Does the Past Exist Yet?

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

More of the kind of theory that is interesting to consider, regardless whether it can have practical consequences in your life. As it happens, this one can, once you tease out its implications. From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-the-past-exist-yet-e_b_683103.html

Does the Past Exist Yet?

Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn’t Set in Stone

by Robert Lanza, M.D.

Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. “The histories of the universe,” said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking “depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history.”

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Ice Age cave painters and scientific myths

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

 

cave-art

This story, courtesy of the Weekly Science Report put together by Steve Detwiler, makes me laugh, it is so naïve. “To me at least, finding these great paintings from so far back in time is a bit like finding an iPad with no previous evidence of the development of electronics. How does humanity plunge so suddenly into this great sea of creativity? Unless there is a whole history of extremely old and not-very-good cave paintings still to be discovered, we are left with the sudden birth of a fully formed pictorial art.”

At least the writer is thinking, but his assumptions are so ridiculous. They are worth noticing only because he shares those assumptions with what is called “science” – which, in context, means “currently popular opinions among mainstream scientists,” which sounds, and is, a lot less authoritative!

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Two Views of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

So You Think Your Life Was Wasted — Part Three (8)

This is a continuation of the very productive sessions I had one day in March, four years ago. This particular conversation took place at first with Claude Bowers, whose book The Tragic Era dealt with Reconstruction from a position of total sympathy with the white South of the day, then with Joseph Smallwood, perhaps a past life, who was one of the Union soldiers who counted the destruction of slavery among the results that mitigated the terrible suffering and dislocation that war caused.

Thursday March 9, 2006

(6:30 p.m.) I don’t mean to quarrel, Mr. Bowers, but the final taste your book leaves in my mouth is one of partisanship. All the nobility on one side, rascality the only motive on the other side. It is overdone, and ultimately doesn’t wash. This book looks to have been written at least in part for partisan purposes, not as a testimonial. It is somewhere between history, journalism, and propaganda.

Say that is so, it will not find itself alone on the shelf! As I said, books are written to be tools or weapons, not as monuments.

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So You Think Your Life Was Wasted (19)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Henry Thoreau’s words and example deeply influenced  my life since I first read Walden at age 24 and wound up writing my M.A. thesis on his early social views in the light of his personal religion. This is a man! And his stalwart, straightforward life is such an example of virtues lived that an earlier age would have named him as a saint. (That is, as a person whose life displayed virtues worthy of emulation.) I never thought, in that long ago, that  I’d be able to talk to him.

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2012 – the fantasy

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Given the interest readers showed in Paul Blakey’s post on how he uses the Mayan calendar in his daily life, I thought it worthwhile to post this comment on the movie 2012. Dr. Carl Johan Calleman is author of several serious books about the Mayan Calendar, among them The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, a study of the processes measured by the Mayan sacred calendar. Naturally, he takes a dim view of the latest cynical Hollywood fantasy  exploiting a theme it knows nothing about and cares nothing about. (So what else is new?) This blog entry appeared in The Mayan Calendar Portal http://www.maya-portal.net/blog

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