Pictures In Baltimore Mostly Around Fells Point

Guns and the Decline of the Young Man

"If the soldier has largely been replaced by the video game character and the drone, if the mothers have proven that they can raise the children alone, if the corporations are less able or willing to guarantee the possibility of upward mobility and some level of respect that comes with title, if someone else can bring home the bacon, what is left for young men?

All this, and they still are not allowed to cry...
...I would argue that maleness and whiteness are commodities in decline. And while those of us who are not male or white have enjoyed some benefits from their decline, the sort of violence and murder that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary will continue to occur if we do not find a way to carry them along with us in our successes rather than leaving them behind. "


By CHRISTY WAMPOLE, The New York Times, Today

Why We Should Remember Robert H. Bork

News Item:

Robert H. Bork, a former solicitor general, federal judge and conservative legal theorist whose 1987 nomination to the United States Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in a historic political battle whose impact is still being felt, died on Wednesday. He was 85.

Comment:

If Bork had been nominated Roe v Wade would have been overturned. The few working class protections left from FDR's days would have been overturned. He had a bad heart that was obvious to all. The Senate performed its Constitutional responsibility with honor and wisdom and the United States is better for it, but barely. This is why it is so very important that the President and the Senate protect the people from those who would diminish liberty for profit.

Theological Twiddling in Reality

I entered this question into the Google Search Engine, "how could god allow this to happen?" this opened a flood gate.
Questions of why god allows bad things to happen to "good" people or why he allows bad things to happen to innocent people etc.,etc.  The best we can understand the meaning of all this is that god allows a "crap shoot" to happen and the random consequence of it appears to shake him up just like it  shakes most of us up. This appears to be "it", the answer. Probably, I was influenced by the current news of the massacre of the children in Connecticut.

There is a scientific rule which proclaims, "if it can go wrong it will go wrong".  If "god" is involved, what is the point? What Is it that he is trying to show us? 

The only point I can figure is that if god can do it, then he will eventually do it. If so, then wouldn't that make god a willful killer? The answer is "yes" but the observation is "so what, god makes the rules". 

But to me that would be like kicking the  can down the road.

What about babies? What about unbaptized babies? Why would they go to hell? 

 Too many unanswered questions for my taste. I vote for "god does not exist" and all the silly questions go away. And all of a sudden creatures who can think abstractly (us) become the captains of our own intellectual ships.

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FROM "THE OPINIONATOR" TODAY'S NY TIMES

Because a solid majority of Americans accept the gun culture (and almost half say they have a gun at home), the N.R.A. has no need to defend its highly questionable assumption that guns of almost every sort should be widely available. This is why there is little chance — even at this moment of moral pain and outrage — of our passing legislation that will significantly stem gun violence. At best, we will get legislation that works at the margins by, say, making it harder for criminal and mental patients to get guns and to limit availability of some of the most destructive weapons. And the carnage will continue.

Are We Living in a Holographic Universe? This May Be the Greatest Revolution of the 21st Century

What if our existence is a holographic projection of another, flat version of you living on a two-dimensional "surface" at the edge of this universe? In other words, are we real, or are we quantum interactions on the edges of the universe - and is that just as real anyway?

Whether we actually live in a hologram is being hotly debated,  but it is now becoming clear that looking at phenomena through a holographic lens could be key to solving some of the most perplexing problems in physics, including the physics that reigned before the big bang,what gives particles mass, a theory of quantum gravity.

In 1982 a litttle known but epic  event occured at the University of Paris, where a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the Daily Show. In fact, unless you are a physicist you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though increasing numbers of experts believe his discovery may change the face of science. Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with increasingly elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. Bohm was involved in the early development of the holonomic model of the functioning of the brain, a model for human cognition that is drastically different from conventionally accepted ideas. Bohm developed the theory that the brain operates in a manner similar to a hologram, in accordance with quantum mathematical principles and the characteristics of wave patterns.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand that a hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams conflate) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

In a recent collaboration between Fermilab scientists and hundreds of meters of laser may have found the very pixels of reality, grains of spacetime one tenth of a femtometer across.

The GEO600 system is armed with six hundred meters of laser tube, which sounds like enough to equip an entire Star War, but these lasers are for detection, not destruction. GEO600's length means it can measure changes of one part in six hundred million, accurate enough to detect even the tiniest ripples in space time -  assuming it isn't thrown off by somebody sneezing within a hundred meters or the wrong types of cloud overhead (seriously).  The problem with such an incredibly sensitive device is just that - it's incredibly sensitive.

The interferometer staff constantly battle against unwanted aberration, and were struggling against a particularly persistent signal when Fermilab Professor Craig Hogan suggested the problem wasn't with their equipment but with reality itself.  The quantum limit of reality, the Planck length, occurs at a far smaller length scale than their signal - but according to Hogan, this literal ultimate limit of tininess might be scaled up because we're all holograms. Obviously.

The idea is that all of our spatial dimensions can be represented by a 'surface' with one less dimension, just like a 3D hologram can be built out of information in 2D foils.  The foils in our case are the edges of the observable universe, where quantum fluctuations at the Planck scale are 'scaled up' into the ripples observed by the GEO600 team.  We'd like to remind you that although we're talking about "The GEO600 Laser Team probing the edge of reality", this is not a movie.

What does this mean for you?  In everyday action, nothing much - we're afraid that a fundamentally holographic nature doesn't allow you to travel around playing guitar and fighting crime (no matter what 80s cartoons may have taught you.)  Whether reality is as you see it, or you're the representation of interactions on a surface at the edge of the universe, getting run over by a truck (or a representation thereof) will still kill you.

In intellectual terms, though, this should raise so many fascinating questions you'll never need TV again.  While in the extreme earliest stages, with far more work to go before anyone can draw any conclusions, this is some of the most mind-bending metaphysical science you'll ever see.
The Daily Galaxy via twm.co.nz and  newscientist.com

Looking west along the Chesepeake Bay from Chrissfield, Maryland

Something is Wrong Here

THE BISHOP OF KANSAS CITY CONVICTED OF COVERING UP THE SINS OF HIS PEDOPHILE CLERGY

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States have a choice, they can do what Jesus would require of them or they can continue to do what they have been doing. I believe the Church i.e., the ordained clergy was given a second opportunity to behave in a moral manner and like the first opportunity (the years immediately before the Reformation) they again failed. This second time it is fair judge the Church in light of current events and determine whether it is God's one true Church or another bogus and tragic example of evil masked as God's workers on earth. Every Catholic should review why he/she is a Catholic and try to determine if membership in the Church or even faith in God is still an option.

Concerning column in today's NYT by Frank Bruno on the new hit movie "Zero Dark Thirty".

Below find remarks from an invididual who calls himself "ostan" taken from this morning's New York Times.  He is commenting on the value and morality of torture.  Which I consider to be an issue not yet resolved in this country. 

"Many security experts, as the article notes, would disagree that torture "works" as a method of interrogation. There is the problem, most obviously, of misinformation and false confessions produced under duress. The brutalization of suspects can also fuel anti-American sentiment, helping to recruit new jihadists. But, more immportantly, torture is simply horrifyingly wrong, a violation of basic standards of due process and human dignity that can never be justified. That's why it's expressly prohibited the Geneva Conventions and other protocols to which the United States is a signatory. It's more than a leftist truism to say that a case could and should be built against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration for their advocacy of waterboarding and other methods that clearly violated international law and will remain to great shame of our country."

The take-away the reader gets from this, I hope,  is:

"TORTURE IS SIMPLY HORRIFYING WRONG, A VIOLATION OF BASIC STANDARDS OF DUE PROCESS AND HUMAN DIGNITY THAT CAN NEVER BE JUSTIFIED".

That I would even have to post this picture and comment comes as a realization that many Americans believe we can suspend basic rights and protections when it is convenient including individuals of power and influence. Such actions come from fear and the belief that the end can justify the means which is innately immoral. 

My Favorite Cartoon Ever

WHAT IS IT ABOUT CHRIST THAT REPUBLICANS JUST DON'T GET?

My Passing Parade


"The Republicans biggest enemy is this man because he said Heal the Sick, Feed the Hungry, Care for the weakest Among us, and Always pray in private." -From "The Newsroom" on HBO

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  David Evans I am a non-believer, nevertheless I find Jesus' life among the Jews and the world to be a force for the love of man.

  about an hour ago · Like · 1