It Should’ve Been Common Sense

I have read and heard about terrible pranks that get pulled on people which have resulted with bodily harm, property damage, or personal loss. These stories are absolutely horrible. It sickens me that people find amusement in causing others pain. It also seems that these types of occurrences are on the rise. I hear about such terrible things, such as these, happening more and more frequently. Why do people find it so amusing?

Now, I know that anybody can be conned. Nobody is immune to it. No matter how smart a person may be, there will always be a con artist out there that is so good that they can even con the brightest and sharpest individual. I have a lot of sympathy to those who are victims of a con, but I do not have much sympathy for people that can’t simply use their brain and logic in something that “should” be blatantly obvious to anyone.

What am I talking about? Well, I found this news article on The Smoking Gun’s website. Maybe you are familiar with the news story that took place on June 9, 2009. At a Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Conway, Arkansas a prank caller phoned the reception desk posing as an official from Grennel Fire Sprinkler service. The prank caller told the lady at the front desk that there was a problem with the fire sprinkler system and that she had to pull the fire alarm to fix the problem with the sprinkler system. When the fire alarm came on, due to pulling the fire alarm, the prank caller told the receptionist that she needs to smash all the windows in the hotel in order to prevent the water sprinklers from turning on. At this point a customer at the hotel assisted in helping the receptionist break all the windows in the hotel. The prank caller proceeded to tell the receptionist that she now had to physically break one of the water sprinkler heads to prevent them from flooding the hotel. However, by doing this it caused massive amounts of water to flow out of it, flooding the hotel as a result. The customer that was helping her got on the phone with the prank caller to seek advice because he had smashed the windows and the fire alarm had not deactivated. The customer gave the prank caller his mobile phone number so they could keep in touch while the customer was roaming about the hotel trying to help the receptionist. The prank caller then called the customer’s mobile phone and then proceeded to advise him that he needed to find the electrical breaker box and shut down the electricity to the hotel. The customer found an employee and was able to get the employee to unlock the main electrical room and he shut down the main power to the hotel. To make a long story short, the prank caller succeeded in causing an estimated $50,000 worth of damage to the hotel. If you want the full story or if you want to read the police report, which is much more detailed, follow the link I gave at the beginning of this paragraph.

Now, as I said before, anybody can be conned or fooled by someone else. When someone calls over the phone you don’t really have a good way to verify their identity. I don’t blame people for being conned; I do blame people for not using their brain. Let’s think about this logically for a second. If someone called you and told you that the only way to turn off your fire alarm is by smashing your windows would you believe them? What if someone said that the only way to prevent the water sprinkler from turning on is to break the head off of it; would you believe that? If you think about the things that the caller requested that they to do, you will see that the requests are absolutely ridiculous. I don’t care if someone called me and claimed to be the president of the world. If they told me that the only way to prevent a fire is if I drive my car into the elevator and then jump off the roof I wouldn’t do it. Common sense would tell me otherwise. So why can’t people just stop and think once in a while? Even if the caller had truly been an official from the Grennel Fire Sprinkler service or even been a real police officer, since when does smashing windows make a fire alarm deactivate? Since when does breaking the head off of a fire sprinkler prevent it from turning on? What next? I suppose chopping off your right arm will prevent you from aging and drowning kittens will fix your computer problems right?

On top of all of this, I will try to imagine a person that is gullible enough to fall for it; then I find myself baffled by how in the world other people got conned into it as well? There was at least a customer and another employee that were also involved in the chaos. So the prank caller didn’t just con the receptionist, but they conned a customer and another employee. Are people really that dense? What has happened to our minds? I am not the brightest person nor do I consider myself to be very smart, but I at least have “some” common sense. It is possible that someone may con me someday, but this story is absolutely ludicrous!

Can We Believe What We See?

Look at the image above. What do you see? It is the shadow of two people sitting back to back isn’t it? Wrong! It is amazing how our eyes can so easily be fooled into believing we are seeing something that we are not. It certainly looks like two people sitting back to back though. Now this image, as well as the images that follow, were made to intentionally look like shadows of people. However, it is human nature to make sense of things that are completely random such as clouds and smoke taking on familiar forms to us. I don’t think if anyone saw a cloud in the sky shaped like a duck that they would really believe it to be a real duck. I could be wrong, but I certainly hope people are at least intelligent enough to know at least that much.

The images that follow, in this blog post, are not mine; I simply found them while I was browsing the Visual Fun House’s site. From what I read, the human shadow images were made by Tim Noble and Sue Webber and you can view the very same page HERE.

Now, the point I want to make is to pose the question of, “Can we believe everything we see?” Well, can we? What about if we have photographs? Photographs don’t lie or at least that is what I hear people say so often. Well, that is half true. It is true that a photograph won’t embellish upon what the camera saw, we are good enough at doing the embellishing on our own. People have a knack for reading into something what wasn’t originally there. A photograph can take photographs of things that seem one way and in reality they are something else but usually people use common sense and logic to know that what they are seeing isn’t what it seems to be when just purely based on the photograph’s witness alone. For example in the following image of the cat, I believe most logical, thinking people know the cat is merely jumping from one ledge to the other and that the cat, in fact, is not really flying.

People make images similar to the flying cat image rather often. Everyone will jump up into the air and the camera person will snap off a picture at just the right time and it appears as if everyone is suspended in midair.

People are very level-headed and logical when they see images of people suspended in the air or what appears to be a flying cat. Even if it is an image that is hard to explain but is known to be impossible, a logical, thinking individual can form an educated conclusion about how such a phenomenon can happen. An example of this would be this dog walking on water, or is it?

Yet, once the photograph is about something paranormal or supernatural people throw all logic and common sense out the window and openly embrace what they see in the photograph or video as real. I have seen a growing hunger for supernatural and paranormal things in people during recent years. It is like people want to find something that is beyond them or higher than them. Many people hope to find life beyond our solar system. I share some of these feelings. It is nice to think there could be a higher power. It is wonderful to imagine other worlds and other life. I am no stranger to this. I love science as well as science fiction and the dream of space travel. I myself also believe in God. However, despite my beliefs, I at least “try” to look at things objectionably. I analyze things and try to explain things rationally and logically. I am aware that belief in God is something that I cannot prove as real to a skeptic. My belief in God is something I believe on faith. Despite having a faith in God, it does not mean that I just openly accept every single thing that comes my way which may prove His existence. In fact, I would love to prove to people that God exists with indisputable evidence. So if a photograph or a video came my way proving that my God is real it would be wonderful. However, despite how much I would like that, I am not so dense as to try to make something out of a photograph or video that is not there. If someone told me they had a photograph or video that had indisputable proof of the existence of my God, I would look at it objectionably and use my brain and logic to see if it is indeed legit or just wishful thinking.

I personally do not know if aliens exist. I am not going to say they don’t exist because I don’t have any evidence to prove such a claim. I am not going to say they do exist because, as before, I don’t have any evidence to prove that claim either. I have never been to any other planet but Earth so it would be folly for me to say definitively that there are or aren’t extra terrestrial beings living somewhere in the universe.

But what about all of the UFO sightings, isn’t that proof? That is proof that you saw something, it isn’t proof that you saw an alien spaceship. I would like to believe just as much as the next person, but despite my desire to validate or justify a belief I refuse to just shut off analytical thinking. When people see UFO’s, they are exactly that, UNIDENTIFIED Flying Objects. Unidentified means that you do not know what they are. If we knew what they were then they would be IFO’s, Identified Flying Objects. So when you see a photograph or a video of something try to look at it objectionably. Just because there is an object that you cannot identify in the sky it does not mean it is a spaceship from another planet filled with aliens that have come to visit us. There are other explanations for these things.

Yet, despite the evidence, or the lack thereof, people insist that they are right. It is amazing how much a person will insist that an object they observe is an alien spacecraft after they see a photograph or video of something they don’t recognize but it resembles a flying saucer. The following video is a perfect example of how unrelenting people are in their beliefs despite the lack of solid evidence. I know that a faith in God is similar in the sense that I claim that God exists despite physical evidence of His existence. However, I will not claim that a photograph or video are proof of such a thing when they are not. I would love to have evidence to prove my faith in God to be true but I know that I do not have the type of proof that a skeptic would require. That is why it is called faith. So why can’t the people who believe they are seeing aliens also call it faith? They are believing in something they haven’t any definitive proof for. The only proof they have is that they have seen “something” up in the sky that is unidentified. They will say, but there are countless reports from people, countless photographs, and countless videos of UFO’s. Yes, that is true, but you only established that people are seeing objects that we can’t yet identify. There are other explanations other than aliens but many people will refute such a statement with such vehemence. Most people will fight until their dying breath that what they believe they saw is in fact real and they are unwilling to accept or consider anything that is contrary to what they believe.

So this following video is a perfect example of how people are so quick to believe that they are seeing a UFO and very unwilling to back down on their belief even after the evidence is presented to them.

Once again, I am not attempting to prove or disprove the existence of aliens. My point here is to encourage people to stop and think before they jump to their conclusions. This next video has been widely accepted as real until it was found out to be a hoax. Yet, despite the fact that it has been exposed as a fake, so many people still insist that it is real. The original was made by person using the YouTube username of BarzolfF814, but this person disabled the ability to embed the video. So the following video is from someone else’s YouTube account that has also posted a copy of the original on YouTube.

After this previous video was put on YouTube and widely believed to be real another video was released by the maker of the original video to show people that it was done with CG. People were still unwilling to admit that it was not real and they continued to insist it was authentic. It is irritating to me how people reacted to the maker of the video. The person who made the fake CG video tried to prove to everyone that it was a fake by making yet another fake CG video revealing how it was done. Despite the author providing evidence of their craftsmanship many people flamed the creator on forums and in YouTube comments. People were angry that the creator of the videos would even try to suggest it wasn’t real when they claim to know that it is.

Later I found another video on YouTube that evaluates the video and reveals details about how to tell if it is a fake or not. Despite the evidence provided, many people were angry and left hateful and vulgar comments on the video. Why are people so unwilling to back down from their belief that the video is real when it is in fact a fake? No matter how much evidence you put in front of their face, they are still unwilling to accept it and or unable to see it. The following video that I came across on YouTube illustrates this point rather well.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that I am not here to prove or disprove the existence of extra terrestrials. I simply wish people would stop to think sometimes. There truly are things in this world that don’t have explanations. There are videos and photographs that are genuinely real. But that doesn’t mean you should immediately accept everything you see. Just because it looks real doesn’t mean that it is real. And just because you believe you are seeing something it doesn’t mean you are actually seeing what you “think” you are seeing. Like I said before, our mind tries to make sense out of the random. We all make images and meanings out of things that do not have meaning. I feel like the wisdom of people and the ability for people to think rationally and critically is rapidly decreasing worldwide.

Dictionary Definitions

     I know it has been a very long time since I last posted anything on this blog. It is not due to a lack of material, believe me. I have plenty to write about, but I haven’t found the time lately. I have much more I intend to write about and I hope that I can get to it sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, I do have a very short post to add.

     I have helped different people from around the world with English from time to time and as I have helped them to find the meanings of words in dictionaries I have started to notice something strange. In some of their electronic dictionaries they are given definitions that can hardly be regarded as definitions. I don’t know the rules of writing a dictionary definition, but I assume that you have to use detailed descriptions and not be allowed to use the same word to define its own meaning. Am I right or wrong on this? I don’t actually know.

     So for a while now I have been keeping note of words that should have a better description in the dictionary. I won’t mention which dictionaries did this as it is from multiple sources, but tell me if it is just my imagination or is there something wrong with these definitions?

ABORTION: The act of aborting.
ABORT: To undergo an abortion.
DISREGARD: The action of disregarding.

     I am not a dictionary writer, an expert in English, or a professional teacher and even I can see there is something lacking in these definitions. If you were unable to speak the English language or if you didn’t already know the meanings of these words, do you think these are adequate definitions? I would like to know who it is that makes these definitions. However, the next example is even better. Let’s assume that you don’t know the English language at all and you are learning it for the first time. You do not know the meaning to the following words: aversion, antipathy, or repugnance. Now, we know they have similar meanings, but assume you don’t know their meanings at all. This is what I found in a certain dictionary:

AVERSION: Repugnance or antipathy.
ANTIPATHY: Habitual repugnance; aversion.
REPUGNANCE: The state of being repugnant.

     Does that define it for you? You should have a complete understanding of their meanings now. I haven’t seen such terrible definitions in dictionaries before. And these last three definitions are from an American dictionary. What is happening to our language? Are we really unable to define our own words? I wish the definition writers would stop to think how a foreign person will view or understand these definitions. Or what about an American child who is trying to learn these new words for the first time? How can someone learn the meanings of words with definitions like these? This seems so absurd!

Prone To Decay Part III

Prone To Decay Part III

LOVE FOR THIS WORLD

     I don’t understand the love people have for this life and this world. A large majority of people in this world seem to think life is great and they would do anything to continue living this life and in this world. What is so great about this world? What is it that makes people marvel at themselves and at human accomplishment? Are we really that wonderful of a people?

     Most of the advancements and achievements that people take for granted today were only accomplished within the past fifty to one-hundred years or so. What about the previous six-thousand years? Why do older people act so smug and think they know everything when they have only been alive for 50 or 60 years? Wow! A whole 60 years? Big deal! In the history of this world, 60 years is meaningless compared to 6,000 years. Yet so many people act like experts in everything and are so proud of their piece of paper stating that they attended some university.

     People show off their fancy cars, their latest cell phone, the newest video games, their bigger television, their expensive couch, their newly built home, or their latest profitable business venture. The rich constantly look down on the poor people as if they are far superior to a poor person, yet when they lose everything and are unable to survive as a poor person, they commit suicide. And if they become rich again, they so quickly forget what it was like to be poor and continue on in life without having learned any life lessons. But even among people of equal financial standing they continuously turn a blind eye to their neighbor and do nothing to help them unless it is profitable to themselves. In fact, there is not one person in the entire world with a pure heart or noble interests. Even if someone is convinced that they are a good person and put others first they cannot deny their human nature. It is our nature to be selfish and to desire fame and glory. It is something as built into us as breathing air. We cannot avoid the fact that we need to breathe oxygen to live. So even the most selfless people who sacrifice so much for others also desires to be recognized or thanked at least. Or deep down, the person may want to be repaid someday or for people to feel indebted to them. They may not realize this or believe this about themselves because it is buried down deep inside. This is the truth of human nature. There is nobody that is “truly” good, no, not one. People care most about themselves and their own riches and belongings more than they do about another person. This has always been and will always be despite what people like to say about how we are becoming better people in an ever improving world. Do we all really enjoy living in a world where generosity isn’t truly genuine and what little generosity exists is hard to come by? Do we love being with people who say they have our backs when really they just have their own? Does it bring comfort to us to have friends that would do anything for us but in reality they just want to look noble and be known as a selfless person when deep down they are selfish and only help others to make themselves look good? Is humanity really improving? Are we going to ascend to a higher plain of existence someday and be beings of pure love, light, and energy? I doubt this very much.

     People are so enamored by this world and the things in it. People flock to shopping malls and buy the latest fashion. They spend an extraordinarily high amount of money to get a popular name brand item. People get together to talk about the latest movies or what the movie stars are doing. And everyone gets wrapped up with things, pleasures, and fleeting delights that have no long term meaning or value. When looking back on history, does anybody actually care what brand of clothing someone wore or what cell phone they used? Yet people put such a high value on it and people get discriminated against just for having something different or just being different.

     People are constantly bragging about human accomplishments. I hear about the ongoing competition between the countries of the world on who can hold the record of the world’s tallest structure, the largest flagpole, the biggest shopping mall and the list can go on. Who cares? No really, who really cares? What’s so great about any of this? Am I the only one that is not impressed by humankind’s “so called” accomplishments? And despite how grand of a structure we may build, one little earthquake can bring it to ruin in mere moments. Our greatest jets can be brought down by birds or air currents. Our greatest submarines still cannot go to the deepest parts of the ocean without being crushed by the pressure. Our own spaceships and satellites break down, crash, and blowup. Yet, mankind marvels at himself and pats himself on the back for these great accomplishments. Mankind seems to be blind to the fact that we are weak and falling apart and our greatest and most noble efforts are like dust in the wind. I believe there is a song about that.

     And despite all of our accomplishments we as a world continue to be unable to solve world hunger, suffering, poverty, racism, and war. I honestly don’t believe it is possible that these things will ever end. Human beings are greedy and selfish and the only way these things would end is if people lost their ego problem, swallowed their pride, and became selfless. Yet, this world becomes more and more selfish and self centered all the time. It is becoming more and more a world of “I” and “me”. I have seen countless arguments and petty bickering over the stupidest things just because one or both members are just being selfish and think they are right and the other is wrong. So many people are unwilling to open their eyes to who they really are. People can’t honestly evaluate themselves and see who and what they truly are. So many just want to live in a fantasy world and believe they are good people because they haven’t done something as bad as their neighbor down the street.

     What’s sad about all of this is that all of these people think they are good people and they believe that they are getting better and the world is getting better. A popular belief now is that the world is becoming greater and greater and the human race is becoming smarter, healthier, stronger, and wiser. Yet the opposite is true. Life spans, as a whole, are shortening despite whatever statistics someone may want to throw at you. There has been more deaths in war in the past century than all the previous centuries combined. Crime rates have skyrocketed and violent crimes are becoming more and more frequent. Catastrophes in the news seem to be common place now. It was in the news recently about the man who lost his job and murdered his wife and kids before killing himself too. I was watching a news broadcast that talked down the incident and mocked the man as if he was so stupid because it was “just” a job. They implied, “Just go get another one.” They also implied that there were no other problems and nothing else going on in his life that would have made him do that. Did they ever stop to think that he could have been struggling with lots of things and this was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”? And in the current economy with so many people losing their jobs and the unemployment rate being so high, how could he have just gone and got another job so easily? How could he find a job that paid as much as he was making at the hospital to support his entire family? But the news broadcaster acted like it is such an easy thing to do. It amazes me how much people lack compassion or understanding and how quick a person is to give their easy “solve all” answers to life’s hardest problems and questions.

     More recent stories are like the stories I read in the news about all the people that were beat up, fought, trampled, and even killed during the Black Friday shopping. Mothers were fighting and punching each other over a toy. Grown men were pulling guns out and having a shootout and both mutually killed each other in the process. People were taking toys out of someone else’s cart and then getting hospitalized because they were beaten almost to death. There is also the story of the man who got trampled to death by customers when he was trying to open the doors of the store to let them in. After the customers trampled him to death, none of them showed any care or concern for him or what they had done. In fact, when the police came to the store and informed everyone they were closing the store because it was now a crime scene, the customers were outraged and justified themselves by saying that they had been waiting outside for hours and the police had no right to kick them out and close the store “just” because they killed someone. The employees spoke about the event in an interview and said the people were acting like savages and when the employees tried to help their fellow worker, they also were trampled and nobody would allow them to help the poor man that got trampled to death.

     People act like uncivilized savages most of the time and throughout most of their day and then they have the audacity to claim that they are good people and that the world is a good and wonderful place as they show you the new gadget they bought at such a great deal despite the fact they killed someone in the process to get it. But maybe it is okay to kill someone if you get an iPod out of it right? Most people would scoff at such a suggestion but that is exactly the mentality of the people who trampled the man to death at the store on Black Friday.

     I have a friend who lives in a certain country where everybody cheats, robs, and steals from anyone they can. They do the most despicable things and don’t think they did anything wrong. And they capitalize on every possibility to earn money. For example, the people in this country believe that if someone dies in a car accident then it means that person’s luck has just run out. So if there is a fatal car accident, the people on the road will call everyone they know about the accident and people will flock to the scene of the accident and try to steal something from the car because they believe that the person’s luck has left them and is moving on and the people want to catch the luck so they can become prosperous. They even use that person’s license plate number in the lottery because they believe those numbers will bring them fortune. They have no concern for the casualty at all. In this same country, there are people who own towing companies. They will take their tow trucks and hide them near the road and then oil the street so that the cars will come down the street and wreck. After the car wrecks, the tow truck is instantly there to offer their services. I know somebody who completely smashed up the car and was injured but no help was given to this person; the towing company just wanted the person’s business and nothing more. They did not offer the person any medical aid or call for help. And when the person called the hospital it took the ambulance over an hour to arrive when it was so close to the hospital yet the mother of this person was able to arrive in 15 minutes and she lived much farther away from the accident than the location of the hospital. But we live in a great world though don’t we? This same country has a phone company that sends at least ten SPAM messages per day to all of the people that use their phone service. Then later they will send a message that says, “Don’t want to get SPAM? Pay us this much money every month and we won’t send you SPAM anymore.” That reminds me of the crime shows where the criminals will go into a business establishment and tell the owner that they will protect that business for a fee and if the owner doesn’t want to pay the fee they will be the ones to prove that the owner needs “protection”.

     It was in the news not too long ago about a babysitter that made a pornographic movie with a two year old child while the parents were away. Then it was in the news about a teenager who murdered his mother because she took a video game away from him. And there was a six year old child who shot his father and his father’s friend killing both of them. Then there was a news report about a whole line of miscellaneous toys that were deathly toxic by containing arsenic and mercury. Those are extremely lethal elements and are being put into toys. But I guess that doesn’t matter right? I mean, they are making such high profits; it doesn’t matter if some children die right? This story relates back to an older story of a car company who had a defective minivan. The minivan’s back door would come open really easily and many children were falling out the back door and dying. The company was being sued and asked to recall their minivans and fix this problem. The car company refused to recall the vans and fix them because they said, “It is cheaper for us to pay the lawsuits for each court case than it is for us to fix all of our minivans.” So all the deaths of the children that fall out of the back of the van is okay because it is cheaper than fixing the problem, according to them.

     There was a very similar story to this in the most recent news. Did you hear about the company called Peanut Corp. that intentionally sold products that were proven to have Salmonella in them and they even sold products that they didn’t even test? The motive behind it all is money. It is cheaper to sell it all and then deal with lawsuits than it is to pay money for testing or to pay money for recalling the items. As of February 7, 2009 there have been at least eight deaths and 575 people sick from this. But at least they got their money. The health and safety of people takes a back seat to profits and so what if people sue them and win? At least it is cheaper than correcting or preventing the problem. It’s all about meeting budgets and cutting costs. You people need to think more about being efficient with your spending budgets. People’s lives and health are expendable and are a necessary collateral. Didn’t you know that? And this very thing could happen to any of us, but we don’t care about the problem until it is at our own door.

     Haven’t heard about these stories? Check the news! These stories are becoming more and more common. These things are happening more and more frequently and are in the news very often now. I didn’t even look very hard for these news reports, there is such an abundance of them that only a blind and deaf person could possibly go without noticing them. Everyone just turns a blind eye to all of this and they love to live in their fantasy world and believe life is great. People go about their lives oblivious while they play their video games, watch their television shows, and gossip with their friends about what the celebrities are doing while shopping for their name brand clothes.

     The downhill drop of everything exists even in the medical field as well. I among many thousands of people have had bad experiences with hospitals. Many have had the impression that doctors don’t want to even take the time to listen to their medical problem. The doctor will cut you off mid sentence and quickly write you a prescription for some kind of drug that has worse side effects than the problem you are trying to fix. But on top of that are the prices they charge for their services or the lack thereof. Countless people are thousands of dollars in debt and have had their credit ruined just from hospital bills alone. But that isn’t all, it gets worse. I have been scammed by hospitals so many times myself. I distinctly remember being in the hospital and a doctor, that was not my assigned doctor, walked into my room followed by four other doctors. The other four doctors stood at the door as the lead doctor of this gang verbally asked me, “How are you feeling?” I said that I was doing okay and then he and the other four walked out the door. Later, I received a bill from EACH of those five doctors charging me $300 a piece for having “checked up on me”. So I had to pay a total of $15,000 just because one single doctor verbally asked me how I was doing and didn’t even touch me, look at my chart, or observe my stats, or anything else that a concerned doctor would do. Not to mention the other four that stood at the door barely peeking into the room, what is it that they did which warrants me paying each of them $300 a piece? Maybe the single doctor that asked the question could argue his point to merit his bill but how can the other four say they checked up on me? And none of them were even supposed to be there.

     Another time I had a doctor intentionally not prescribe me enough medicine to fix my condition. I have friends and relatives that are in the medical field. The doctor gave me half the amount he should have given me so I would have to pay money for a second visit. And on the second visit he prescribed one-fourth the amount I needed so I would have to visit him a third time. So in the end I paid a total of about $1,000 in doctor visits when only one single doctor visit would have been necessary. These types of examples are endless. I have many more stories I could tell of my own experiences and a large majority of people have experienced this same thing. It is becoming common knowledge that the medical field is now for the sake of making money and not concerned with helping people. There have been news reports about people dying in hospitals more and more frequently these days because of the lack of sanitation and due to irresponsibility. Also, I know doctors who have told me that they are required to prescribe a certain amount of specific drugs because the hospital gets financial support by the pharmaceutical companies. If they do not prescribe a certain quota of the drug, they will not get their financial funding. Other doctors have admitted that they have prescribed certain drugs to people that don’t even need it in order to meet this quota to get financial backing at their hospital. There have been news reports about people that have been prescribed drugs that have nothing to do with their problem just because the doctors have to do it. So I guess the moral of this story is that the hospital needs money and the end justifies the means.

     So once again I pose the question, “What is so great about this world?” What is it about this life that people love so much and will do anything to protect it? Why do people think the world is becoming a better place and everything is improving and becoming greater despite the lack of evidence of such a claim? Rather, on the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence to support just the opposite but people turn a blind eye or stick their head in the sand. What is it that constitutes such behavior? Is this deep love for this world merited?

     I have written two previous chapters to my “Prone to Decay” series. My point in all of this is to show that everything is falling apart and becoming chaotic. Nothing gets better on its own. And by nothing I mean nothing. Language is falling apart, morals, ethics, health, governments, economy, knowledge, and so much more. I wanted to write about each and every topic but it an exhaustive study to prove something that many don’t want to see or admit. People want to be ignorant. People choose to not see and nothing you show them will convince them otherwise. I think it is so foolish for people to believe that our lives, human nature, and the world are becoming better every day. There is more evidence than I could ever write about to prove that everything is falling apart. It is a scientific law that everything moves to a state of chaos and decay. Everything breaks down, falls apart, molds, rots, rusts, decays, fades, and weakens with time. Nothing improves by itself. And there is ample evidence that people are not improving themselves or this world despite what they tell themselves and try to make themselves believe. So what if someone drops a penny in a donation jar? So what if you wear a ribbon on AIDS awareness day? So what if you stand outside with a picket sign to protest something? Did any of these things actually make a difference? People feed themselves this lie that they are making a difference by just wearing a ribbon or giving a penny. It is sad that people can only part with one single penny to help someone starving but they will spend hundreds of dollars for a game console or video games. People will wear a ribbon but won’t actually give money to fund research or give food to someone starving. People will stand on a street in a crowd and hold a sign up, but they won’t actually get their hands dirty and do something about a problem. This world is full of people that live in a fantasy and want to believe they are good people and believe they are making a difference. Maybe that is how they cope with life. Maybe that is how they find a reason to get up in the morning. Maybe that is how each person can look at themselves in a mirror. But for me, I am not blind to all of this. I do not claim to be a good person. I do not pretend to be making a difference in the world. And I certainly do not believe that this world is becoming a better place and that people are so great as we evolve to a higher plain of existence someday. Stop to think about all of this. Take the blinders off of your eyes and honestly evaluate your own heart and ask yourself: What is it that I believe?

Prone To Decay Part II

Prone To Decay Part II

A CURSED WORLD?

     I previously wrote about everything in the universe being in a state of chaos and decay. I wrote about the reality that everything is falling apart and moving towards disorder. I wrote about the scientific law called The Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that everything in existence tends towards disorder, chaos, and decay. It had recently come to my mind that everything does seem to be falling apart, even language itself. See my previous post to learn more about what I wrote on that topic.

     I am continuing my series on the fact that everything is prone to decay. My future posts may be deeper and more serious so I thought I would throw in a light hearted post to offset the gloom and doom feeling I will be broadcasting in the upcoming posts.

     Do you ever wonder why everything seems to go wrong so often? Do you ever stop to think about why something seems to go wrong at the most inconvenient times? Or maybe you have heard the saying, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” This is commonly called Murphy’s Law. This philosophy has been among humanity for so long because it is so true and so many people can see it in their day to day lives. Why can’t things go wrong at a more convenient time? It always seems that when one thing goes wrong multiple other things go wrong at the same time. There is another saying that goes, “When it rains it pours.” The saying, “Famous last words.” is also related to the same kind of philosophy. It is related to someone saying that something will never happen and then it does. It is so strange that life works like this. When you have important assignment with a deadline, then that is the time your computer will crash. It couldn’t crash the day after the report was finished, it has to happen during the moments you are trying to save it to disk or print it.

     Most of my life I have never understood it or thought more deeply about it until recent days. I do believe it is related to the fact that everything falls apart. And without someone or something to help with the upkeep all things would eventually rot away, rust, erode, and decay to nothing. Our Earth and environment are falling apart and though people blame it on the human race, this would still happen even in our absence. Everything is slowing down, drifting away, and dying off in the known universe. Nothing seems to be getting better or improving and the only way to keep things going is to constantly be trapped in the cycle of rebuilding, repairing, and replenishing everything. It is so evident that we live a broken existence, so why do so many people love this world and cling to it as if it were precious gold?

     I recently came upon a list of ironic things that always seem to happen, but if you stop to think about it, it does seem to be true. This list of events makes me stop and scratch my head as I ask myself why this is. For example, how many of you have noticed when you are repairing your car and you have grease all over your hands that it is this precise time that you have to scratch your nose? How about when you want someone to notice you or you do something amazing but nobody seems to see it, yet the moment you do something embarrassing or stupid, everyone seems to see it? Or on a similar line of thought, when you do something amazing and when you are asked to do it again you cannot, but as soon as the witnesses walk away you are able to do it again. It seems so strange or ironic that people you intentionally try to call or contact over the phone so often cannot be reached, but when you accidentally dial the wrong number you will never get a busy signal because somebody always picks up. Or how about the people out there who get to work late and make up a story by telling the boss that they had a flat tire and then the next day they are late again because this time they really did get a flat tire? Isn’t it so ironic? How could this happen so often to so many people?

     Now these things are being written with a light hearted tone to them. These are not meant to be evidence or anything other than me trying to point out the irony of life on this planet. The irony of the things that can go wrong and how things do seem to go wrong for most people is universal. I haven’t met many people who have not experienced these same things. How about when you are in a traffic jam and you change lanes and immediately after you change lanes the lane you were previously in finally starts moving? I remember a similar scene from the movie “Office Space” that portrayed this experience so well. It was a very funny scene in the movie to laugh at but it is so true and always does seem to happen, and the problem compounds when you are in a hurry or late for something. Am I right? You know this happens! Or when you are fully immersed in water by taking a bath or a shower, you are brushing your teeth, or you are shaving, that is when the phone will ring. When a mechanical or electronic device malfunctions it seems to work fine when you take it to the repair shop and the technician looks at it. After the technician tells you there is nothing wrong with it and you bring it home, it stops working again. You can go out and never run into anyone you know until you are doing something embarrassing or you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with then you will inevitably cross paths with people that know you. When you discover a product or a television show you really like they will discontinue it. When you are sick and you make an appointment to see a doctor you always get better before the appointment, but if you don’t make an appointment to see the doctor you remain sick. Or you can be obsessed with safety and always buckle up in the car out of fear of getting in a car accident and for years you have faithfully buckled your seatbelt and nothing has ever happened, but the one time you don’t do it you get in a car accident. Or you always drive the speed limit and the one time you decide to speed you get caught by the police.

     Now granted, these are humorous examples of daily frustrations and silly things that happen to us. They are not really worthy to be called proof that things are falling apart. But they do give a light hearted example of how things often don’t work out the way we expect them to nor do they work out the way they should. Things should work out and they often times don’t. My explanation for this is related to living in a cursed world but that is on more of a spiritual topic and this post isn’t centered on spiritual things per say.

     I do believe we live in a fallen and cursed world, however, and everything will always fall apart and go wrong without someone to set things right. Nothing maintains itself and nothing gets better without it being made better. This is something for you to chew on before the next post.

Prone To Decay Part I

Prone To Decay Part I

LANGUAGE

     This new post of mine is going to be quite large so I plan to break it down into multiple posts. This post is still grounded in science but will now spill over into other subjects. There are many things I have observed and have thoughts about and they all relate to one single scientific law. There are many scientific laws such as the law of gravity, for example. A scientific law is an independently and sufficiently verified description of a direct link between the cause and effect of a phenomenon, deduced from experiments and/or observations. Also called laws of science, scientific laws are considered established and universally applicable to certain class of things or phenomenon under appropriate conditions. There are scientific laws of Thermodynamics and The Second Law of Thermodynamics in essence states that everything in existence tends towards chaos and disorder. It is a tested and proven fact that everything gets worse not better. The only way something can be improved is with direct intervention by an outside variable of some sort. Everywhere around us we all can look and see this scientific law being enacted in all that we see and come into contact with. We all age, everything dies at some point, things rot, metal rusts, food molds, paint fades, faces wrinkle, hair becomes gray, sight becomes blurry, things fall apart, cars break down, hearts fail, lungs collapse, etc. The list can go on and on. I believe I made my point that everything becomes disorderly, chaotic, and falls apart without some other variable to repair, replenish, or put things back in place.

     I’ve always thought about this fact in a material sense. I think about houses that need new roofs or cars that rust or about the faded wallpaper in a house. But with the way the world is I also have now realized that this law seems to be true for ethics, morals, language, business practices, knowledge, health, and so much more. I would like to write about each of these topics, not necessarily in that order.

     One of these topics that have bothered me the most lately is the realization that language is also falling apart and people’s ability to communicate is weakening. I am prey to this problem as well. I make plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes of my own. I am certainly not claiming to have it all together but I have taught English to many students and my wife teaches English at a university and the things I have seen have absolutely amazed me, much to my chagrin.

     The first year university students that my wife teaches were handpicked and given scholarships to attend a university. For all intents and purposes, I will keep it as anonymous as possible. These students were chosen because they are considered to be the smartest and brightest of all the students in their class. They have not begun their field of study yet but most of them have expressed that they plan to become scholars or lawyers after graduating from the university. My wife teaches an English course at this university. Her students are self-proclaimed geniuses and experts. They constantly brag about how smart they are and act like they are better than all the other students by showing off that they are in school on a scholarship. The students are so arrogant that they have the audacity to tell the teacher that she is wrong and argue with her over their answers. I have seen some of the homework from these students and it is absolutely horrible. If I were their teacher, I would flunk all of them.

     Their recent assignment was to write a report about genetically modified food and its effects on people. Here are just a few example sentences of what they wrote in their reports:

“For instance genetically modified food has been done by modification of food that is to put nutrient into the food.”

“It can causes.”

“By doing genetically modified food.”

“All the political people are agree with them.”

“Many of us still blur and do not concern on the harmful effects of GM food.”

“Genetic engineering concept have been used for centuries.”

     Now keep in mind, these are what the students consider to be complete sentences. They have also argued with my wife that their answers are correct and that they should be given more points on their homework and tests. Yet, that is only an example of how the best of the best write sentences. Let’s look at how they spell:

Difficultness [Difficult]
Wet her [Whether]
Faulties [Faults]
Outcompete [Outperform]
Dissolvency [Dissolve]
Dramastically [Dramatically]
Genenetic [Genetic]
Futher [Further]
Prsue [Pursue]
Encomposed [Encompassed]
Porfit [Profit]
Salvation [Starvation]
Statisfied [Satisfied]
Enchane [Enhance]
Shelter Life [Shelf Life]
Aravle [Available]
Inserts [Insect]
Inexact [Inaccurate]
Majoritically [Majority]
Hawt [Hot]

     This is just a small portion of the massive amount of mistakes my wife has had to mark. Yet, the students proclaim to be experts at English and want to be lawyers and scholars. I have one last example and this is one of the most tragic. A test was given to them and on this test was a fill-in-the-blank section. The sentence had a blank after the word “leap”. Please note, this is not the actual sentence, but I am making up an example sentence to portray what the essence of the question was. “In the world today, modern technology is rapidly advancing. From what the technology used to be, computers have taken a huge leap __________ in such a short time.” Okay now, do you want to know what the class wrote as their answers? The following are seven of the answers given by the students:

1: Leap Performances
2: Leap Dash
3: Leap Off
4: Leap Action
5: Leap To
6: Leap Frogged
7: Leap Frogging

     But enough with the university students, this problem permeates everything, even the media. I can’t count how many times I have read articles online and found spelling or grammar mistakes in the news articles. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no wiz at English. In fact, I consider myself to be quite bad at English. English is a difficult language and there are many things about English I simply don’t know or I have forgotten over the years, especially in the realm of vocabulary. I have forgotten a lot of vocabulary. But when it comes to the television media, news articles, newspapers, movies, and books, these things should be checked by an editor. There are people that are paid to check for mistakes and if mistakes get past them they aren’t doing their job. Everybody makes mistakes when they write but a professional source employs professional editors to check for mistakes and to make sure none exist.

     For example, it was just in the news about Michael Jackson not showing up to court because he is sick, again. If you visit the site via this link you will see a couple of errors right away. Look at the third small paragraph. It says, “It would be unwise for him to travel, given what’s he’s got now…” The word “what’s” should be “what”. And the very next line is wrong too. In the next line, “for the obvious reasons” should read, “for obvious reasons”. I was a bit surprised that there were two mistakes in the first three small paragraphs. I didn’t even continue reading the article, I just stopped right there.

Commonly Misused Words and Phrases

     The link provided above is an article I read online just a few days ago. The article is well written and has a lot of insightful information. I highly suggest reading it. It has some great information in it. It is on the topic of English words and phrases that most people misuse or don’t truly understand. It is amazing how many words and phrases people use wrongly. But the irony of this article is that the writer is trying to correct these English mistakes and makes an English mistake of their own. Oh, the irony. If you look at the fourth word in the article, “peruse” and read the first sentence you will see a mistake. The sentence reads, “I think everyone falls pray to conflicting nature of peruse—and it’s no wonder.” The word “pray” should be spelled as “prey”.

     Now, I don’t even have to touch the topic of blogs, chat programs, online community sites, chat rooms, and forums. Many people have noticed how horrible the English found at these sources can be. It ranges from bad punctuation to the lack of punctuation entirely. These posts also show a range from the lack of capitalizing letters to writing in all caps. There is a mixture of bad grammar, poor spelling, and just simply writing with acronyms. Then there is the topic of “1337”. Don’t even get me started on that. It has become a language all of its own. The sad thing is when I see people that use “1337” in school reports, presentations, or even job résumé’s. Believe it or not, I have even met people who speak with “1337” in their daily conversations. These same people mock you and ridicule you for having proper English because they think that they are right and you are wrong. This happens when you use words they are unfamiliar with and they treat you as if you are stupid when in fact they are the ones that can’t speak proper English.

     This post is already very long and I could go on and on with examples. I have seen so many things that are so absolutely absurd that I can’t believe what it is that I am experiencing. The English language has taken a huge plummet over recent years and seems to be spinning rapidly out of control as it continues to get worse.

     The intriguing thing about this is that it is not limited to English. I have friends who speak many other languages and I have friends who are from many other countries; all of them have told me that even in their own languages it has begun to decay and people don’t know how to speak or write properly anymore. Another phenomena taking place is the meaning of words changing. It is mind boggling to see how many languages have new slang words that have a different literal meaning than the slang meaning. This type of occurrence is something that has just taken off in recent years. Languages have always changed and evolved over time, but it is now evident of how much languages are falling apart and now becoming meaningless and confusing.

     I have learned that older versions of the English language are much more descriptive. Today many words change their meaning based on their context. If someone says, “That’s hot!” you won’t know if they mean that it is spicy, hot to touch, popular, or sexy, unless you know the context of the phrase. Just like the word “love”. Love could mean a romantic love, erotic love, brotherly love, or affection. I have studied foreign languages and it is amazing how some languages are very descriptive and have different words for almost everything. With a language that is very descriptive it is easier to get very specific and clear, but to do this in English you need supporting words to form the context in order to know the meaning of the specific word being used.

     Depending on what era you are from, you could find yourself confused with vocabulary as well. Many words have changed their meaning over time. For example, the word “let” used to mean, “to hinder” but now it means “to allow”. The word “Queer” used to mean “strange”, “gay” used to mean “happy”, and “fag” used to mean “cigarette”. Use any of those words now and you will see they have a completely new meaning. If you want a cigarette and you say, “I want a fag.” or if you see a strange person walking around and you say, “That person is queer.” or you feel happy and you tell your friends, “I am gay.”; you will discover a completely different reaction than what you were expecting and find people believing things about you that aren’t necessarily true.

     Lastly, I would like to point out how the English language has become corrupted, dirty, and perverse in recent years. There were so many things you used to be able to say and nobody would bat an eye, but if you say it now you will be accused of being a pervert or sexually harassing somebody. Very common and innocent words have now become iffy. You have to chose your words carefully and think about how someone might take it. The name Richard is a prime example of this. Most people know that Dick is a shortened way of saying Richard; however, if you holler to somebody and say, “Hey Dick!” you may find yourself with an unexpected reaction. If you are trying to set up an appointment with somebody and you ask them, “So when can you come?” you may hear people snicker as if you said something funny. The list can go on and on with examples of how many words have a dirty, perverse, or sexual connotation to it nowadays. The words used to be seen as clean and innocent. There is clear evidence of a rapid decay of languages spoken globally. It is not just limited to English and it is such a tragic thing to behold.

     So this is just one example of how the Second Law of Thermodynamics is truly at work. Everything is moving towards disorder and chaos. Everything is falling apart, rotting, and decaying. I previously, hadn’t noticed that it stretches and penetrates every aspect of existence. Everything is falling apart and deteriorating, even language. And with this in mind, it is so ironic that people think the world and everything in it are improving. You really believe that?

The Age Of The Universe?

     All of the topics in my blog thus far have been science related. I do not intend for my entire blog to be science topics, but so many questions pop into my mind when I learn of new scientific data. In this blog post I am not seeking to prove or disprove evolution or to say who is right or wrong. I simply want the reader to stop and think about the facts before coming to their conclusion. Some people believe the universe is billions of years old and some people believe the universe is under seven-thousand years old. Regardless of who is right or wrong, there are many different views on scientific data. I simply just want to take a look at the facts and think about the facts logically.

     In regards to the age of everything in our universe there are certain things that would be limiting factors. For example, if you find a sunken ship in the ocean with a chest of coins on it and you look at the dates of these coins, these dates will determine a limiting factor of when the ship sank. If there is a coin with a date that says 1475, another coin’s date that says 1620, and lastly a coin with the date of 1730 on it, then you will know that the ship could not have sank before 1730. You do not know the exact date it sank because there isn’t any more information to work with, but you know it couldn’t have sank before 1730. The 1730 coin is now the limiting factor.

     So it may not be possible to know the exact age of the universe or how long the Earth has been in existence, but there are limiting factors. One such factor is the spiral galaxies themselves. Let’s look at the scientific facts only. It is a scientific fact that there are spiral armed galaxies in the universe. It is a fact that we live in such a galaxy. It is a fact that the galaxies are spinning. It is a fact that the galaxies are spinning faster on the inside and spin slower the further you get to the outside edge of that galaxy. Those are all the facts. So with these facts come the conclusions. Well, a scientist can tell you that at the rate of speed the galaxy is spinning and the fact that it is spinning faster in the center – and if the universe were really billions of years old – there would not be any spiral arm galaxies in existence. Because of this fact, the spiral arm galaxies would have lost their arms long ago.

     Another strange fact is the fact that the planets in our solar system are radiating heat and are in the process of cooling off. This is a real and proven scientific fact. It is also a fact that the planets receive heat from the sun. It is a fact that the planets radiate much more heat than they ever acquire from the sun. If the solar system were billions of years old, the planets could not possibly be radiating this kind of heat.

     Jupiter has a moon that is named Ganymede. Ganymede has a very strong magnetic field. Science has record of the known fact that magnetic fields are generated by the liquid motion of molten metal inside of a body. Because of known and proven scientific facts, Ganymede should have cooled solid billions of years ago but it hasn’t.

     One recent scientific fact that I learned of really got me thinking. Did you know that Saturn’s rings are unstable and moving away from the planet? This is also a scientific fact. If Saturn’s rings are moving farther and farther away from the planet, then you can logically conclude that if Saturn is billions of years old it would not have any rings.

     Or let’s take the moon as an example. The moon is known to collect space dust because its own gravitational pull as it circles the Earth. Scientists calculated that the moon would accumulate approximately an inch of dust every 1,000 years. When building the landing craft for the moon landing, that took place on July 20th 1969, it was built with wide disks at the base of its legs to disperse the weight of the craft to prevent it from falling through the space dust that has collected on the moon all of these years. Over 500 million people worldwide watched this event on television when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, and seeming surprises, made a comment about the ground being solid. This is a recorded fact and was witnessed by many. The audio file of this event can be found online. During the trip to the moon, samples of the dirt and space dust were taken. When the space dust was measured, there was only six inches of space dust. The scientists were right about their calculations that the moon gains an inch of dust every 1,000 years, so why did the moon only have six inches of dust? This puts a limiting factor of 6,000 years on the moon’s existence.

     Or to continue with the topic of the moon; did you know that the Earth is slowly losing the moon? As the moon circles the Earth, it gradually moves farther and farther away. Scientists are aware of this and it is another recorded fact. The moon moves about three inches farther away from the Earth each year. As large as the moon and Earth are, you may think, “Three inches? What difference does three inches make? That is so insignificant!” No, on the contrary, if you do the math and calculate it out you will find that the moon could not have been here more than a few thousand years before it would be so close to the Earth that no life could exist, when calculating the effects of its drifting away. As we all know, the moon affects life on Earth in many ways; one of the main ways is through the ocean tides.

     Mankind has known about comets for many years down through history. The tail of a comet is nothing more than particles and pieces of the comet breaking off and deteriorating. Scientists have calculated that a comet’s life expectancy is approximately 10,000 years. So if the universe is billions of years old there should no longer be any comets. So why do we still have comets? This phenomena alone limits the universe to being 10,000 years old.

     The Earth’s magnetic field is getting weaker and weaker all the time. The Earth’s magnetic strength has declined 10% just in the past 150 years. This fact alone now limits the Earth’s age to a maximum of 25,000 years old.

     The Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour, but the Earth is slowing down by one second per day. If the Earth were billions of years old it would have been spinning so fast that nothing could live on the surface. In fact, the winds alone would be at speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour due to the Coriolis Effect.

     The Sahara Desert is another limiting factor. To know more about this just read my very first blog post. The Sahara Desert, alone, puts a 5,000 year cap on the desert itself.

     These days, the economy and prices of gasoline are a constant headline in the news. But did you ever stop to think about where our gasoline and oil come from? Yes, obviously, they come from beneath the ground. It is commonly known that the oil underneath the Earth’s surface is under extreme pressure and when people drill for oil, the oil bursts up to the surface and shoots out like a giant fountain. It is logical to conclude that “some” of that pressure is obviously from the weight of the rocks and dirt of the Earth bearing down on top of it. However, the weight of all the rock and earth, alone, could not hold all of that oil down for very long. In fact, scientists have stated that the weight of the earth on top of the oil, alone, could only hold the oil down, under pressure, for a maximum of 10,000 years. So if the Earth were billions of years old, there would not be any more pressure to hold the oil down anymore and it would have already risen to the surface.

     It is another proven fact that the population of the Earth is increasing. Over time censuses have been taken to record the population of people on the Earth. Historians and archaeologists have found documentation and records of censuses taken and ancient historians records of populations during their times. Approximately, 2,000 years ago there were about 250 million people living on the Earth at that time. By 1800, there were now 1 billion people on Earth. In 1930 we reached the 2 billion mark. In 1962 we were at 3 billion people. By the year 2000, the Earth now had a population of 6 billion people. So in just a mere 200 years, the Earth went from 1 billion people to 6 billion people. Now, this is much easier math to calculate here. If the population can multiply by six, in just 200 years and if man has really been on the Earth for 3 million years like the theories in the textbooks say, then by now there would be 150,000 people per square inch covering the entire world. As you most likely know, that just isn’t possible.

     So in conclusion, the question stands, “How old is everything in this universe?” I leave it up to you to come to your own opinion on that. I do not know how old the universe is. The only thing I know are the scientific facts that have been publically revealed to the world through science. And from the facts, people have come to entirely polar opposite conclusions from these facts. Some people believe everything is billions of years old and some people believe that everything is less than 7,000 years old. What you want to believe is up to you. I am attempting to be unbiased in my blog post here by simply stating scientific facts and not my opinions.

The Big Bang Theory

     I am not a scientist and I have a very limited knowledge of scientific subjects, which may be why I have all the unique questions that I have. When I was a child I was taught that in the beginning there was originally nothing and then nothing exploded in what is known as the Big Bang theory, and everything that exists today came from that. At the time I was taught this I didn’t question it or think about it at all. I mean I was just a child, who was I to question what the teachers taught me? I remember very clearly reading a textbook in high school named “The Origin of the Universe”. This textbook was an HBJ General Science book from 1989. I remember it so clearly; it had a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on it. In chapter 17.6 on page 362 it says, “In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago. This theory of the origin of the universe is called the Big Bang theory.”

     Being so young, I didn’t know any better, but when you stop and think about what the textbook says, it really doesn’t seem very logical. Now, I know the Big Bang theory is exactly that, a theory, but theories should have some sort of logic or observable evidence to it. How do you have nothing and then nothing explodes causing everything to come into existence from nothing exploding?

     Once again, I am not a scientist and I am not saying the Big Bang theory is true or not, I am simply just trying to make “logical” sense of the things I have been taught. However, I know that 1989 was a very long time ago and the theory has been updated since then. Yet even as recent as April of 2002 in Discover Magazine, it essentially said the same thing. The magazine cover had the subtitle, “Where Did Everything Come From?” An excerpt from the article says, “The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing – zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.”

     And to look up this subject today, the theory has remained the same. Scientists still believe that once there was nothing and nothing was swirling together inside of a tiny region smaller than a dot on a page, and as the dot filled with nothing, nothing exploded which resulted in galaxies, stars, moons, and planets. I am not against people having theories. People can believe anything they want to believe. I just feel like there should at least be some logic to a theory like this if they are going to call it “science”.

     On the topic of everything swirling inside of this “dot”, also called an “infinitesimal region”, then when it exploded sending forth everything that exists in the universe, everything would naturally be spinning in the same direction right? I mean, that is a logical assumption, is it not? We have scientific laws that explain how everything works don’t we?

     There is a scientific law known as the Conservation of Angular Momentum. This law states that it is a measure of the momentum of a body in rotational motion. The angular momentum of rigid bodies is conserved; thus, a spinning sphere will continue to spin unless acted on by an outside force. So this law is saying that if something is spinning and then it breaks into pieces, all the pieces will be spinning in the same direction unless the pieces are stopped or thier speed and direction gets changed by another source.

     According to the Conservation of Angular Momentum, when the Big Bang took place and everything exploded from nothing, everything in the universe would be expanding and spinning in the same direction. So if this is the case, then why is it that Venus, Uranus, and Pluto are rotating backwards compared to the other planets in our solar system? There are more than 90 moons in our solar system and 8 of them also spin backwards. In fact, some entire galaxies are spinning in the opposite direction.

     So the question is, “Is the Big Bang theory accurate?” I don’t know because I wasn’t there; I am older than I look but I’m not that old. I wasn’t there to witness it happen and once again it is only a theory. I just find it a strange theory that doesn’t “appear” to be very well devised. There should also be some kind of observable evidence, but the only things that we can observe seem to contradict the theory because of the fact that they are backwards.

     I am curious what you think. Please write your comments and constructive feedback to this post. No flaming please. This is meant to be for intellectual conversations and postings. I am not in the mood to argue with people or for people to accuse me of this or that. I am simply stating facts that I have observed and expressing my questions on the subject. I said before that I am not an expert in such things. I just read what the teachers made me read and questions sprang up from that. It was a moment that caused me to “stop to think” about it.

Red Giants To White Dwarfs

     As I stated in my previous blog entry, I have always had a deep love and fascination with anything relating to astronomy. I used to know a lot about astronomy when I was younger, but I have forgotten so much of it. And these days, so much new knowledge has been found that it is hard to keep up with how quickly things advance and change. However, I had fairly recently attended an astronomy class at a university. The textbook had a lot of great information, but there were always things that caused me to have deep nagging questions to wrestle with.

     One such question came after learning that it takes billions of years for a red giant star to evolve into a white dwarf star. I have never questioned it until I learned that ancient astronomers have records that say something different. Cicero, in 50 B.C. stated that the star known as Sirius was red. Seneca also recorded Sirius as being red and stated that Sirius was redder than Mars. Ptolemy listed Sirius as one of the 6 red stars in 150 A.D.

     Today, Sirius is a white dwarf star. I am no mathematician but I am able to do simple addition and subtraction and I can easily figure out that from 150 A.D. to now is not billions of years. So my question is how does a red giant become a white dwarf in such a short time if my astronomy textbook told me it takes billions of years?

Supernova Remnants

     I have always had a deep love and fascination with astronomy. Since I was a child I would look up at the stars and wonder if I would ever get to visit other planets? I always pondered the existence of other life on other planets and how many stars there might be in outer space. Growing up, as a child, I used to know the names of all the Constellations and I could easily point them out in the night sky. I knew all the planet and moon names and in what order they were in, from first to last.

 

 

     When I was attending a university, I enrolled in an astronomy class. The class taught many things that spawned new questions in my mind. I had a number of questions relating to the stars and supernovas in result of this class. I learned, as we all know, that a star is a self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures.

 

 

     Later, the class arrived at the topic of supernovas. A supernova is when a star undergoes a sudden, extreme increase in brightness across the electromagnetic spectrum, followed by a more gradual decrease lasting from several days to several months. Supernovae occur when a star collapses suddenly at the end of its life, condensing its core material into an extremely compact mass that then undergoes a slight rebound. The resulting shock wave sends all matter surrounding the core flying into space, leaving a neutron star at the site of the core’s collapse. The shockwave induces further fusion in the matter surrounding the collapsed core.

 

 

     So to put it more simply, a star implodes on itself and the energy and shockwave it releases exceeds that of the output of the entire galaxy. Such a thing should easily be detectable for millions of years after its implosion. When I learned that very few supernova remnants have been observed I questioned where the other supernova remnants are? Scientists say that a supernova occurs approximately every 25 years or so and leaves behind very observable evidence that should last millions of years. So if our universe is billions of years old, where are all the supernova remnants? Why is it that approximately 200 supernova remnants have been found and no more than that? Shouldn’t there be thousands; or even millions of them? So why are they absent?