Update: Dad died about an hour or two after I left this post. Thanks for your concern and your prayers. This is one of the last photos taken of him. He was teaching at his little Assembly of God Church, the same one I grew-up in.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
My Dad
The nursing home my dad has been recuperating in temporarily just called saying they couldn't wake him up this morning and that they're sending him to the hospital. He's been sleeping almost constantly for two days and has lots of things wrong with him. Maybe it's just his time to go. But if he's going to live I want him to live well and not be sick. Prayers are appreciated.
Update: Dad died about an hour or two after I left this post. Thanks for your concern and your prayers. This is one of the last photos taken of him. He was teaching at his little Assembly of God Church, the same one I grew-up in.
Update: Dad died about an hour or two after I left this post. Thanks for your concern and your prayers. This is one of the last photos taken of him. He was teaching at his little Assembly of God Church, the same one I grew-up in.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Initiations of Myth
It's often been said that real mythology died out with the Norse sagas. The people who say this assume that science now provides us with the answers to our origins and the origins of all things, and that if science can't yet answer all our questions, just give science time. Statements like these make me think that real wisdom died with the ancient Greeks because Plato would have been very amused at such assumptions. And it wasn't as though science didn't exist in Plato's time. They were already working with very advanced concepts in geometry. Eratosthenes had actually managed to calculate the Earth's circumference by the 3rd century BC to within 15% accuracy. Aristotle probably knew more about zoology (a science he practically invented) than any man who ever lived. Earth science, biology, and botany all had their start in ancient Greece. But those Greeks were smart enough to know that science always introduces more questions than it answers. Plato would have told us that the world would always be in need of fresh myths.
Myths vaguely explain the unexplainable in wispy, shadowy terms like dream symbolism. God sends us these myths through various means. They can come by way of imagination, meditational states, dreaming, real life strings of coincidences where it seems the world is trying to tell you something, or through the observance of animals and nature.
A few years ago I was watching the 70s sci-fi movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, certainly one of the very best films ever made about alien encounters with man. As I was watching, I came to two realizations. One is that our generation's stories about space aliens are a new kind of mythology. There are a few tales here and there about visitors from space found among ancient legends but certainly not anywhere near the level our age has produced. Whether there really are intelligent non-spiritual life forms (beings composed of matter like us rather than ghostly types of beings) outside of Earth I wouldn't venture to guess. But there have been so many tales of encounters with space aliens that even if these tales come only by way of trance states, dreams, or imagination we still have to wonder what these stories are trying to tell us. Even if people are just tapping into the world of imagination, that world is ruled by God too. We have to consider that he may be sending us a new myth. We should ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this new myth? While I do believe the many, many stories of space aliens and UFO encounters are a kind of new mythology for our age, I have yet to discover its deepest meanings.
The other realization I came to while watching the movie was the way myths come to us in this hazy sort of state. In the story, certain people around the world were having visionary experiences that were very undefined. They would see an object shaped a certain way, kind of like a small mound, and it would remind them of something, but they couldn't quite figure out what that something was. A man would be shaving and look down at the mound shape of cream in his hand before putting it on his face and realize it meant something. A person might be eating mashed potatoes and instinctively push them together to form a mound shape without knowing why. Another person might be driving by a haystack and have that same vague recollection of something. People started trying to better define what this something was. They would try to draw it over and over or make clay models etc. Some of them eventually managed to get a form that satisfied them. They all created the exact same shape that looked just like Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, which ended up being the place where the space aliens landed.
I think this is very much the way God introduces myths to mankind. These symbols may come through dreams, real-life experiences, or any number of other ways. We should be on our guard when we notice many individuals all encountering the same manifestations of what may or may not be imagination, but which seem more symbolic than anything. They will generally be something that gives you a vague sense of having come from another world. As fortune would have it, I just finished rereading Arthur C Clarke's 2001 A Space Odyssey last week and started on CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew a few days ago. They both contain passages that to me convey the same mythical message even though the two storylines are quite different.
From Clarke's story:
David Bowman, an astronaut, is flying in a space pod toward a mysterious object. It's a giant monolith nearly a mile high resting on Saturn's moon--Japetus. He tries to land on it and instead feels himself sinking into it. As he does so he can see that inside this slab of darkness there are innumerable stars. Time begins to slow down as well. It says, "The seconds themselves were passing with incredible slowness, as if time itself were coming to a stop. At last, the tenth-of-a-second counter froze between 5 and 6." Eventually he comes out into another world. Whether it's merely another part of our universe or another universe altogether he can't say for sure:
So imagine an artificial planet that has upon its surface thousands of giant domino-shaped monoliths, each of them routing you to a different world or a different part of our world. We're never really made clear on that. At the book's end we certainly find David Bowman living in a totally different kind of existence, yet he can still find his way back to Earth anytime he desires. He's living in a very strange form of non-material existence now.
From CS Lewis story:
Two children, Digory and Polly, have found that all the houses on their street are connected together with no space between them. There's a passageway in the attics, a small space close to the roofline that will allow you to crawl from house to house. Climbing through it, they accidentally come out into Digory's house but in the upper room where his uncle lives. The uncle is a typical freemason magician wannabe who thinks he knows things that he doesn't. He does, however, have in his possession a set of rings that will bring you to and from another world. Both children put on the yellow rings and end up in something like a small pool, but you can breath in this pool and you don't get wet. It comes up into a wooded area that appears to be another kind of reality that's very dreamlike and is described as a place where nothing ever happens:
Lewis says a little later: "It seems to be always the same time in the Wood between the Worlds." So, like in Clarke's story, this sort of switching station is a place of no-time.
Now in the case of the Lewis story it seems rather obvious that he's giving a short lecture on the out-of-body experience taking you to another world and the trancelike sleep state you need to attain that kind of journey. However, he also makes it clear throughout the Narnia tales that you should never try to enter these worlds on your own, but rather, you should wait to be drawn in by Aslan if you're to go at all. He's obviously read his MacDonald.
The Clarke story is of course a little different, yet at the same time we have here two tales expressing doorways into new worlds and the unknown. We also find in both Clarke's novel and the Narnia tales a new world that's coming into view which will change our current world. A new heavens and earth so to speak. And it is in these other worlds that we find the beings (either God or godlike) who truly run our own world and bring it into being.
How did these two authors end up writing stories about trips to other worlds through holes in reality in much the same way? I really don't think Clarke borrowed from Lewis on this (although they did correspond from time to time). And they aren't the only ones. For instance, there is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel" which is about a cosmic library that represents the universe, which in turn represents not only multidimensional space and time, but the building blocks of reality on every level:
Men for ages have searched through the library trying to find the meaning of life etc. It contains all the mysteries of the world. Now you may look at the passage from Borges and not see any connection to either of the other stories. But I think most of you will feel there is a certain something being conveyed that is somehow related, and yet you can't say why. Well that is precisely how the symbols of myth come into the world. What does it all mean, these infinite spaces, infinite worlds, and travel between them? Does it relate at all to the space alien myth our age has produced as well? I really don't have an answer. But I feel there's one coming. We are experiencing a myth in the making, and that myth has to do with a remaking of the world. Perhaps God is merely trying to give us a sense of destiny. Mankind cannot go on existing without one.
Myths vaguely explain the unexplainable in wispy, shadowy terms like dream symbolism. God sends us these myths through various means. They can come by way of imagination, meditational states, dreaming, real life strings of coincidences where it seems the world is trying to tell you something, or through the observance of animals and nature.
A few years ago I was watching the 70s sci-fi movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, certainly one of the very best films ever made about alien encounters with man. As I was watching, I came to two realizations. One is that our generation's stories about space aliens are a new kind of mythology. There are a few tales here and there about visitors from space found among ancient legends but certainly not anywhere near the level our age has produced. Whether there really are intelligent non-spiritual life forms (beings composed of matter like us rather than ghostly types of beings) outside of Earth I wouldn't venture to guess. But there have been so many tales of encounters with space aliens that even if these tales come only by way of trance states, dreams, or imagination we still have to wonder what these stories are trying to tell us. Even if people are just tapping into the world of imagination, that world is ruled by God too. We have to consider that he may be sending us a new myth. We should ask ourselves, what is the purpose of this new myth? While I do believe the many, many stories of space aliens and UFO encounters are a kind of new mythology for our age, I have yet to discover its deepest meanings.
The other realization I came to while watching the movie was the way myths come to us in this hazy sort of state. In the story, certain people around the world were having visionary experiences that were very undefined. They would see an object shaped a certain way, kind of like a small mound, and it would remind them of something, but they couldn't quite figure out what that something was. A man would be shaving and look down at the mound shape of cream in his hand before putting it on his face and realize it meant something. A person might be eating mashed potatoes and instinctively push them together to form a mound shape without knowing why. Another person might be driving by a haystack and have that same vague recollection of something. People started trying to better define what this something was. They would try to draw it over and over or make clay models etc. Some of them eventually managed to get a form that satisfied them. They all created the exact same shape that looked just like Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, which ended up being the place where the space aliens landed.
I think this is very much the way God introduces myths to mankind. These symbols may come through dreams, real-life experiences, or any number of other ways. We should be on our guard when we notice many individuals all encountering the same manifestations of what may or may not be imagination, but which seem more symbolic than anything. They will generally be something that gives you a vague sense of having come from another world. As fortune would have it, I just finished rereading Arthur C Clarke's 2001 A Space Odyssey last week and started on CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew a few days ago. They both contain passages that to me convey the same mythical message even though the two storylines are quite different.
From Clarke's story:
David Bowman, an astronaut, is flying in a space pod toward a mysterious object. It's a giant monolith nearly a mile high resting on Saturn's moon--Japetus. He tries to land on it and instead feels himself sinking into it. As he does so he can see that inside this slab of darkness there are innumerable stars. Time begins to slow down as well. It says, "The seconds themselves were passing with incredible slowness, as if time itself were coming to a stop. At last, the tenth-of-a-second counter froze between 5 and 6." Eventually he comes out into another world. Whether it's merely another part of our universe or another universe altogether he can't say for sure:
He was emerging from the tunnel. ... At the same time, he felt that he was moving upward.... But even before the space pod soared out into the open he knew that this place had nothing to do with Japetus, or with any world within the experience of man. ... He must be above a world of enormous size--perhaps one much larger than Earth. Yet despite its extent, all the surface that Bowman could see was tessellated into obviously artificial patterns that must have been miles on a side. It was like the jigsaw puzzle of a giant that played with planets; and at the centers of many of those squares and triangles and polygons were gaping black shafts--twins of the chasm from which he had just emerged. ...in a flash of insight that might have been wholly spurious, he knew what this thing must surely be. It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy.
So imagine an artificial planet that has upon its surface thousands of giant domino-shaped monoliths, each of them routing you to a different world or a different part of our world. We're never really made clear on that. At the book's end we certainly find David Bowman living in a totally different kind of existence, yet he can still find his way back to Earth anytime he desires. He's living in a very strange form of non-material existence now.
From CS Lewis story:
Two children, Digory and Polly, have found that all the houses on their street are connected together with no space between them. There's a passageway in the attics, a small space close to the roofline that will allow you to crawl from house to house. Climbing through it, they accidentally come out into Digory's house but in the upper room where his uncle lives. The uncle is a typical freemason magician wannabe who thinks he knows things that he doesn't. He does, however, have in his possession a set of rings that will bring you to and from another world. Both children put on the yellow rings and end up in something like a small pool, but you can breath in this pool and you don't get wet. It comes up into a wooded area that appears to be another kind of reality that's very dreamlike and is described as a place where nothing ever happens:
The pool he [Digory] had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others--a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. ... This wood was very much alive.
...
"What's the matter?" said Polly.
"I've just had a really wonderful idea," said Digory. " What
are all the other pools?"
"How do you mean?"
"Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn't we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool."
...
"You mean, this wood might be only one of them?"
"No, I don't believe this wood is a world at all. I think it's just a sort of in-between place." ... Think of our tunnel under the slates at home. It isn't a room in any of the houses. In a way, it isn't really part of any of the houses. But once you're in the tunnel you can go along it and come out into any of the houses in the row. Mightn't this wood be the same?--a place that isn't in any of the worlds, but once you've found that place you can get into them all." ... "And of course that explains everything," he said. "That's why it is so quiet and sleepy here. Nothing ever happens here. like at home. It's in the houses that people talk, and do things, and have meals. Nothing goes on in the in-between places....
"The wood between the worlds," said Polly dreamily. "It sounds rather nice."
Lewis says a little later: "It seems to be always the same time in the Wood between the Worlds." So, like in Clarke's story, this sort of switching station is a place of no-time.
Now in the case of the Lewis story it seems rather obvious that he's giving a short lecture on the out-of-body experience taking you to another world and the trancelike sleep state you need to attain that kind of journey. However, he also makes it clear throughout the Narnia tales that you should never try to enter these worlds on your own, but rather, you should wait to be drawn in by Aslan if you're to go at all. He's obviously read his MacDonald.
The Clarke story is of course a little different, yet at the same time we have here two tales expressing doorways into new worlds and the unknown. We also find in both Clarke's novel and the Narnia tales a new world that's coming into view which will change our current world. A new heavens and earth so to speak. And it is in these other worlds that we find the beings (either God or godlike) who truly run our own world and bring it into being.
How did these two authors end up writing stories about trips to other worlds through holes in reality in much the same way? I really don't think Clarke borrowed from Lewis on this (although they did correspond from time to time). And they aren't the only ones. For instance, there is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel" which is about a cosmic library that represents the universe, which in turn represents not only multidimensional space and time, but the building blocks of reality on every level:
The universe (which others call the library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below--one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides.... One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first--identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. ... Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. ... (Mystics claim that their secret ecstasies reveal to them a circular chamber containing an enormous circular book with a continuous spine that goes completely around the walls. But their testimony is suspect, their words obscure. That cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice for the moment that I repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circumference is unattainable.
Men for ages have searched through the library trying to find the meaning of life etc. It contains all the mysteries of the world. Now you may look at the passage from Borges and not see any connection to either of the other stories. But I think most of you will feel there is a certain something being conveyed that is somehow related, and yet you can't say why. Well that is precisely how the symbols of myth come into the world. What does it all mean, these infinite spaces, infinite worlds, and travel between them? Does it relate at all to the space alien myth our age has produced as well? I really don't have an answer. But I feel there's one coming. We are experiencing a myth in the making, and that myth has to do with a remaking of the world. Perhaps God is merely trying to give us a sense of destiny. Mankind cannot go on existing without one.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Ethanol
Christians have been called upon by God to be the caretakers of the Earth since the first man appeared. We're also commanded to be good stewards of our money. It's with that attitude in mind that I present this article.
There are currently 1900 filling stations in the USA with E-85 fuel pumps. The number goes up considerably every year, and the trend is not going to go away. Despite attempts from the oil industry and its congressional cronies to defeat ethanol proponents entirely and send them packing, the grassroots efforts to bring ethanol into the 21st century are alive and well. I will attempt to be a political centrist in this article. In interest of full disclosure, my political leanings are mainly conservative. However, the topic of ethanol is one in which everyone, republicans and democrats alike, have been handed a fistful of misinformation thanks to the deep pockets of the oil industry.
I don't know if ethanol, hydrogen, or some other fuel will win out in the end. But as far as ethanol goes, there are no inherent problems with ethanol itself as a fuel alternative to gasoline; the problem is primarily with corn and corn subsidies. I've been investigating this a lot the past year after hearing David Blume, author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas, give a short talk about the benefits of ethanol and the many false claims about it. Here's a short rundown of much that I've discovered:
1. Corn is one of the worst crops to use for making alcohol/ethanol. It requires much more by way of farm equipment, underlying groundwater, and energy, yet it only produces between 350 to 500 gallons of ethanol per acre. It's simply not worth it trying to make ethanol out of corn, and no one in the greater ethanol industry supports doing so. Sugar cane, for instance, costs less than half the price of corn to make ethanol out of and produces twice as much ethanol in the process. So why do we continue to pay out all this subsidy money to farmers for growing corn? Because, believe it or not, farm lobbyists are extremely powerful critters. The one and only reason they have any power at all is because of the almighty Iowa Caucuses. If we would simply change early caucus locations every four years it would take away all the power that the farmer welfare kings now enjoy. Farmers are used to growing corn and have a lot of money invested in harvesting equipment and so forth that's corn related. Many are reluctant to change. But farm subsidies of any and every kind need to go! Enough of this welfare already.
2. Some of the better crops for ethanol are sugar cane at 900 gallons per acre, buffalo gourd & fodder beans 900 gallons, cattails 1,000 gallons, sorghum 1,500 gallons, switch grass 2,000 gallons, and industrial hemp possibly as much as 2,500 gallons. This last one is very controversial; however, there isn't an agriculturalist on the planet that won't tell you what a tremendous textile industrial hemp is/was. It's the strongest textile known to man which is why boat sails are still made from it (albeit from foreign farms). You can make some 10,000 different products from hemp including every single thing that comes from petroleum oil such as plastics. You can even make a darn good particle board from hemp. I for one would like to see hemp grown again in America. And, no, you cannot make marijuana from industrial hemp.
3. Ethanol detractors constantly talk about how much energy it takes to make ethanol. One of the many things they don't realize (or don't want you to) is that the byproduct of ethanol can be run through a digester to make methane gas. That same methane gas can then be used to heat your next batch of ethanol in the distiller. I've also read of complaints about ethanol not being suitable for sending through large pipelines for shipment like the oil pipelines in Alaska. This is silly. Few, if any, modern pipelines are made from iron. More importantly, crops for ethanol can be grown in every individual state, so there's no need to ship it through pipelines anywhere to begin with.
4. Nearly every detractor of ethanol not only bases all his arguments on corn, but will generally use it to tell you that it will take an incredible amount of land to grow all the ethanol crops we would need to become an all ethanol fueled country. However, Brazil is a good example of what the reality is. They import no oil whatsoever. They have quite a bit of their own oil for one thing, plus they raise sugar cane to make ethanol out of and then run a 50/50 blend in their cars. Sugar cane produces around 900 gallons of ethanol per acre. They grow all the sugar cane they need on only 2% of the land. They've been doing this successfully for over 20-years. They also have enough ethanol leftover to export to other countries every year. If they can do that, then it's hard to believe that we couldn't grow a crop that produces 1500 gallons, or more, of ethanol per acre and run on E-85. Switch grass and hemp will both grow just about anywhere by the way. In fact, it's been said that there's enough switch grass growing wild along the highways in Missouri to fuel every vehicle in the state for the next year. And if you're still concerned we might not have enough land on which to grow our ethanol crops, here's an idea: ban tobacco, the most useless excuse for a crop ever seen on the face of the earth, and use that land to grow ethanol crops. The only downside would be that healthcare costs would drop by at least 20%. Oh... wait....
5. Any gas based car can be converted to run on ethanol, although cars made before 1985 that have carburetors will need several more modifications. Most cars made after 1980 will do just fine with only a cheap converter kit installed. Of course flex fuel vehicles are ready to go.
6. There is nothing better that you can put in your vehicle than ethanol. You'll get around 15% more horse power than with gas. Your motor will have almost no carbon buildup at all which means it will last two to three times longer. Imagine getting 500,000 miles on your car before its first overhaul! There are almost zero emissions. Your motor will run so cool that in many cases you won't even need a radiator. Some naysayers claim that you'll get worse mileage; however, if you design a motor with ethanol in mind you can get better mileage than with gas. Also (and this is a biggie), ethanol burns over 98% clean. That means we can get rid of our catalytic converters and other pollution control items that kill our gas mileage and performance. Your fuel mileage will be considerably better with ethanol. We can also go back to making simple cars that we can all work on again. Wouldn't that be nice?
7. Ford's Model T was designed to run on ethanol. Both Henry Ford and Charles Kettering (of GM back in the day) referred to ethanol as "the fuel of the future". The only reason we're running on gas today is because Rockefeller and his oil baron pals got together and priced gas so cheap (even taking a loss on it for a few years) that ethanol couldn't compete back in the 1920s.
8. GM is plainly on the ethanol bandwagon and will have the world’s largest ethanol plant, 100 million gallons/year, up and running by the end of 2010, and they already have 2.5 million flex fuel vehicles on the road. GM has also invested heavily in Coskata, a company that's producing ethanol from agricultural leftovers and municipal and industrial waste. They claim to be able to produce ethanol for around a dollar a gallon in the near future using an entirely different technology in making it. They say: "During gasification, carbon-based input materials are converted into syngas using well-established gasification technologies. After the chemical bonds are broken using gasification, Coskata's proprietary microorganisms convert the resulting syngas into ethanol by consuming the carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) in the gas stream. Once the gas-to-liquid conversion process has occurred, the resulting ethanol is recovered from the solution using "pervaporation technology.""
9. One of the many myths about ethanol is that it will corrode engine parts, especially seals. This is only partially true. Ethanol is hard on gaskets and seals made from cork, and can eventually erode iron fuel tanks and lines (though it would take a long time) because of the small amount of water present in ethanol. Also, fuel pumps have to be made to withstand the slight electrical conductivity of ethanol. However, all cars made after 1980 or thereabouts have corrosion resistant tanks and fuel lines, they have no cork gaskets anymore, and they all have the correct fuel pumps. A lot of ethanol corrosion myths are based on ethanol's evil cousin--methanol--the stuff they use in race cars which is generally made from wood grain alcohol and is very hard on a motor. There's a fantastic video on YT showing the torn apart motor of a 2000 Chevy Tahoe which was run almost entirely on E85 for 100,000 miles. This vehicle is NOT a flex fuel vehicle, and it never had an ethanol converter kit installed. It was completely stock. I've never seen such a clean looking motor inside. Even the seals look like new:
10. The question on your mind should be, why doesn't the general public know all this? Why have we been sold this ridiculous bill of goods? Of course the answer lies where it usually does when politics are concerned--in money. Very simply put, ethanol has no rich men with deep pockets to fund campaigns or to even fund their own lobbyists, while the oil industry is so powerful and has so much money to throw at legislators, even funding their campaigns, that ethanol is completely shut-out. Big oil spent over $400 million in lobbying while Bush and Cheney were in office, and 80% of it went to republicans. (When Bush and Cheney, two oil magnets themselves, took office, they put together a special energy taskforce in 2001 and wouldn't tell anyone who was on it. It was later leaked in 2005 that every person on it was a representative from a big oil company). But now that the democrats are in control we're seeing big oil starting to toss quite a bit of money their way as well. Among all the people running for political office in 2008, the person who received the largest campaign contribution from big oil was John McCain. However, you may find it harder to guess who the person was that received the second largest amount. It was Barack Obama who raked in a cool million from them. Yeah, it's good to be president.
There are currently 1900 filling stations in the USA with E-85 fuel pumps. The number goes up considerably every year, and the trend is not going to go away. Despite attempts from the oil industry and its congressional cronies to defeat ethanol proponents entirely and send them packing, the grassroots efforts to bring ethanol into the 21st century are alive and well. I will attempt to be a political centrist in this article. In interest of full disclosure, my political leanings are mainly conservative. However, the topic of ethanol is one in which everyone, republicans and democrats alike, have been handed a fistful of misinformation thanks to the deep pockets of the oil industry.
I don't know if ethanol, hydrogen, or some other fuel will win out in the end. But as far as ethanol goes, there are no inherent problems with ethanol itself as a fuel alternative to gasoline; the problem is primarily with corn and corn subsidies. I've been investigating this a lot the past year after hearing David Blume, author of Alcohol Can Be A Gas, give a short talk about the benefits of ethanol and the many false claims about it. Here's a short rundown of much that I've discovered:
1. Corn is one of the worst crops to use for making alcohol/ethanol. It requires much more by way of farm equipment, underlying groundwater, and energy, yet it only produces between 350 to 500 gallons of ethanol per acre. It's simply not worth it trying to make ethanol out of corn, and no one in the greater ethanol industry supports doing so. Sugar cane, for instance, costs less than half the price of corn to make ethanol out of and produces twice as much ethanol in the process. So why do we continue to pay out all this subsidy money to farmers for growing corn? Because, believe it or not, farm lobbyists are extremely powerful critters. The one and only reason they have any power at all is because of the almighty Iowa Caucuses. If we would simply change early caucus locations every four years it would take away all the power that the farmer welfare kings now enjoy. Farmers are used to growing corn and have a lot of money invested in harvesting equipment and so forth that's corn related. Many are reluctant to change. But farm subsidies of any and every kind need to go! Enough of this welfare already.
2. Some of the better crops for ethanol are sugar cane at 900 gallons per acre, buffalo gourd & fodder beans 900 gallons, cattails 1,000 gallons, sorghum 1,500 gallons, switch grass 2,000 gallons, and industrial hemp possibly as much as 2,500 gallons. This last one is very controversial; however, there isn't an agriculturalist on the planet that won't tell you what a tremendous textile industrial hemp is/was. It's the strongest textile known to man which is why boat sails are still made from it (albeit from foreign farms). You can make some 10,000 different products from hemp including every single thing that comes from petroleum oil such as plastics. You can even make a darn good particle board from hemp. I for one would like to see hemp grown again in America. And, no, you cannot make marijuana from industrial hemp.
3. Ethanol detractors constantly talk about how much energy it takes to make ethanol. One of the many things they don't realize (or don't want you to) is that the byproduct of ethanol can be run through a digester to make methane gas. That same methane gas can then be used to heat your next batch of ethanol in the distiller. I've also read of complaints about ethanol not being suitable for sending through large pipelines for shipment like the oil pipelines in Alaska. This is silly. Few, if any, modern pipelines are made from iron. More importantly, crops for ethanol can be grown in every individual state, so there's no need to ship it through pipelines anywhere to begin with.
4. Nearly every detractor of ethanol not only bases all his arguments on corn, but will generally use it to tell you that it will take an incredible amount of land to grow all the ethanol crops we would need to become an all ethanol fueled country. However, Brazil is a good example of what the reality is. They import no oil whatsoever. They have quite a bit of their own oil for one thing, plus they raise sugar cane to make ethanol out of and then run a 50/50 blend in their cars. Sugar cane produces around 900 gallons of ethanol per acre. They grow all the sugar cane they need on only 2% of the land. They've been doing this successfully for over 20-years. They also have enough ethanol leftover to export to other countries every year. If they can do that, then it's hard to believe that we couldn't grow a crop that produces 1500 gallons, or more, of ethanol per acre and run on E-85. Switch grass and hemp will both grow just about anywhere by the way. In fact, it's been said that there's enough switch grass growing wild along the highways in Missouri to fuel every vehicle in the state for the next year. And if you're still concerned we might not have enough land on which to grow our ethanol crops, here's an idea: ban tobacco, the most useless excuse for a crop ever seen on the face of the earth, and use that land to grow ethanol crops. The only downside would be that healthcare costs would drop by at least 20%. Oh... wait....
5. Any gas based car can be converted to run on ethanol, although cars made before 1985 that have carburetors will need several more modifications. Most cars made after 1980 will do just fine with only a cheap converter kit installed. Of course flex fuel vehicles are ready to go.
6. There is nothing better that you can put in your vehicle than ethanol. You'll get around 15% more horse power than with gas. Your motor will have almost no carbon buildup at all which means it will last two to three times longer. Imagine getting 500,000 miles on your car before its first overhaul! There are almost zero emissions. Your motor will run so cool that in many cases you won't even need a radiator. Some naysayers claim that you'll get worse mileage; however, if you design a motor with ethanol in mind you can get better mileage than with gas. Also (and this is a biggie), ethanol burns over 98% clean. That means we can get rid of our catalytic converters and other pollution control items that kill our gas mileage and performance. Your fuel mileage will be considerably better with ethanol. We can also go back to making simple cars that we can all work on again. Wouldn't that be nice?
7. Ford's Model T was designed to run on ethanol. Both Henry Ford and Charles Kettering (of GM back in the day) referred to ethanol as "the fuel of the future". The only reason we're running on gas today is because Rockefeller and his oil baron pals got together and priced gas so cheap (even taking a loss on it for a few years) that ethanol couldn't compete back in the 1920s.
8. GM is plainly on the ethanol bandwagon and will have the world’s largest ethanol plant, 100 million gallons/year, up and running by the end of 2010, and they already have 2.5 million flex fuel vehicles on the road. GM has also invested heavily in Coskata, a company that's producing ethanol from agricultural leftovers and municipal and industrial waste. They claim to be able to produce ethanol for around a dollar a gallon in the near future using an entirely different technology in making it. They say: "During gasification, carbon-based input materials are converted into syngas using well-established gasification technologies. After the chemical bonds are broken using gasification, Coskata's proprietary microorganisms convert the resulting syngas into ethanol by consuming the carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) in the gas stream. Once the gas-to-liquid conversion process has occurred, the resulting ethanol is recovered from the solution using "pervaporation technology.""
9. One of the many myths about ethanol is that it will corrode engine parts, especially seals. This is only partially true. Ethanol is hard on gaskets and seals made from cork, and can eventually erode iron fuel tanks and lines (though it would take a long time) because of the small amount of water present in ethanol. Also, fuel pumps have to be made to withstand the slight electrical conductivity of ethanol. However, all cars made after 1980 or thereabouts have corrosion resistant tanks and fuel lines, they have no cork gaskets anymore, and they all have the correct fuel pumps. A lot of ethanol corrosion myths are based on ethanol's evil cousin--methanol--the stuff they use in race cars which is generally made from wood grain alcohol and is very hard on a motor. There's a fantastic video on YT showing the torn apart motor of a 2000 Chevy Tahoe which was run almost entirely on E85 for 100,000 miles. This vehicle is NOT a flex fuel vehicle, and it never had an ethanol converter kit installed. It was completely stock. I've never seen such a clean looking motor inside. Even the seals look like new:
10. The question on your mind should be, why doesn't the general public know all this? Why have we been sold this ridiculous bill of goods? Of course the answer lies where it usually does when politics are concerned--in money. Very simply put, ethanol has no rich men with deep pockets to fund campaigns or to even fund their own lobbyists, while the oil industry is so powerful and has so much money to throw at legislators, even funding their campaigns, that ethanol is completely shut-out. Big oil spent over $400 million in lobbying while Bush and Cheney were in office, and 80% of it went to republicans. (When Bush and Cheney, two oil magnets themselves, took office, they put together a special energy taskforce in 2001 and wouldn't tell anyone who was on it. It was later leaked in 2005 that every person on it was a representative from a big oil company). But now that the democrats are in control we're seeing big oil starting to toss quite a bit of money their way as well. Among all the people running for political office in 2008, the person who received the largest campaign contribution from big oil was John McCain. However, you may find it harder to guess who the person was that received the second largest amount. It was Barack Obama who raked in a cool million from them. Yeah, it's good to be president.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Seeing Around Invisible Corners
I've mentioned several times how much respect CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien had for John Dunne's dream experiments with Oxford students during the 1920s. These culminated in his seminal book, An Experiment With Time, about people who often dreamed of future events. Something that I think is just as interesting are the experiments Rupert Sheldrake did with cats and dogs that proved they can often find their way home from just about anywhere. Some dogs also showed an amazing ability to know the exact moment their owners were about to come home. The dogs would go over and sit by the door at the precise moment their owners were beginning their homeward journey. He wrote a book outlining his experiments called Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.
While I have very little use for psychology, and I think Carl Jung's dream archetypes are a bit silly, Jung did have a very honest outlook on the more strange abilities that humans show now and then. The following is from a TV interview he did toward the end of his life:
Isn't it nice those few times you come across a respected professional who acknowledges the incredibly obvious?
While I have very little use for psychology, and I think Carl Jung's dream archetypes are a bit silly, Jung did have a very honest outlook on the more strange abilities that humans show now and then. The following is from a TV interview he did toward the end of his life:
Interviewer: I know that you say death is psychologically just as important as birth and like it is an integral part of life, but surely, it can't be like birth if it is an end. Can it?
Jung: [W]e know that there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche--that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future. You can see around corners and such things. ONLY IGONRANTS DENY THESE FACTS. IT'S QUITE EVIDENT THAT THEY DO EXIST AND HAVE EXISTED ALWAYS. Now these facts show that the psyche--in part at least--is not dependent on these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to live in time and space alone--and obviously it isn't--then to that extent the psyche is not submitted to those laws, and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.
Isn't it nice those few times you come across a respected professional who acknowledges the incredibly obvious?
Monday, May 31, 2010
Aberrations of Intimacy
This is one of those politically correct, or incorrect, topics that people with brains are smart enough to leave alone.
So, as I was saying... I'll be the first to admit I don't understand homosexuality anymore than I appreciate it. And quite honestly, I don't think I'm supposed to understand it. Sin is an aberration. Beyond that, the actual mechanisms of sin are something completely beyond human understanding. Only God can properly understand sin and properly hate it. That almost magical framework which supports sin and infuses our world with it is unknown to mortals. Negative thoughts, suggestions, appetites and habits are constantly poured into the cup of each soul. The bible tells us from whom they flow. It does not tell us how. At its most diminutive, sin preys upon the weakness of our flesh. These are appropriately referred to as sins of weakness. Sin begins to show its real strength, however, when it is premeditated. It then gathers even more steam and becomes the custom of small groups. And at its deadliest it takes on the function of a worldwide tradition just as human sacrifice once was.
If there's one characteristic of sin that stands out it must be that of senselessness. Not that all sins appear senseless at all times. For instance, to a lazy man, it must seem quite sensible to steal. But there's usually a root to sin that has no sense in it. In this case it is the laziness itself. Laziness provides no real function in life. Laziness enhances the life of no man, and lazy men do nothing to enhance society. It's not just that no good thing comes from it that should astound us though. It's that any man should ever think to be lazy in the first place. How did he ever conceive of such a way of life? Did the world's first lazy man actually conceive anything at all of laziness? Or did he merely act on impulse? Impulse! Ah, where did that impulse come from? How? And why? I also must say that the closer you look at the psychology professional's view on the impulse to sin, the more you come to realize his view is all smoke and mirrors. It's no secret that I have always had a very low opinion of psychology. There are simply no answers there--only men who put on the pretense of one who knows.
The only thing about homosexual acts that can in any way be construed as desirous is that of the physical pleasure some claim to derive from it. But physical pleasures cannot be thought of as positive or negative. They are simply physical states such as hot or cold. They are neither good nor evil. Physical discomforts are also neither good nor evil. They may not be desirous, but they are just a state of existence.
I would also quickly admit that I've heard locker-room talk where guys mentioned things their wives or girlfriends did with them sexually that seemed quite pleasurable to them, but which sounded just as strange to me as any homosexual act and sometimes just as sickening. Frankly, anything involving the word "anus" is disturbing, and to me, comes under the heading of mentally imbalanced. Is this a way of getting back at their parents for not allowing them to play in the city sewer system as kids? That might be the best answer a psychologist could come up with. But isn't it obvious that there's something very wrong, something very insensible going on?
Of course it hardly stops there. One of the more oddball intimate behaviors people sometimes engage in was immortalized by ZZ Top in the song "Pearl Necklace". Need I say more? My question is, what's the point? Physical pleasure? But couldn't performing the sex act in the normal way bring the exact same pleasure? What compels people to do the very strange?
These are the kinds of weird explorations I would expect of six year old kids if six year old kids could have sex. But is there anything about these acts that conjure up images of well-balanced adults?
Now I'm not letting myself off the hook here. For several years I had a thing for married women. I never once acted on the impulse, but still, the compulsion was there, and for the life of me, I don't know why. It made no sense whatsoever. The last thing I was looking for was a wife myself, so it wasn't like I was hoping any of these women were going to leave their husbands for me. That was the last thing on my mind. It was simply a kind of appetite, and maybe that's the word we should be focusing on.
An appetite in this case can best be described as a wild craving. For some it can even become insatiable over time. Life is about making choices. But where do those choices come from? I'm especially thinking of choices involving cravings that appear from within. Sexual appetite is often thought of as merely a physical and biological desire (or bio-physical if you like), but I see much more at work here because so often those cravings have little or nothing to do with the flesh. Normal humans have a physical craving for sex. But strange sexual aberrations begin from within and will manifest themselves even when the physical body is craving nothing at all. Our mind tells us it wants to have sex, and it wants to have it in an abnormal way, even though our bodies are telling us no such thing. I truly believe this is how many people get involved with weird sexual behaviors. They'll so often claim, "This is the only way I can do it", when the truth of the matter is that they could perform the act in the normal manner if they waited until their physical bodies were actually craving sex rather than just their minds. It's rather like a man saying he doesn't like water and can only drink a particular kind of imported wine when in truth he would gladly drink water if he were very, very thirsty.
I've mentioned before of how I once knew a married couple, both of whom were afraid of being in high places, not because they were afraid of heights, but because both of them felt the same insensible compulsion to jump.
These insensible impulses we feel in life have a way of bringing about self-hatred. It begins with a sort of disgust we have toward ourselves for even being tempted to act irrationally in the first place (perhaps because we allowed the impulse in) and ends with an all out self-hate when we fall completely out of control. I've always felt homosexuality was somehow a form of self-hatred. It's only recently that I've come to this understanding of why.
The things of God, however, are usually pretty straight forward. This in fact is one of the things that draws us most to him. We're bombarded with irrational impulses day after day, and if we give in to them, we know that irrationality is only a step away from insanity. But there is sanity in God. I often think this is what's being referred to by that "peace that surpasses understanding". It is simply sanity. A devotion to God is a devotion to all that is rational. It makes sense of the world and gives clarity to the mind.
If you ever try to talk rationally with a homosexual you will immediately find his world is full of irrationalities. I recently found myself having just such a discussion with one. The first thing he did was to say that I hated homosexuals. I of course said no such thing. He had instantaneously drawn the conclusion that if I thought homosexuality was wrong that I must hate anyone who does it. When I informed him that it was only the act that was the object of my scorn, he quickly replied, "The old hate the sin, love the sinner nonsense, eh? That's just a copout. Nobody buys that."
He then went on to say that since I had never tried homosexuality that I couldn't make an informed decision about it. I replied that I had also never tried murder, torture, rape, incest, biting off an ear, or poking out someone's eye with a stick either, but that all rational people realize such things are wrong.
Next he trotted out the old standby of how I was being "intolerant" and that he was promoting "openness and acceptance." I replied that he was being "permissive" that he was promoting openness and acceptance to something that most of the world considers to be a vice.
I also pointed out to him that, without fail, every single homosexual person I had ever encountered had been extremely self-centered and incredibly childish. Well of course he was just aghast at such a comment, but I was simply telling the truth. The fact is that every homosexual man I've ever met, or ever saw on TV, acted much more like a child than a woman. Richard Simmons is probably a pretty good example. I asked him how I could think of homosexual men as being "normal" well-balanced adults when they acted like children?
His only answer was that I must be bigoted. I said that I certainly was not but was only relating my impressions. I said that I had never known a homosexual that I felt comfortable being around but that I didn't see that as bigotry. There are in fact all kinds of people we don't like being around such as those who are childish, selfish, foolish, loud, obnoxious, rude etc. If I don't like being around a fool, does that make me a fool-bigot? Isn't it just common sense not wanting to be around a fool?
His last argument was perhaps the least sound of all and one I've heard many times before, and that was the fact that there are some animals that engage in homosexual acts. This in his mind made it all right for humans too. Actually, he went on to mention some studies done on rats which showed that they became more prone toward homosexual behaviors when their populations were increased within the same small area. The idea behind this argument is that homosexuality may in some cases be nature's way of population control.
First I mentioned that we humans are in dire straights when we start to use the criteria of other animals to judge our own behaviors. Some insects eat their mates after sex. Some eat their children too. Does that make it okay for us to do these things? Does it really imply that homosexual behavior in humans is just a part of nature if other animals do it? Or could it possibly imply that animals simply have no moral conscience? No real sense of right and wrong? I once saw a cat play with a snake and basically torture it to death. I'm no fan of snakes, but the cat never ate the snake. What purpose did it serve to torture it to death like that? Once again, could it be that other animals have no conscience and have no qualms about doing anything irrational that comes into their feeble minds?
The entire conversation with this man felt very strange. It was almost like I was conversing with an animal rather than a human. His arguments made no rational sense at all. They were the types of arguments I would have expected from someone below the age of ten. But the man wasn't stupid. He was irrational. There's a difference. I couldn't help but think that this is what a lifetime of willful sin will do to an intellect. There's no sanity away from God. There's only confusion, selfishness, and inner strife.
By the way, I recently had a chance to look up that study on controlled rat populations. It had the following to say:
"Males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some males became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. ... The crowded rodents had lost the ability to co-exist harmoniously, even after the population numbers once again fell to low levels. At a certain density, they had ceased to act like rats and mice, and the change was permanent."
It almost sounds as though homosexual behavior and mental devolution go hand in hand. The whole point in his bringing up the rat studies was to offer evidence that physical environments cause homosexual behaviors in some rats, and thus, that their behavior is not their own fault--the implication being that humans can't help their own behavior either. It's basically a determinist view of the world. That to me is absurd.
That humans may find themselves in situations that tempt bad behavior is a given. It's not even interesting. What's interesting is the way some people fight that same temptation and don't allow it to control them. It's our ability to go against these outside influences (or at least give it our best try) and remain in control of our natures that makes humans interesting compared to all other creatures on earth. The very fact that some of us remain loyal to a higher standard (what the ancients called first precepts, the Tao, or the laws of nature) in the face of adversity is truly astounding and goes against all science since science by its nature is deterministic. Call me crazy, but that a rat chooses to make poor choices doesn't matter to me.
So, as I was saying... I'll be the first to admit I don't understand homosexuality anymore than I appreciate it. And quite honestly, I don't think I'm supposed to understand it. Sin is an aberration. Beyond that, the actual mechanisms of sin are something completely beyond human understanding. Only God can properly understand sin and properly hate it. That almost magical framework which supports sin and infuses our world with it is unknown to mortals. Negative thoughts, suggestions, appetites and habits are constantly poured into the cup of each soul. The bible tells us from whom they flow. It does not tell us how. At its most diminutive, sin preys upon the weakness of our flesh. These are appropriately referred to as sins of weakness. Sin begins to show its real strength, however, when it is premeditated. It then gathers even more steam and becomes the custom of small groups. And at its deadliest it takes on the function of a worldwide tradition just as human sacrifice once was.
If there's one characteristic of sin that stands out it must be that of senselessness. Not that all sins appear senseless at all times. For instance, to a lazy man, it must seem quite sensible to steal. But there's usually a root to sin that has no sense in it. In this case it is the laziness itself. Laziness provides no real function in life. Laziness enhances the life of no man, and lazy men do nothing to enhance society. It's not just that no good thing comes from it that should astound us though. It's that any man should ever think to be lazy in the first place. How did he ever conceive of such a way of life? Did the world's first lazy man actually conceive anything at all of laziness? Or did he merely act on impulse? Impulse! Ah, where did that impulse come from? How? And why? I also must say that the closer you look at the psychology professional's view on the impulse to sin, the more you come to realize his view is all smoke and mirrors. It's no secret that I have always had a very low opinion of psychology. There are simply no answers there--only men who put on the pretense of one who knows.
The only thing about homosexual acts that can in any way be construed as desirous is that of the physical pleasure some claim to derive from it. But physical pleasures cannot be thought of as positive or negative. They are simply physical states such as hot or cold. They are neither good nor evil. Physical discomforts are also neither good nor evil. They may not be desirous, but they are just a state of existence.
I would also quickly admit that I've heard locker-room talk where guys mentioned things their wives or girlfriends did with them sexually that seemed quite pleasurable to them, but which sounded just as strange to me as any homosexual act and sometimes just as sickening. Frankly, anything involving the word "anus" is disturbing, and to me, comes under the heading of mentally imbalanced. Is this a way of getting back at their parents for not allowing them to play in the city sewer system as kids? That might be the best answer a psychologist could come up with. But isn't it obvious that there's something very wrong, something very insensible going on?
Of course it hardly stops there. One of the more oddball intimate behaviors people sometimes engage in was immortalized by ZZ Top in the song "Pearl Necklace". Need I say more? My question is, what's the point? Physical pleasure? But couldn't performing the sex act in the normal way bring the exact same pleasure? What compels people to do the very strange?
These are the kinds of weird explorations I would expect of six year old kids if six year old kids could have sex. But is there anything about these acts that conjure up images of well-balanced adults?
Now I'm not letting myself off the hook here. For several years I had a thing for married women. I never once acted on the impulse, but still, the compulsion was there, and for the life of me, I don't know why. It made no sense whatsoever. The last thing I was looking for was a wife myself, so it wasn't like I was hoping any of these women were going to leave their husbands for me. That was the last thing on my mind. It was simply a kind of appetite, and maybe that's the word we should be focusing on.
An appetite in this case can best be described as a wild craving. For some it can even become insatiable over time. Life is about making choices. But where do those choices come from? I'm especially thinking of choices involving cravings that appear from within. Sexual appetite is often thought of as merely a physical and biological desire (or bio-physical if you like), but I see much more at work here because so often those cravings have little or nothing to do with the flesh. Normal humans have a physical craving for sex. But strange sexual aberrations begin from within and will manifest themselves even when the physical body is craving nothing at all. Our mind tells us it wants to have sex, and it wants to have it in an abnormal way, even though our bodies are telling us no such thing. I truly believe this is how many people get involved with weird sexual behaviors. They'll so often claim, "This is the only way I can do it", when the truth of the matter is that they could perform the act in the normal manner if they waited until their physical bodies were actually craving sex rather than just their minds. It's rather like a man saying he doesn't like water and can only drink a particular kind of imported wine when in truth he would gladly drink water if he were very, very thirsty.
I've mentioned before of how I once knew a married couple, both of whom were afraid of being in high places, not because they were afraid of heights, but because both of them felt the same insensible compulsion to jump.
These insensible impulses we feel in life have a way of bringing about self-hatred. It begins with a sort of disgust we have toward ourselves for even being tempted to act irrationally in the first place (perhaps because we allowed the impulse in) and ends with an all out self-hate when we fall completely out of control. I've always felt homosexuality was somehow a form of self-hatred. It's only recently that I've come to this understanding of why.
The things of God, however, are usually pretty straight forward. This in fact is one of the things that draws us most to him. We're bombarded with irrational impulses day after day, and if we give in to them, we know that irrationality is only a step away from insanity. But there is sanity in God. I often think this is what's being referred to by that "peace that surpasses understanding". It is simply sanity. A devotion to God is a devotion to all that is rational. It makes sense of the world and gives clarity to the mind.
If you ever try to talk rationally with a homosexual you will immediately find his world is full of irrationalities. I recently found myself having just such a discussion with one. The first thing he did was to say that I hated homosexuals. I of course said no such thing. He had instantaneously drawn the conclusion that if I thought homosexuality was wrong that I must hate anyone who does it. When I informed him that it was only the act that was the object of my scorn, he quickly replied, "The old hate the sin, love the sinner nonsense, eh? That's just a copout. Nobody buys that."
He then went on to say that since I had never tried homosexuality that I couldn't make an informed decision about it. I replied that I had also never tried murder, torture, rape, incest, biting off an ear, or poking out someone's eye with a stick either, but that all rational people realize such things are wrong.
Next he trotted out the old standby of how I was being "intolerant" and that he was promoting "openness and acceptance." I replied that he was being "permissive" that he was promoting openness and acceptance to something that most of the world considers to be a vice.
I also pointed out to him that, without fail, every single homosexual person I had ever encountered had been extremely self-centered and incredibly childish. Well of course he was just aghast at such a comment, but I was simply telling the truth. The fact is that every homosexual man I've ever met, or ever saw on TV, acted much more like a child than a woman. Richard Simmons is probably a pretty good example. I asked him how I could think of homosexual men as being "normal" well-balanced adults when they acted like children?
His only answer was that I must be bigoted. I said that I certainly was not but was only relating my impressions. I said that I had never known a homosexual that I felt comfortable being around but that I didn't see that as bigotry. There are in fact all kinds of people we don't like being around such as those who are childish, selfish, foolish, loud, obnoxious, rude etc. If I don't like being around a fool, does that make me a fool-bigot? Isn't it just common sense not wanting to be around a fool?
His last argument was perhaps the least sound of all and one I've heard many times before, and that was the fact that there are some animals that engage in homosexual acts. This in his mind made it all right for humans too. Actually, he went on to mention some studies done on rats which showed that they became more prone toward homosexual behaviors when their populations were increased within the same small area. The idea behind this argument is that homosexuality may in some cases be nature's way of population control.
First I mentioned that we humans are in dire straights when we start to use the criteria of other animals to judge our own behaviors. Some insects eat their mates after sex. Some eat their children too. Does that make it okay for us to do these things? Does it really imply that homosexual behavior in humans is just a part of nature if other animals do it? Or could it possibly imply that animals simply have no moral conscience? No real sense of right and wrong? I once saw a cat play with a snake and basically torture it to death. I'm no fan of snakes, but the cat never ate the snake. What purpose did it serve to torture it to death like that? Once again, could it be that other animals have no conscience and have no qualms about doing anything irrational that comes into their feeble minds?
The entire conversation with this man felt very strange. It was almost like I was conversing with an animal rather than a human. His arguments made no rational sense at all. They were the types of arguments I would have expected from someone below the age of ten. But the man wasn't stupid. He was irrational. There's a difference. I couldn't help but think that this is what a lifetime of willful sin will do to an intellect. There's no sanity away from God. There's only confusion, selfishness, and inner strife.
By the way, I recently had a chance to look up that study on controlled rat populations. It had the following to say:
"Males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some males became exclusively homosexual. Others became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. ... The crowded rodents had lost the ability to co-exist harmoniously, even after the population numbers once again fell to low levels. At a certain density, they had ceased to act like rats and mice, and the change was permanent."
It almost sounds as though homosexual behavior and mental devolution go hand in hand. The whole point in his bringing up the rat studies was to offer evidence that physical environments cause homosexual behaviors in some rats, and thus, that their behavior is not their own fault--the implication being that humans can't help their own behavior either. It's basically a determinist view of the world. That to me is absurd.
That humans may find themselves in situations that tempt bad behavior is a given. It's not even interesting. What's interesting is the way some people fight that same temptation and don't allow it to control them. It's our ability to go against these outside influences (or at least give it our best try) and remain in control of our natures that makes humans interesting compared to all other creatures on earth. The very fact that some of us remain loyal to a higher standard (what the ancients called first precepts, the Tao, or the laws of nature) in the face of adversity is truly astounding and goes against all science since science by its nature is deterministic. Call me crazy, but that a rat chooses to make poor choices doesn't matter to me.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The End of a Perfect Tale
I just watched the final episode of Lost. I wasn't at all prepared for it. I went into it wanting to have all my questions answered about the ancient mythology and science. Well I didn't get what I wanted. Instead I got what I needed. I've always felt (especially lately though) that feeling Jack had going through his death throes--that I live a sort of false life behind a false face. I see glimpses of the real world now and then, sometimes quite vivid, but it always exceeds my grasp. Maybe that's what Heaven is--a person, a thing, or a place that's more familiar than anything on earth, but a thing that's always just a bit out of reach. Some people are scared of it because they've allowed themselves to become too accustomed to this sham reality we live in.
This is the secret thread that runs through the works of CS Lewis, Charles Williams, GK Chesterton, and George MacDonald. They glimpsed the real world and had no fear of it--only a great longing to be there.
I pity those people who are afraid of death. They think it will be full of the unfamiliar and will take some getting used to. The opposite is the truth of things. It will be like opening the door to your home after having been on a long journey through an alien land.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
Putting aside any allusions you are now having toward all things Mason Proffit, let me tell you about it.
I dreamed I was in a house with CS Lewis, a woman I know named Ann from an online Charles Williams group, and a man who seemed to be something like a butler. It was a very simple dream and was the last thing I remember upon awakening this morning.
I don't know where this house was. I don't recall seeing Jack (I can call him that since we're old drinking buddies), but I think he was inside the house while I was in the front yard. The home was old and brick--the front yard a bit small and sparse of vegetation except for the grass. The yard was fenced in by an iron fence like the ones they made in the old days. Iron in fact played a big role in this dream. On the other side of the fence everything you saw was rather rundown. Not terrible, but certainly the other properties had been let go for a number of years. There was also a shop where a man (who I didn't see) made things from iron. He had made an outside chair for Jack and an odd piece of "poetry" for Charles Williams. Both objects now sat in Lewis' front yard. The butler had just brought them out, and I was afraid they would get stolen.
There's no point in trying to describe the chair, it having no distinguishing characteristics from other iron chairs except to say it had a lot of open spaces instead of tons of bars going around it like some chairs do. The more intriguing object was this piece made for Williams. I don't know if Williams was still alive or not, but I believe the object was made to his specifications. Ann came out of the house and looked it up and down for a while before declaring that the "poetry was too dense" to figure out. The odd thing was that the object seemed to be nothing but a hurdle bar--the kind people jump over when running hurdles. It was different from other hurdle bars I had seen in that it was made from iron and had no wood on it. It was completely iron, and instead of having a flat wood piece on the top that you were to jump over, it had an iron bar that was shaped like a half moon with the curved side facing up making it more difficult to clear.
The butler moved one of the pieces (I can't remember which now, but I think it was the chair) over against the fence. This really worried me, because I could see how easy it was to steal from there. Sure enough a boy grabbed it and ran off with it in just a few minutes. I was chasing him when I woke up.
Whatever could it mean?
I dreamed I was in a house with CS Lewis, a woman I know named Ann from an online Charles Williams group, and a man who seemed to be something like a butler. It was a very simple dream and was the last thing I remember upon awakening this morning.
I don't know where this house was. I don't recall seeing Jack (I can call him that since we're old drinking buddies), but I think he was inside the house while I was in the front yard. The home was old and brick--the front yard a bit small and sparse of vegetation except for the grass. The yard was fenced in by an iron fence like the ones they made in the old days. Iron in fact played a big role in this dream. On the other side of the fence everything you saw was rather rundown. Not terrible, but certainly the other properties had been let go for a number of years. There was also a shop where a man (who I didn't see) made things from iron. He had made an outside chair for Jack and an odd piece of "poetry" for Charles Williams. Both objects now sat in Lewis' front yard. The butler had just brought them out, and I was afraid they would get stolen.
There's no point in trying to describe the chair, it having no distinguishing characteristics from other iron chairs except to say it had a lot of open spaces instead of tons of bars going around it like some chairs do. The more intriguing object was this piece made for Williams. I don't know if Williams was still alive or not, but I believe the object was made to his specifications. Ann came out of the house and looked it up and down for a while before declaring that the "poetry was too dense" to figure out. The odd thing was that the object seemed to be nothing but a hurdle bar--the kind people jump over when running hurdles. It was different from other hurdle bars I had seen in that it was made from iron and had no wood on it. It was completely iron, and instead of having a flat wood piece on the top that you were to jump over, it had an iron bar that was shaped like a half moon with the curved side facing up making it more difficult to clear.
The butler moved one of the pieces (I can't remember which now, but I think it was the chair) over against the fence. This really worried me, because I could see how easy it was to steal from there. Sure enough a boy grabbed it and ran off with it in just a few minutes. I was chasing him when I woke up.
Whatever could it mean?
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