the empty space between us and say Andromeda. What would a civilization out there be like? That's fodder for science fiction.

 Or we can turn back inward and look at Comets.  Comets leave trails of particles as they approach the Sun. They are also moving through this magnetic field. And now lets slide over into "fringe science" like the guy in this video.  Let's say that comet's tail touches the earth's magnetic field and like Io spewing out sulfur and other particulates capable of bridging the gap between Io and Jupiter, even briefly or even just one time in the case of our comet we get a FLASH IN THE SKY as the discharge between two bodies, the comet and earth, bathed in the Solar Magnetic Field, and you get something harmless as a momentary NEON SIGN effect or perhaps it ionizes our atmosphere briefly and changes weather for a year.  Who knows? Its all speculation. But its possible. Works for Sci Fi anyway.

I actually learned a lot from reading Science Fiction.  Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were both actual scientists. They took the same approach to their Sci Fi. Mixing science and fantasy to paint possibility-scapes. There was nothing more exciting for me than to start reading a Clarke novel and given the science being used figure out where he "could" go with it and often times being surprised where he "did" go with it.  Unlike Star Trek and other sci fi Clarke and Asimov stuck to the science without having to toss into too many unlikely scenarios such as Transporters.  Although I love Star Trek I have always cringed at the idea of transporter technology. The idea that a computer could map the exact position, energy, spin, etc of atoms, their nuclei, their quantum states, and then convert that to a signal with no receiver other than a point in space, at least by the 23rd century always seemed absurd.  I did once read a Sci Fi story that improved upon the idea but it becomes the story itself.  As I recall a race of reptilian like beings have contacted and work with humans and they have this technology except the signal is sent, the body is reconstituted using materials at the receiving site, and the original copy must be destroyed. This idea was later echoed (SPOILER ALERT) by the movie The Prestige which joins up stage magic and the genius of none other than Nikola Tesla. Which incidentally is where we get the previously mentioned electrical generators. Circle of Life moment there.

I find science fiction more interesting when they don't throw in 'magical" technology. It is more interesting to imagine what life would be like two hundred years from now given that the odds of creating faster than light travel are pretty slim. I try to get around this in my story Wonder Press Down by inventing the Magneto Drive. The use of powerful magnetic fields to work against the fabric of space to allow my ship to be "squirted" like a watermelon seed up to substantial fraction of the speed of light.  I must admit when I read an article recently about something similar being accomplished in Germany I was pretty happy with myself since I have been thinking about it ever since I was a teen and saw an article in Popular Mechanics about ion engines. Any science enthusiast has probably come to similar conclusions that the most likely way to approach speeds of say a tenth the speed of light or more is to use a fuel that travels at the speed of light and somehow impart that energy to the craft.  Solar sails do this in theory by being pushed by the light being pumped out by a sun.  Then it becomes a mass to solar pressure calculation which I imagine is a Terminal Velocity calculation in the same vein as a person sky diving from 100,000 feet would have to deal with.

How does this relate to the fantastical ideas representing in some of the videos we see on youtube where people believe or claim to believe that Giza was built as an energy producing structure or a landing pad for giant mother ships or Stonehenge is not only a megalithic calendar but a tuning fork for earth or any number of other "theories"?

In the same way I talk to my kids let me pause for a moment to explain the statement "believe or claim to believe".  There are of course people who believe none of what they say but rely on the fact that you do.  It is quite obvious that many preachers don't believe what they are saying or at least dont practice it. Various people say they believe in Universal Consciousness such as the Akashic Records and how Water can be altered by emotion and so forth.  Some actually believe these things and others just use them to sell books or get youtube subscribers.

But ignoring or dismissing these people out of hand might be a mistake as well. At the beginning of this blog I wrote several pieces on "Building Mysteries" where I talk about my fascination with the number 444.  Mystery building is an interesting exercise in thinking. I think I talked about an idea I had that the Giza Pyramids could be a plan by the builders to alter the rotational aspects of the earth perhaps for climate change.  This is based on the known practice of putting wheel weights on spinning objects.  A small 1 or 2 ounce weight on a 70 pound tire can be the difference between your car driving smoothly or bouncing all over the road causing you to think all kinds of things are going on with the steering and suspension systems. It can even be dangerous if your tire is jumping around while you are driving on icy and wet roads. (That was a PSA for proper tire care).

During the thought process for this I came up with several "chain theories" or ideas if you will.  For instance. Compared to the earth's mass how much affect could a few million tons of weight in a single area effect the rotation of the earth and how?  Could it slow or increase the rotational speed thus changing the length of a day? Could its position relative to the equator cause the earth to kind of "roll over" as the weight tries to be in sync with the rotational plane of the earth? Could the attachment of such a large mass or groups of masses to the continental plate they sit on drive the plate in a desired direction?  Could this mass cause the earth's crust as a whole to rotate different around the solid core (if there is a solid core).  A tangential thought here is the question of whether or not as you descend toward the "core" of the earth is there a point at which there is more mass above you than below you and if this attraction above you balanced against the attraction below you and acting symmetrically causes the "core" to actually be empty.  Then you start thinking about the liquid part and vortexes and eddies and solid mountain size objects much bigger than the mass of Everest that might be bumping around in there and the effects of sudden changes in a harmonious system.  And so on.

Now just as I took the example of Io and Jupiter and the movement of bodies through a magnetic field and went out to the edge of the Solar System and the Galaxy itself to mull over the possibilities lets do the same with this.  What about Manhattan?  Is the movement of millions upon millions of tons of material from one place to another to build the buildings on the island of Manhattan causing any effects in how our planet moves? Even the smallest change in a system has an effect. Maybe the effect would take millions of years to be realized but there is probably some. Our release of CO2 into the atmosphere is supposedly causing the Earth to warm up and its rather small an has taken several decades. On the other hand some believe the reverse is true. The warming is caused by something else, perhaps the interplay between the solar wind and our field, solar output, neutrino emissions from the sun passing through us as in the movie 2012, or what have you and that is causing the release of CO2 as ground thaws and oceans warm up.  Warming a liquid decreases the amount of gases that can be dissolved in it. At the same time a rise in temperature or adding energy to a system changes interaction rates such as boiling water will dissolve more salt than cold water so when you think about it is there a battle between solids being dissolved and gases being released and how would that effect things?

Is the damming of water here and there changing the dynamics?  How about carving a canal between two oceans through a land mass and thus allow an interchange, not only of species, but energy making any difference? Or look at it naturally. Is the loss of Arctic Ice Pack changing the interactions at certain times between the water bodies on either side?

Now come back to the idea of "balance" in a system. Take a very delicate balance beam scale with each side  holding a pound of lead. Beneath the scales on either side, two feet down, sits an egg. The system is such that if a tray holding the weight drops below a certain point it will tip spilling its contents.  Now start dropping feathers on one side.  This is the nature of change in small increments.

The earth supposedly wobbles about its axis in such a way that over 26,000 years a point on the axis rotates backward 360 degrees. I talk about this in earlier entries. Now if the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun in what is called the ecliptic plane remains the same you realize that every half cycle, or 13,000 years what is the North American Continent would be facing the sun in what is now winter and on the other side of the cycle facing away in what is now winter. According to man made calendars mind you. Currently we are in "the away" position. Also you would get in between moments. And even more accurately you would get a fluid movement from one to the other with different exposure by different land masses both at the top of the earth and at the bottom of the earth over a continuum.  A point that is only important because of the fact that there are land masses above the water sliding around on moving tectonic plates surrounded by large amounts of water all sucking up and releasing energy with complex wind flows and water flows.  Now take the idea of moving small amounts of mass, such as the stones at Giza or the concrete at Manhattan, and replace those with the tectonic plates moving around over millions of years.

You get ice ages, very warm ages, mild ages, mega flora ages, ocean floors that eventually become the tops of mountains which is why you find marine fossils on the top of Mt. Everest and most other mountain ranges. So if ocean floors go up and mountains go down you take the deposition of soil constantly being eroded by biology and physical and chemical processes and you see another complex pattern of moments when a layer of strata is above sea level and you get no marine fossils, then its covered over by plant fossils or no fossil record, then it gets covered again by ocean, or you get entire epochs of time erased by a plate getting pushed down into the earth, melted, and then spit back up onto the surface.  That lava rock you walk on in Hawaii may have held a record of life you haven't even factored in yet and now that evidence is gone.

Take that and move to the Solar System and our study of the planets. Once the Earth was a different size and a different planet altogether. Science says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old but perhaps this is only since its last "reset".  According to a long lasting theory the original Earth was hit with a planet the size of Mars and the result is the current Earth and the Moon. The consequences of new theories is you have to tie up the loose ends of the old theories. Such as you have to account for the moon being close enough to orbit and not crash into Earth but also moving away from us at a rate of an inch or so a year. So in your collision theory you have to have a "glancing blow" hypothesis or switch gears altogether and have the rotational velocity of the original earth, in a highly molten state, undergoing something akin to cell division, and producing the moon which eventually pulled away and continues to pull away and some day will possibly get away from us. This leads yet to more ideas such as when this happens the tides will decrease, the effects of the tide on life will change life, just as it did when the moon was closer and the effect stronger, and the length of a day was shorter and thus the amount of sunlight energy on a particular spot on the Earth and in the oceans was different and so on. Somewhere in all this "streaming" between theory and speculation, running the thought back and forth through time and figuring out consequences, you find testable theories and good stuff for Sci Fi stories.

This is how I think. This is how people with an interest, a "drive" if you will, to understand things think. We aren't content to let Apple tell us that a hunk of plastic and metal, while very cool in what it can do, is the end all beat all purpose of existence.   I admit I am impressed by technology. Some guy doing experiments with chemicals, electricity, and the knowledge how to manipulate the known properties of these elements and some "what if" thinking figured out you can put some of the 92 naturally occurring elements together in such a way to cause one of the most fundamental forces in nature, electricity, to flow in only one direction (mostly) and the Diode was created.  Put a diode in a circuit with an A/C generator and you make DC power. Another person figured out that if you take some elements and put them together in a certain way that you can take a large electrical current, put it on one 'leg" of the object, give it another leg to release that energy, and put another element in between that you apply a small amount of electricity/current to and you can cause the large current to flow as you wish and you have the transistor. And the property of amplification as well as the building blocks of computer chips.

I am going to end there because this isn't about the content I just spewed out as much as it is about the method of Streaming Consciousness.  I will be posting some more Sci Fi soon and more speculations on what science will discover next. And as always you can look for me giving someone my opinion in the youtube comments.  If anyone has a particular subject that I might be able to amuse you with by brainstorming it out feel free to leave me a note. For now I'm going to go build a computer out of some scavenged spare parts. I think I have enough and I've been itching to get to it all day. It will be the computer I dedicate to imaging the entire Human Genome Data Set as I talk about in my blog. So gotta run.

Have a freaking good day.