Burial At Sea
By Lt Col George Goodson, USMC (Ret)
In my 76th year, the events of my life appear to me, from time to time, as a series of vignettes. Some were significant; most were trivial.

War is the seminal event in the life of everyone that has endured it. Though I fought in Korea and the Dominican Republic and was wounded there, Vietnam was my war.

Now 42 years have passed and, thankfully, I rarely think of those days in Cambodia, Laos, and the panhandle of North Vietnam where small teams of Americans and Montangards fought much larger elements of the North Vietnamese Army. Instead I see vignettes: some exotic, some mundane:

*The smell of Nuc Mam. *The heat, dust, and humidity. *The blue exhaust of cycles clogging the streets. *Elephants moving silently through the tall grass. *Hard eyes behind the servile smiles of the villagers. *Standing on a mountain in Laos and hearing a tiger roar. *A young girl squeezing my hand as my medic delivered her baby. *The flowing Ao Dais of the young women biking down Tran Hung Dao. *My two years as Casualty Notification Officer in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.

It was late 1967. I had just returned after 18 months in Vietnam .. Casualties were increasing. I moved my family from Indianapolis to Norfolk, rented a house, enrolled my children in their fifth or sixth new school, and bought a second car.

A week later, I put on my uniform and drove 10 miles to Little Creek, Virginia. I hesitated before entering my new office.

Appearance is important to career Marines. I was no longer, if ever, a poster Marine. I had returned from my third tour in Vietnam only 30 days before. At 5′9″, I now weighed 128 pounds – 37 pounds below my normal weight. My uniforms fit ludicrously, my skin was yellow from malaria medication, and I think I had a twitch or two.

I straightened my shoulders, walked into the office, looked at the nameplate on a Staff Sergeant’s desk and said, “Sergeant Jolly, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Goodson. Here are my orders and my Qualification Jacket.”

Sergeant Jolly stood, looked carefully at me, took my orders, stuck out his hand; we shook and he asked, “How long were you there, Colonel?” I replied “18 months this time.” Jolly breathed, you must be a slow learner Colonel.” I smiled.

Jolly said, “Colonel, I’ll show you to your office and bring in the Sergeant Major. I said, “No, let’s just go straight to his office.” Jolly nodded, hesitated, and lowered his voice, “Colonel, the Sergeant Major. He’s been in this job two years. He’s packed pretty tight. I’m worried about him.” I nodded.

Jolly escorted me into the Sergeant Major’s office. “Sergeant Major, this is Colonel Goodson, the new Commanding Officer. The Sergeant Major stood, extended his hand and said, “Good to see you again, Colonel.” I responded, “Hello Walt, how are you?” Jolly looked at me, raised an eyebrow, walked out, and closed the door.

I sat down with the Sergeant Major. We had the obligatory cup of coffee and talked about mutual acquaintances. Walt’s stress was palpable. Finally, I said, “Walt, what’s the h-ll’s wrong?” He turned his chair, looked out the window and said, “George, you’re going to wish you were back in Nam before you leave here. I’ve been in the Marine Corps since 1939. I was in the Pacific 36 months, Korea for 14 months, and Vietnam for 12 months. Now I come here to bury these kids. I’m putting my letter in. I can’t take it anymore.” I said, “OK Walt. If that’s what you want, I’ll endorse your request for retirement and do what I can to push it through Headquarters Marine Corps.”

Sergeant Major Walt Xxxxx retired 12 weeks later. He had been a good Marine for 28 years, but he had seen too much death and too much suffering. He was used up.

Over the next 16 months, I made 28 death notifications, conducted 28 military funerals, and made 30 notifications to the families of Marines that were severely wounded or missing in action. Most of the details of those casualty notifications have now, thankfully, faded from memory. Four, however, remain.

MY FIRST NOTIFICATION My third or fourth day in Norfolk, I was notified of the death of a 19 year old Marine. This notification came by telephone from Headquarters Marine Corps. The information detailed:

*Name, rank, and serial number. *Name, address, and phone number of next of kin. *Date of and limited details about the Marine’s death. *Approximate date the body would arrive at the Norfolk Naval Air Station. *A strong recommendation on whether the casket should be opened or closed.

The boy’s family lived over the border in North Carolina, about 60 miles away. I drove there in a Marine Corps staff car. Crossing the state line into North Carolina, I stopped at a small country store / service station / Post Office. I went in to ask directions.

Three people were in the store. A man and woman approached the small Post Office window. The man held a package. The Store owner walked up and addressed them by name, “Hello John. Good morning Mrs. Cooper.”

I was stunned. My casualty’s next-of-kin’s name was John Cooper!

I hesitated, then stepped forward and said, “I beg your pardon. Are you Mr and Mrs. John Cooper of (address.)

The father looked at me-I was in uniform – and then, shaking, bent at the waist, he vomited. His wife looked horrified at him and then at me. Understanding came into her eyes and she collapsed in slow motion. I think I caught her before she hit the floor.

The owner took a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer and handed it to Mr. Cooper who drank. I answered their questions for a few minutes. Then I drove them home in my staff car. The store owner locked the store and followed in their truck. We stayed an hour or so until the family began arriving.

I returned the store owner to his business. He thanked me and said, “Mister, I wouldn’t have your job for a million dollars.” I shook his hand and said, “Neither would I.”

I vaguely remember the drive back to Norfolk. Violating about five Marine Corps regulations, I drove the staff car straight to my house. I sat with my family while they ate dinner, went into the den, closed the door, and sat there all night, alone.

My Marines steered clear of me for days. I had made my first death notification.

THE FUNERALS Weeks passed with more notifications and more funerals. I borrowed Marines from the local Marine Corps Reserve and taught them to conduct a military funeral: how to carry a casket, how to fire the volleys and how to fold the flag.

When I presented the flag to the mother, wife, or father, I always said, “All Marines share in your grief.” I had been instructed to say, “On behalf of a grateful nation….” I didn’t think the nation was grateful, so I didn’t say that.

Sometimes, my emotions got the best of me and I couldn’t speak. When that happened, I just handed them the flag and touched a shoulder. They would look at me and nod. Once a mother said to me, “I’m so sorry you have this terrible job.” My eyes filled with tears and I leaned over and kissed her.

ANOTHER NOTIFICATION Six weeks after my first notification, I had another. This was a young PFC. I drove to his mother’s house. As always, I was in uniform and driving a Marine Corps staff car. I parked in front of the house, took a deep breath, and walked towards the house. Suddenly the door flew open, a middle-aged woman rushed out. She looked at me and ran across the yard, screaming “NO! NO! NO! NO!”

I hesitated. Neighbors came out. I ran to her, grabbed her, and whispered stupid things to reassure her. She collapsed. I picked her up and carried her into the house. Eight or nine neighbors followed. Ten or fifteen later, the father came in followed by ambulance personnel. I have no recollection of leaving.

The funeral took place about two weeks later. We went through the drill. The mother never looked at me. The father looked at me once and shook his head sadly.

ANOTHER NOTIFICATION One morning, as I walked in the office, the phone was ringing. Sergeant Jolly held the phone up and said, “You’ve got another one, Colonel.” I nodded, walked into my office, picked up the phone, took notes, thanked the officer making the call, I have no idea why, and hung up. Jolly, who had listened, came in with a special Telephone Directory that translates telephone numbers into the person’s address and place of employment.

The father of this casualty was a Longshoreman. He lived a mile from my office. I called the Longshoreman’s Union Office and asked for the Business Manager. He answered the phone, I told him who I was, and asked for the father’s schedule.

The Business Manager asked, “Is it his son?” I said nothing. After a moment, he said, in a low voice, “Tom is at home today.” I said, “Don’t call him. I’ll take care of that.” The Business Manager said, “Aye, Aye Sir,” and then explained, “Tom and I were Marines in WWII.”

I got in my staff car and drove to the house. I was in uniform. I knocked and a woman in her early forties answered the door. I saw instantly that she was clueless. I asked, “Is Mr. Smith home?” She smiled pleasantly and responded, “Yes, but he’s eating breakfast now. Can you come back later?” I said, “I’m sorry. It’s important. I need to see him now.”

She nodded, stepped back into the beach house and said, “Tom, it’s for you.”

A moment later, a ruddy man in his late forties, appeared at the door. He looked at me, turned absolutely pale, steadied himself, and said, “Jesus Christ man, he’s only been there three weeks!”

Months passed. More notifications and more funerals. Then one day while I was running, Sergeant Jolly stepped outside the building and gave a loud whistle, two fingers in his mouth……. I never could do that….. and held an imaginary phone to his ear.

Another call from Headquarters Marine Corps. I took notes, said, “Got it.” and hung up. I had stopped saying “Thank You” long ago.

Jolly, “Where?”

Me, “Eastern Shore of Maryland. The father is a retired Chief Petty Officer. His brother will accompany the body back from Vietnam ….”

Jolly shook his head slowly, straightened, and then said, “This time of day, it’ll take three hours to get there and back. I’ll call the Naval Air Station and borrow a helicopter. And I’ll have Captain Tolliver get one of his men to meet you and drive you to the Chief’s home.”

He did, and 40 minutes later, I was knocking on the father’s door. He opened the door, looked at me, then looked at the Marine standing at parade rest beside the car, and asked, “Which one of my boys was it, Colonel?”

I stayed a couple of hours, gave him all the information, my office and home phone number and told him to call me, anytime.

He called me that evening about 2300 (11:00PM). “I’ve gone through my boy’s papers and found his will. He asked to be buried at sea. Can you make that happen?” I said, “Yes I can, Chief. I can and I will.”

My wife who had been listening said, “Can you do that?” I told her, “I have no idea. But I’m going to break my ass trying.”

I called Lieutenant General Alpha Bowser, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, at home about 2330, explained the situation, and asked, “General, can you get me a quick appointment with the Admiral at Atlantic Fleet Headquarters?” General Bowser said, “George, you be there tomorrow at 0900. He will see you.”

I was and the Admiral did. He said coldly, “How can the Navy help the Marine Corps, Colonel.” I told him the story. He turned to his Chief of Staff and said, “Which is the sharpest destroyer in port?” The Chief of Staff responded with a name.

The Admiral called the ship, “Captain, you’re going to do a burial at sea. You’ll report to a Marine Lieutenant Colonel Goodson until this mission is completed…”

He hung up, looked at me, and said, “The next time you need a ship, Colonel, call me. You don’t have to sic Al Bowser on my ass.” I responded, “Aye Aye, Sir” and got the h-ll out of his office.

I went to the ship and met with the Captain, Executive Officer, and the Senior Chief. Sergeant Jolly and I trained the ship’s crew for four days. Then Jolly raised a question none of us had thought of. He said, “These government caskets are air tight. How do we keep it from floating?”

All the high priced help including me sat there looking dumb. Then the Senior Chief stood and said, “Come on Jolly. I know a bar where the retired guys from World War II hang out.”

They returned a couple of hours later, slightly the worst for wear, and said, “It’s simple; we cut four 12″ holes in the outer shell of the casket on each side and insert 300 lbs of lead in the foot end of the casket. We can handle that, no sweat.”

The day arrived. The ship and the sailors looked razor sharp. General Bowser, the Admiral, a US Senator, and a Navy Band were on board. The sealed casket was brought aboard and taken below for modification. The ship got underway to the 12- fathom depth.

The sun was hot. The ocean flat. The casket was brought aft and placed on a catafalque. The Chaplin spoke. The volleys were fired. The flag was removed, folded, and I gave it to the father. The band played “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” The casket was raised slightly at the head and it slid into the sea.

The heavy casket plunged straight down about six feet. The incoming water collided with the air pockets in the outer shell. The casket stopped abruptly, rose straight out of the water about three feet, stopped, and slowly slipped back into the sea. The air bubbles rising from the sinking casket sparkled in the sunlight as the casket disappeared from sight forever….

The next morning I called a personal friend, Lieutenant General Oscar Peatross, at Headquarters Marine Corps and said, “General, get me out of here. I can’t take this anymore.” I was transferred two weeks later.

I was a good Marine but, after 17 years, I had seen too much death and too much suffering. I was used up.

Vacating the house, my family and I drove to the office in a two-car convoy. I said my goodbyes. Sergeant Jolly walked out with me. He waved at my family, looked at me with tears in his eyes, came to attention, saluted, and said, “Well Done, Colonel. Well Done.”

I felt as if I had received the Medal of Honor. Jmac

A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America ‘ for an amount of ‘up to and including their life.’

That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.’

Thanks Jack

No, freedom isn’t free.

If you can read this thank a teacher, if you are reading it in English thank a soldier.

Semper fi LtCol semper fi. — “Poor people have access to the courts in the same sense that Christians had access to the lions.” – Justice Earl Johnson, Jr.

God bless the REPUBLIC with Liberty and Justice for ALL.

I am James Elmer

If you want off my list send an email with Remove in the subject line, you will be gone like a wild goose in winter.

Jack Perrine
Jack@Minerva.com

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Reports indicate that an infrared space telescope has spotted several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near Earth’s orbit.

Saturday, March 6, 2010,8:07 [IST]
Source: India Today

Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths.

It began its survey in mid-January.

In its first six weeks of observations, it has discovered 16 previously unknown asteroids with orbits close to Earth’s.

Of these, 55 per cent reflect less than one-tenth of the sunlight that falls on them, which makes them difficult to spot with visible-light telescopes.

One of these objects is as dark as fresh asphalt, reflecting less than 5 per cent of the light it receives.

Many of these dark asteroids have orbits that are steeply tilted relative to the plane in which all the planets and most asteroids orbit.

This means telescopes surveying for asteroids may be missing many other objects with tilted orbits, because they spend most of their time looking in this plane.

Fortunately, the new objects are bright in infrared radiation, because they absorb a lot of sunlight and heat up.

This makes them relatively easy for WISE to spot.

“It’s really good at finding the darkest asteroids and comets,” said mission team member Amy Mainzer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas

WISE is expected to discover as many as 1000 near-Earth objects – but astronomers estimate that the number of unknown objects with masses great enough to cause ground damage in an impact runs into the tens of thousands.

According to Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the dark asteroids may be former comets that have long since had all the ice vaporised from their exteriors, leaving them with inactive surfaces that no longer shed dust to produce tails.

He pointed out that many comets have very tilted orbits, and comets visited by spacecraft have been observed to have very dark surfaces. (ANI)

In Search of Dark Asteroids (and Other Sneaky Things)

A link to NASA’s Site

WISE will also target dim “failed stars” called brown dwarfs that outnumber ordinary stars by a wide margin. Mapping brown dwarfs in the Milky Way may reveal much about the structure and evolution of our own galaxy.

And this could be just the beginning of the discoveries scientists make once WISE puts the spotlight on stealthy denizens of the dark.

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates told a recent TED conference, an organization which is sponsored by one of the largest toxic waste polluters on the planet, that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2 emissions.

Source: Prison Planet.com
Monday, March 1, 2010

Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates is referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.

“I’m not sure what the nothing-to-see-here explanation is for Bill Gates’ theory that “new vaccines” can help lower the population of the world,” points out the Cryptogon blog, “But I thought about the incidents from the 1990s where the World Health Organization was providing a “tetanus vaccine” to poor girls and women (and just poor girls and women) that contained human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). For those who don’t want to delve into that, in short, it was a World Health Organization experiment; a test of a vaccine against pregnancy.”

After presenting an equation that included the number of people on the planet and CO2 emissions, Gates said, “Probably one of these numbers is going to get pretty near to zero.”
Later in the presentation, Gates mentions picking a vaccine, “which is something I love,” that would be used to lower global CO2 emissions.

He also advocates pouring more money into the global warming scam by way of the United Nations, as well as a “CO2 tax” and cap and trade, while making it clear that the developed world would have to reduce its living standards by cutting back on essential services that generate CO2.

Gates said that a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions was necessary by 2020, a 50 per cent reduction by 2050, and ultimately that there had to be zero CO2 emissions globally, a measure that would completely reverse hundreds of years of technological progress and return man to the agrarian age, all in the name of preventing an alleged miniscule temperature increase that has been proven to be based on fraudulent data models in light of the Climategate scandal.

One of Gates’ proposals for reducing CO2 emissions is the use of biofuels, which as a new report highlights, has resulted in millions of acres of forests being destroyed, which ultimately means a net increase in CO2 emissions from biofuels when compared to fossil fuels, not to mention the massive devastation caused to wildlife.

As we have documented, a CO2 reduction of 50-80 per cent, not to mention 100 per cent, would inflict a new great depression in the United States, reducing GDP by 6.9 percent – a figure comparable with the economic meltdown of 1929 and 1930.
Additionally, the “post-industrial revolution” being proposed by Gates and his ilk would lead to massive job losses.

The implementation of so-called “green jobs” in other countries has devastated economies and cost millions of jobs. As the Seattle Times reported back in June, Spain’s staggering unemployment rate of over 18 per cent was partly down to massive job losses as a result of attempts to replace existing industry with wind farms and other forms of alternative energy.

In a so-called “green economy,” “Each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital,” states the report.
The fact that Gates would be so open in his call to use vaccines to lower global population (without a word as to the human rights considerations), probably has a lot to do with the audience attending his speech.

The TED organization admits that it is elitist, “in a good way,” and charges a whopping $6,000 dollars membership fee which must be paid by conference attendees. TED also charges nearly $1,000 just for its live conference web stream. The organization’s sponsors include IBM and military-industrial complex kingpin General Electric, which has a notorious history of environmental misdeeds, being ranked fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 Tonnes) of toxic chemicals released into the air. GE is also a major contributor to the toxic waste problem, rendering its sponsorship of an organization that claims to be seeking solutions to environmental problems completely hypocritical.

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Chile’s Chaiten volcano has been placed under red alert due to an increase in seismic activity for three weeks, the Chilean government said.

February 17, 2010 — Updated 1433 GMT (2233 HKT)
Source: Chile’s Chaiten volcano under red alert.

The volcano in southern Chile became active in May 2008 after being dormant for more than 9,000 years.

Volcanic activity was on the decline in the past few months until picking back up January 21, the Chilean Interior Ministry said in a news release Monday.

The red alert, which indicates activity is above normal levels and an eruption could be imminent, was enacted in large part to protect tourists in the area, said Carmen Fernandez, director of Chile’s National Emergency Office.

Underground seismic rumblings 1.2 to 5 miles (2 to 8 kilometers) deep in the area around the volcano and constant gas eruptions in the dome indicate “a high grade of instability,” the National Emergency Office said.

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The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce.

Source: US government rescinds ‘leave internet alone’ policy.

Discuss: Link

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The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.
It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.
Correction, Feb. 22, 2010: The article originally and incorrectly said that the 18th Amendment banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. It banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol, not consumption. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
t was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.
http://www.slate.com/id/2245188#Return
Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season. Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.” Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that’s due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

I learned of the federal poisoning program while researching my new book, The Poisoner’s Handbook, which is set in jazz-age New York. My first reaction was that I must have gotten it wrong. “I never heard that the government poisoned people during Prohibition, did you?” I kept saying to friends, family members, colleagues.

I did, however, remember the U.S. government’s controversial decision in the 1970s to spray Mexican marijuana fields with Paraquat, an herbicide. Its use was primarily intended to destroy crops, but government officials also insisted that awareness of the toxin would deter marijuana smokers. They echoed the official position of the 1920s—if some citizens ended up poisoned, well, they’d brought it upon themselves. Although Paraquat wasn’t really all that toxic, the outcry forced the government to drop the plan. Still, the incident created an unsurprising lack of trust in government motives, which reveals itself in the occasional rumors circulating today that federal agencies, such as the CIA, mix poison into the illegal drug supply.

During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: “Normally, no American government would engage in such business. … It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified.” Others, however, accused lawmakers opposed to the poisoning plan of being in cahoots with criminals and argued that bootleggers and their law-breaking alcoholic customers deserved no sympathy. “Must Uncle Sam guarantee safety first for souses?” asked Nebraska’s Omaha Bee.

The saga began with ratification of the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States.* High-minded crusaders and anti-alcohol organizations had helped push the amendment through in 1919, playing on fears of moral decay in a country just emerging from war. The Volstead Act, spelling out the rules for enforcement, passed shortly later, and Prohibition itself went into effect on Jan. 1, 1920.

But people continued to drink—and in large quantities. Alcoholism rates soared during the 1920s; insurance companies charted the increase at more than 300 more percent. Speakeasies promptly opened for business. By the decade’s end, some 30,000 existed in New York City alone. Street gangs grew into bootlegging empires built on smuggling, stealing, and manufacturing illegal alcohol. The country’s defiant response to the new laws shocked those who sincerely (and naively) believed that the amendment would usher in a new era of upright behavior.

Rigorous enforcement had managed to slow the smuggling of alcohol from Canada and other countries. But crime syndicates responded by stealing massive quantities of industrial alcohol—used in paints and solvents, fuels and medical supplies—and redistilling it to make it potable.

Well, sort of. Industrial alcohol is basically grain alcohol with some unpleasant chemicals mixed in to render it undrinkable. The U.S. government started requiring this “denaturing” process in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid the taxes levied on potable spirits. The U.S. Treasury Department, charged with overseeing alcohol enforcement, estimated that by the mid-1920s, some 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol were stolen annually to supply the country’s drinkers. In response, in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge’s government decided to turn to chemistry as an enforcement tool. Some 70 denaturing formulas existed by the 1920s. Most simply added poisonous methyl alcohol into the mix. Others used bitter-tasting compounds that were less lethal, designed to make the alcohol taste so awful that it became undrinkable.

To sell the stolen industrial alcohol, the liquor syndicates employed chemists to “renature” the products, returning them to a drinkable state. The bootleggers paid their chemists a lot more than the government did, and they excelled at their job. Stolen and redistilled alcohol became the primary source of liquor in the country. So federal officials ordered manufacturers to make their products far more deadly.

By mid-1927, the new denaturing formulas included some notable poisons—kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone. The Treasury Department also demanded more methyl alcohol be added—up to 10 percent of total product. It was the last that proved most deadly.

The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,” New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. “[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.”

His department issued warnings to citizens, detailing the dangers in whiskey circulating in the city: “[P]ractically all the liquor that is sold in New York today is toxic,” read one 1928 alert. He publicized every death by alcohol poisoning. He assigned his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to analyze confiscated whiskey for poisons—that long list of toxic materials I cited came in part from studies done by the New York City medical examiner’s office.

Norris also condemned the federal program for its disproportionate effect on the country’s poorest residents. Wealthy people, he pointed out, could afford the best whiskey available. Most of those sickened and dying were those “who cannot afford expensive protection and deal in low grade stuff.”

And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. “Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes,” proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.

Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist’s war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the craziness of Prohibition—and the poisonous measures taken to enforce it—had never quite happened.

Correction, Feb. 22, 2010: The article originally and incorrectly said that the 18th Amendment banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. It banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol, not consumption. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
By Deborah Blum

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A vast iceberg that broke off eastern Antarctic earlier this month could disrupt marine life in the region, scientists have warned.

They say the iceberg, which is 78km long and up to 39km wide, could have consequences for the area’s colonies of emperor penguins.

The emblematic birds may be forced to travel further afield to find food.

The iceberg calved from the Mertz Glacier Tongue after it was hit by another huge iceberg, called B9B.

“It is a very active area for algae growth, especially in springtime,” explained Dr Neal Young from the Australia-based Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre.
“There are emperor penguin colonies about 200-300km away to the west. They come to this area to feed, and seals in the area also come to get access to the open water,” he told BBC News.

He suggested that a change in the availability of open water could affect the rate of food production, which would have an impact on the amount of wildlife it could sustain.

“If the area gets choked up (with ice), then they would have to go elsewhere and look for food.”

Changing landscape

The calving of the iceberg, which has an estimated mass of 700-800bn tonnes, has changed the shape of the local geography, Dr Young explained.

Large icebergs always attract a lot of attention due to their scale
Dr Mike Meredith,
British Antarctic Survey http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8538060.stm

“We have got two massive icebergs that – end to end – create a fence of about 180km.

“So the area’s geography has changed from a situation where we effectively had a box in which two sides were open ocean,” he told BBC News.

“Now we have a fence across one side of the box.”

Before the formation of the iceberg, the Mertz Peninsula provided the right conditions for a polynia – an expanse of open water surrounded by sea-ice – to exist.

“Winds blow off the coast and clear anything in that region, including sea ice, exposing open water,” Dr Young explained.

He added that as well as providing a feeding site for the region’s wildlife, the polynia also was a key production site of “bottom water”; very cold, dense water that sinks to the ocean floor.

“Sea ice is relatively fresh compared to sea water, so the more sea ice you have (in the surrounding area), the more salt that is left in the remaining open water.”

The rise in the concentration of salt increases the water’s density, causing it to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

“This area around the Antarctic coastline, of which the Mertz Peninsula is one part, produces about one quarter of the Antarctic’s bottom water, but the Mertz polynia is a major contributor,” Dr Young said.

He added that the new iceberg had shortened the length of the Mertz Glacier Tongue, which could result in pack ice entering the area and disrupting the polynia.

“That means that the bottom water production rate… will decrease.

“The bottom water spills over the continental shelf, flows down the continental slope into the deep ocean.”

This process helps drive the “conveyor belt” of currents in the Southern, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Any disruption to the net flow of bottom water could result in a weakening in the deep ocean circulation system, which plays a key role in the global climate system.

‘Natural laboratory’

However, the researchers say the changes to the region triggered by the formation of the new iceberg will not shut down the circulation system or affect the world’s climate.

“Large icebergs always attract a lot of attention due to their scale,” observed Dr Michael Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey, who was not involved in the research.

“Bottom water is indeed an important part of the global ocean overturning circulation and hence climate,” he told BBC News.

“There are also a number of other locations of bottom water formation, however. So, it’s unlikely that a large-scale sustained change of the order of magnitude required for a global climate impact will happen from this one event.

“The more important thing, I think, is that this event has been closely and carefully monitored by scientists, who will now look at the processes whereby such calvings can impact on the ocean and the ecosystem – and studying this natural laboratory will add to our knowledge of how the Antarctic system works.”

Related posts:

1. ‘Unprecedented Warming’? -Science Shows Total Fraud
2. Earth more sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought?
3. If any of your idiot friends still believe in AGW, make them read this letter

We are tracking a very strong connection between the collapse of the magnetic filament that was tracked all last week, the 3 simultaneous CMEs that were recorded from the moment of the collapse, these Auroras and the Chilean Earthquake on 2/27/2010

Incredible Spiral Aurora

Interesting quotes about the magnificent Auroras lately

• All week long, the Arctic Circle has been aglow with auroras. “The lights have been incredibly bright and active,” says Øystein Lunde Ingvaldsen of Bø i Vesterålen, Norway.
• “This has been a very nice month for auroras,” agrees Wioleta Zarzycka of Iceland, where coastal waters have been turning green in reflection of the sky above. The lights have even descended as far south as Scotland. “On Monday night, we had the first auroras I have seen here in years,” reports Gordon Mackay of Campsie Fells.
• All this activity is a sign that the sun is coming back to life after a long, deep solar minimum. Sunspots have returned crackling with solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are once again buffeting Earth’s magnetic field. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% to 30% chance of more geomagnetic activity tonight.
• The CME’s are punching through our magnetosphere… Is this the beginning of the energies we have been awaiting for???

More incredible Auroras:

More Spiral Auroras

On Feb. 25th, the hooting of owls drew Norwegian birdwatcher Fredrik Broms outdoors under a crispy, moonlit sky. “After having been really lucky to hear a Tengmalms owl, the auroras appeared behind the mountains.”

“The pictures I took–without a tripod and with very cold fingers–turned out a bit shaky, but the conclusion was as crystal clear as the sky itself – winter is beautiful!”

A few days from now, a solar wind stream is due to hit Earth, and that could spark a renewed display. High-latitude sky watchers should obey the owls on the nights around March 1st. Be alert for auroras!

The magnetic filament:

Filament snapping on the sun

For the seventh day in a row, an enormous magnetic filament is hanging suspended above the surface of the sun’s southern hemisphere. I million Klms long or 621371 miles long.. about 24 times around Earth. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has a great view. How long can it last? Solar filaments are unpredictable. If this one collapses and hits the stellar surface, the impact could produce a powerful Hyder Flare. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments. Check with Nasa website http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/ for a video of what is going on and what could happen with this Filament. If falls to Sun will be a 4th of July you will never forget.

OH SNAP!

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) images bracket the eruption between 0719 and 1919 UT on Feb. 24th. The event did not produce a bright solar flare, as sometimes happens when filaments erupt, but there was a coronal mass ejection (CME).

SOHO coronagraphs observed at least one and possibly as many as three clouds billowing away from the sun: movie. If any of this material is heading for Earth–a big unknown!–

It should arrive on Feb. 27th or 28th. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras on those dates.

We notice a INVERTED SPIKE in the Xray flux

Notice the "inverted spike" around 0600 GMT....

Then we wake up to hear about this:

Huge quake hits Chile; tsunami threatens Pacific

AP – Vehicles that were driving along a highway that collapsed near Santiago are seen overturned on the asphalt …

By ROBERTO CANDIA and EVA VERGARA, Associated Press Writer – 29 mins ago

TALCA, Chile – A devastating earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, toppling homes, collapsing bridges and plunging trucks into the fractured earth. A tsunami set off by the magnitude-8.8 quake threatened every nation around the Pacific Ocean — roughly a quarter of the globe.

President-elect Sebastian Pinera said more than 120 people died, but the death toll was rising quickly.

In the town of Talca, just 65 miles (105 kilometers) from the epicenter, Associated Press journalist Roberto Candia said it felt as if a giant had grabbed him and shaken him.

The quake occurred at 0634 GMT

Now look at the latest SOHO Picture coming in for 2/27/2010…

Direct Hit?

Is there a connection?

Related posts:

1. Chile’s Chaiten volcano under red alert
2. Solar System is Passing Through Galactic Clouds
3. Earth’s Magnetic Pole is Shifting!

A temple complex in turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

By Patrick Symmes
Published Feb 19, 2010
Source: News Week

They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date,” according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford’s archeology program. Enthusing over the “huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art” at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: “Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.”

Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a “Neolithic revolution” 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the “high” religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Religion now appears so early in civilized life—earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct—that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance. The archeologist Jacques Cauvin once posited that “the beginning of the gods was the beginning of agriculture,” and Göbekli may prove his case.

The builders of Göbekli Tepe could not write or leave other explanations of their work. Schmidt speculates that nomadic bands from hundreds of miles in every direction were already gathering here for rituals, feasting, and initiation rites before the first stones were cut. The religious purpose of the site is implicit in its size and location. “You don’t move 10-ton stones for no reason,” Schmidt observes. “Temples like to be on high sites,” he adds, waving an arm over the stony, round hilltop. “Sanctuaries like to be away from the mundane world.”
Unlike most discoveries from the ancient world, Göbekli Tepe was found intact, the stones upright, the order and artistry of the work plain even to the un-trained eye. Most startling is the elaborate carving found on about half of the 50 pillars Schmidt has unearthed. There are a few abstract symbols, but the site is almost covered in graceful, naturalistic sculptures and bas-reliefs of the animals that were central to the imagination of hunter-gatherers. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers. The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have no faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. “In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image,” says Johns Hopkins archeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe “is the first time you can see humans with that idea, that they resemble gods.”

The temples thus offer unexpected proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gatherers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capable of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts. A Catholic born in Franconia, Germany, Schmidt wanders the site in a white turban, pointing out the evidence of that transition. “The people here invented agriculture. They were the inventors of cultivated plants, of domestic architecture,” he says.

Göbekli sits at the Fertile Crescent’s northernmost tip, a productive borderland on the shoulder of forests and within sight of plains. The hill was ideally situated for ancient hunters. Wild gazelles still migrate past twice a year as they did 11 millennia ago, and birds fly overhead in long skeins. Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat was in this immediate area—perhaps at a mountain visible in the distance—a few centuries after Göbekli’s founding. Animal husbandry also began near here—the first domesticated pigs came from the surrounding area in about 8000 B.C., and cattle were domesticated in Turkey before 6500 B.C. Pottery followed. Those discoveries then flowed out to places like Çatalhöyük, the oldest-known Neolithic village, which is 300 miles to the west.

The artists of Göbekli Tepe depicted swarms of what Schmidt calls “scary, nasty” creatures: spiders, scorpions, snakes, triple-fanged monsters, and, most common of all, carrion birds. The single largest carving shows a vulture poised over a headless human. Schmidt theorizes that human corpses were ex-posed here on the hilltop for consumption by birds—what a Tibetan would call a sky burial. Sifting the tons of dirt removed from the site has produced very few human bones, however, perhaps because they were removed to distant homes for ancestor worship. Absence is the source of Schmidt’s great theoretical claim. “There are no traces of daily life,” he explains. “No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here.” Everything from food to flint had to be imported, so the site “was not a village,” Schmidt says. Since the temples predate any known settlement anywhere, Schmidt concludes that man’s first house was a house of worship: “First the temple, then the city,” he insists.

Some archeologists, like Hodder, the Neolithic specialist, wonder if Schmidt has simply missed evidence of a village or if his dating of the site is too precise. But the real reason the ruins at Göbekli remain almost unknown, not yet incorporated in textbooks, is that the evidence is too strong, not too weak. “The problem with this discovery,” as Schwartz of Johns Hopkins puts it, “is that it is unique.” No other monumental sites from the era have been found. Before Göbekli, humans drew stick figures on cave walls, shaped clay into tiny dolls, and perhaps piled up small stones for shelter or worship. Even after Göbekli, there is little evidence of sophisticated building. Dating of ancient sites is highly contested, but Çatalhöyük is probably about 1,500 years younger than Göbekli, and features no carvings or grand constructions. The walls of Jericho, thought until now to be the oldest monumental construction by man, were probably started more than a thousand years after Göbekli. Huge temples did emerge again—but the next unambiguous example dates from 5,000 years later, in southern Iraq.

The site is such an outlier that an American archeologist who stumbled on it in the 1960s simply walked away, unable to interpret what he saw. On a hunch, Schmidt followed the American’s notes to the hilltop 15 years ago, a day he still recalls with a huge grin. He saw carved flint everywhere, and recognized a Neolithic quarry on an adjacent hill, with unfinished slabs of limestone hinting at some monument buried nearby. “In one minute—in one second—it was clear,” the bearded, sun-browned archeologist recalls. He too considered walking away, he says, knowing that if he stayed, he would have to spend the rest of his life digging on the hill.
Now 55 and a staff member at the German Archaeological Institute, Schmidt has joined a long line of his countrymen here, reaching back to Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. He has settled in, marrying a Turkish woman and making a home in a modest “dig house” in the narrow streets of old Urfa. Decades of work lie ahead.

Disputes are normal at the site—the workers, Schmidt laments, are divided into three separate clans who feud constantly. (”Three groups,” the archeologist says, exasperated. “Not two. Three!”) So far Schmidt has uncovered less than 5 percent of the site, and he plans to leave some temples untouched so that future researchers can examine them with more sophisticated tools.

Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 B.C., when the entire site was buried, deliberately and all at once, Schmidt believes. The temples had been in decline for a thousand years—later circles are less than half the size of the early ones, indicating a lack of resources or motivation among the worshipers. This “clear digression” followed by a sudden burial marks “the end of a very strange culture,” Schmidt says. But it was also the birth of a new, settled civilization, humanity having now exchanged the hilltops of hunters for the valleys of farmers and shepherds. New ways of life demand new religious practices, Schmidt suggests, and “when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones.”

Related posts:

1. Ancient Tablets Decoded
2. Dark and dangerous asteroids spotted lurking unseen near Earth’s orbit
3. Amazing Discovery A 200,000 year Old Metropolis in Africa

The Final Truth

A Theory of Practice

The Thirteen Intentions of Creation

Source: http://www.conspiracybase.com/final_truth

(The original is a work in progress.  Goto the address above for updated material)

1. Introduction

1.1 Theory versus practice

Theories play a very important role in our lives by helping us make sense of the world through accurate models of reality. Primarily, a theory is concerned with finding answers that can increase our knowledge about the universe, answers that do not necessarily have practical consequences. If scientific theories were elaborated just for immediate and practical purposes, then a lot of them would not even exist today. Having knowledge is priceless, while doing something with it is just a matter of paying the right price.

Problems have to be completely understood before they can be solved efficiently. For that reason, a theoretical research can be carried out for a long time without achieving concrete results, since scientists cannot risk their reputation by submitting incomplete theories to million-dollar experiments. Anyway, still no theory is beyond practical application and should only be contemplated as a work of art. The problem is that making a theory yield practical results requires as much work as ellaborating the theory itself. A classical example of this dilemma is the stereotype of the mad university professor that daydreams about fantastic theories but fails to impress the upper management due to lack of objectivity in his research. Eventually the management decides to cut off research funds, but if only they had waited a few more days the professor could have changed the world with a new discovery.
http://www.conspiracybase.com/final_truth/chapter1.html#ch1
There is a strong relationship between the possibilities for application of a theory and how valuable and effective a theory is seen by public eyes. If a theory can be proven to be consistent with observations after rigorous testing and experimentation, then it becomes a valuable tool for predicting master phenomena. The relevance and specificity of those predictions will determine how potentially useful the theory is. This view is known as instrumentalism. In this highly pragmatic view, theories are seen as mere instruments that one can use to gain control over the processes of reality, and it does not matter if the theory also satisfies philosophical aspirations of achieving the highest truth.

Any scientist with a philosophical inch knows that although each new theory is better and may last longer than the last, the only thing that remains constant inside him is a primal instinct to find the truth. The search for absolute truth has always been the motivation behind philosophical inquiry. Some of the greatest ancient philosophers had this ambition in abundance, and that is mainly what set them apart from less-known thinkers. But the active search for an ideal truth was halted with the advent of the pragmatic conception. The pragmatist is only concerned with the difference that a theory will make in his reality. It makes no sense for the pragmatists to look for a truth that is completely independent of their reality. For them, that which is valid and true is that which is real (factual) or has the possibility of becoming real through action in the physical world.

What happened next is that the pragmatic conception together with religious dogmatism have played a strong role in discouraging people from seeking the truth themselves. It turned out that pragmatism was not only a ideological movement defended by a few philosophers, but also an entirely new way of thinking that grew to affect social philosophy as well. In many ways pragmatism helped to lay the grounds for materialism. The result is that knowledge of the truth is taken for granted; it is handed down to people by institutions. People are not supposed to look beyond the “facts” of life for answers. Truth for them is that which is laid upon their eyes: the physical world — they are entitled to take action upon it or shut up.

What pragmatists seem to ignore is that there is a reflexive relationship as well as a two-way communication between theory and practice. Theory is not supposed to eternally feed practice; the inverse must happen sometimes. While practice already includes the act of elaborating a theory, a theory can change our outlook on reality and thus even determine what we consider practical. Theoretical knowledge can contribute to the efficiency of practical action, whereas practical action can bring to our awareness facts that complement and refine our knowledge.

Unfortunately, the supposition that theory and practice are essential to each other also seems to be more true in theory than in practice, because that is not what seems to have seeped into the public consciousness. The common view is that theory and practice are separate entities that do not go along with each other. While theoretical behavior relies on careful planning and attention to principles and details, practical behavior has been associated to action without thinking and with focus solely on “getting things done” at all costs. In other words, people reject thinking as too impractical and time-consuming even when a lack of it may very well prove disastrous.1

________________________
1 Take Note of Something Different. 23 April 2008 < http://www.take-note.com/session24.htm >.

1.2 Theory of practice

Practice, or praxis, usually refers to a situation where taking direct action is the only real challenge, action that dispenses with the theoretical considerations. In other words, the motivation for practical action is the very necessity for deliberate and spontaneous action, such as when there is a need for immediate results.

But there is a great deal of relativity present in the concept of practice, because any kind of behavior can be aimed at obtaining practical results, which leads us to an important distinction: a practical approach is not the same as giving importance to any kind of activity. It would be irrelevant to do so, because there is no such thing as a true state of inactivity. Even when there is an appearance of rest or inaction, activity is still present due to its status of universal principle; an example being that all atoms are in a state of constant energetic fluctuation even when the temperature drops infinitely toward reaching absolute zero.1

Without activity there is no circulation of energy, and thus there is not a circuit, a closed system where energy is contained. Without a containment, there can be no energy present at all, because energy is not an entity in and of itself — there is no such thing as formless energy. We know that energy is required to bring things into reality, but it does not stop at that: energy is what brings the entire reality into reality. Consequently, without energy it would be no longer possible for a corporeal (physical) reality to exist, which means that existence would become insubstantial, and probably very boring.

It is important to establish a common denominator for the term reality, as this term is quite relative. In other words, we need to be talking about a reality that everyone can identify with. We may start from the principle that reality is better defined as the baseline for those sensations that feel more intense than others, sensations that hook our perception better. It is obvious that physical reality feels sufficiently intense for most people, and so it is the perfect candidate to be the common denominator for the term reality.

Since there is no true state of inactivity, practice is really concerned with those activities considered useful according to the values held by someone and their culture (society). Behind the “do something” provocation that people commonly throw at each other, there is always a hint of “do as I do” or “do what is considered valid.” However, a common-sense exception for this rule is that it really does not make sense to possess an instrument such as the human body and never use it. Anyway, whether it is in accordance to cultural values or ingrained common sense, practical action is really just action seen as useful.

Bonus image (click to open)
Because of the external judgement imposed by society on the individual, people often walk into situations only for the sake of displaying action. This of course can be very dangerous, since no course of action is free of risks. To jump into a situation without a proper understanding and assessment of risks is tantamount to enter a war zone unarmed: remarkable, but stupid.

Practice may have degenerated into those activities composing one’s social duty or role, but it is still a central aspect of life. In fact, practice focus on what is essential to human life: survival. By mastering practice, the art of survival, we can master reality. That is why it is necessary for us to have a theory of practice. Any theory that is not of practice is still not realized in what we do and how we live; it is still removed from our reality and will ultimately fail to provide us with real answers.

In many ways, a theory of practice is a theory of Reality with capital R, and not a theory based on what we believe or expect reality to be. A theory of practice is really the unification of theory and pratice in a wider frame of reference for greater understanding of Reality. In addition, a theory of Reality is no ordinary theory because it must be guaranteed to work always. Reality Itself is ruthless and never fails to work regardless of whether people like It or not, and so should a theory about It. For this reason, a theory of pratice must provide us with final answers or it will be just another theory doomed to fail.

________________________
1 Even when temperature approaches the hypothetical absolute zero until it is practically there, atomic motion (energy) is still expected to exist according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

1.3 Final theory

Like the mortals who develop them, theories do not have an infinite life. Scientists can only hope to learn as much from a theory for as long as possible. It is just a matter of time until circumstances change and a theory’s ability to support new discoveries begins to fail. In other words, all theories lose their value sooner or later. But let us try to be more reasonable here: it is never only a matter of failure vs. success. Some theories are more persistent than others, and not all of them have to be rewritten from scratch every time that something goes wrong. The bottom line is simply that we can never be sure about the continued success of a theory without actually testing it for an eternity.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. (Stephen Hawking)

If we can never prove a theory to be the ultimate one, then looking for one that escapes this rule must be an act of faith. Science does not require faith from anyone, but it is just natural that a technological world, for example, will have high hopes on the physical sciences. The ironic thing is that having faith in science is actually the same as people having faith in themselves, because science is nothing more than the result of a collective effort to understand the universe rationally. Science works at the level of the collective consciousness, or consensus reality, a level where everyone can relate with without getting into conflict about how the reality of the universe works.

On the other hand, faith in the context of scientific inquiry is irrelevant because science seeks certainty, a state of mind that excludes the need for faith. Still, the degree of confidence that people have in a theory plays an important role in determining its success. As the confidence in a theory grows, the theory grows as well, because more people start using and supporting it. The difference is that having confidence is not unjustified or without basis like having pure belief or faith. The only problem with confidence, or any other positive attitude for that matter, is that nothing can replace scientific certainty. In science, to have certainty is to have the ability of being able to predict.

The fact that theories eventually fail is considered one of the greatest strengths of science, because there is no way to achieve more reliable conclusions without it. In other words, science sees its own limitations as the factor that promotes its constant development. However, scientific development is not cumulative (Kuhn 96). Instead, we see a succession of revolutions (paradigm shifts) where newer scientific models replace older models almost completely. Every time that a new paradigm arises, science has no other choice than to disregard a good part of its current work. Real and continuous progress is only found in the natural evolution of human consciousness, the same process that generates new paradigms that force science to readapt itself.

But let us assume that there is progress behind science after all. With this in mind, we can ask ourselves the following: how long until there is enough improvement? Do we even know exactly where we are going? That is, we cannot afford having no destiny in sight while certain problems continue to plague humanity. It is not prudent to stay in a slow path of evolution when we have a real possibility of getting the process over with at once. Instead of asking the same questions over and over again, we should ask ourselves about the reason why we keep making questions.

To resolve this uncertain fate and finally put science in a path of steady progress, we need a theory that does not have limitations, a theory that is not susceptible to failure. It is indeed counterintuitive to even conceive such theory as being scientific, and it is probably not even a good idea to call it a theory. Therefore, consider that we are not talking about any theory; we are talking about a final theory. The list below shows the requirements of a final theory should it ever arise.

Must be able to adapt itself to any situation.
Must predict and cover every possibility.
Must explain everything.
Theories, as models, are not reality; models are built on top of reality. For this reason, no scientific / physical theory can be final because they are all superficial; they cannot give us deeper understanding. We either know how things really are or we hold tight to an elaborate hunch that we consider sufficiently accurate. Well, just as all scientific theories tend to fail, a gap in our understanding eventually becomes our downfall. A final theory, on the other hand, could provide us with an understanding so accurate that there would be almost no difference between theory and practice, knowledge and action, or model and reality. The “gap,” if existent, would be too insignificant to ever force us to abandon the theory completely.

Realistically speaking, it is impossible for a theory to predict or explain everything directly, but a final theory could at least offer us a starting point for such task, with the rest becoming only a matter of derivation. In other words, a final theory is not the end of knowledge and the desire to learn, but instead it is the final excitement needed for the acquisition of all remaining knowledge. Why not learn the basics first and then have fun experimenting with your fundamental knowledge for the rest of eternity? It is possible to enjoy a continued learning process just as much as the fact that you have already learned the essential.

Whether a final theory explains everything or not is not even the most important requirement. Above all, a final theory should put an end to the most bugging philosophical, scientific and religious questions, so that there would be little left in people’s minds besides a raw desire for action based on an understanding of how Reality works. In other words, with a final theory there would exist no more doubts to prevent people from assuming a fully powered practical approach to solve their problems. Instead of continuing to learn by mistakes, people would be able to skip the possibility for error completely and instead go directly to that which is guaranteed to work. Instead of contemplating or ignoring the Truth, people would put It into practice.

It is even more important that people can achieve peace of mind. As researcher Ian Xel Lungold put it, the stability of our peace of mind is directly related to our degree of certainty. With this in mind, a final theorhy is simply a theory that can provide us with the highest degree of certainty. In this manner a final theory serves as the ultimate scientific theory, the ultimate religion and also the ultimate philosophy. It’s only a matter of how much it can be developed toward each of these three directions.

Anyway, it is true that theoretical knowledge will never replace direct experience of the Truth, and so even a final theory is still an interpretation, not an awareness. A person needs to internalize the experience of what is true, and not only contempate it from an external perspective. Therefore, we must be aware we never reach an end to our knowledge, but this does not mean that we can reach a virtual / theoretical end to our knowledge if wework to simplify your knowledge instead of accumulating more redundant information that do not fit together. The next section will show how this is possible.

1.4 Point of reference

Scientists know that laws that apply only to a limited range of phenomena are but minor expressions of fundamental laws that apply to the whole universe. Furthermore, when researchers are sorting information about a certain field of knowledge, they invariably notice a small number of root concepts from which all other concepts stem from. In Biology, for example, there are hierarchical models describing the various levels on which life is structured, such as those involving life forms and their evolution from common ancestors. In sum, these examples show us that there is hierarchy present in every organization found in the universe.

In face of the principle of hierarchy, what any field of knowledge tries to do is integrate information around a point of reference. In this context, a point of reference is some kind of primary (central) knowledge that justifies the very existence of all secondary (peripheral) knowledge. If you can have a point of reference in your knowledge, the rest becomes just a matter of derivation. This means that only a very small subset of all knowledge will be useful to you, while the rest becomes useful only when supported by this subset. Many times we fail to understand some aspect of the world because we lack a point of reference acting as the support for our knowledge.

Let us make an analogy. Consider the point of reference as a tiny circle surrounded by several fragments of bigger circles. Also, consider that there are many paths leading to the tiny circle coming from the outside area, but none of them are free of the clutter caused by the fragments. See the illustration below.

Figure 1.1 – Point of reference
The fragments represent fragmented information and distorted knowledge, while the tiny circle represents complete information and perfect knowledge, but in a relatively small quantity. A person can try to put all fragments back together as perfect circles, but, as trying to use scrap metal parts to build a spaceship, the task is clearly out of hand. Alternatively, the person can just force way through the fragments and go directly to the tiny circle. Once in the center the person can project and expand the tiny circle outwards so that it serves as a mold or support for the reconstruction of the bigger circles.

Does this analogy mean that we should ignore all available information and just go directly after the most fundamental knowledge there is? No, but if you do not focus on addressing the core of the problem first, then all other information remains peripheral and meaningless. Information needs context in order to make ense, and contexts carry a hierarchical structure, then if we can understand the center of the hierarchy, all informadion inside this context will fall into perspective. it is at this manner that Fundamental knwoledge is preferable than peripheral knowledge.

In order to have a point of reference, we need concepts thta are absolute. We cannot achieve unified understanding without absolutes. Absolutes simply are, everything else is an illusion. There is no real cause or beginning for absolutes. You don’t question an absolute concept, you just accept it. Questioning it is a sign of denial / non-acceptance of your part. The subject of absolute concepts are going to be very importanbt in this book. We have a small ist on appendix 1 at the last (thirteenth elemtn). By this book we will eventually define some fo them ,but mostly they are open to one’s personal interpretation.

1.5 Principles

We have discussed in earlier sections how something like a final theory may be possible for us to achieve. In this section we will merely exercise one possible way of reaching such theory. Indeed, there are many ways, but only one theory may appear in the end, because a final theory should have no contestants if it really deserves to be called final.

It all begins with us addressing the logical part of the problem. The most logical conclusion that we have as rational beings is that it is impossible to disprove the existence of something beyond. Those who glorify nonexistence are still giving credit to something that lies beyond their immediate perception, which, by the way, is one of existence. In other words, faith in a higher concept of existence is present in all levels of intelligence.

No complex logic is necessary for us to conclude that everything that exists or will ever exist is part of a great whole. It does not matter: whatever you can imagine, or not imagine, will be part of this Whole. There is only the Whole. Even if there was something outside of or detached from everything, we can still rise our perspective even more and again see uncorrupted wholeness. Therefore, we can accept as inalienable truth that, for an infinite number of greater perspectives, the Whole is continuously reaffirmed as a recursive totality, an overall existence that keeps engulfing / encompassing everything. To this overall existence we give the name of Creation (All That Is).

Figure 1.2 – The Whole
One can always contest (negate) the absoluteness of a totality / wholeness, but several wholes that failed to affirm their absolute status still add up to form a recursively defined whole. Although the Whole becomes more complete with each recursion on top of Itself, It is already complete. This is the paradoxical nature of the Whole, which is akin to an omniverse.
Although Creation is all-inclusive, we still cannot say that Creation is everything. At the same time that Creation already is everything, It is also much more, going even beyond the mere notion of “isness” (i.e, what is and what is not). The main reason for this is because Creation is an absolute concept. We have already seen examples of absolute concepts: the Whole, Reality, etc. What the Whole and other absolute concepts have in common is that there is never really an objective limit for what they represent, and no amount of explanation can convey what it means for them to be absolute. That is why even giving Creation a name is ridiculous: whatever Creation really is, is beyond the name Creation. In reality, we are talking about a certain Absolute that transcends all denominations.

The Tao [absolute] that can be named, expressed or defined is not the eternal Tao [the Absolute]. Even the finest name is insufficient to define It. (Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching 1)

Nobody is really sure of how to define the Absolute properly, but we know due to an overwhelming intuitive force that it has an infinite, perfect and perpetual nature. Organized religions tap into this latent knowledge present in everyone and try to spin it along a certain line of interpretations. What religion does not realize is that any ideas about the unlimited will still be unbelievably limited. Generally, what is left after all belief systems have been demistified is acceptance of the transcendental nature of the Absolute. Surprisingly enough, however, it is through this act of acceptance that better interpretation of the Absolute may come.

The natural urge to understand the Absolute is present in everyone, but it is initially dealt with in a very primitive way. Most people expect to find their point of reference in the form of an universal principle that is above all others. At first, they never try to determine a fixed set of principles — just one. They end learning the hard way: all their favorite principles fail to maintain their status as such, because it would be a great shame to the Absolute if It was restricted to a single interpretation. On the following paragraphs we will see examples of how these primitive conceptions arise and then turn out as dead ends.

As they look further for an universal truth, people become fascinated with certain life philosophies up to the point that they forget or ignore anything that may be discordant with their views. But philosophy is not the least bit concerned with finding final answers to end the search for truth, an attitude that is consistent with reality, because in practice there is always new questions arising that force people to adopt new paradigms. Humans are naive by nature, and it is easy for them to see every new paradigm that arises as definitive. This process repeats itself for a long time until the person starts wondering if the final truth is of a complex nature and beyond a single answer. This is a major breakthrough, because a cycle of belief and disbelief is broken, and suddenly it becomes important for the person to increase her knowledge by getting to know as many points of view as possible.

A new kind of conclusion tends to arise when the person reaches an intellectual dead end after many failed attempts at trying to comprehend the Absolute. They are usually very relativistic and/or extremist conclusions, such as that the universe is infinitely complex, or that there is as many universal principles as people can come up with. The problem with these conclusions is that they hide a state of fascination with infinity. It is not far-fetched to think that there is an infinite number of ways to view the universe, but such “non-approach” defeats our purpose of trying to find universal principles (i.e., that are true regardless of what anyone thinks). It would be impossible for us to ever become acquainted with an infinite number of principles, and we would never fully move from theory to practice.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of infinity, but when worshiped in isolation it is mistakenly taken as a limit, a fixed ideal. Infinity cannot be taken as a limit because it is already defined as being greater than any limit. Infinity only gives the illusion that it can be sought as an ideal, because, in reality, it is always more than what it appears to be. Consequently, being infatuated with infinity alone is dangerous and can keep someone inside a path with no real destination in sight.

Figure 1.3 – Infinity
The adoption of the lemniscate to symbolize infinity was proposed by the English mathematician John Wallis (1616-1703).
The Greeks saw the idea of infinity as being absurd and chaotic. Indeed, infinity is often employed as a supplementary word for uncertainty about certain quantities in the universe. There is, for example, an exact amount of particles in the universe just as there must be a certain amount of distance, a certain shape and size, and a certain amount of mass for everything. There is enough evidence for us to believe in Absolutea finite universe; otherwise, we are left with irrational conclusions such as infinity, conclusions that in reality provide us with no answers at all.

As we continue with our search for universal truth, we eventually come to the next obvious indication: the Absolute has no specific smell, color, form or name, and all attempts to define It are in vain. It seems that the Absolute is always beyond anything that can be said about It, perhaps because our fixation with trying to define It is what prevents us from understanding It. As usual, people often jump into the conclusion that the Absolute is completely void of definition, and they start to believe that the Absolute is tantamount to nothingness. Well, this is a major breakthrough in the understanding of the Absolute, because something that does not exist is certainly beyond any rational definition of our part.

Zero, a concrete representation (symbol) for nothingness, is different from other numbers to the extent that it cannot be canceled as when we subtract a number from itself, because zero is already its own additive inverse: 0 = 0. Also, zero is always present before and after operands and signals in an equation, as well as before and after decimal places in a number (e.g., 001.000 = 01.0 = 1). All of this makes of zero an omnipresent abstract concept in mathematics, a concept that accurately reflects the absoluteness of the Absolute.

Zero could very well be the answer that we are looking for if it was not for a major flaw: by pointing a finger to zero and isolating it as a concept, we are still creating a duality composed of zero and its absence: non-zero. For instance, if we name an unknown object as “greel,” then we automatically create an opposite composed of whatever is outside and beyond greel. Therefore, the presence of non-zero makes of zero an unworthy definition for the Absolute, because nothing can have an exclusive existence outside something that is supposed to be all-inclusive.

Nonetheless, if our chosen principle was really nothingness (zero), then this can only mean that we have not found a principle yet. Unlike in the real world where there is no such a thing as a perfect nothing (e.g., perfect vacuum in space), the word nothing in the strict sense really means absolute nonexistence. Therefore, a principle that has nothingness / zero as an ideal should also acknowledge that no principles can exist, but this creates a functional contradiction that renders zero unusable as something to be sustained ideologically. In other words, what we have here is just another dead end resulting from our fascination with extremes.

Common sense naively defines nothing as the “absence of thing.” Absence, however, is still a state, while nothingness is not supposed to be a state, nor a state that is not a state, nor a state that is not a state that is not a state, and so on ad infinitum. The fact that the word nothing exists is proof that we cannot address a “no-thing” if we do not treat it as “some-thing.” In sum, there is no way to talk about nothing without falling in contradiction, and if we consider that we have been talking about it in the last few paragraphs, including this one, then we cannot even be sure of our own assertions! This leads us to conclude that thinking or talking about nothing is completely irrelevant and a distraction from more important (useful) issues.

Apart from being conceptual numbers, infinity and zero are also abstract concepts that ultimately equate to each other, because when exclusively sought as ideals they both lead nowhere. In many ways, going nowhere is the same as never leaving the place. People will be deceiving themselves by walking in circles exactly how a dog chases its own tail; they will be always looking for something, and yet never being able to find it. Seeking infinity is a task that never comes to fruition, and seeking zero is an absurd, because you cannot approach or avoid something that is simply not there. The only difference between infinity and zero is that those who seek infinity do not even know that they are walking in circles, because infinity is a masked zero.

Figure 1.4 – Twisted zero
The symbol for zero has an occult connection with the symbol for infinity. Consider that the little men walking on the surface of infinity have a low attention span. It is not clear for them that they are walking in circles. Zero is the illusion brought into light, but this does not mean that it has become less of an illusion. Zero is the illusion brought into light now we can clearly see that the course is a circle. zero is straightened out infinity, and infinity is a twisted zero. Note that twisted can mean the same as convoluted, exactly how we decsribed the infinetely complex view of the universe,. which is generally nothing more than ignorance. zero approached with ignorance.
It is obvious why infinity and zero have failed to give us a satisfactory understanding about the Absolute: they are irrational concepts, and what cannot be understood by reason alone cannot be properly defined. Therefore, we still cannot say anything about the Absolute except that it is not restricted to zero, infinity and any other singular and extreme notion for that matter. As we hinted before, people jump from principle to principle and never settle down for the possibility that a finite number of principles, perhaps even including zero and infinity, could be working together to embody the Absolute. Indeed, as we will see in the next chapter, a fixed number of principles, and not just one, is the best possible guess that someone can have about the Absolute.

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1 Adapted from translations by Western scholars who have interpreted this classical Chinese work. The second sentence is credited to Stan Rosenthal’s translation. 8 Dec 2009 .

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