[dark energy] and the complexity of space

In 2001, Ray Villard, of spacedotcom, wrote of:

A strange repulsive force of "dark energy" pervad[ing] every nook and cranny of the universe, push[ing] against the master force of gravity.While gravity gently binds planets, stars and galaxies together, dark energy tugs on the fabric of time and space, pushing galaxies apart ever faster and faster into the farthest reaches of the universe.

The Hubble Deep Field image containing the farthest supernova suggested that that a decelerating universe holds galaxies relatively close together and objects in them would have appeared brighter because they would be closer.

The comment I liked the most about this was:

"This starts to look incredibly ugly and complicated," says Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "I even wonder if we are we asking right questions."

Or this one:

"Dark energy is something we have no clue as to what is causing it, and it doesn't fit into current physics theories, and they have to develop new approaches to explain it," said Perlmutter, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "That's exciting. It's rare that we get to do this."

Yep, when you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, you can wax lyrical, like Morris Aizenman, a senior science associate with the National Science Foundation, who was so moved by the finding that he likened it to a Keats poem about Cortez' first sighting of the Pacific Ocean.

So is the universe accelerating or decelerating? Who knows? Supernovae observations published in 1998 suggested space is expanding faster today than long ago. And is the universe three-dimensional or is it flat? The simple answer is that scientists don’t know.

It’s not scientists who appear to be the arrogant ones. It is mankind who places science on a pedestal and wilfully misunderstands what it is about. Science is seeking answers, it is not G-d.

So in the knowledge that we don’t really know anything, except on the plane we currently perceive from, who would be so arrogantly blinkered as to suggest that there might just be a great cosmic force we can refer to under the moniker “G-d”?

Who knows, there might be such a power after all.

[to where] add your caption

[snow] and the ebbing of dull care

Did you have the snow? It might sound a stupid question but with no daily news input here, I can only assume you did.

What is it about snow that makes it almost as important as the touch of a woman or sailing a boat, skiing down a mountain or walking through the forest? When it’s with you, it’s so soothing, so restful, so fulfilling and dull care fades away, in a fairytale landscape.

Also, like a good woman, snow can inspire you to heights, stir the creative urge and lead you to achieve great things.

So the theory goes.

[cunning plan] and winnie the pooh

Winnie the Pooh, whom I resemble in many ways, spoke of his “cunning plan” and why should I be any different?

At this moment, a BT line and therefore an internet connection, are four weeks down the track. For now, the alternative is to use the library in a nearby town [not the best but better than nothing] and occasionally to ride a few kilometres across to where my friend lives [laptop in my backpack and cricked back allowing] to check emails, check post comments, post articles and to visit.

One thing this enforced austerity teaches you is the principle of delayed gratification, a principle I should have thought was an admirable one in this era of envy and avarice and these days of contraction of the household budget.

To those who care and with apologies to a different Winnie, this is not the end nor even the beginning of the end [hand crosses to his heart]:

“It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Remember, courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all others.

We will fight this pernicious enemy, this economic depression, on the beaches, on the landing fields …”

[won’t get fooled again] or will we

The essential difference between the last world war and the one they’re currently leading us into is the consciousness of the people.

People largely accepted that WW2 was Hitler’s doing and that we were the innocent, in grave danger of being overrun by the murderous savages. Therefore we were willing to sign on and throw ourselves in the path of crossfire for G-d, Queen [King - thanks, dearieme] and country.

At the other end of the spectrum, the communists were steadfastly trotting out Marx’s impossible theorem, with its clandestine underlying agenda of the same enslavement that Hitler was hell bent on. Class war was convenient because it promoted, in one fell swoop:

1. the politics of envy;
2. diminution of the family in favour of the state;
3. removal of incentive and initiative;
4. creation of the preconditions for enslavement.

So it didn’t matter which way it happened, on either side of politics – the common man was for the chop. He’d been nicely set up.

IG Farben is a good example of how the people behind the governments they influence have no morality or patriotism whatsoever:

In 1930, Standard Oil announced that it had purchased an alcohol monopoly in Germany, a deal which had been set up by I.G. Farben. After Hitler came to power, John D. Rockefeller assigned his personal press agent, Ivy Lee, to Hitler to serve as a full- time adviser on the rearmament of Germany, a necessary step for setting up World War II.

Standard Oil then built large refineries in Germany for the Nazis and continued to supply them with oil during World War II. In the 1930s Standard Oil was receiving in payment from Germany large shipments of musical instruments and ships which had been built in German yards. I.G. officials, seeing the handwriting on the wall, began a close association with Adolf Hitler, supplying much needed funds and political influence.

The success of the I.G. Farben cartel had aroused the interest of other industrialists. Henry Ford was favorably impressed and set up a German branch of Ford Motor Company. Forty per cent of the stock was purchased by I.G. Farben. I.G. Farben then established an American subsidiary, called American I.G., in cooperation with Standard Oil of New Jersey. Its directors included Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil, Paul Warburg of Kuhn Loeb & Company and Edsel Ford, representing the Ford interests.

John Foster Dulles, for the law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, became the attorney for I.G., frequently traveling between New York and Berlin on cartel business. His law partner, Arthur Dean, is now director of the $40 million Teagle Foundation which was set up before Teagle's death.

Business is business but mothers’ sons lying in blood and mud for no good reason is another question. There is no justification for war whatsoever except to enrich the military industrial cartels. To say it’s to protect freedom is so disingenuous as to be labelled evil.

There are ample tools through trade and diplomacy to offset any war – I’ve seen this at first hand – and the only reason a dictator remains in power and devastates a country is because of the collusion of outside elements for whom it is politically expedient.

The internet is a great medium for exposing and detailing the criminality of those who purportedly ‘lead’ us. Prior to WW2, there were no doubt people who had tumbled to the truth but of course, they had no outlet for expression. Now we have that but has the populace as a whole, woken up? Have they hell.

The average householder today is preoccupied with holding on to his mortgage and his job, trying to come to terms with his credit debt and putting the right refuse in the right bins, before paying homage, at the palaces of shopping, to the new god Consumerism.

Is he going to refuse to go off and fight those naughty terrorist infidels which the MSM insists are hell bent on reducing us to a condition of religious enslavement and slit throats? If he’s told that it is patriotic to be dictated to by the ruthless shells above and women are sent with white feathers to harangue any who won’t swallow this pap, he’ll meekly fall in line, won’t he?

The greatest crime of the soulless elite is that it takes a truth, e.g. that there is climate change and Gorizes it into an untruth or else it takes universal human weaknesses – ambition, lust for power and sex, envy, pride and the desire to be loved and find inner peace – then perverts and bastardizes them into a twisted parody, in a spirit of deep cynicism and sound business principles.

An example is the ‘poverty industry’:

The Rockefeller Foundation created a number of spin-off groups, which now plague the nation with a host of ills, one of them being the Social Science Research Council, which single-handedly spawned the nationwide “poverty industry,” a business which expends some $130 billion a year of taxpayer funds while grossing some $6 billion income for its practitioners.

The money, which would amply feed and house all of the nation's “poor,” is dissipated through a vast administrative network which awards generous concessions to a host of parasitic “consultants”.

Anything these people touch turns to dirt and human misery is exploited for its possibilities of revenue. Ditto your government.

Now, will “the people” wake up to this before the next war arrives, using the internet to discover what is really going down? What percentage, even with this wonderful tool, are ever going to wake up?

[copyright] and the nastiness of litigation

An issue has arisen which needs to be raised with fellow bloggers.

At Bloghounds, we don't have copyright problems at this time but we might have if we don't act now. What has brought all this on is that a friend's friend has been sent a demand for thousands of pounds because she used an image some time ago which is now owned by someone else.

The implications for both my personal blog here and for many of your blogs are clear. My blog, nourishing obscurity, is a heavily image-intensive blog, as everyone knows and I have tried to use images from either Wiki or where I reasonably thought, from checks, that they were able to be used legally at that time. Sometimes I've had to do deeper checks.

Now the thing which should worry you here is not that many images are copyright and that there are implications for then using them without paying royalties - everyone knows that. The thing you should worry about is, for example, if you have an image up on, say, a post on California from 2006. At the time, that image was able to be used but now another company has bought it and are able to send you a letter that you have been using a copyright image.

Even if you immediately remove said image, their angle is that you have used it in the past.

That this is going on is just plain wrong - I mean, not letting you have a reasonable time to remove it stems largely from our current financial climate when people's incomes are under threat and the more unscrupulous are looking around for ways to produce new revenue.

What a society we're living in.

[shakespearean insults] time for some more

You’re probably wondering how to adequately express your contempt for the incompetents above so it’s time to revisit the world of the bard. Try these for size:

Methink'st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee. Taken from: All's Well That Ends Well

Away, you bottle-ale rascal, you filthy bung, away! Taken from: Henry IV, part 2

Thou mewling dizzy-eyed flirt-gill! You are a fishmonger. Taken from: Hamlet

Thou art only mark'd for hot vengeance and the rod of heaven. Taken from: Henry IV, part I

Thou reeky clapper-clawed gudgeon!

This one would not make the cut for ingenuity but I like it for its simplicity:

In civility thou seem'st so empty. Taken from: As You Like It

[grammar corner] lay and lie

Lie detector

Lay or Lie?

• Lay means "to place something down." It is something you do to something else. It is a transitive verb.
lay – laid – laid - laying
• Lie [1] means "to recline" or "be placed." It does not act on anything or anyone else. It is an intransitive verb.
lie – lay – lain - lying
• Lie [2] means "to tell an untruth" or "to tell a lie". It does not act on anything or anyone else. It is an intransitive verb.
lie – lied – lied - lying
• Layed is a misspelling and does not exist. Use laid instead.

Which is the correct variant in each case?

1. You’ve been lying/laying on that bed all day!
2. She lied/laid to me about how much money she’d spent.
3. Whenever chickens lay/lie eggs, we eat.
4. He has lied/lie to you from the very first day.
5. He lay/laid on the bed and thought about his life.
6. Are you going to lie/lay on that bed all day?
7. Having laid/layed the books on the table, he sat down.
8. Having laid/lain in bed all day, he decided finally to get up.
9. By lying/laying the baby on the bed, she would have her hands free.
10. He has been laying/lying to you about his second wife.
11. Having laid/layed the baby on the bed, she had her hands free.
12. Do not lay/lie to me about the crime you committed!

Answers next posting day.

[geography] can you name the area

Question 1 [1 point]

Which country [nation] is this?

Answer

Trick question - the country, England, doesn't officially exist.

Question 2 [5 points]

Can you name the specific area where this is?

Answer

Oxendale and Crinkle Crags

[where are they now] an occasional series

So … er … where is he now?

I’m talking about the Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. Can anyone forget such classic lines as:

"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all. G-d will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."

"We are not afraid of the Americans. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid" (dramatic pause) "and they are condemned."

"They tried to bring a small number of tanks and personnel carriers in through al-Durah but they were surrounded and most of their infidels had their throats cut."

"They are trying to fool you. They’re not at the airport. They are showing any old pictures of buildings. And they even went into the VIP section at the airport, just because Saddam Hussein may have sat in such and such a chair or slept in such and such a bed. They are stupid!"

About Bush: "the insane little dwarf Bush" About Bush and Rumsfeld: "Those only deserve to be hit with shoes."

Anyone know where he is? Perhaps he’s no a shoe salesman in Cincinatti.