Gather.com Finally Kicks Social Networking Content

Many were sad to see gather.com's social networking content bite the dust recently. For a year and a half it hadn't allowed photo or video uploads and now all of the text content by all except a very few semi-pro writers has gone offline.

I uploaded hundreds of photos videos and essays-actually thousands for several years, so that's quite a deletion from the www. Helium.com-another Boston based company censored, deleted and then banned me from writing, and N.P.R. took down it's Your Turn-Discussion open posting content a few years ago. Those and a few others have sequentially deleted my content from the Internet Since they all seem like left-leaning sites it leads me to wonder if the Demos aren't the main Internet de facto censors.

If a writer's page has anything to do with Massachusetts and you haven't  left-leaning style beware-the content may eventually disappear one way or another.

N.A.S.A. Earth Images Via Pink Floyd (video)

The idea of putting men and women on Mars should continue with long-term build up of supplies for living including crackers. These could be delivered in occassional packets to a specific location. It would also be good to ask Boeing to design an electro-magnetic linear accelerator-mass driver system for Earth to orbit heavy-lift launches.

In the age of exploration ships such as that of Columbus had to be self-contained with nothing sent ahead. Mars is not like that however. Earth can view Martian sites directly and communications with lasers can be instant. It would be a good idea to begin building up stuff and components the next decade in order to synergize invention and innovation on-site.

The Mars exploration start ought not be a Super SUV packed for vacation style all or nothing dice throw with fair odds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YMI39sObY

U.S. Public Debt May Reach 18 Trillion This Year-51 New American Billionaires

Thought the U.S. public debt today is 

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

there are reportedly 51 new American billionaires this year with an average worth of more than 3 billion each. The world's 2600 billionaires have 7.3 trillion bucks. Its lucky they run personal finance better than the public sector. 

Have NFL Spectator-Drunks Added to the War on Women?

One wonders if the violence of the NFL that is an alleged culture of corruption might promote violence against women indirectly through alcohol fueled beatings? When Women's suffrage grew in the early 20th century women supported prohibition. For 13 years the nation was dry-during that time called the roaring 20s the 18th amendment had prohibited booze in America. Wall Street built up a huge flam pyramid of unsupported investment without the dampening influence of booze. In the 1990s that was accomplished without sobriety on Wall Street-that is prohibition was was repealed with the 21st amendment in 1933.

A new prohibition era might reduce violence against women-at the very least Sunday Blue Laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages would be a moderate way to begin to deescalate the violence in culture, if alcohol is partly responsible for the violence. Advertising beer sales on any given Sunday seems a little to irreverent for a sober society.

It is something of a social philosophical issue when tens of thousands of drunks watch violence growing animated with emulative emoting. When sports media sneaking into Soldier field to swill alcohol from plastic cups and report the game developed a social conscious (just kidding) and sense of honor they might have thought that prohibition should be restored and violence against women reduced, yet that would be against the odds. Jim McMahon could have received diagnostic imaging for brain damage to determine the extent of damage to health during his career. There should be objective measurements and allowable levels of brain damage any NFL player can experience before mandatory retirement. Alcohol too damages brains as well as livers not only of drunks but of those they beat down as well.

Free Scotland to become 51st State Next?

If the Scots vote to be free in the independence vote tomorrow, taking control of their natural resource wealth, one must wonder if they will petition to become a territory of the United States and then a U.S. State next? There is a certain blingy zinginess about Scotland and single malt scotch as as American. For one thing Scotland can have its own vote in the U.N. before it joins the U.S.A. and seek a position on the Security Council where it can press for better anti-oil spill laws. As an American state it can at least for a while ban homosexual marriage that Britain forced upon them. The fine print though would exclude 18 U.S. states where Federal District Courts have rather forced homosexual marriage upon the people.

It is possible that after the divorce with England that Scotland will ask for foreign banks to move in and replace those that fled to the Thames for comfort and royal security blankets. I recommend that they avoid any banks without a certain percent of real assets versus loans. maybe the Scots will seek union with Denmark because of their fine cheeses or  Germany because of black forest hams. If I were a Scot myself I think I would look for a partnership with a good potato-producing country and have a free trade agreement in place right away.

A Switch to Robots of Discipline Ahead?

N.F.L. football star Adrian Peterson was arrested recently for spanking his kid with a switch. With child abuse a global problem theorists have developed the spare not the Rodham and spoil  not a child-spanking robot of discipline. When junior deserves corporal punishment for Napoleanic tendencies a Rodham robot of discipline can administer one-hundred swats faster than Bruce Lee’s wing Chung delivered with politically-correct sensitivity.

Some American males for too long have had a Pavlovian attitude toward discipline paradoxically salivating over the prospect of discipline-fulfillment-response-compensation loops. Cults of dog-walking females inspired the inventor of the Rodham Robot to journey to Europe and Paris in search of theories of discipline machines.

Shurelee ‘Tickle’ Flant Oxford IV realized that brutality to dogs was part of a cast system hierarchy brought about by leader-of-the-pack domination violence against dogs. Stopping spanking of dogs from early puppydom would create a better dog social-ecostructure. Instead of condign conditioning Oxford saw that the reward system for misbehavior would be more effective. If a dog was given enough taffy treats for misbehavior it would learn to hate misbehavior. The first step was in developing a Rodham Robot of Discipline to wean the dog ‘owners’ away from brutality to their pups.

Combining Charles Babbage’s calculating engine with women of discipline advertising in shop windows of Amsterdam Dr. Oxford saw the prototype of his dreams forming as a sparkling Rodham Spankin machine of discipline.

Americans have been moving toward a cessation of spanking and swatting in public schools where echoes sounding like a gunshot would reverberate from one end of a school building to another whenever another victim was given the flat bat of stinging discipline on the behind. The results have liberated Wall Street to have zero-responsibility passing of bad debt in little slices called derivatives globally, and there was no problem with that. They seek another way to discipline children without the possibility of sadistic pleasure fulfillment in administrators of discipline and are thus receptive to the Rodham Spanking Robot taking a swat at it down the road.

On Eschatology

Eschatology is a term referring to the study of end times-that is the end of the world and Universe. Many cultures have end times prophecies as a kind of counterpoint to creation stories. Science of course views everything through a jaundiced eye of causality reasoning from within the field of being. With logical investigations and mathematical calculations one may infer the cosmological history of the Universe and project the future of the Universe and even its end. Of course science does not inevitable have all the facts hence it may miss out on significant elements for calculating. In 1999 it was discovered that the expansion of the Universe is increasing and has done so for about 7 billion years instead of slowing down under the influence of gravity. One might wonder how renewed, accelerated spatial expansion occurs in-itself and how that effects the parameters of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

I believe that historians of eschatological paradigms of diverse cultures have classified the form of thee end times. Science has had a big rip-in which the Universe’s space-time is torn apart by too rapid of expansion. Science has also had a big crunch wherein the gravity of the Universe slows the expansion and draws it toward contraction and an end times singularity. There are also cyclical theories of science wherein space-time field membranes periodically collide, bounce and end and start a new cycle of expansion and evolution until it wears down its energy in thermodynamic exhaustion. That would be something like a ball thrown into the air that goes higher and higher until its energy is spent whereat it falls to Earth, hits a trampoline with energy in the skin of the trampoline that adds energy to the returning ball for a bounce of equal height again.

Hindu eschatology has time periods called kalpas. After the equivalent of 50 billion years have passed Brahma wraps up the Universe and recycles it. Brahma is the Christian equivalent of God.

Ragnarok and other Nordic myths are included in the field of eschatology. Yet as Christians we are concerned with the eschatological paradigm of the Bible. Scholars of Bible studies necessarily make a kind of limited systematic theology by deciding what valid eschatological references in the Bible are and how they should be correlated with references in other books of the Bible. There are several ways of interpreting the collected eschatological materials producing different ideas about when or how the end times scenarios eventuate.

In end-times paradigms the world may end in flames, or flood, disaster of various kinds with signs and portents, predicted circumstances and indications that the end times are on the way. Jesus Christ of course said,

Matthew 24-4 “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.”

The temporal exstasis, the rate and nature of the passage of time, in eschatological scenarios tends to be linear with the arrow of time moving forward irreversibly along one dimension or direction. Some theorists believe that if space-time can be regarded as a composite of dimension entailing membrances that moving along or through each other producing the phenomena of time for observers. They may also postulate that the complexity of matter interactions make reversibility of time theoretically possible yet practically not so. It goes witout saying that the entire space-time field would need to reverse rather than just a portion of it, and that seems unlikely, not that one would ever notice if it did.

At any rate, I mentioned the foregoing as a lead-in to pointing out that Jesus Christ seems to bring a different paradigm to space-time eschatology without necessarily advancing neither a cyclical nor a linear time paradigm for end times. Even though the New Testament does provide something of more usual end-times information, it also has a different temporal axis, one based in the kingdom of God that is for-itself outside of space-time existing as a transcending fact beyond the linear order of causality.

Yet of the causal order the Lord was not short of knowledge. He mentioned at one time to his contemporaries prophecies concerning himself and Jerusalem, yet they failed to understand then. The destruction of Jerusalem would be an apocalyptic event, yet not that of the entire world, unless of course one interpreted the resurrection of the Lord as the most important eschatological event-the end of temporal history as the main place of meaning-with the new emphasis shifting to the church and the kingdom of God-though the temporal line runs on for a time or time and a half, a kalpa or a trillion years…like something of a cul de sac.

Matthew 16-1 “The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.

2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.”

The kingdom of God may have a different physics, a different field, or even a spiritual foundation with fundamentally new structure of existence. From what Jesus said here about marriage, it seems that temporal thermodynamics might be absent from the kingdom of God.

Matthew-29 “Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,

32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

Eschatology has many Judeao-Christian and even Muslims interpretations. I will briefly consider elements of some.

Christian eschatology is a large field concerned with learning when the second coming of Christ and end of the present temporal world order will occur.  Some of the basic fields for interpreting the Revelation and apocalyptic references comprising eschatological material are Praeterism, Idealism, Historicism and Futurism. There also are fields of study about a millennium of rule by the Lord on Earth. One finds a comparable paradigm in the Muslim period ruled by Isa. The field opinions about a millennium of rule by God/Jesus or Isa his rep are called premillennialism, post-millennialism and amillennialism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology#Amillennialism

There is yet another context-ism about these time periods. Dispensationalism has the idea that there are various ages or epochs whereby God relates to humanity providing a different emphasis. This age of the Gentiles might be regarded as one such era. I think this idea is one paradigm abstract with some true elements. Yet one can have a few true fence post located at right places and still make a fence with the wrong shape. That is there might be more going on than a simple dispensation paradigm might take notice of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realized_eschatology

This point of view is described by the wikipedia article as being mostly an historical viewpoint. It seems something like Bultman might have liked. It is the ministry and legacy of Jesus that was the eschatological event and the corresponding worldly events have already happened. It differs from futurism and futurist dispensationalism with those ideas anticipating a coming anti-Christ, Armageddon, rapture and so forth. Even so it is not so simple. What Jesus said and his ministry wasn’t entirely or even primarily worldly or grounded in space-time rather than the kingdom of God. Time is non-linear for the Lord.

Inaugurated Eschatology was popularized by George Eldon Ladd-a prolific Christian theologian. He has several books available on-line. It has some elements of futurism while also has elements that were fulfilled already with the appearance of the Lord. It seems a reasonable approach.

http://www.amazon.com/Presence-Future-Eschatology-Biblical-Realism/dp/0802815316/ref=la_B001KITWUA_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410646377&sr=1-3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inaugurated_eschatology

http://eschatologytoday.blogspot.com/

This web site has interesting real-time political concepts about end times fragments in the Middle East. Egypt offered some Sinai land to the Palestinian authority in the context of making a final settlement with Israel and that was rejected. Wars and rumors of wars include ISIS, the Caliphate and the prospects for partitioning Syria to give the Sunni of Syria half of that nation so they can extricate themselves from the civil war that evidently cannot end without further.

Muslim have an eschatological tradition somewhat similar to Jewish and Christian though with less content. The Bible was written by many authors under the direction of God while the Quran was written, it is said, by one man. Hence there isn’t as much detail or subtle weaving of nuance and scripttural references and allusions developing over more than a thousand years in the Quran. Even so the end times are called Qiyamah. That is the Resurrection or the Final Day. Muslims have a battle of Armageddon too. The point of view of those events differs from Christian and Jewish paradigms.

Muslims have some paradigms of apocalypse similar to those of John the author of the Revelation. An anti-Allah appears named Masih ad-Dajjal and the bad folks follow he who claims to be god though he has just one eye while the good are led by the returning Mahdi (Jews expect a mahdi to appear to establish the kingdom). The Mahdi and Isa will beat down Masih ad-Dajjal and establish peace on Earth.

After Isa’s period of ruling the faithful placidly ends two evil tribes descended from evil beings will start a battle to wipe out the believers. The Ya'jooj and Ma'jooj tribes start a general decline of morals. I believe these tribes are also known as Gog and Magog. Instead of a rapture, a pleasant southern breeze arrives to remove the faithful from the world, and all hell breaks loose.

An evil beast will come out of the ground (something like the beast in the pit) and vanquish the faithful and the Quran will be forgotten. People will fornicate in the street like donkeys before a black smoke covers the world. The sun rises in the west and a trumpet sounds and everything is wrapped up. The only things living are what Allah wills to remain. Another trumpet sounds and everything is hunkie dorrie-everyone is resurrected and a journey starts. The good go to Janna and the faithless go to Jannanam (heaven and hell I suppose).

The paradigm seems to reflect Jewish-Christian-pagan syncretism changing the orientation  to reflect Muhammad’s point of view. Muhammad’s father was the keeper of the Kabba at Mecca before he was orphaned. He probably had both testaments of the Bible. By the 7th century the New Testament had been translated into Gothic for Germans. It was moving about the old world with priests liberally. With the fall of Jerusalem and the Roman Empire the attack upon the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople was getting started. Mohammad's warrior religion was the unifying power for conquest of North Africa, much of Asia and Europe. With the retreat of the Byzantine Empire and start of the dark ages in Europe the game was on.