Year 2012's topics - tribe.net

2012 Tipping Point - The Prophet's Conference

Hoopes — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:02:36 GMT

In Cancun, Mexico for January 2011:

http://www.greatmystery.org/events/cancun2012.html

(Aren't they misspelling "profits.")

posted in Year 2012 - 89 replies

LSD less dangerous than alcohol, says government's drug adviser

VidasVeron — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:44:37 GMT

The Government's chief drug adviser has suggested that Ecstasy, LSD
and cannabis are less dangerous than both alcohol and cigarettes.

David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs,
attacked the decision to make cannabis a Class B drug. He accused the
former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who reclassified the drug, of
'distorting and devaluing' scientific research.

Professor Nutt said smoking cannabis created only a 'relatively small
risk' of psychotic illness, adding that all drugs, including alcohol
and tobacco, should be ranked by a 'harm' index.

He said that alcohol came fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates
and methadone, while tobacco should rank ninth, ahead of cannabis, LSD
and Ecstasy. His views are published today as a briefing paper for the
Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.

It is not the first time that Professor Nutt has courted controversy.
He first recommended the introduction of a drugs' harm scale in a
paper in The Lancet in 2007, when he also suggested that alcohol would
rate higher than substances such as LSD. Earlier this year he
suggested that the dangers of taking Ecstasy were no greater than
those of frequent horse riding, which he repeats in the latest paper.

Professor Nutt attacks the 'artificial' separation of alcohol and
tobacco from illegal drugs. No one is suggesting that drugs are not
harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree.

'We need a full and open discussion of the evidence and a mature
debate about what the drug laws are for - and whether they are doing
their job.'

The paper - Estimating Drug Harms: A Risky Business? - criticises the
decision to increase penalties for supplying Class C drugs. The move
to double the maximum prison sentence from seven to 14 years was taken
as a 'tit-for-tat' move when cannabis was downgraded, Professor Nutt
said.

In recent years drug classification policy has become 'quite complex
and highly politicised', he said. The Advisory Council on the Misuse
of Drugs (ACMD) review of cannabis classification, ordered in 2007,
was the result of a 'skunk scare', he claimed.

Overall, cannabis users faced a 'relatively small' risk of getting a
psychotic illness compared with the risks of smokers contracting lung
cancer. Ms Smith's decision to reclassify it as a 'precautionary step'
sent mixed messages and undermined public faith in government science,
he said.

He added: 'I think we have to accept young people like to experiment '
with drugs and other potentially harmful activities - and what we
should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this
stage of their lives.

We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information.
If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably
wrong.

James Brokenshire, the Conservative home affairs spokesman, said that
Professor Nutt's comments only added to the confusion over drug
classification.

'Giving simple labels of levels of harm risk gives a false impression
of the dangers,' he said. Drugs like GBL [a 'party' drug] can be
lethal if taken in combination with alcohol.

'Rather than providing clearer evidence on the harms linked to illicit
drugs, Professor Nutt is making an overtly political pitch and that
isn't helpful.'

posted in Year 2012 - 19 replies

The Fourth Kind

Celestine — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:41:17 GMT

Saw this a Moment ago at the theater. It was an interesting foray into the area of alien abduction and ancient Sumerian gods but the story was obviously fake. The supposed archived footage looked too staged and just when there was about to be what could be taped evidence the footage became fuzzy, blurred and choppy. I have had a close encounter of the first kind before and from my own experience the kind of energy I felt was more of a contentedness.

posted in Year 2012 - 3 replies

Soul Hunger: The reason of faith, according to Karen Armstrong

Will Beat Hippie Raver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:54:32 GMT

www.odemagazine.com

MICHAEL BRUNTON
Ode
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE

The reason of faith

Religion isn’t easy, Karen Armstrong says: “You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form.”

Modern science knows how to fix a hole in the heart. It can diagnose a hole in the ozone layer and prove the existence of black holes at the edge of the universe.

But when it comes to explaining what's often described as the "God-shaped hole" in our lives, neither quantum physicists nor geneticists nor neuropsychologists appear to quite have the measure of it.

If anything, the rate of scientific advance in recent decades has only served to polarize religious debate. At one extreme is a resurgent atheism—epitomized by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who've both written best-selling books denouncing religious belief—which trusts that this hole, like every hole, will be filled in time by knowledge. At the other extreme is religious fundamentalism—epitomized by political spats over headscarves and creationism—which believes this hole is brimful of scriptural truth. For most of us in between, the hole in the soul gnaws away at our subconscious, like a hunger. And all of us, believers and non-believers alike, rush to fill the void with words.

One way or another, according to Karen Armstrong, "We talk far too much about God these days." Which might sound a bit rich coming from the English author of almost 20 books on religion as well as two memoirs about her becoming—and then unbecoming—a Catholic nun, who has been decked with religious prizes and who regularly lectures the high and mighty of church and state around the world. What's more, according to her new book The Case for God, the things we say when we do talk about religious faith are often "facile," "stupid" or "primitive." Ammunition, perhaps, for Armstrong's critics, of whom she has had her share, ever since her breakthrough book, A History of God, in 1993.

In that and the books that followed, Armstrong has traced the tangled roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, liberally reinterpreted the lives of Muhammad, Buddha and Jesus, and dived headlong into the maelstrom of theological debate around fundamentalism, both before and after 9/11. Some have criticized her idealistic interpretation of the Koran; religious academics berate her for shortcomings of scholarly rigor; atheists dismiss her for refusing to engage in debate on their terms.

Yet Armstrong's consistently eloquent arguments for compassion and commonality as an antidote to Islamophobia and the "clash of civilizations" have struck a chord, particularly in the U.S., where she has addressed both houses of Congress. She's also increasingly in demand on the lecture circuit in countries like Pakistan and Egypt, and is to be found on book stalls in 40 languages around the world. Drawing together the main threads of her previous research, The Case for God is Armstrong's most concise and practical-minded book yet: a historical survey of how rather than what we believe, where we lost the "knack" of religion and what we need to do to get it back.

"A lot of the arguments about religion going on at the moment spring from a rather inept understanding of religious truth," says Armstrong, settling into her theme and a winged easy chair in her early-Georgian home in north London. The furnishings and decoration suggest Jane Austen may have just stepped out of the room. Like Austen, and in a polished English accent, Armstrong is sharp-witted, quick to ridicule nonsense, and a good storyteller. "Our notion changed during the early modern period when we became convinced that the only path to any kind of truth was reason. That works beautifully for science but doesn't work so well for the humanities. Religion is really an art form and a struggle to find value and meaning amid the ghastly tragedy of human life."

Armstrong's The Case for God begins with the cave paintings of Lascaux in the French Dordogne, made some 17,000 years ago—seemingly religious art works in which the hunter assuages his unease at killing his prey through shamanic rituals in honor of the Animal Master. Such myths were born because, Armstrong writes, "As meaning-seeking creatures, men and women fall very easily into despair. They have created religions and works of art to help them find value in their lives, despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary."

From that point on, the religious impulse took the form of creation myths like Tao and Brahman from the East, on through the gods of ancient Greece and eventually the emergence of the world's three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—and their founding scriptures. But none of them, says Armstrong, were meant to be taken literally. "The cosmology of the ancient world was telling you about the nature of life here and now. Genesis is not about the origins of life. There were many other creation stories current in Israel at that time and no one was required to believe in that one."

Reason, science and logic—what the Greeks called "logos"—were also evolving as ways of understanding the world, but always in concert, not competition, with the stories—the mythos—they relied on to deal with the mysteries of the human psyche. Pythagoras, for example, a founding father of mathematics and astronomy, sought the geometric truth of the universe from within a religious community dedicated to Apollo and the Muses. He also called himself a philosopher and expected his students to lead an ascetic and monastic kind of life, undergoing rites of purification and silence "in a search," Armstrong writes, "for transcendence and a dedicated, practical lifestyle."

In conversation, Armstrong spins the threads of her research with agile, unhesitating precision, leaping across centuries of scripture, philosophy and theology. She dissects the writings of Denys the Areopagite, the pseudonymous 5th-to-6th-century Christian theologian; explains the roots of Greek words like pistis (faith); pauses to unpick the purpose of Socratic dialogue or the classical atheism of Ludwig Feuerbach, the 19th-century German philosopher and proto-Marxist.

But through all the twists and turns, the notion of transcendence is the one she returns to time and again as the beating heart of all pre-modern theology. "The idea was that when we spoke about God we were speaking of something that lies beyond words," says Armstrong. "People like Thomas Aquinas would say we can't talk about God as a creator because we can only have in our heads the idea of a human creator and that can't apply to God. We can't even say that God exists because our notion of existence is too limited to apply to God. People were instructed to think about this in those terms."

In Armstrong's scheme of things, it was with the dawning of the Age of Reason that the problems started. As philosophers and mathematicians both, Descartes and then Newton well understood that science and religion—logos and mythos—were discrete realms in the search for universal truth. But when the foundation for modern science was laid, the conceptual nature of truth itself began to blur.

"Newton and Descartes started to try and prove that God existed in the same way as they would try and prove something in the laboratory or with their mathematics," says Armstrong. "And when you try and mix science and religion you get bad science and bad religion. The two are doing two different things. ... Science can give you a diagnosis of cancer. It can even cure your disease, but it cannot touch your grief and disappointment, nor can it help you to die well."

Newton seeded not only the idea that God was reducible, says Armstrong, but also that understanding religion would be easy. So easy that by 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert could confidently assert that precisely 23 problems remained to be solved in order to complete the Newtonian view of the universe. More than a century later, few of us can even comprehend those problems, let alone calculate the answers or grasp the significance of all the things we've learned since. Worse, as our theories about the universe grow ever more abstract, a sense of bewilderment is replacing the sense of transcendence. "It's not easy to talk about transcendence, just as it's not easy to play or listen to a late Beethoven quartet," says Armstrong. "You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form. Religion is hard work."

And as with great art, the realization that God defies understanding can be a source of the profoundest joy. For Einstein that sense of the existence of something impenetrable was, as he wrote in a 1930 essay, "the sower of all true art and science" and "the centre of all true religiousness." Armstrong herself calls this experience "the stunned appreciation of an otherness"—a state she says she can occasionally glimpse in the long, silent and solitary hours of study that fuel her writing.

In her studies, Armstrong, at 64, now finds what countless hours of obligatory prayer as an unhappy Catholic nun in her teenage years had flatly failed to bring into focus. Suffering a lost vocation and physically frail, she considered her eventual departure from the convent in 1969 as a relief of sorts. But coming to terms with the world outside and the God she'd left behind triggered a profound spiritual trauma. After a diagnosis of epilepsy and disastrous spells teaching at a university, Armstrong's convalescence proper began in 1981—it's still underway, she says—when she poured her pain into a memoir of her convent days, Through the Narrow Gate. A second volume Beginning the World related her adjustment to the outside world, but Armstrong later recanted it because of the false heartiness she'd adopted to satisfy both her publisher and her own delusion of contentment.

In fact, Armstrong's adjustment wasn't going well, and a brief spell as an erudite but pungently skeptical presenter of religious TV programs in the U.K.—egged on by the producers, she claims, to say ever more outrageous things—did little to help matters. But in the course of that work, Armstrong found herself drawn back to the theological texts underpinning the monotheistic religions and to what they really mean. To do that, says Armstrong, "I had to put my clever, post-Enlightenment, Oxford-educated, aggressively logos self on the back burner, and enter into the mind of someone like Muhammad, who believed he'd been touched by God. Because if I didn't sympathetically and compassionately feel with him, I would miss the essence of it and just write another clever riposte."

A report by the Pew Forum, a U.S. research body on religion and public life, recently painted a startling picture of religious faith in America. About half the population appears to have changed religious affiliation at least once, while the number of believers unaffiliated with any particular faith is rising faster than those of any of religion. Yet more than half of those who grow up unaffiliated later choose to join one. Of the reasons people give for this restlessness, far more cite disenchantment with their religious institutions than a loss of faith per se.

Across Europe, in contrast, while many still identify with a religious denomination, Pew's Global Attitudes Project report last year showed that only a fraction value religion as "very important" in their lives, compared to America, where 55 percent consider it so. In secular-minded France, only 10 percent take that view. Even in traditionally Catholic Spain, the figure is only 19 percent. Among young Europeans, religion's importance appears to be still on the wane. That's somewhat true in America, although 49 percent of adults under 40 value it like their parents and grandparents do, while in places like Egypt (69 percent), Turkey (88 percent) and Pakistan (95 percent), many more young people are keeping the faith.

That longing for spiritual uplift and communion, along with the sense of being let down, have no doubt driven the popularity of New Age beliefs in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent decades. It may also have contributed to the rise in eco-consciousness and the emergence of a "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" (LOHAS) demographic, said to include some 40 million people in the U.S., socially responsible green consumers interested in spiritually tinged practices like alternative medicine and personal development.

Armstrong for one isn't surprised at these shifts. "We—the British and the northern Europeans—are beginning to look endearingly old-fashioned in our secularism. The rest of the world is becoming more religious." But while God-centered religion may not own the copyright on transcendence, she warns, "None of it is of any value unless you translate it into practical compassionate action for others. In Buddhism, yoga is properly about the dismantling of egotism; if you just do these things to lose weight or to get a warm glow, that's not religion."

For Armstrong, it's compassion that's the defining virtue of religion, the Golden Rule articulated by Confucius two and a half millennia ago as "Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you." Practicing compassion is, she says, a form of "ethical artistry" that requires the dethroning of ego—a virtue, Armstrong believes, that's alive and well for the majority of the faithful in all religions, but one often singularly lacking in the higher echelons of the various faiths she addresses.

Last year, that message earned Armstrong a prize from the TED Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering big ideas, allowing Armstrong to promote a Charter for Compassion that aims to get religious leaders to commit to a program of compassionate principles (see sidebar). For some religious commentators, like the U.S. rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the Charter amounts to little more than "a ‘Kumbaya' moment" for "a world filled with hate-driven faith." Armstrong disagrees, believing the abundant supply of compassion among religious communities the world over will win out. She does have a poor opinion of religious committees though, and admits she was nervous before the first meeting of the high-profile, multifaith, multinational body convened to draw up the Charter. Until, that is, the first speaker got up and said, "We must include a sentence saying that we, that religious people, have failed." Everyone agreed, nodding, says Armstrong with a grin. "As soon as I heard that, I thought, ‘We're going to be all right.'"

Michael Brunton is a writer living in London who agrees with Voltaire on the necessity of god and gardening.

posted in Year 2012 - 15 replies

What if the 2012 movie really happens?

Celestine — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:50:33 GMT

Wouldn't that be in bad taste to make a movie about something that may truly happen. I was thinking about the way the rational mind works and how showing something like this as entertainment might effect the public perspective of 2012. What if that is the intention of making this movie because in truth it is entirely a tool for engineering the public into a state of less seriousness. Any evidence that would be produced after this would be seen as a product of inspiration from a movie and hold less scientific validity. I do enjoy that they have made a professional film about it but the subtle effects of such a thing will last at least until something really does happen and then chaos. Better to hedge your bets on this one me thinks. : )

posted in Year 2012 - 9 replies

Could man exist in a non-monetary culture?

VidasVeron — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:02:30 GMT

Many cultures from ancient religions to new age cults seem to have a common theme, in that one day man will come together in a new age where there will be no need for money or even a barter system… A way of life that all people will have plenty to eat regardless of their status and all sickness will be cured without the need to pay someone to cure everyone.

I’m just wondering if you all think that man can accomplish this feat with his history of greed, lust and hatred that has been bred into his immortal soul from the beginning of time?

Even in a couple of years in 2012, many believe we will be going through not a destruction of man but a transformation that will lead to exactly this type of culture. Do you think man is capable of such a humble existence?

posted in Year 2012 - 17 replies

Will Our Universe Collide With a Neighboring One? by Zeeya Merali

Will Beat Hippie Raver — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:39:31 GMT

Go to site for graphic: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/04-will-our-universe-collide-with-neighboring-one

Will Our Universe Collide With a Neighboring One?
Our universe may be one of a multitude—and it may bear the scars of past run-ins with its neighbors.
by Zeeya Merali
11.04.2009

(Graphic) Hot (red) and cold (blue) spots in the microwave sky might record an ancient collision. NASA/WMap

Relaxing on an idyllic beach on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Anthony Aguirre vividly describes the worst natural disaster he can imagine. It is, in fact, probably the worst natural disaster that anyone could imagine. An asteroid impact would be small potatoes compared with this kind of event: a catastrophic encounter with an entire other universe.

As an alien cosmos came crashing into ours, its outer boundary would look like a wall racing forward at nearly the speed of light; behind that wall would lie a set of physical laws totally different from ours that would wreck everything they touched in our universe. “If we could see things in ultraslow motion, we’d see a big mirror in the sky rushing toward us because light would be reflected by the wall,” says Aguirre, a youthful physicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “After that we wouldn’t see anything—because we’d all be dead.”

There is a sober purpose behind this apocalyptic glee. Aguirre is one of a growing cadre of cosmologists who theorize that our universe is just one of many in a “multiverse” of universes. In their effort to grasp the implications of this idea, they have been calculating the odds that universes could interact with their neighbors or even smash into each other. While investigating what kind of gruesome end might result, they have stumbled upon a few surprises. There are tantalizing hints that our universe has already survived such a collision—and bears the scars to prove it.

Aguirre has organized a conference on Grand Cayman to address just such mind-boggling matters. The conversations here venture into multiverse mishaps and other matters of cosmological genesis and destruction. At first blush the setting seems incongruous: The tropical sun beats down dreamily, the smell of broken coconuts drifts from beneath the palm trees, and the ocean roars rhythmically in the background. But the locale is perhaps fitting. The winds are strong for this time of year, reminding the locals of hurricane Ivan, which devastated the capital city of George Town in 2004, lifting whole apartment blocks and transporting buildings across streets. In nature, peace and violence are never far from each other.

Much of today’s interest in multiple universes stems from concepts developed in the early 1980s by the pioneering cosmologists Alan Guth at MIT and Andrei Linde, then at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. Guth proposed that our universe went through an incredibly rapid growth spurt, known as inflation, in the first 10-30 second or so after the Big Bang. Such extreme expansion, driven by a powerful repulsive energy that quickly dissipated as the universe cooled, would solve many mysteries. Most notably, inflation could explain why the cosmos as we see it today is amazingly uniform in all directions. If space was stretched mightily during those first instants of existence, any extreme lumpiness or hot and cold spots would have immediately been smoothed out. This theory was modified by Linde, who had hit on a similar idea independently. Inflation made so much sense that it quickly became a part of the mainstream model of cosmology.

Soon after, Linde and Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University came to the startling realization that inflation may not have been a onetime event. If it could happen once, it could—and indeed should—happen again and again for eternity. Stranger still, every eruption of inflation would create a new bubble of space and energy. The result: an infinite progression of new universes, each bursting forth with its own laws of physics.

In such a bubbling multiverse of universes, it seems inevitable that universes would sometimes collide. But for decades cosmologists neglected this possibility, reckoning that the odds were small and that if it happened, the results would be irrelevant because anyone and anything near the collision would be annihilated.

At the Grand Cayman conference, Guth sounds somewhat sheepish that he ignored the possibility of cosmic collisions until recently. “It’s funny that we hadn’t thought about this seriously,” he says. “I hadn’t thought about it all, except maybe to think it was rare.”

That changed a few years ago, after Guth received a chance phone call from an ABC News reporter. She was working on a story about global disasters and asked if a collision with another universe could destroy the planet. Guth’s response was apparently not dramatic enough—his interview did not turn into a TV spot—but the question inspired him. He decided that the risks of death-by-bubble should no longer be ignored, and he teamed up with Vilenkin and Jaume Garriga of the University of Barcelona in Spain to investigate.

The team assumed that bubble collisions would be deadly and set out to calculate the odds of such a lethal run-in. Guth’s calculations showed that the likelihood of a fatal collision in our part of the multiverse is probably quite small. However, other research was starting to show that our universe could actually survive a run-in with an alien bubble—and in fact, there was a good chance that such a nonlethal collision had already occurred. “When you think about it, in an infinite multi verse, with bubbles being formed all the time, sooner or later a bubble will form near the boundary of our bubble, and we will be hit,” Vilenkin says. “There’s the possibility of a benign collision when the cosmological characteristics of the alien bubble are similar to ours, so that it doesn’t destroy us but recedes away.”

+++
Now Vilenkin had a whole new question to consider: “Can we see signs of such a collision?” The search for evidence that we are living in the aftermath of a cosmic crash was quickly picked up by other researchers, including Aguirre and his colleagues Matthew Johnson and Assaf Shomer, also at Santa Cruz. “The realization that a mild collision could leave behind something that could potentially be seen anywhere in our universe got us interested,” Aguirre says.

According to standard cosmology, the universe should appear much the same whichever way you look; after all, the extreme uniformity of the universe was one of the reasons why the inflation hypothesis caught on in the first place. But a fender bender with another universe that partially infiltrated ours and then moved away would disturb that symmetry in a subtle but distinctive way, leaving a scar in the heavens, Aguirre says.

The place to look for such a scar is the cosmic microwave background—the all-pervasive radiation left over from the Big Bang. The best measurements of this radiation were made earlier in this decade by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, which produced a detailed map of cold and hot spots in the early universe (thought to correspond to relatively dense and empty zones, respectively). Although the pattern of the spots largely matches the random distribution predicted by standard cosmology, the map does show some unexpected features. One anomaly streaks across the microwave sky, marking out a strange alignment of certain cold and hot spots. Because it flies in the face of the standard belief that there are no special directions in the universe, this anomaly was mischievously dubbed the “axis of evil” by its discoverers, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London, in 2005.

“The axis of evil could be a remnant hanging over from something that happened before inflation took place,” Aguirre says. Although inflation should have erased most details of what the cosmos looked like before that point, it might not have eliminated everything. The axis of evil could therefore be a relic of something huge and powerful that disturbed the infant universe in the very brief moment before inflation kicked in. “A bubble collision that happened before inflation would be a compelling explanation,” Aguirre claims.

He is quick to admit that a collision with another bubble universe is not the only possible explanation for the strange patterns seen by WMAP. For instance, some cosmologists suggest that our universe did not inflate perfectly symmetrically but stretched more in one direction. Others propose that the entire universe may be rotating, which would show up as a distortion in the cosmic microwave background. Aguirre recognizes that he needs more evidence to convince his colleagues—and himself—that our universe was the victim of a multiverse hit-and-run.

Physicist Thomas Levi of New York University is helping to dig up that evidence, albeit from a very different perspective. Levi’s fascination with the multiverse grows from his background in string theory, a physics model positing that all of the elementary particles consist of extremely tiny, vibrating strings. At the end of the last decade, string theory was being touted as the best route to a master explanation for all the physical laws in the universe. But by 2002 proponents of string theory had begun to realize that their equations were a little too good at predicting the laws of physics. Instead of providing one solution that would explain the conditions in our universe, the equations offered up a staggering 10500 possible solutions. Each solution seems to describe a different universe in a “string landscape,” each with its own physical laws and each (in theory) equally likely to exist.

This failure to explain the unique laws of our universe initially seemed to spell disaster for string theory. But then physicists began to tie the string landscape to the notion of a multi verse. Perhaps, they argued, every universe predicted by string theory really does exist—each one in its own bubble within the far greater multiverse. The problem with this interpretation was that it was doubly speculative. There was (and still is) no observational support for string theory, and it did not seem possible that we could find such support for the multiverse, either, since we are locked inside our bubble with no access beyond its walls.

Levi thinks he may have spotted a clue, however. He and two NYU colleagues note another strange anomaly embedded in the cosmic microwave background: In the southern hemisphere of the sky there is one cold spot that is much bigger than the rest. Levi’s calculations show that an ancient wallop from a neighboring universe could have created this spot. “It’s tough to explain with standard cosmology how such a cold spot could have come about,” he says.

While Levi seeks observational support for cosmic collisions, another string theorist—Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—is attempting to study mathematically how neighboring universes would interact. Working with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Saga University in Japan, she is modeling where and how bubble universes might be born in the string landscape. The crucial twist: These researchers hypothesize that every budding universe is inextricably intertwined with its siblings. This theory is based on a well-known quantum effect known as entanglement. On a cosmic scale it means that neighboring universes can retain a ghostly influence on each other long after they have drifted apart.

In 2006 Mersini-Houghton predicted that the entanglement between our universe and another could show up as an otherwise inexplicable force pulling on galaxies in one part of the sky. Last year she was elated to hear that a group of NASA astronomers had observed just such an effect: clusters of galaxies being yanked along at a velocity of about 600 miles per second even though it is not at all clear what is doing the yanking. Dubbed “dark flow” by its discoverers, this movement seems mouthwateringly close to her predictions. “It makes me believe that this bizarre mathematical thing I’ve been considering may, in fact, be real,” Mersini-Houghton says, eyes gleaming.

+++
Dark flow is not her only prediction. Entangled universes provide another possible explanation for the axis-of-evil feature in the cosmic microwave background. On the other hand, a recent experience makes Mersini-Houghton wary of highly tentative evidence for interactions with other universes. In December 2006 she and her team predicted that cosmic entanglement would gouge out a giant void in space. Within a year a group led by Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota announced that the giant WMAP cold spot in the southern sky corresponds to just such a void, one that is far too large to be explained by conventional physics. (It would appear cold because light loses energy as it traverses a vast, rapidly expanding empty space.)

For a moment Mersini-Houghton appeared headed toward celebrity. A young, vivacious woman, she was already living well outside of academia’s ivory tower. She had met with the prime minister of her native Albania, Sali Berisha, to help launch a campaign to spark interest in science; she had also begun receiving Bibles in the mail from people worried about the possible religious implications of the multiverse. “We’re asking fundamental questions about the nature of reality, so it’s understandable,” Mersini-Houghton says.

Soon there came another twist. Follow-up calculations by two other astrophysicists suggested that Rudnick was mistaken and that there is not any great void after all. The news drove home to Mersini-Houghton just how challenging it is to go chasing after bubble universes. “It’s dangerous to hastily point at a cold spot the sky and claim that it’s a window into another universe,” says Hiranya Peiris of the University of Cambridge, who is dubious about all the highly theoretical multiverse discussions. She points out that many of the anomalies seen by WMAP could simply be glitches created by the complicated way in which the microwave background data are interpreted. “It’s easy to read too much into the map,” she says.

For now, tales of colliding universes still play better on the beaches of Grand Cayman than they do in the pages of Physical Review Letters. To convince the many skeptics, Aguirre and like-minded theorists will need to do a lot more work. Levi plans to look for more detailed signatures of cosmic collision in the new, improved measurements of the microwave background being made by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which began a comprehensive new sky survey two months ago.

Vilenkin, meanwhile, is conducting a mathematical census of all the different bubbles that could show up in the multiverse, totting up which values for the physical constants are likely to be shared by the largest number of universes. “We should hopefully be able to make a prediction for the masses of neutrinos [ghostly particles that interact weakly with ordinary atoms] based on which masses are most commonly found in different bubbles,” he says. If future experiments confirm that neutrinos have these predicted masses, that would offer impressive support for the multiverse.

To Mersini-Houghton, the mere fact that serious scientists are having these discussions signals a major turn in physics. “Copernicus shocked the world by telling us that our planet isn’t at the universe’s center,” she says. “We may soon find that our whole universe isn’t even at the cosmic center.”

WINNERS AND LOSERS

In a clash of the cosmos, what are the chances that our universe would emerge victorious? The prospects of survival for any bubble universe come down to the amount of energy embedded in it, Thomas Levi of New York University says. In the late 1990s, astronomers noticed that the expansion of the universe is speeding up—a phenomenon they ascribed to a mysterious “dark energy” pushing our universe apart. That entity may take the form of a cosmological constant, energy that is spread out through all of space. “If our cosmological constant is less than the alien bubble’s, we’re safe,” Levi says. Flip those conditions and “you don’t want to be around.”

In the latter case, a wall forms between the two universes when they collide. If the wall’s tension is less than a certain value, it will rush into our universe, wiping out everything in its path at almost the speed of light. “Some large chunk of the universe is eaten, while all the people who hit the wall are crushed and killed,” Levi says. Luckily, our cosmological constant is vanishingly small, making us primed to win if we do get caught in a cosmic battle.

For some time physicists have been perplexed by the exact value of this constant. Its level seems to be finely tweaked to create just the right conditions for stars, planets, and life to form. Had it been even slightly greater, the universe would have blown apart and life never could have evolved. Levi’s findings hint at why our universe—or any universe—is likely to have a small cosmological constant. “We don’t know enough to say that such collisions happen at all, let alone happen often,” Levi cautions. “But if a typical bubble goes through a large number of collisions, it would point to a reason why we find ourselves in this kind of universe.”

“It does make sense that if the cosmological constant is low, the bubble is more likely to survive,” cosmologist Alan Guth of MIT says. But even if the results looked less encouraging for our universe, Levi would not be too concerned. “I’m more worried about crossing the street in New York and getting hit by a car than being hit by a bubble,” he says. “I won’t go out and buy bubble-collision insurance just yet.”Z. M.

MAKING THE BANG

While other theorists worry about the destructive power of a cosmic collision, two maverick physicists propose that such a titanic accident actually gave birth to our universe—and that what we call the Big Bang is just the latest incarnation in an infinite cycle of creation.

Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok, now at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada, devised their controversial alternative to Big Bang cosmology in 2002. Their idea is based on a mathematical model in which our universe is a three-dimensional membrane, or “brane,” embedded in four-dimensional space. The Big Bang, they say, was caused when our brane crashed against a neighboring one. The violence of the collision would have flooded both universes with energy and matter. These collisions should repeat every trillion years, each time triggering a new Bang and a new universe.

Steinhardt and Turok’s model predicts a slight but specific pattern of hot and cold spots that should be detectable in the microwave radiation from the universe’s early days. In 2007 researchers saw hints of that pattern in preliminary measurements from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). “The signature fits the predictions for the cyclic model,” Steinhardt says. “But it’s too early to call.” Indeed, when a WMAP team revised some probe data, researchers could not confirm that the “signature” was more than a chance blip—but neither could they rule it out. New microwave studies from the Planck satellite may help break the tie. Z. M.

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

History Channel Docu Series - Searching for Expertstopic

VidasVeron — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:17:07 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/2012the-end-times/thread/9ac7c944-ede4-46fc-9193-fe03f22a4a26#0569b02e-d983-4b5c-b471-5eb8d6268ecf

Yesterday, November 05, 2009, 3:18:40 PM | 2012Seekers
I am working on a project for the History Channel. We are searching for 2 lead investigators to host a tv series documentary on the topic of 2012 and other unexplained phenomena. http://www.seekers2012.com - please see all information here. We would also really appreciate it if you could possibly post to your blog as well or send to your network. Any help in our quest would be great! Please let me know how I can help you. Thank you! We are on twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/seekers2012

posted in Year 2012 - 3 replies

The Wayfinders : Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

wil — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:15:24 GMT

This series is totally excellent and most highly recommended for anyone with interest in the wealth of cultural information contained in the wisdom of the heritage of various peoples. It is a CBC lecture series, and only the first two have been aired. The third one will air today on CBC. It is called " People of the Anaconda". I'm really looking forward to it.

Check this out!

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2009.html

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

This Way to Sustainability Conference CSU, Chico

Oba — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:01:09 GMT

Maybe some here will benefit from this info:

Making the Impossible Possible: Adapting to Rapid Climate Change

Nico Stehr is Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany. His research interests center on the transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies and associated developments in different major social institutions of modern society (e.g. science, politics, governance, the economy and globalization) as well as the societal consequences of climate change. He has published more than 40 books and over 100 refereed articles. Among his recent book publications are: Biotechnology: Between Commerce and Civil Society (Transaction Books, 2004); Knowledge (with Reiner Grundmann, Routledge, 2005), Moral Markets (Paradigm Publishers, 2008), Who owns Knowledge: Knowledge and the Law (with Bernd Weiler, Transaction Books, 2008), Knowledge and Democracy (Transaction Publishers, 2008) and Society (with Reiner Grundmann, Routledge, 2009) and Climate and Society (with Hans von Storch, World Scientific Publishers).

The Economics of Sustainability: Can we create a sustainable future?

Howard has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding, molecular biology and food production systems for over 40 years. A former college professor, he was one of the founders of Seeds of Change and at Mars, Incorporated, is responsible for their plant science globally, investigation of potential new plant-based solutions for use in their brands, review and oversight of existing and future plant-based research. A former Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Award winner, in 2007 Howard was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organic Trade Association and was recognized by USDA for his work on the international cacao breeding project. In 2008 Howard was appointed to direct the Mars, Incorporated global effort on the genome sequencing of Theobroma cacao, with IBM and USDA- ARS, was made a Fellow of the World Agroforestry Centre, organized the Kumasi Cacao Consensus Symposium, authored the IAASTD chapter on Biotechnology and Biodiversity and is member of the National Research Council Committee on Citrus and Greening. He is a founding member of the Keystone Roundtable on Sustainable Agriculture, co-chair of the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry and is chairperson of the External Advisory Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis. His collaborations span all continents and have involved the National Academies of Science, The World Bank, parastals and NGO’s, and the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, amongst many organizations. He has presented at science meetings globally and is frequently quoted in the international press. He is an award-winning author of four books, including Chocolate: History, Culture and Heritage, and is currently co-authoring two books—The Science of Theobroma Cacao: Botany, Chemistry & Medicine and the Future of Agroforestry and Landuse Globally

more speakers and dates:
http://www.csuchico.edu/sustainablefuture/conference/keynotes.shtml

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

MAHA KUMBH MELA, HARIDWAR 2010 - SCHEDULE

Oba — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:48:11 GMT

Dates of Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, India, 2010

January 14, 2010 to April 28, 2010

The main bathing dates are 14th January, 12 February, 13th February, 15th March and 14th April

Kumbha Mela is the largest religious gathering in the world. This year it's the turn of Haridwar to host this religious extravaganza. The complete date-wise schedule of this fair is as follows:

http://www.kumbhamela.net/kumbha-mela-2003-schedule.html

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

Poetry of the Shift

sblonder — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:22:48 GMT

I thought I would begin a thread to post poems that speak to our experience of a transformative time.

I wrote this today.

Dead Men Walking

CRACK went the whip of corporate expectation.

FLAIL went the arms and legs of the severed servants.

PSSEW went the balloon of numbers and cents when the air was sucked out.

EXHALE was the non-granted wish of the multitude riveted by the non-stop rigamortis of the quo that once was.

PRAYER could be heard in the silent whispers of those who were betrayed by the better angels of their natures.

ANGST in the seams of gratitude for a life once lived though skated and hung by a thread.

GRUNTS of steel doubling over the skill hoarder who thought he was immune to irrelevancy.

TEARS backed up into wells of the soul that can only be expressed one drop at a time.

posted in Year 2012 - 10 replies

What happened to global warming?

VidasVeron — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:18:03 GMT

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

posted in Year 2012 - 241 replies

☆¸.•¨!SOMVARTA!`•.☆

Ommanipadmehum — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:53:53 GMT

well seeing as i came across this new (to me) notion ~ a fantastic burst of light/fire (i think Blake referred to it too) that occurs sometimes, like the end of an age to be precise ~ twice (the second in fact presenting the Vedic term to me) in one hour i thought i'd share..

anything you care to add?

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

The Right Diet

Auton — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:13:32 GMT

Midway
Message from the Gyre

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

~cj, October 2009

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

Surviving 2012: Political Aspirations

wil — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:09:17 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o3-dhZ-uFI

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

When You're Ready to Party Like It's 2012

Hoopes — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:25:38 GMT

Crystal Head Vodka
http://crystalheadvodka.com

posted in Year 2012 - 14 replies

Barack Obama Wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

Hoopes — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:53:17 GMT

Congratulations to an authentic visionary who risks the lives of himself, his wife, and his children 24/7 to make this world a better place for us all.

Obama Wins the 2009 Nobel Prize for Effort
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929396,00.html

Nobel Committee Member: Nuclear Disarmament Efforts Won Obama the Prize
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/09/nobel-committee-member-nuclear-disarmament-efforts-won-obama-the-prize/

posted in Year 2012 - 124 replies

"I feel no need for food and water" - Prahlad Jani

Oba — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:43:49 GMT

Doctors and experts are baffled by an Indian hermit who claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for several decades - but is still in perfect health.

Prahlad Jani, a holy man, or fakir, who is over 70 years old, has just spent 10 days under constant observation in Sterling Hospital, in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

During that time, he did not consume anything and "neither did he pass urine or stool", according to the hospital's deputy superintendent, Dr Dinesh Desai.

Yet he is in fine mental and physical fettle, say doctors.

Most people can live without food for several weeks, with the body drawing on its fat and protein stores. But the average human can survive for only three to four days without water.

Followers of Indian holy men and ascetics have often ascribed extraordinary powers to them, but such powers are seldom subject to scientific inspection.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3236118.stm

posted in Year 2012 - 117 replies

Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK

Oba — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:12:26 GMT

"Our goal is to make people laugh, then make them think. We also hope to spur people's curiosity, and to raise the question: How do you decide what's important and what's not, and what'sreal and what's not — in science and everywhere else?"

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig1994

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

the fullness of space

neekos — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:23:52 GMT

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

Ancient African ruins

neekos — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:28:15 GMT

http://www.viewzone.com/adamscalendar.html

posted in Year 2012 - 20 replies

crazy little facts

Ommanipadmehum — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:44:07 GMT

After caterpillars form their chrysalis during metamorphosis, it is a little-known but very relevant fact that they completely dissolve into a soup of amino acids before reassembling into butterflies εiз

posted in Year 2012 - 9 replies

finacial markets still despratly need reform, sickness is still there

elo_celtic_moore — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:01:29 GMT

this is a good discussion with Michael Moore and others -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAXFxusUKBE

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

2 die in sedona sweatlodge

anistara1 — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:58:00 GMT

i am mortified, disturbed, and distraught over this. no words really say the ill feeling i have over the person who organized this event (i don't know who was running the sweat, that remains to be seen, but if any of my hunches are correct, i'll be even more saddened, crossing fingers i'm wrong.

not only did people die and get sick, its a bastardization of tradition, orgainzed by one of 'the secret" people, for more than $9000 to learn how to be a spiritual warrior and over come... blah! gross gross gross! i was just at angel valley a couple of months ago (researching for a friend who plans to do a hoopdance retreat), know the owners and management. its a hard hit for the spiritual community of sedona. i've never sweat outside of my tradition (turtlelodge) and have always been told to stick to the original instruction. i have always been fearful of the ways that are bent for the dollar. spiritual materialism is the root of evil, or a kin thereof...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,563162,00.html

wo people are dead and several others remain hospitalized Friday after becoming mysteriously ill in a sauna-like sweat lodge at an Arizona resort.

Three people had heart attacks and about 21 in all were treated for injuries after being sickened Thursday night at the Angel Valley Sweat Lodge in Sedona. Two died.

The resort is next to GOP Sen. John McCain's ranch, according to MyFOXPhoenix.com.

Emergency crews responded about 5 p.m. Thursday to a hazardous materials situation at the sauna, the station said. Three patients were reportedly suffering cardiac arrest when ambulances and a helicopter arrived.

About 50 people were in a "sweatbox"-type structure when they were overcome at the resort, which provides Native American-style spiritual retreats, Yavapai County sheriff's spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn said Friday.

Many people began feeling ill after about two hours in the sweat lodge.

About 21 people were taken by ambulance or helicopter to area hospitals, where two were pronounced dead, D'Evelyn said. The dead were only identified as a man and woman, both middle-aged.

Two people taken to Flagstaff Medical Center were listed in critical condition on Friday. Three others who were admitted to a hospital in nearby Verde Valley recovered quickly; two were released overnight and one was reported in good condition on Friday.

Sheriff's homicide investigators were working to find the cause and determine if any criminal actions might have been a factor in the incident, D'Evelyn said. Investigators remained at the resort and were interviewing the retreat director, staff and resort guests on Friday.

Sedona is a resort town about 115 miles north of Phoenix famous for its red rocks. It is well-known as a center for a modern spiritual movement. Sweat lodges are indoor saunas usually located at spiritual resorts.

posted in Year 2012 - 227 replies

Inerton Waves of the Earth

Celestine — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:12:50 GMT

If you are into Pyramid power or the John Hutchison Crystal Battery phenomenon then you will enjoy this read.

In condensed media, the relationship between the parameters of atoms and their clouds of inertons shows that amplitude L of an atom's inerton cloud much exceeds the distance between neighbor atoms. This means that inerton clouds of atoms overlap and in such a way that additional interaction between a media's atoms is settled. In other words, when we treat any matter, we should take into account that it is embedded in another substrate, or a quantum aether, or the space net and that the interaction of atoms with the space net induce one more field (i.e. the inerton field) which together with the electromagnetic one connect all atoms of the matter studied.

In my recent research, the impact of inertons on the collective behavior of atoms in a solid has theoretically been treated and then experimentally approved in metal specimens. It has been derived that the force matrix W that determines three branches of acoustic vibrations in the crystal lattice consists of two components, W = V + U. Here, V is the conventional term caused by the elastic electromagnetic interaction of atoms in the crystal lattice and the second term, U, is originated from the overlapping of inerton clouds of adjacent atoms. Much probably U is very small. However, the availability of U means that an outside inerton field is able to influence the crystal lattice increasing amplitudes of vibrating atoms.

However, where can we take a source of the inerton field? A condensed medium and, in particular, our planet itself may be considered as a source of inertons. Actually, the motion of atoms of the Earth considered to be an ideal globe moving as a single unit apparently does not differ in principle from the motion of a free particle shortly described in the previous section. A macroscopic globe only contains inner structural bonds, which keep atoms in the globe. The bonds lead to the coherence of atoms – roughly speaking we may imagine that all atoms in the globe nailed to their positions. Deviations from coherence in the motion of atoms caused by thermal fluctuations and various mechanical, physical and chemical processes, produce excitation of the atoms and as a result, generation of acoustic waves takes place. Consequently, the corresponding excitation of inertons (inerton waves) accompanying the acoustic waves will appear as well. If the lifetime of a sound excitation happening in any place of the Earth lasts only 1 sec., the corresponding inerton wave will be able to round the terrestrial globe about ten times.

and much more
http://www.gizapyramid.com/DrV-article.htm

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

A hoax made with precision cut boards and rope or the real deal

Celestine — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:07:50 GMT

http://www.lucypringle.co.uk/photos/2008/uk2008bf.jpg

I'll let you be the judge.

All I can say is this crop circle is very straight forward.

posted in Year 2012 - 53 replies

anyone see the mothership lately?

travis — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:44:23 GMT

zing!

posted in Year 2012 - 10 replies

New Proof the Popol Vuh was NOT tainted by the Invasion...

Manjushri — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:01:46 GMT

"(BEGIN VIDEO)

BALDWIN: From the air, it looks like just jungle. But these forests in Guatemala hide an ancient secret: the city of Mirador, often referred to as the cradle of Mayan civilization, the size of a modern day metropolis. This is no mountain. It's a pyramid. And according to the Mirador Basin Project, it may be the largest pyramid by volume in the world. CNN is traveling with the project's director and lead archaeologist, Richard Hansen, and the founder of the Global Heritage Fund, Jeff Morgan.

RICHARD HANSEN, DIR., MIRADOR BASIN PROJECT: The pyramid is a structure the world should know, because it represents an investment of labor unprecedented in the world's history. Every single stone in that building, from the bottom to the top, was carried by human labor.

BALDWIN: And the work to save this pyramid is delicate, done by hand. Guatemalan archaeologists painstakingly help uncover pieces of history built by their ancestors. And the view from the top of La Donta, spectacular.

HANSEN: This is the sum of the Maya world.

BALDWIN: Here at the top of La Donta, we are 72 meters or about 224 feet from the forest floor. And when we talk about the sheer size of this area that is El Mirador, just one single Mayan city, archaeologist Dr. Richard Hansen says it's size is larger than all of downtown Los Angeles. And he says there are still thousands of pyramids yet to be uncovered.

Then, Dr. Hansen shows us something few people have ever seen: a relic referred to as the Popol Vuh that is the Mayan story of creation. CNN cameras are the first to capture this fresh discovery, which Hansen says will rewrite Mayan history.

This is the creation story of the Mayan people.

HANSEN: This is the creation story, and it goes back to at least 300, 200 B.C.

BALDWIN: For decades, historians believe the Popol Vuh was tainted by the Catholic views of Spanish conquistadors. Finding this frieze changes everything, because it predates the Spanish arrival by more than a millennium. The challenge now is preserving this area, a jungle constantly under threat by narco traffickers, loggers and cattle ranchers. Hansen's guards are on constant standby to keep looters out.

HANSEN: Where we've had guards in cities throughout the basin, we've had no new looters' trenches. Where we haven't had the resources for that, we have lost 100 percent.

BALDWIN: Hansen has made Mirador his life's work and hopes to share these Mayan secrets with Guatemala and the world.

HANSEN: The science for the sake of science is sterile if it doesn't bless the lives of people. And by conserving this, we're blessing the lives of an entire nation.

(END VIDEO) "

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/studentnews/11/01/transcript.mon/

http://peoplemagazinedaily.com/?p=2558

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6JiShvlUxI

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

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

The Maya Flood Myth and the Decapitation of the Cosmic Caiman

Manjushri — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:21:23 GMT

"The 1999 discovery of the hieroglyphic platform of
Temple XIX at Palenque (Stuart 2000a) opened the
doors to a new understanding of Classic Maya mythology.
Dedicated during the reign of K’inich Ahkal
Mo’ Nahb’ III2 in AD 734, it begins with an account
of a series of cosmic events that occurred during
the final bak’tun of the previous creation. These
events include the enthronement of god GI in the
sky under the supervision of Yax Naah Itzamnaaj on
March 10, 3309 BC, as well as a decapitation event
that happened eleven years later. This passage (Figure
1), partially deciphered thanks to contributions
made by David Stuart (2000a:29, 2005:68-77, 176-180,
2006:101), narrates the decapitation of a crocodile or
caiman with star and deer attributes (the “Starry Deer
Crocodile”), that we can observe in other contexts as
a patron god of the month Yax,3 the head variant of
the eighth day of the Maya calendar, Lamat, or the
personification of the glyph for “star,” “Venus,” or
“planet,” EK’ (see Förstemann 1906:182-196; Thompson
1960:77, 105, 220-221; Kelley and Kerr 1974:184;
Kelley 1976:38; Closs 1979:147-148; Aveni 1991:316)"

"ERIK VELÁSQUEZ GARCÍA
Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM"

Read This PDF for the Full Article...
http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/journal/701/flood_e.pdf

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

Beryllium-10

Solari — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:23:16 GMT

Because the sun has been unusually quiet lately with a consequent diminishment of it magnetic deflection of cosmic rays vis a vis the earth, there is also a subtle elevation of beryllium-10 levels in the upper atmosphere which make their way down to the earth's surface eventually. Cosmic rays interact with nitrogen to create BE. Beryllium levels in ice cores tell us when cosmic ray bombardment varies.
Be is an interesting element for me because when Be is present in quartz it influences the quartz as modulator quite a bit. Phenacite and herderite are both BE minerals which put the human handler into meditative states. Ingested, Be is quite toxic; but the "vibe" of BE at least as it interacts with silicon dioxide and interacted with further by humans presents as something unusual and spacey.
.So, to go way out on a shaky limb it is possible that the periodicity of cosmic ray bombardment might indicate a "spiritual" elevation as well because of increased interaction with BE at the earth's surface. In minute quantities, it might not be technically toxic but present as a "spaciness" just as it does it when handled as a dopant in quartz.

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Fibonacci Sequence

marvindublin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:40:27 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAqTfBaqxGM

Numbers of Life, Matrix of Universe

Nathan Miller provided this alternative link. : )

http://www.contracosta.edu/math/Pentagrm.htm

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Troll control

emptycloud — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:33:13 GMT

With consideration and dismay I suggest that Orpheus be warned once again to limit the number of posts or be removed from membership due to his constant disregard for serious pursuit of thread content. He takes a left turn consistently, leading others off topic or into nonsense. Is this the pattern that the majority here wish to endure. Turning any subject into a joke is not my definition of intelligence. And rapid and profuse comebacks does nothing to build thoughtful pursuit of thread content.
And Chonti...either you are one of his shadow alts or you just love feeding trolls. Your stimulating and stroking his nonsense is not helpful to this tribe.
That said...you both have good energy to add to this tribe if you would just limit entries or begin your own threads instead of pissing on others.
is this asking too much? Does smoking pot dull your senses beyond control?
I know, you now most likely harbor resentful thoughts toward me for this speaking of my heart. I'll live with it in order to offer some hope that this tribe can be something to be proud of and worth participating in for all the members who find value here.
Start stream of consciousness tribe and babble on if you wish, but allow us our space for semi - serious pursuit and exploration of wonders here.
Love ya on the being level but sick of you on another.......................with all due respect to the tribe members and mod........................e

posted in Year 2012 - 302 replies

2012 and Beyond

marvindublin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:50:33 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy9TGbE2F-8 - The Maya Of Eternal Time Drunvalo Melchizedek July 29 2009 ( 1 of 14)

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/3353365035.html - 2 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2362189327.html - 3 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2001945964.html - 4 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/3737179414.html - 5 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/510347676.html - 6 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2579785448.html - 7 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2581975126.html - 8 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2853768096.html - 10 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/589351777.html - 11 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/1716397097.html - 12 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/1982890005.html - 13 of 14

http://video.tiscali.it/canali/truveo/2509273575.html - 14 of 14

Where the hell are segments 1 & 9 on tiscali? Hmm.

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Harmonic Convergence

marvindublin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:36:18 GMT

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

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

2012 = miscalculation according to Dutch science magazine

Mon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:11:39 GMT

>>>The google translation sucked so I fixed it here and there:

http://www.natutech.nl/00/nt/nl/47/artikel/26050/Balen:_%272012%27_is_pas_over_twee_eeuwen.html

"...In the 2012 film that will premiere this month, cities and continents are destroyed in droves, as the world decays. What a pity that research has shown that the "end times" of December 21, 2012 is probably more than two centuries later ..."

The dozens of books, websites, yes, even the Flemish gentleman who is planning to flee to a mountain in South Africa. You couldn't have missed it: the doom preachers have discovered yet another deadline. This time the world perishes on Friday, December 21, 2012. Our planet will be torn to pieces by a passing stray planet, burned by solar flares, lifted by the gods or even spiritual cleansing by cosmic primal forces - it all depends on which book or website you read.

On two things the stories agree. First, on 21/12/2012 the sun climbs to a very special place in the sky. And second, on 21/12/2012 the calendar of the ancient Maya ends. For enterprising prophets of doom, the sum is quickly made: say goodbye to the world. "I think the idea of the year 2012 as a special year began in 1985 with the encounter between esoteric Terence McKenna and Jose Arguelles, Sacha Defesche suspects, whom graduated in Philosophy and Religion studies on the subject of 2012 at the University of Amsterdam. "Together they are responsible for giving a religious, apocalyptic meaning to a date that would otherwise probably have remained unnoticed."

Astronomer Louis Strous comforts us, and says it's not all that bad. "It is the beginning of astronomical winter. But there are no special forces connected," said Strous, who set up a public page for the Utrecht University in which he drew up the astronomical side of the 2012 discussion. This 'special' position of the stars is a bit of a stretch, says Strous. During lectures, he sometimes shows a series of pictures to of the celestial sky at different dates. Whereupon he asks his audience: point to any image here where you think something special is to be seen. Nobody picks December 21, 2012, of course. "The random population will have nothing special to see."

Yet something happens on the day of the disaster. The sun climbs over to where you, at night, would see the Milky Way - the bright band of stars that runs diagonally through the sky. Right in the middle of the band, also called the "galactic equator ', the sun will reach its highest point on 21/12/2012. It is only once in the roughly 25,800 years that the Sun performs this feat exactly while the winter solstice occurs. A true 2012-believer sees it certainly evident: a cosmic portal to the Galaxy will open, through which spiritual forces will flow.

Too bad that this state isn't quite that unusual. "This happens every few thousand years", stresses Strous. Moreover, there is no such thing as an exact 'equator' of the galaxy. "These are not things you just can see. The galactic equator is not a line in the sky or something. In previous years, the Sun was also even with the galactic equator on December 21st, and the coming years this will also be the case. "Apart from the fact that the sun passes the galactic equator twice a year anyway when there isn't a winter solstice. But hey, why would you really worry, says Strous. "I think it is questionable whether the Maya did have such knowledge to begin with."

Mishmash...

No cosmic sky suddenly swinging gates open, so what about that other disaster story: Mayan Calendar?

Also here lies the truth quite differently. When the Spaniards in the 16th century conquered the realm of Maya, the Maya did not have merely one calendar. The people kept time with no less than four calendars at once. The oldest was a calendar count of 260 days called the "Tzolkin", consisting of 20 days with all one's own name, that each passed 13 times. The Maya also knew the "Haab", a calendar of 365 days, spread over 18 months of 20 days each, with a sort of bonus at the end of 5 'accident days. Calendar number three was the "short count", a sort of counter of days, months, years and "Katun", periods of almost twenty years. And finally dozing in the background is called a "long count". They counted the Katun: 20 Katun formed a "baktun", and those of those baktuns there were again 13. This long count was however abandoned when the Spaniards arrived, probably not least because the baktun count is so extremely slow running.

Therefore, it was a creepily complex system, that was expressed in date terms as '10 .4.0.0.0 - 12 Ahau - 3 Uo ', or' the tenth baktun plus the fourth katun after the creation by the long count, the next-to - Ahau last-days according to the Tzolkin calendar and the 3rd day of the month according to the Uo Haab calendar. "

Well, but what is really the western translation of such a date? What Christian calendar date corresponds to what Maya Year? This is a practical problem that scientists already are in discussion about for a century. The Spaniards were so unwise to burn most of the written texts of the Maya that could have been used as a guide. Researchers who want to know how the Maya Time fits the regular calendar, must therefore rely on carved inscriptions, a couple written documents from the Spanish settlers and modern tables with which you can determine the positions of planets and the moon. The "correlation problem" is the name of this complex scientific dating puzzle trying to tie down the Mayan calendar to that of the West.

And here comes the infamous end date 21/12/2012 into play. A small one hundred years ago scientists thought that they had figured it out. By looking at references in Spanish writings, the archaeologists Goodman, Martinez and Thompson presented their "GMT-correlation": a calculation that the creation date of the Mayan mythology (and thus the start of the long count) pointed to August 11 of the year 3114 BC. After some mathematics, the GMT-correlation means that the long count completes a full round in December 2012. The counter then jumps on 13.0.0.0.0 and the time, literally, runs out, the archaeologists thought.

However, for what little 2012-prophets know is that the GMT-correlation has come under heavy fire over the past ten years by modern astronomers, archaeologists and a few hobbying mathematicians. The final blow was arguably the thesis that nature scientist Andreas Fuls presented three years ago at the Technical University Berlin. Fuls pointed out that the GMT-correlation is not consistent with a preserved Mayan table on which the positions of Venus are listed. And there is more, such as inscriptions and objects that at the time of Goodman, Martinez and Thompson were not yet detected or outdated. By adding this all up, Fuls ends up with a very different dating: one that is shifted 208 years ahead. The end of the long count by his correlation is about two centuries from now, at 21, 22 or December 23, 2220. "It is the only option," says Fuls if you ask him about it...

This is btw not to say that the world in the year 2220 will still perish. "Can you even speak of an 'end' in a cyclical calendar, such as the Maya", notes Defesche. You can expect that after 13.0.0.0.0 the time of the Maya goes straight back to 1.0.0.0.1.

Apart from the question of whether the "long count" even actually expires at that point. Four years ago, archaeologist David Kelley and astrophysicist Eugene Milone proposed that the Maya probably had an even longer count, one in 'pictuns': "baktuns periods of 20 (or 20 x 144,000 days = 7890 years). It seems that he prophets of doom - and the film industry - can keep going for many thousands of years.

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

The 2012 Story

Hoopes — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:01:31 GMT

I see that John Major Jenkins has a new book out:

The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History
http://www.amazon.com/2012-Story-Fallacies-Intriguing-History/dp/1585427667/

Anyone read it yet?

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

Collapse

Mon — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:03:53 GMT

Collapse

In theaters: November 6, 2009

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WJ0CjGOsG8

Synopsis: "...Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new President will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil, and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and to hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst? Michael Ruppert is a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter “From the Wilderness” at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Smith has always had a feeling for outsiders in films like “American Movie” and “American Job.” In “Collapse,” Smith stylistically departs from his past films by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray. Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate over the issue of “peak oil,” the concern raised by scientists since the 1970s that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn’t hold back at sounding an alarm. He portrays a future that resembles apocalyptic science fiction. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded; and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments...."

"It makes countless other political documentaries look like episodes of "Teletubbies". Unnervingly persuavive much of the time, and merely riveting when it's not!"
VARIETY

"Buzz film 'Collapse' showcases a gripping pundit."
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"I for one left the theater shaken."
THE ONION/AV CLUB

"Less wake-up call than four-alarm fire."
VARIETY

"You can’t take your eyes off him...riveting."
TIME OUT NEW YORK

"Collapse jolted and melted me down like no documentary has in a long, long while. "
HOLLYWOOD-ELSEWHERE

"It’s hard to imagine a better documentary being released this year."
MARTINI BOYS

"Ruppert lays out a compelling, convincing, and terrifying argument"
HAMMER TO NAIL

"Compelling."
NEW YORK TIMES

"Michael Moore may have come into this year’s Toronto International Film Festival with the most high-profile documentary about the current economic crisis, but it’s the less well-known non-fiction filmmaker Chris Smith who brought the best film on the subject to town. "
METRO CANADA

"Excellent and Important. Leaves you breathless."
MOVIE CITY NEWS / THE HOT BLOG

"Michael Moore has grabbed headlines for his take on 2008's financial market meltdown...but perhaps a more ominous picture of a world in crises is painted by 'Collapse' director Chris Smith. "
NEW YORK TIMES / REUTERS

"After watching Chris Smith’s latest documentary, Collapse, there is no going back: once seen its nearly impossible to forget. " 4.5/5 Stars
ROW THREE

"Collapse...will be a contender for major kudos whatever year it gets submitted to Oscar."
IONCINEMA

"Chris Smith’s lucid, compelling portrait."
INDIEWIRE

posted in Year 2012 - 5 replies

The LOVE POLICE

in-PHI-net — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:49:28 GMT

haha!!! This is great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjgoBamFb4A&feature=related

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

Aleister Crowley 2012

marvindublin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:03:30 GMT

http://aleistercrowley.tribe.net/thread/9765efd4-6aa1-4733-8b70-b8d8e0976a85

MaryEllen posted this on the Aleister Crowley tribe.

http://ac2012.wordpress.com/about-aleister-crowley-2012/

posted in Year 2012 - 107 replies

Presence......... (and, of course the FAKE versions thereof)

Leslie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:39:43 GMT

Presence.
How do you manifest it? How do you Aspire towards its fullest potential?

What, IS it? ReCognizance of (realization of) the Looming Actualities?

Analysis (good use for the left brain to keep it out of dominance conflicts) of what Constitutes DEsirable Presences .... and wherein are we Subjected to ILLusory-UnDesirable 'ExISTances"

Do you Fully Cognate (inHabitate), or merely Opine & Skew Derivativeness (precipitative slam-facilitation)?

In Other Werdz, Can you Bring IT, in terms of Who-Watt you ARE.........UP in-the-Highness of what you Would if were-fully-could?
.....................there Are pitfalls..............
some of us have Nav-engineered ways aRound these, but it's ONgoing, this......... and SO, No Apologies, but Yes, Learning Intently..... not much Budget for massaging egos in the Dynamics of "How Can WE cut through MASSIVE ILLusions-DeLusions?"

Prove? Proof? Prove your wholesomeness, because the Skillful Madness is Big & Loud. Charisma can Kill. Watch them lining up, demanding their doses of poison. FAKE is the old-newTechnique for Culling Life out-of-Full Potentials, and Into Programmed PreDictations.

here's some crop circle Background (10/15), and goes into Solar System Heating-Energetic Upscaling (11/15), which constitutes "data available" (fyi)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tPPDznDNf4&feature=response_watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxFe-J-4sg8&feature=related

Manipulate? That's what the culture-of-Fake Does Big Time to us, as it has from our earliest memories, as it Incites Us to carry-forth-with.
A MILLION Methods of deCeption, ..........yet Always there is Present a few ways of Wisdom.

posted in Year 2012 - 6 replies

World Food Crisis Discussed Over 18 Course Banquet

wil — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:49:11 GMT

Summit that's hard to swallow

Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions.

But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.

The dinner, and a six-course lunch, at the summit of leading industrialised nations on the island of Hokkaido, included delicacies such as caviar, milkfed lamb, sea urchin and tuna, with champagne and wines flown in from Europe and the U.S.

(full article)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1032909/Summit-thats-hard-swallow--world-leaders-enjoy-18-course-banquet-discuss-solve-global-food-crisis.html

They have an enlargable menu in the full article that i found particularly shocking. You know, this is really, really disgusting.

posted in Year 2012 - 21 replies

World's Largest Pyramid Discovered: Lost Mayan City

Mon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:16:41 GMT

>>> I'm not sure how old this 'news' is, but it was news to me ;)

World's Largest Pyramid Discovered, Lost Mayan City Of Mirador Guatemala

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voY8jNcuGe8

posted in Year 2012 - 24 replies

Iceland says goodbye to the Big Mac

sblonder — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:26:59 GMT

The apocalypse has now officially arrived.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_iceland_mcdonald_s_1

"REYKJAVIK, Iceland – The Big Mac, long a symbol of globalization, has become the latest victim of this tiny island nation's overexposure to the world financial crisis.

Iceland's three McDonald's restaurants — all in the capital Reykjavik — will close next weekend, as the franchise owner gives in to falling profits caused by the collapse in the Icelandic krona.

"The economic situation has just made it too expensive for us," Magnus Ogmundsson, the managing director of Lyst Hr., McDonald's franchise holder in Iceland, told the Associated Press by telephone on Monday.

Lyst was bound by McDonald's requirement that it import all the goods required for its restaurants — from packaging to meat and cheeses — from Germany.

Costs had doubled over the past year because of the fall in the krona and high import tariffs on imported goods, Ogmundsson said, making it impossible for the company to raise prices further and remain competitive with competitors that use locally sourced produce.

A Big Mac in Reykjavik already retails for 650 krona ($5.29). But the 20 percent increase needed to make a decent profit would have pushed that to 780 krona ($6.36), he said.

That would have made the Icelandic version of the burger the most expensive in the world, a title currently held jointly by Switzerland and Norway where it costs $5.75, according to The Economist magazine's 2009 Big Mac index...."

posted in Year 2012 - 15 replies

another theory they had wrong

emptycloud — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:39:46 GMT

Earth’s Magnetic Field is Not Produced Inside the Planet!

http://sites.google.com/site/earthsmagneticfield/

posted in Year 2012 - 10 replies

oba jelly m leslie et al

orpheus — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:34:44 GMT

party up dudes...

don't hide behind trollcalling take your hate fuelled minority on the quest for popular support...

every little seed of world domination has to start somewhere so come on out and do your heartfelt thing here boys...

I'm sure you'll get lots of recruits and pretty soon you'll be marching on poland (or the nearest welfare office) with a bag of drugs and new age rhythms...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TK0MEtM-E

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

2012 Charlatans

Copy & Paste — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:22:11 GMT

people will always take up the opportunity to make a buck......the existance of charlatans doesn't doesn't mean the things they tell half truths or complete lies about in order to make money aren't true. The only ones who really know what happens on the 2012 date in question are those looking back at it with an open mind. We can't scientifically prove nothing will happen. But we do know it's interesting as far as what's going on in the heavens. To ignore the importance that has been placed on the placement of heavenly bodies since the dawn of humankind (even by cultures as advanced as the ancient Egyptians.....which we only just start to comprehend) would be arrogant.

posted in Year 2012 - 45 replies

Where 'today' starts on our planet

VidasVeron — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:18:49 GMT

At the centre of time
By Lucy Rodgers
BBC News

Without it international travel would be in turmoil and calling friends in faraway places at the right time impossible. Exactly 125 years after the Greenwich Meridian line was drawn, how and why did Britain become the centre of time?

At longitude 0° 0' 00", the arbitrary stroke on our maps that passes from pole to pole and bisects the UK, France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana divides the Earth into east and west, just as the Equator splits it into north and south.

This imaginary line now known as the Greenwich Prime Meridian not only allows us to navigate the globe but also keeps the world ticking to the same symbolic 24-hour clock.

But it has not always been so.

Until the 19th Century, many countries and even individual towns kept their own local time based on the sun's passage across the sky and there were no international rules governing when the day would start or finish.

However, with the rapid expansion of the railways and communications networks during the 1850s and 1860s, setting a standard global time soon became essential.

"The world was in a very big mix-up," explains Dr Avraham Ariel, author of Plotting the Globe. "People had lots of prime meridians. Earlier in Europe there were 20 prime meridians. The Russians had two or three, the Spanish had their own and so on."

And so, 125 years ago this week, 41 delegates from 25 nations gathered in Washington in the US for the 1884 International Meridian Conference to decide from where time and space should be measured.

By the end of the difficult summit, which, according to Dr Ariel, dragged on until "smoke came out", Greenwich had won the prize of longitude 0º by a vote of 22 to one, with only San Domingo against and France and Brazil abstaining.

The meeting also agreed Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) would be used as the standard for the world, with the day beginning at midnight at Greenwich and counted on a 24-hour clock.

Political opponents

One of the main reasons for British victory over key rivals Washington, Berlin and Paris, was that 72% of the world's shipping already depended on sea charts that used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, says Dr Rebekah Higgitt, curator of the history of science and technology at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

Greenwich's reputation among seafaring nations and the wide range of maps and charts using Greenwich as the Prime Meridian meant those at the conference "could see that was the way it was going", she says.

Another factor in Britain's favour was that the US had already plumped for Greenwich as the basis for its own national rail time system.

But, as the San Domingo, French and Brazilian votes showed, the choice was not without its opponents.

There remained some desire, particularly among Britain's European competitors, for "something more neutral" - a location that did not have such national ties, Dr Higgitt says.

"France suggested using an older idea of a meridian running through the Canaries - and even after the 1884 conference, Jerusalem was suggested as a site, particularly by Italy."

Opting out

Yet while the conference's Greenwich decision has stood until this day, the ultimate aim of some of those at the conference - a simple centralised system of 24 uniform time zones for 24 hours - never came into being.

LONGITUDE
All points on the Prime Meridian are at 0° longitude All other points on the earth have longitudes ranging from 0° to 180°E or from 0° to 180°W The international date line lies along the 180° meridian Meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude together form a grid by which any position on the earth's surface can be specified Unlike the parallels of latitude, which are defined by the rotational axis of the Earth, the Prime Meridian is arbitrary
Over the years, many countries have opted out of the system to demonstrate national independence, keep in time with neighbours or maintain standard days within their borders.

As recently as 2007, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez shifted the entire country back half-an-hour, while other countries operate similar fractional zones - half-hour or quarter-hour deviations. Yet more, such as China and India, use single time zones even though their territory extends across many hours.

"These things come up. Sometimes it's popular will or sometimes it is government choice," says Dr Higgitt.

"France and Spain should be on the same time as the UK, but it is more convenient to be in sync with those they are attached to by land."

And while such political and practical considerations have caused time zones to change in relation to Greenwich over the years, scientific and technological advances have also challenged Greenwich's role as the centre of time and space.

Leap seconds

Since the 1960s, atomic clocks rather than astronomy have been keeping the world's time and have forced GMT to adapt.

The combination of atomic clocks' super-accurate measurement and the fact that the rotation of the Earth is irregular and slowing mean atomic time and Earth time - and therefore GMT - slowly drift apart.

To keep them in sync "leap seconds" are added and produce a compromised version of GMT called Coordinated Universal Time, which keeps atomic time tied to the Earth's rotation.

On top of such changes to GMT, the advent of GPS technology and its ability to precisely track location has also had its impact on Greenwich as the zero point of longitude.

GPS's World Geodetic System 1984 system now places the Prime Meridian 100m to the east of Greenwich Observatory - away from the line defined by its large "Transit Circle" telescope and its corresponding brass strips straddled by tourists eager to have one foot in the East and one foot in the West.

Dr Ariel argues this renders the historical Prime Meridian no longer meaningful. But Dr Higgitt believes it simply highlights the fact it is not a scientifically- determined line and simply the result of global agreement.

"People stand on it because people think it is a predestined place," she says. "But it has never been official. It just exists in terms of habits and international usage. It is just something that has happened over a period of time."

The 125th anniversary of the Prime Meridian will be celebrated with a talk by Graham Dolan at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich at 1900 BST on Tuesday 20 October.

posted in Year 2012 - 6 replies

2012 in Sky & Telescope

Hoopes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:33:41 GMT

The cover story for November 2009:

The 2012 Doomsday Scare?
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/skytel

posted in Year 2012 - 14 replies

the mirror door of maya!

neekos — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:52:31 GMT

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2009/10/23/baldwin.mirador.forgotten.maya.cnn.html

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

Esoteric Cosmos

marvindublin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:01:29 GMT

http://www.esotericcosmos.com/

I found this site while watching their video about the Swine Flu Vaccine Conspiracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGR7FXOwbo - Swine Flu Vaccine Conspiracy | Swine Flu Epidemic Part 1/7

I don't see 2 - 6 though. Hmm.

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Balloon Boy Dad Has 2012 Fears

Hoopes — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:59:15 GMT

"Robert Thomas, an associate of 'balloon boy' dad Richard Heene, has told of how Heene is a follower of David Icke, and he wanted his own reality TV show so that he can fund a bunker for when the sun explodes in 2012. According to Thomas’s attorney:

"'Heene believes the world is going to end in 2012,' she said. 'Because of that, he wanted to make money quickly, become rich enough to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding.'

"Last year Heene participated in a series of entertaining YouTube videos known as '2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives'.

"Gawker.com published an exclusive interview with Thomas, and here’s the part dealing with 2012:

"But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government. Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.

"As the weeks progressed, his theories got more and more extreme and paranoid. A lot of it surrounded 2012, and the possibility of there being an apocalyptic moment. Richard likes to talk a lot about the possibility of the Sun erupting in a large-scale solar flare that wipes out the Earth. It got to the point where he was really pressing me, saying we’re running out of time, we’re running out of time, the end of the world is coming. And we have to take necessary precautions to make sure that we’re not among the majority that’s going to be killed."

http://2012news.com/?p=261

From Gawker.com:

Exclusive: I Helped Richard Heene Plan a Balloon Hoax
http://gawker.com/5383858/exclusive-i-helped-richard-heene-plan-a-balloon-hoax

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFKJCsqZLlA

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWGuMIQe5Mw

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives #3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn7S3g4Y4WU

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives #4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL8h-ZdAzVw

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives #5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXHHjoGmExw

2012 - The Best Evidence - by The Psyience Detectives #6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuElxTE4q7E

Colorado balloon incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_balloon_incident

posted in Year 2012 - 78 replies

Superwave, Aetherons and Unified theory

neekos — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:52:08 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oURVtGKW420

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

and even more secrets...

orpheus — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:44:28 GMT

and yes the hidden workings of all hidden stuff is all revealed yet again kinda... hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhXfdwBXKn8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_di2jbfRrY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P8d-3SYKVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PKtj7lAvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVCJkiHyLLk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-z3C8V7I3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuydXgQ20_8

posted in Year 2012 - 11 replies

ALL ABOUT 2012

Copy & Paste — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:19:32 GMT

Interesting site, lots of stuff:
http://www.greatdreams.com/2012.htm

posted in Year 2012 - 12 replies

Why the world will NOT end in 2012

Mon — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:44:19 GMT

Why the world will NOT end in 2012: Nasa scientist debunks conspiracy theories
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1221892/Why-world-NOT-end-2012-Nasa-scientist-debunks-internet-rumours.html
By Niall Firth and Claire Bates - 22nd October 2009

Skyscrapers crumble to the ground, fiery meteorites smash into Earth and a Tibetan monk cowers as a massive tidal wave swamps his mountain retreat. It is a vision of the coming apocalypse thrillingly captured in the latest Hollywood blockbuster. But fears that the world is due to end in December 2012 is just a myth fuelled by internet rumour, according to a leading Nasa scientist.

Dr David Morrison, who runs the space agency's 'Ask an Astrobiologist' service, says he has received more than a thousand emails from those worried that the world is due to end in 2012.

In an article published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Dr Morrison has answered the top 20 questions in an attempt to assuage these fears.

According to the theories on the internet, the calendar used by the ancient civilisation of the Mayans is due to come to an end in December 2012. Luckily for conspiracy theorists, this coincides neatly with predictions by an obscure sci-fi author, who wrote about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, that a planet named Nibiru will collide with the Earth on that date.

Fears have been further inflamed by an apocalyptic film called '2012' starring John Cusack, which is out this November. A quick search on Amazon reveals there are 175 books listed that deal with 2012 doomsday.

First off Dr Morrison dismisses the possibility that the planet Nibiru even exists.

He writes: 'The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact.
'To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is "nearby" but “invisible” are just plain silly.'
And Dr Morrison laughs off suggestions that the government has been complicit in hiding its existence from the public.
'Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret,' he says.

'If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world. 'I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!'

He also addresses the concerns of those who worry that the Mayan calendar is due to end in 2012.

Read the full list of questions and answers here: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers

'Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use.

'The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.
'I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.'

He added although many believe prophecies by the sixteenth century seer Nostradamus predict the end of the world in 2012, there is no evidence he has correctly predicted anything.
He also tackles the belief circulating on some internet forums that an alignment of planets in our galaxy the Milky Way could in some way disrupt the Earth's gravitational field or reverse the Earth's rotation.

'A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. It has never happened and never will,' he said.
He added that although the magnetic polarity of Earth does take place around every 400,000 years scientists don't believe it will take place for another few millennia and there is no evidence it would do any harm.

Publicity for the film '2012' also comes under attack for stirring up fear about the date.
Like many Hollywood blockbusters nowadays, '2012' uses a sophisticated PR campaign which incorporates elements of 'viral' marketing.
In the trailer for the film, which plays on conspiracy theorists' fears that the truth is being somehow hidden, viewers are directed to a 'faux scientific' website.

The website purports to be the home for The Institute for Human Continuity, an entirely fictitious organisation which allows visitors to sign up for a lottery which will decide who will be saved when Armageddon comes.
'The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fueled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film “2012”,' he says.
'I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality.'

Dr Morrison noted that a growing interest in outer space has led to a general 'cosmophobia', that is a fear of the cosmos.

He said he found people were frequently worried about the sun's magnetic field, solar storms, black holes and a rift in the Milky Way.
'Previously these would have merely been interesting astronomical ideas to explore, but now for many young people (who read misinformation about them on the web) they are objects of dread.
'This cosmophobia could be one of the worst long-term consequences of the 2012 doomsday hoax - to make people fearful of astronomy and the universe.'

posted in Year 2012 - 32 replies

Israel push to change laws of war

wil — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:29:05 GMT

Israel's prime minister has instructed his government to draw up plans for a "world wide campaign" to lobby for changes in the international laws of war.

The order from Binyamin Netanyahu follows a special cabinet meeting on Tuesday to discuss Israel's response to the UN's Goldstone report, which condemned Israel's actions during the 22-day war on Gaza earlier this year.

The meeting also called for the formation of a special committee to deal with the international legal consequences of the report and the prospect Israeli officials could face war crimes trials abroad.

The Israeli government contends international law needs to be amended in order to fight global terrorism.

"The prime minister instructed the relevant government bodies to examine a worldwide campaign to amend the international laws of war to adapt them to the spread of global terrorism," Netanyahu's office said in a statement following Tuesday's meeting.

It added that the cabinet had also instructed justice ministry officials to form a committee to deal with the prospect of "legal proceedings abroad against the state of Israel or its citizens".

"We need to keep punching a hole in this lie that is spreading with the help of the Goldstone report," Netanyahu was quoted as saying in the statement.

'Freedom of action'

The statement was backed by Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, who said a change in the international laws of war was "in the interest of anyone fighting terrorism".

He added that the government wanted to give the Israeli military "the full backing to have the freedom of action."

The UN-backed Goldstone report – compiled by South African jurist Richard Goldstone - accuses Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during last winter's war in Gaza, but is more critical of Israeli troops for "terrorising and targeting" civilians.

Goldstone recommended that the conclusions of the report be forwarded to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague if the two sides fail to conduct credible investigations into the conflict within six months.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) endorsed the report, but Netanyahu has promised that it will be vetoed at the UN General Assembly.

Israel has previously called the report unbalanced, while Netanyahu has promised a lengthy fight to "delegitimise" the findings by the UN commission.

An Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the issue of establishing an official inquiry into the conduct of the military during the Gaza campaign was not raised at Tuesday's meeting.

Goldstone attacked

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/2009102122137152596.html

Richard Goldstone himself has faced a storm of personal attacks inside Israel since the report's publication.

But on Monday he urged the Israeli government to comply with calls for a full investigation into the war, rejecting suggestions that the report risked sinking the stalled Middle East peace process.

"It's a shallow, utterly false allegation," Goldstone said during a meeting with a group of rabbis in the United States.

"What peace process are they talking about? There isn't one."

About 1,400 Palestinians – the majority of them civilians - and 13 Israelis were killed during Israel's three-week war on Gaza between December and January, which had the stated aim of stopping rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters from the coastal territory.

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

2012: Science or Superstition?

Hoopes — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:28:43 GMT

A post that's more-or-less on topic for a change!

Daniel Pinchbeck's online magazine is hyping a soon-to-be released film that claims to present multiple perspectives on 2012. You can find a brief discussion and trailer (on YouTube, of course) here:

http://www.realitysandwich.com/sneak_peek_2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DylQeMx6hY&

The music is ominous, and 2012 is presented as "the ending" of the Maya calendar (which it's not). There are references to what "some scientists" think in terms of coming disasters, which I guess means the handful of individuals such as Lawrence Joseph who are seeking to profit from the hype. Anthony Aveni, a scholarly expert on archaeoastronomy, seems to be in there mostly for a token voice to make it appear as if a balanced perspective will be offered.

IMHO, more hyping and harvesting of profits from fear and gullibility at an ever greater scale than the "channeled" message from Blossom Goodchild. Only that me may have four more years of this hype before anyone has egg on their face.

(See the thread on 10-14-08 & 12-21-08.)
http://2012.tribe.net/thread/d02d8b20-71fb-40e8-9961-d88abe3ee949

posted in Year 2012 - 194 replies

The Plant of Renown

Oba — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:52:45 GMT

Just as Prohibition of Alcohol in the U.S. was counterproductive and produced an enormous organized crime wave in the 1020s, so has the Prohibition of Marijuana. Since it is still the popular "drug" of choice for many millions of people despite the fact that every 45 seconds one is arrested for using it, it is the top selling item sold by criminal neighborhood gangs and drug cartels who smuggle and sell it, and they have become increasingly violent and murderous.

It is time now to reevaluate policies and laws regarding Marijuana, because they are not only foolish in that respect, they are based on half-truths and even falsehoods. They ignore scientific evidence that clearly show how and why that is so, and that has been the case since 1937 when Marijuana was first made illegal, and especially since 1970 when Marijuana was falsely and foolishly reclassified as a "Schedule I Drug" right along with hard drugs and narcotics like heroin.

Therefore, will discuss the factual history of Marijuana, from ancient times, to American Prohibition in 1937, to the present.

"I will raise up for them a Plant of Renown, and they shall no more be consumed with hunger [for truth] in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they are my people." (Ezekiel 34:29-30)

I will show you why Marijuana is the Plant of Renown, and I will show you why that has been misunderstood and not revealed.

Most Christians have been led to believe that Ezekiel was speaking of the Christ Jesus as the "Plant of Renown." But that is merely another case of erroneous attributions and referrals to Judaic ("Old Testament") scriptures that have been made by Christians since not long after the death of Jesus.

The error is in believing that Isaiah 53:2-4 speaks of the Christ Jesus where it is written: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant…" However, Isaiah was using the word plant as a metaphor, while Ezekiel was talking literally about a plant. Furthermore, in using the plant metaphor, Isaiah was not talking about the Christ Jesus, but the next son of man who now fulfills both Judaic and Christian prophecies. That will become evident when you consider the context.

"For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:2-4)

That does not speak of the Christ Jesus, even though a little bit of Chapter 53 of Isaiah does speak of Jesus, following that in verses five and seven. But, as I explain on the page titled Prophecies Re: The One to Come, Isaiah 53 speaks mainly of the modern son of man even though it does speak a little bit of the son of man named Jesus. For Isaiah foresaw the future in a spiritual manner that is beyond time and space, and he actually foresaw aspects of the lives of two different men. He foresaw this modern prodigal son of man being stricken and afflicted and being despised and rejected by his generation (as Jesus later also foresaw), and Isaiah also foresaw the son of man named Jesus being whipped, crucified and martyred as a sacrificial lamb of God after being accepted as a Mashiach/Christ by multitudes in his generation. That is why Isaiah wrote about "his stripes" (from being whipped), and even wrote that "he shall be brought as a lamb to slaughter."

(continued ... )

http://reformationcomingsoon.bravehost.com/PlantofRenown.html

posted in Year 2012 - 31 replies

Let's not forget, it's not just.....

13moonflower — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:32:04 GMT

"2012" folks who believe "something" is going to happen in the near future......

http://wereuleft.com/

how bout them apples?!

the christian rapturists have had this thing wrapped up quitely nicely for some time now.......and when did they start hitching it to the bandwagon of 2012 i wonder....hmmmm??

ugh....it's all just too much....! hahaha.....

posted in Year 2012 - 12 replies

2012 Hoax

Hoopes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:28:53 GMT

Here's a helpful website for researching many of the 2012-related topics and personalities we discuss here:

http://www.2012hoax.org

posted in Year 2012 - 15 replies

3rd Person Dies in AZ sweatlodge case

13moonflower — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:38:58 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_re_us/us_sweat_lodge_deaths

news is comin down hard on that guy....

prayers to the families....and maybe now people will be woken up to what's up

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

“Signs of Allah” appear on infant’s skin

Mon — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:31:48 GMT

Pictures & Article: http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-10-19/signs-allah-infant-skin.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published 19 October, 2009, 14:06 - Edited 20 October, 2009, 16:07

A miracle or a simple hoax? Parents of a nine-month-old child claim their son has been marked by God, while doctors say the extracts from the Koran on his skin have nothing to do with divine intervention.
Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Live Technorati
del.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx Propeller

Soon after Ali was born to an ordinary and not very religious family, strange writings began appearing on his skin. The Arabic characters turned out to be extracts from the Muslim Holy book, the Koran. At first, Ali’s parents concealed this fact, but when yet another writing reading “Show these signs to people” appeared, the news spread all around Ali’s native Dagestan, Russia’s Muslim republic.

The child’s mother, Madina Yakubova, says the writings appear every Monday and Friday, with Ali having a major fever on these days. “[Ali] can’t sleep at night when the signs appear. He tortures himself,” says Madina.

The writings are always different – new characters replace the old ones every time.

Local religious officials believe these are the signs of Almighty Allah. The head of the North Caucasus Muslims coordinating centre Ismail Berdyev insists the epistles are mainly addressed to unreligious people.

“Let them see that these signs are not accidental. These are God’s signs. We, Muslims, realize it. Let skeptics and nonbelievers realize it as well,” he insists.

>>> Continued: http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-10-19/signs-allah-infant-skin.html

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

awesome energy...?

orpheus — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:07:34 GMT

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8309875.stm

Awesome energy

The operating temperature of the LHC is just a shade above "absolute zero" (-273.15C) - the coldest temperature possible. By comparison, the temperature in remote regions of outer space is about 2.7 kelvin (-270C; -454F). The LHC's magnets are designed to be "superconducting", which means they channel electric current with zero resistance and very little power loss. But to become superconducting, the magnets must be cooled to very low temperatures.
For this reason, the LHC is innervated by a complex system of cryogenic lines using liquid helium as the refrigerant of choice. No particle physics facility on this scale has ever operated in such frigid conditions. But before a beam can be circulated around the 27km-long LHC ring, engineers will have to thoroughly test the machine's new quench protection system and continue with magnet powering tests. Particle beams have already been brought "to the door" of the Large Hadron Collider. A low-intensity beam could be injected into the LHC in as little as a week. This beam test would involve only parts of the collider, rather than the whole "ring".

The LHC's tunnel runs for 27km under the Franco-Swiss border
Officials now plan to circulate a beam around the LHC in the second half of November. Engineers will then aim to smash low-intensity beams together, giving scientists their first data. The beams' energy will then be increased so that the first high-energy collisions can take place. These will mark the real beginning of the LHC's research programme. Collisions at high energy have been scheduled to occur in December, but now look more likely to happen in January, according to Cern's director of communications James Gillies.

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

Buddhism, Shamanism and the use of entheogens

Auton — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:00:03 GMT

An interesting mixture of atheism/non-theism, Shamanism, Buddhism and a different view on the effects of entheogens;

Materialistic versus spiritual explanations of the effects of hallucinogens/entheogens

From the materialist's viewpoint, transcendental and religious experiences are the result of the disordered functioning of the brain. The fact that people get spiritual experiences under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs clearly demonstrates that all these transpersonal experiences are simply delusions caused by disruption of the normal electrochemical activity of the neurones.

From the spiritual viewpoint the mind is not the same thing as the brain. The brain is an organ which has evolved to present a particular interpretation of reality to the non-physical mind. There's no dispute that the brain operates abnormally under the influence of entheogens - but you've got to ask yourself - what is the purpose of the normal functioning of the brain?

The brain hasn't evolved to represent ultimate reality to the mind. The brain has evolved by selection of the fittest (not the most truthful) to project the delusion of the inherently-existing self onto the mind. This delusion of a permanent, unchanging self is 'imputed' over the ever-changing transitory collection of biochemical building blocks that makes up the physical aspects of a sentient being.

These biochemical building blocks are brought together by a loose temporary alliance of selfish genes. This alliance comes into existence at conception and ends at death. When the brain is functioning *correctly*, it is acting in the best interests of the alliance.

The brain is the alliance's propaganda machine, and it is constantly exhorting the mind to:

" Preserve ME ! Reproduce ME ! "

The correct functioning of the propaganda machine is obviously necessary for the preservation and procreation of the species. Nevertheless, to perform its function the brain needs to project a distorted view of the self onto the mind.

Disruption of this ceaseless barrage of ME-ME propaganda by psychedelic agents enables the mind to temporarily push the doors of perception ajar and peek beyond mundane biologically-determined appearances.

Entheogens and the spiritual path

It's no secret that many Westerners have come to Buddhism via use of psychoactive substances (in fact the Buddhist magazine Tricycle once devoted an entire issue to this subject). This was especially true for the 'baby boomer' generation who reached adulthood in the sixties. Like the Beatles, they realised that mind-altering chemicals could demonstrate that there was a spiritual dimension to existence, but the only way for a westerner to follow it in any controlled manner was by meditation.

This isn't to disparage shamanism, but shamans typically undergo a prolonged period of meditative training before using these substances. The shaman will also use pure legal natural preparations of known potency, rather than illegally popping pills of dubious origin, or munching magic mushrooms which may or may not be the correct species.

Conclusion

Historically Buddhism has probably been helped in its spread to the West by prior familiarity with expanded mental states during the psychedelic era. But these factors would seem to be of declining influence nowadays. Present day use of psychedelic agents should be discouraged on the following grounds:

They are mostly illegal.
They are often adulterated and may cause physical and psychological problems.
They may contain or lead on to use of addictive substances.
There are the dangers of a bad trip - if your meditation gets a little freaky you can just stop. But if you've dropped acid you have no choice but to go where it takes you.
The dangers of a one-way trip. It takes a professional mycologist to identify mushroom species correctly. Get the wrong type of Amanita, and - Bye bye, its Bardo time!
Safe techniques of manifesting clear mind are now readily available in the form of meditation classes. Why use a sledgehammer to break down the doors of perception when you could simply unlock them by turning the key?

http://kwelos.tripod.com/entheogens.htm

posted in Year 2012 - 47 replies

Skepsis - The 2012 Phenomenon

Hoopes — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:51:55 GMT

‘The 2012 Phenomenon’: A historical and typological approach to a modern apocalyptic mythology.

M.A. Thesis by Sacha Defesche
Department of Religious Studies, Subdepartment History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents
M.A. Program Mysticism and Western Esotericism.
Tutor: Prof. Dr. W.J. Hanegraaff
Secondary Reader: Dr. M. Pasi
University of Amsterdam
January-August 2007

"As the year 2012 approaches, apocalyptic visions of the year has achieved newfound popularity. In this MA-thesis, Sacha Defeche investigates the roots of the esoteric apocalypse in 2012 in psychedelic and New Age subculture, and looks at the different types of apocalyptic visions, from Jose Argüelles to David Icke."
http://skepsis.no/?p=599

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Physics with an eye to the missing 96% of Nature's mystery

emptycloud — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:18:44 GMT

Super Relativity can be most accurately described as an extension of the Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory and the ether theory and can be simply stated as such: There exists only one thing that is real and physical – space itself. Our entire reality stems from this object. The type of ether that is believed to exist in Super Relativity Theory is solid and all pervasive in nature. Scientific evidence suggests this, because light has been proven to be a transverse wave and these occur in solids rather than gases or fluids. Therefore the ether material must be solid and motionless. It must also be elastic and exist in a state of very high tension.

much more here...
http://www.superrelativity.org/html/TheoryIntro.html

posted in Year 2012 - 7 replies

32 planets discovered outside solar system

Oba — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:59:04 GMT

(CNN) -- Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday.

The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced at the European Southern Observatory/Center for Astrophysics, University of Porto conference in Porto, Portugal, according to a statement issued by the observatory.

The announcement was made by a consortium of international researchers, headed by the Geneva Observatory, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. The device can detect slight wobbles of stars as they respond to tugs from exoplanets' gravity. That tactic, known as the radial velocity method, "has been the most prolific method in the search for exoplanets," according to the European Southern Observatory statement.

The instrument detects movements as small as 3.5 km/hr (2.1 mph), a slow walking pace, the observatory said.

With the discovery, the tally of new exoplanets found by HARPS is now at 75, out of about 400 known exoplanets, the organization said, "cementing HARPS's position as the world's foremost exoplanet hunter." The 75 planets are in 30 planetary systems, the European Southern Observatory said.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/19/space.new.planets/index.html

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Maya Shamaness AumRak's "Crystal Flight" Guided Meditation now available for download.

tribalsociety — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:21:19 GMT

http://www.gate-13.com

posted in Year 2012 - 16 replies

Canada's Genocide - new film

psircles — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:38:33 GMT

"UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide"

Kevin Annett is a former United Church minister in Vancouver, Canada, who was fired without cause in 1995, and then expelled from the same church without due process, after he had unearthed evidence of the theft of native land by church officers, and of the murder of native children at the United Church residential school in Port Alberni, British Columbia, where Kevin ministered.

Since his firing and blacklisting by the United Church, Reverend Annett has worked as an advocate and counsellor in aboriginal healing circles on the west coast. He organized the first international Tribunal into Canadian residential schools in Vancouver in June, 1998, at which a United Nations affiliate, IHRAAM, presided.

Reverend Annett is working with aboriginal and human rights groups around the world in an effort to bring charges of complicity in Genocide against the government of Canada, the Anglican, United and Roman Catholic churches, and the RCMP.
He is serving as the secretary of the recently-established Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada, and has authored a book about his experiences, "Love and Death in the Valley".
Men and women of the Pacheedat, Ahousat, Cowichan, Haida, Songhees, Penelakut, Carrier, Halalt, Tseshat, Inuit, Chemainus, Squamish, Hesquait, Cree, Blood, Sto:lo, Dene, Lakhota and Metis Nations wrote this report with their own witness, suffering, and courage. Some of them have chosen to remain anonymous in the face of death threats and other perils both to themselves and their families which have been made by agents of the state, the churches, the RCMP and government-funded native organizations.

For more information, go to:
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

posted in Year 2012 - 10 replies

2012 in Skeptic Magazine

Hoopes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:30:43 GMT

The issue that's on the newsstands now:

2012: The End of the World--Again?
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar

Rocky — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:57:41 GMT

Hey, I thought some here might love this -

The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar

An Astrotheology Press/Stellar House Original

"The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar—brought to you by Astrotheology Press, a division of Stellar House Publishing—provides valuable and amazing information about holidays celebrated from ancient times to today that are largely based in astrotheology and nature worship. In addition to recording a number of fascinating celebrations from a variety of cultures marked on various days of each month, the Astrotheology Calendar highlights certain dates in the accompanying explanatory text. These highlighted days include the solstices, equinoxes and "cross-quarter days," as well as various dates that reflect important developments in the field of comparative religion and mythology......"

Click here for more info -
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/2010calendar.html

;

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

History is Wrong

Hoopes — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:50:36 GMT

Well, if a credible source says so...

History is Wrong, by Erich von Däniken
http://www.amazon.com/History-Wrong-Erich-Von-Daniken/dp/1601630867/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken

http://www.daniken.com

posted in Year 2012 - 22 replies

fascinating, UN ex Chair, talks about how reform of the UN and America is being blocked by right wing forces

elo_celtic_moore — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:44:03 GMT

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4304

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4318

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4335

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

chaotic nodes

emptycloud — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:34:47 GMT

For those willing to entertain the possibilities of Tom Kenyon...

Chaotic Nodes and Dimensional Attunements
message in it's entirety ... http://tomkenyon.com/chaotic-nodes-and-dimensional-attunements
Chaotic Nodes

In one of our previous communications we discussed the concept of chaotic nodes. From our perspective we believe you are on the cusp of one such node.

When predicting chaotic events, one is presented with an enigma, since by its very nature chaos is unpredictable. Yet within the flow of chaotic events there is a substructure that feeds the flow of chaos, as you experience it. Based upon our understanding of this sub-structure (the quantum-field), we predict that a Chaotic Node will manifest somewhere in the next 90 days. In reality it could appear within hours of this message or weeks past the window we have predicted. (Note: see previous Hathor message entitled, Chaotic Nodes).

Nevertheless, regardless of the actual timing of this Chaotic Node, we believe that it will present itself in multiple ways, involving international finance, challenges to physical and mental health, planetary earth changes, including earthquake and volcanic activity, and increased weather anomalies. All of these events will strain the resources that your governments have to cope with such things.

As we said previously, the nature of Chaotic Nodes is such that there are multiple effects that cannot be predicted, and so we do not wish to address the specific aspects of chaos that we believe will arise, but rather we wish to discuss strategies for dealing with the chaos, energetically and spiritually.

We suggest you shift your perspective regarding chaos and view it not as an inconvenience and a difficulty, but rather as an evolutionary catalyst. How such events affect you resides in how you view them.

What we mean by this is that there is a tendency for human consciousness to get stuck in a rut, to anticipate what things are going to be like, and to take actions based upon those predictions. And for most people, when the reality does not match expectation this creates great internal travail, and yet by the very nature of Chaotic Nodes your predictive abilities collapse in the midst of multiple probabilities.

For most persons, chaotic events generate a fear response, since the stability that one counts on to predict appropriate action has seemingly disappeared. And while fear is certainly an understandable response, it is only one of many possible responses. Thus, we encourage you to train your mind to jump out of the habitual rut of self-limitation and expectation, on a moment’s notice, whenever confronted with unexpected events.

From an energetic standpoint, what happens to you in a given situation has more to do with your vibrational frequency, meaning the state of your consciousness, than where you are physically located.

Thus, two people in the same location experiencing chaotic events can have vastly different emotional responses. Whereas one person might be paralyzed with fear, anger, and resentment, the other person might experience the moment as humorous. He or she “gets” the cosmic joke, which is the sudden and unexpected realization that the reality everyone experiences as “real” is nothing more than the fabrication of their own minds.

When chaotic events disturb the status quo, a doorway briefly appears, an opportunity if you will, to jump upward in consciousness, to wake up from the dream spell. But waking up from the collective dream only occurs if you are prepared to step across the threshold.

For a person who is prepared mentally and emotionally to embrace chaotic events as evolutionary catalysts, the near future will be full of amusing incidents, unexpected serendipity, and a feeling of waking up from a mass dream that has gripped humanity for the last several thousand years.

So here is the line in the sand, so to speak. For those who wish to continue blaming others for the problems they are facing, for those who would rather die than wake up from the dream that they are collectively dreaming, this coming Chaotic Node will be extremely difficult to contend with, and as we have said, this is just the first of many such nodes to come. But for a person who has embraced the idea that Chaotic Nodes are evolutionary catalysts, it will be a different story.

Again, it is not where you are physically located that matters, it is your vibratory frequency, the state of your consciousness.

posted in Year 2012 - 15 replies

Is foreign policy all wrong

elo_celtic_moore — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:16:45 GMT

Obama's military conundrumOnly by switching spending from war to development can America hope to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban

Jeffrey Sachs The Guardian, Friday 22 May 2009 19.00 BST Article history

<American foreign policy has failed in recent years mainly because the US has relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places such as Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can't feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion. President Barack Obama has raised hopes for a new strategy, but so far the forces of continuity in US policy are dominating the forces of change.

The first rule in assessing a government's real strategy is to follow the money. America vastly overspends on the military compared with other areas of government. Obama's projected budgets do not change that. For the coming 2010 fiscal year, Obama's budget calls for $755bn in military spending, an amount that exceeds US budget spending in all other areas except so-called "mandatory" spending on social security, healthcare, interest payments on the national debt and a few other items.

Indeed, US military spending exceeds the sum of federal budgetary outlays for education, agriculture, climate change, environmental protection, ocean protection, energy systems, homeland security, low-income housing, national parks and national land management, the judicial system, international development, diplomatic operations, highways, public transport, veterans' affairs, space exploration and science, civilian research and development, civil engineering for waterways, dams, bridges, sewerage and waste treatment, community development and many other areas.

This preponderance of military spending applies to all 10 years of Obama's medium-term scenario. By 2019, total military spending is projected to be $8.2tn, exceeding by $2tn the budgeted outlays for all non-mandatory budget spending.

US military spending is equally remarkable when viewed from an international perspective. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total military spending in constant 2005 dollars reached roughly $1.4tn in 2007. In other words, the US spends roughly the same amount spent by the rest of the world combined – a pattern that the Obama administration shows no signs of ending.

The policy decisions of recent months offer little more hope for a fundamental change in US foreign policy direction. While the US has signed an agreement with Iraq to leave by the end of 2011, there is talk in the Pentagon that US "non-combat" troops will remain in the country for years or decades to come.

It is easy to see how the persistence of instability in Iraq, Iranian influence, and al-Qaida's presence will lead American policymakers to take the "safe" route of continued military involvement. Some opponents of the Iraq war, including me, believe that a fundamental – and deeply misguided – objective of the war from the outset has been to create a long-term military base (or bases) in Iraq, ostensibly to protect oil routes and oil concessions. As the examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia show, however, such a long-term presence sooner or later creates an explosive backlash.

The worries are even worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nato's war with the Taliban in Afghanistan is going badly, so much so that the commanding US general was sacked this month. The Taliban is also extending its reach into Pakistan.

Both Afghanistan and the neighbouring provinces of Pakistan are impoverished regions, with vast unemployment, bulging youth populations, prolonged droughts, widespread hunger and pervasive economic deprivation. It is easy for the Taliban and al-Qaida to mobilise fighters under such conditions.

The problem is that a US military response is essentially useless under these conditions, and can easily exacerbate the situation rather than resolve it. Among other problems, the US relies heavily on drones and bombers, leading to a high civilian death toll, which is inflaming public attitudes against the US. After one recent disaster, in which more than 100 civilians died, the Pentagon immediately insisted that such bombing operations would continue. A recent survey showed overwhelming Pakistani opposition to US military incursions into their country.

Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan, by raising the number of US troops from 38,000 to 68,000, and perhaps more later. There are also risks that the US will get involved much more heavily in the fighting in Pakistan. The new US commanding general in Afghanistan is reportedly a specialist in counter-insurgency, which could well involve surreptitious engagement by US operatives in Pakistan. If so, the results could prove catastrophic, leading to a spreading war in an unstable country of 180 million people.

What is disconcerting, however, is not only the relentless financing and spread of war, but also the lack of an alternative US strategy. Obama and his top advisers have spoken regularly about the need to address the underlying sources of conflict, including poverty and unemployment. A few billion dollars has been recommended to fund economic aid for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this remains a small amount compared to military outlays, and an overarching framework to support economic development is missing.

Before investing hundreds of billions of dollars more in failing military operations, the Obama administration should rethink its policy and lay out a viable strategy to US citizens and the world. It's high time for a strategy of peace through sustainable development – including investments in health, education, livelihoods, water and sanitation and irrigation – in today's hotspots, starting with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Such a strategy cannot simply emerge as a byproduct of US military campaigns. Rather, it will have to be developed proactively, with a sense of urgency and in close partnership with the affected countries and the communities within them. A shift in focus to economic development will save a vast number of lives and convert the unthinkably large economic costs of war into economic benefits through development. Obama must act before today's crisis explodes into an even larger disaster.Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/obama-military-spending-development

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posted in Year 2012 - 14 replies

Involution- The Lowest Common Denominator

Auton — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:12:07 GMT

Lately, I've been thinking about the opposite of the generally hyped theory of collective/global awakening; what if humankind is on the way to hit the lowest common denominator. What could that be? Where is the bottom of the involution, the rapid degeneration that's taking place over the world? I thought, Evola's short article is shedding a unique light on this...

On the Secret of Degeneration

By Baron Julius Evola (from Deutsches Volkstum, Nr. 11, 1938)

Anyone who has come to reject the rationalist myth of "progress" and the interpretation of history as an unbroken positive development of mankind will find himself gradually drawn towards the world-view that was common to all the great traditional cultures, and which had at its centre the memory of a process of degeneration, slow obscuration, or collapse of a higher preceding world. As we penetrate deeper into this new (and old) interpretation, we encounter various problems, foremost among which is the question of the secret of degeneration.

In its literal sense, this question is by no means a novel one. While contemplating the magnificent remains of cultures whose very name has not even come down to us, but which seem to have conveyed, even in their physical material, a greatness and power that is more than earthly, scarcely anyone has failed to ask themselves questions about the death of cultures, and sensed the inadequacy of the reasons that are usually given to explain it.

We can thank the Comte de Gobineau for the best and best-known summary of this problem, and also for a masterly criticism of the main hypotheses about it. His solution on the basis of racial thought and racial purity also has a lot of truth in it, but it needs to be expanded by a few observations concerning a higher order of things. For there have been many cases in which a culture has collapsed even when its race has remained pure, as is especially clear in certain groups that have suffered slow, inexorable extinction despite remaining as racially isolated as if they were islands. An example quite close at hand is the case of the Swedes and the Dutch. These people are in the same racial condition today as they were two centuries ago, but there is little to be found now of the heroic disposition and the racial awareness that they once possessed. Other great cultures seem merely to have remained standing in the condition of mummies: they have long been inwardly dead, so that it takes only the slightest push to knock them down. This was the case, for example, with ancient Peru, that giant solar empire which was annihilated by a few adventurers drawn from the worst rabble of Europe.

If we look at the secret of degeneration from the exclusively traditional point of view, it becomes even harder to solve it completely. It is then a matter of the division of all cultures into two main types. On the one hand there are the traditional cultures, whose principle is identical and unchangeable, despite all the differences evident on the surface. The axis of these cultures and the summit of their hierarchical order consists of metaphysical, supra-individual powers and actions, which serve to inform and justify everything that is merely human, temporal, subject to becoming and to "history." On the other hand there is "modern culture," which is actually the anti-tradition and which exhausts itself in a construction of purely human and earthly conditions and in the total development of these, in pursuit of a life entirely detached from the "higher world."

From the standpoint of the latter, the whole of history is degeneration, because it shows the universal decline of earlier cultures of the traditional type, and the decisive and violent rise of a new universal civilization of the "modern" type.

A double question arises from this.

First, how was it ever possible for this to come to pass? There is a logical error underlying the whole doctrine of evolution: it is impossible that the higher can emerge from the lower, and the greater from the less. But doesn't a similar difficulty face us in the solution of the doctrine of involution? How is it ever possible for the higher to fall? If we could make do with simple analogies, it would be easy to deal with this question. A healthy man can become sick; a virtuous one can turn to vice. There is a natural law that everyone takes from granted: that every living being starts with birth, growth, and strength, then come old age, weakening, and disintegration. And so forth. But this is just making statements, not explaining, even if we allow that such analogies actually relate to the question posed here.

Secondly, it is not only a matter of explaining the possibility of the degeneration of a particular cultural world, but also the possibility that the degeneration of one cultural cycle may pass to other peoples and take them down with it. For example, we have not only to explain how the ancient Western reality collapsed, but also have to show the reason why it was possible for "modern" culture to conquer practically the whole world, and why it possessed the power to divert so many peoples from any other type of culture, and to hold sway even where states of a traditional kind seemed to be alive (one need only recall the Aryan East).

In this respect, it is not enough to say that we are dealing with a purely material and economic conquest. That view seems very superficial, for two reasons. In the first place, a land that is conquered on the material level also experiences, in the long run, influences of a higher kind corresponding to the cultural type of its conqueror. We can state, in fact, that European conquest almost everywhere sows the seeds of "Europeanization," i.e., the "modern" rationalist, tradition-hostile, individualistic way of thinking. Secondly, the traditional conception of culture and the state is hierarchical, not dualistic. Its bearers could never subscribe, without severe reservations, to the principles of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and "My kingdom is not of this world." For us, "Tradition" is the victorious and creative presence in the world of that which is "not of this world," i.e., of the Spirit, understood as a power that is mightier than any merely human or material one.

This is a basic idea of the authentically traditional view of life, which does not permit us to speak with contempt of merely material conquests. On the contrary, the material conquest is the sign, if not of a spiritual victory, at least of a spiritual weakness or a kind of spiritual "retreat" in the cultures that are conquered and lose their independence. Everywhere that the Spirit, regarded as the stronger power, was truly present, it never lacked for means - visible or otherwise - to enable all the opponent's technical and material superiority to be resisted. But this has not happened. It must be concluded, then, that degeneracy was lurking behind the traditional facade of every people that the "modern" world has been able to conquer. The West must then have been the culture in which a crisis that was already universal assumed its acutest form. There the degeneration amounted, so to speak, to a knockout blow, and as it took effect, it brought down with more or less ease other peoples in whom the involution had certainly not "progressed" as far, but whose tradition had already lost its original power, so that these peoples were no longer able to protect themselves from an outside assault.

With these considerations, the second aspect of our problem is traced back to the first one. It is mainly a question of explicating the meaning and the possibility of degeneracy, without reference to other circumstances.

For this we must be clear about one thing: it is an error to assume that the hierarchy of the traditional world is based on a tyranny of the upper classes. That is merely a "modern" conception, completely alien to the traditional way of thinking. The traditional doctrine in fact conceived of spiritual action as an "action without acting"; it spoke of the "unmoved mover"; everywhere it used the symbolism of the "pole," the unalterable axis around which every ordered movement takes place (and elsewhere we have shown that this is the meaning of the swastika, the "arctic cross"); it always stressed the "Olympian," spirituality, and genuine authority, as well as its way of acting directly on its subordinates, not through violence but through "presence"; finally, it used the simile of the magnet, wherein lies the key to our question, as we shall now see.

Only today could anyone imagine that the authentic bearers of the Spirit, or of Tradition, pursue people so as to seize them and put them in their places - in short, that they "manage" people, or have any personal interest in setting up and maintaining those hierarchical relationships by virtue of which they can appear visibly as the rulers. This would be ridiculous and senseless. It is much more the recognition on the part of the lower ones that is the true basis of any traditional ranking. It is not the higher that needs the lower, but the other way round. The essence of hierarchy is that there is something living as a reality in certain people, which in the rest is only present in the condition of an ideal, a premonition, an unfocused effort. Thus the latter are fatefully attracted to the former, and their lower condition is one of subordination less to something foreign, than to their own true "self." Herein lies the secret, in the traditional world, of all readiness for sacrifice, all heroism, all loyalty; and, on the other side, of a prestige, an authority, and a calm power which the most heavily-armed tyrant can never count upon.

With these considerations, we have come very close to solving not only the problem of degeneration, but also the possibility of a particular fall. Are we perhaps not tired of hearing that the success of every revolution indicates the weakness and degeneracy of the previous rulers? An understanding of this kind is very one-sided. This would indeed be the case if wild dogs were tied up, and suddenly broke loose: that would be proof that the hands holding their leashes had become impotent or weak. But things are arranged very differently in the framework of spiritual ranking, whose real basis we have explained above. This hierarchy degenerates and is able to be overthrown in one case only: when the individual degenerates, when he uses his fundamental freedom to deny the Spirit, to cut his life loose from any higher reference-point, and to exist "only for himself." Then the contacts are fatefully broken, the metaphysical tension, to which the traditional organism owes its unity, gives way, every force wavers in its path and finally breaks free. The peaks, of course, remain pure and inviolable in their heights, but the rest, which depended on them, now becomes an avalanche, a mass that has lost its equilibrium and falls, at first imperceptibly but with ever accelerating movement down to the depths and lowest levels of the valley. This is the secret of every degeneration and revolution. The European had first slain the hierarchy in himself by extirpating his own inner possibilities, to which corresponded the basis of the order that he would then destroy externally.

If Christian mythology attributes the Fall of Man and the Rebellion of the Angels to the freedom of the will, then it comes to much the same significance. It concerns the frightening potential that dwells in man of using freedom to destroy spiritually and to banish everything that could ensure him a supra-natural value. This is a metaphysical decision: the stream that traverses history in the most varied forms of the traditional-hating, revolutionary, individualistic, and humanistic spirit, or in short, the "modern" spirit. This decision is the only positive and decisive cause in the secret of degeneration, the destruction of Tradition.

If we understand this, we can perhaps also grasp the sense of those legends that speak of mysterious rulers who "always" exist and have never died (shades of the Emperor sleeping beneath the Kyffhäuser mountain!). Such rulers can be rediscovered only when one achieves spiritual completeness and awakens a quality in oneself like that of a metal that suddenly feels "the magnet", finds the magnet and irresistibly orients itself and moves towards it. For now, we must restrict ourselves to this hint. A comprehensive explanation of legends of that sort, which come to us from the most ancient Aryan source, would take us too far. At another opportunity we will perhaps return to the secret of reconstruction, to the "magic" that is capable of restoring the fallen mass to the unalterable, lonely, and invisible peaks that are still there in the heights.

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/1404/degeneration.html

posted in Year 2012 - 119 replies

Sprword

Auton — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:57:25 GMT

Nice website with good collection of alternative news sites and a bunch of free movies.

http://www.sprword.com/index.html

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

Lucifer Speaks

marvindublin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:17:03 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/conspiracypureevil/thread/4bc77269-98f8-4e03-a39a-e4b2d44c5b80

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

2012 Galaxy Heart Tantra

Leslie — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:58:43 GMT

I've changed the name of one of my tribes to 2012 Galaxy Heart Tantra. It's predicated on the Earth-Galaxy axial co-alignment and Meta-physical aspects that are Apparently on the 2012 Horizon, rapidly approaching, as it were. This is a place for those who have moved beyond the skepticisms-digressions which weigh down discussions Here, and membership is not maintained or given over to those who rejoice in opposition to the Intention to focus Heartmind, and to do so without undue distractions.

Here is a link and my post put up today:

http://tribes.tribe.net/2012galactivation/thread/0a990ce1-634d-44d9-9413-33c862ef4b16?newpostingid=a5f27883-db0c-433e-be2a-840516c74c48#a5f27883-db0c-433e-be2a-840516c74c48

The perimeter circle of the Precession of the Equinoxes, as centered upon Earth, and intersecting the galactic central axis at a distance of 26,000 light years, is about 96,829,987,205,600,000 miles in circumference.
At present, Earth's axis is only a fraction of a degree from aligning perfectly with the galactic axis according to information provided. Why would an Exact Alignment be so different "all of a sudden" from the "very close to alignment" situation we have as we approach this?
Here's why: We are yet some 10,097,996,540,000 miles from a perfect alignment, axis-wise.

The rate of motion relative to the circumference that intersects the galactic center is some 1,168,749 miles/second .... one second equals about a Million miles difference.

This is the equivalent of : 4,207,498,560 miles/hour & 100,979,965,440 miles/day......... this being Earth Axial alignment movement Relative, mind you, to that 52,000 light year diameter circle/circumference with Earth at the center, and the galactic axis On that circumference.

So.... if / as the Galaxy is a sort of sentience of collective Being, with some very Likely aspects of the Divine Goddess(es) (male deities also) dwelling as Spirit in that central vortex of Flow......... the Idea that "in an Instant" everything could be flipped outside of our spacetime continuum, and into the TimeSpace of Simultaneity .....spread through Space.................... is not far-fetched in the schemes of meta-physical thought.

The continuum from some 13,000 years past ENDS at Dec 21, 2012, (by many reliable accounts & diverse sources) and we (as spirited beings) are possibly bumped into OBE Timespace of the 5th dimension and higher, to sort of "preview" and "modify" the probability matrix beyond that terminal moment ..... assuming there IS what can be called a "matrix", as there is Much talk about, and recall of, words-to-the-effect that we are moving into Heartspace, which may Involve Applications of HeartMind in Ways previously Unknown......... in the Shaping of Destinies......

Perhaps those Unprepared to immerse their destinies Into Heartmind may choose a return path into our current Spacetime continuum ......, yet those who Cultivate Heartmind will surely transition effortlessly into more Highly integrated Realities beyond the meta-Terminus of our experiential timeflow that we have come to "take as ultimate reality", when it is, in fact, a strange configuration fraught with illusoryness.

The word "Tantra" is infused with many meanings, here it Indicates Highly-Spirited Awarenesses-Empowerments beyond the Basic sorts of lower-chakra-centered Mindednesses we Encounter "at Present" in the world.

posted in Year 2012 - 15 replies

Meeting God, squashing the mystery again

JohnWilly — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:07:08 GMT

I am hovering above an Earth-like planet, a place very much like Earth but without human beings. And I'm asking myself now where is God down there? Is God the animal in the tree? Does the animal need God? Am I the closest thing to God as I look over this planet? An animal may eventually evolve to become a thinking, speaking, loving creature. He wonders. He demands of himself an answer to the question,"What exactly is the star?" But before he can meet the answer he shall dream and in his dream he shall know God.

For me, God is an idea I have within me, rather than an elusive idea outside. In a real sense though, I think God is everything within view and all beyond my view and I am alive in the whole. In the simplest terms, God is the higher intelligence. Sometimes I am God, sometimes I must create God and other times I must meet God.

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

A cut and paste worth reading, we'll discuss afterward...

VidasVeron — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:52:33 GMT

No Electricity And Its 5000 BC
From Ted Twietmeyer
10-11-9

This could come in perhaps two or three years, or even sooner. This is about a future with no electricity. Such a disaster can quickly happen anytime after the Sun generates a coronal mass ejection (commonly known as a CME) in the direction of Earth. A CME is the product of an X class solar flare as solar material leaves the sun, and does not loop back into the Sun as it does an M class flare.

A CME is a momentary event, which will have extremely negative effects lasting for a century or more on Earth. We'll explore what will happen in detail to most aspects of life as we know it. Some parts of this article will be graphic in nature.

In the 1990s a minor CME event did happen. CME solar material becomes ionizing radiation and hit the Earth's atmosphere over the area ofQuebec, Canada. For about one week the power company was unable to reset high tension power line circuit breakers to restore power. The ionizing radiation made the atmosphere so conductive that high tension power lines were arcing.

Ionizing radiation ionizes the air, making it highly conductive and shorting out the AC power to ground. All power authorities could do was to wait for the radiation to subside, which took about one week before power could be restored. We do not officially know how much of the Quebecarea's electrical system was damaged by the CME. It would also be interesting to see if there was a spike in cancer or other diseases with people who were exposed to the ionizing radiation during the event.

If a truly massive CME hits the Earth, it could for all practical purposes take out the world's electricity distribution. For all practical purposes, this would essentially be permanent. It could take decades to repair the world's electrical system, if replacement parts were immediately available. There would be massive damage to power generating, distribution facilities, substations and countless transformers and switching equipment everywhere.

When high power transformers used in substations or on utility poles are damaged, they must be scrapped or rebuilt. If the factories that create or repair these electrical components are also without power, they will be unable to rebuild or repair electrical equipment. With an AC power outage, there will be no diesel fuel available to fill the tanks on large trucks used to transport and install these massive electrical components.

We've read in history books how mobs of people grabbed and lynched people, or tar and feathered them, about former queens voluntarily walking to the chopping block, the condemned walking up the steps to the gallows or people burned at the stake. Living in the past where these things were accepted as part of life seems incomprehensible to us with our modern mindset.

Yet a sudden shift back in time to a mindset of acceptable brutality can happen faster than we want might want to accept. And it all starts with a light switch on the wall that won't work.

Imagine life without electricity. First, let's consider something simple like lighting, which is often taken for granted. Today we flip a switch and a light comes on. Turning on a light seems simple enough, but try lighting your home at night when the power goes off. All of us have made a simple mistake when the power is off. As we move from one room to another we instinctively reach for the light switch and flip it on and nothing happens. Meanwhile, food in refrigerators and freezers is in danger of spoiling as temperatures slowly begin to rise.

It's instinctive today to simply grab a flashlight. Most people do not know that the life expectancy of an ordinary incandescent flashlight bulb is about 25 hours according to some manufacturer' s data sheets. That means having a big box of batteries on hand won't help you when the lamp burns out. And although the lifetime of a solid-state LED flashlight is measured in thousands of hours, battery lifetime is not. If power is out and not coming back on for decades how many batteries and light bulbs would you need for a lifetime of power? Will batteries last for decades sitting unopened in the packages? Of course they won't. Everything has an expiration date on it.

So why time travel back 5000 years? That's roughly how far back in time we need to go back, to when candles and kerosene/oil lamps didn't exist. Even during the years America was founded, they were accustomed to lighting with kerosene lamps and candles. Without power this is where we'll be. In biblical times and even before, people had oil lamps and candles. Egyptians even had a means to light their tombs to do paintings. Today, almost everyone is completely and utterly unprepared to generate even simple lighting at night at night for any length of time, without resorting to oil lamps and candles. The art of making candles (and volume availability candle wicks and animal fats or paraffin used to make them) is, for all practical purposes, non-existent.

Without electricity, kerosene to fill oil lamps will be completely unavailable. Tanks in the ground at your local gas station may still hold thousands of gallons of kerosene when the power goes off - but there won't be any easy way to reach it. And if there was, the kerosene would be completely gone in a matter of a few days. It ends the usefulness of those cute little portable kerosene heaters in the winter.

Computers and communications of all types including the emergency broadcast system will become worthless without electricity. To be informed, we will have to return to listening to government vehicles using loudspeakers which drive up and down streets blaring instructions to people on what to do, where to go and what the curfew hours are.

Oil refineries cannot operate without electricity which is used to run large pumps, valves and computer controlled instrumentation for controlling the refining process. Extremely high pressures and temperatures are involved in the refining process which must be carefully controlled to prevent explosions or leaks. Even if a refinery generates its own power, who will be their end customer? Surely it will be the government that will become their biggest customer.

Men will grow long facial hair. This will be a forced hair style, since electric razors will no longer function and stores will quickly be sold out of razor blades and shaving cream. Women's legs and armpits will soon look likewell, what men's legs and armpits do. Hair styles will soon turn flat, gnarly and wild, as only scissors will be available to cut hair. However that should fit right in as many hair styles are already gnarly-looking.

If you owned a huge stockpile of new flashlight batteries you could sell, what would you take for them as payment? The dollar or currency of whatever country you lived in would become meaningless. You'll need a store to spend it in for needed goods. But what value does a dollar actually have? Toilet paper will become more valuable than gold. You can't wipe your butt with gold coins, but you can with a fistful of one hundred dollar bills.

This leads us to bathroom issues. Back in the days of outhouses, there was the legendary (and now non-existent) Sears catalog among other things which was used as toilet paper. No matter what you may use for toilet paper, it will run out sooner than later. What then? What will people use? Leaves? And without a flushable toilet, where will people relieve themselves? Cities have millions of people, but most of them do not have access to a field or wooded area in which to dig a hole or build an outhouse. This is one of many reasons why city life will become incredibly difficult. City life will return to what Europe was hundreds of years ago, when sewage was dumped from buckets out of windows into the street. Along with the sewage, rats and the plague will most certainly thrive as well.

Medical issues will arise on a scale never seen before in recorded modern history. Even a routine simple surgery like an appendectomy will become a serious problem. Hospitals will generate their own power using backup generators, but can only do this for a short time. When the fuel runs out they too, will be crippled. Being a patient in a hospital without power will quickly become a nightmare. Smart patients will get up and leave, because their fate will soon be sealed.

When the power goes out in the hospital for the second time after generators have permanently shut down, all the beeping alarms will soon go silent after a few hours when battery packs in medical equipment like IV pumps are depleted. Everyone will know deep in their gut that this is the beginning of the end. An eerie silence will descend upon all the floors. Someone might hear news on a portable radio broadcast from an emergency station that power won't be coming back on for many years, if ever again because of damage to the grid. This will add confirmation to the fear. Government and emergency services can't even begin to cope with the crisis.

Nurses and doctors hearing the devastating news will soon be talking amongst themselves in hushed tones, deciding the fate of many unwitting patients. A nurse will enter a patient's room holding a hypodermic filled with cocktail of a pain killer and potassium chloride. She will tell the patient with an assuring and comforting voice, "This is just a vitamin shot the doctor ordered. It won't hurt." On the obstetrics floor the crying of babies in the nursery will bring on a whole new meaning of hopelessness to mothers and staff, as the reality of life without electricity sets in.

Most hospitals can only operate a matter of days without power. No modern hospital can run indefinitely without main AC power. Laparoscopic surgery requires electricity to power the light sources used to illuminate organs inside patients during surgery. TV monitors allow the surgeon to see what's going on inside the patient. Laparoscopic surgery will have to be replaced by older style open surgery near windows but this can only be performed while medical supplies and sunlight lasts. Medical instrument sterilizers will also become useless. Every hospital's supply of pain killers will be quickly exhausted in a matter of days, or perhaps even hours once euthanizing begins.

Deaths from something as simple and curable as appendicitis, currently almost unheard of today, will become commonplace. Even a simple kidney or bladder stone problem can become life-threatening if a stone is lodged in the wrong place and left untreated. Defibrillators used to revive cardiac patients will become non-functional. One-time-use portable defibrillators such as those carried by police and fireman or used in the home will be quickly used and discarded. Government forces will confiscate any defibrillators remaining for saving the lives of only those deemed worthy to survive.

Hospital ultrasound, CT scanners, X-ray and MRI machines will become useless hardware without electricity to run them or the associated computers that reconstruct today's images. Most hospitals only use digital imaging plates for single image X-ray imaging. Even if film and developing equipment was available this would make no difference, since there will be no power to run even a simple X-ray machine or run a film processor.

Modern medical diagnostic tools and procedures will become worthless almost instantly. Medical procedures will quickly return to the state of the art hundreds of years ago, with only a blood pressure cuff, thermometer and stethoscope as diagnostic tools. Today's doctors are mentally and physically unequipped to deal with primitive medical techniques. Most of these ancient diagnostic techniques they have only have read about in med school textbooks or heard medical school professors describe. Despite all their modern medical training and experience, their profession would be seriously impaired. Almost every clinical instrument a doctor uses today has batteries or an AC plug on it somewhere to power it. This includes life-saving respirator machines to assist breathing.

We saw a glimpse of what will happen with the hospital in New Orleans when Katrina hit the city. Patients were left to die or were euthanized when temperatures rose without electricity. There was nothing doctors or nurses could do to help them. This only made a brief appearance in the news when discussions about criminal charges and reprimands were discussed, then little more was heard. Now imagine these decisions taking place in thousands of hospitals across the world after a CME takes out the power.

There will be major problems disposing of the deceased. Cemeteries depend on gas and diesel power equipment such as backhoes and bucket loaders to open and close graves. Without diesel or gasoline fuel there will be few burials. Hand-digging graves could never keep up with the demand. No hearses will have gasoline to transport bodies to the cemeteries.

So what about cremation? Crematories are not something people like to talk about. However, they use gas burners and blowers to generate intense heat to perform a cremation in about 90 minutes, according to manufacturers who manufacture these machines. Crematories also require electricity to run the gas safety circuits and the air blower which forces oxygen and gas into the chamber. No electricity, no cremation.

Without graves, hearses, trucks or crematories, the deceased will have to be dumped into large piles in locations as far away from the population as they can be moved to with whatever available means of transport. There will be no diesel fuel available to dig pits to bury them in. Remember old films of German concentration camps? Those cadavers were eventually buried. But without power and fuel, no one after a CME event will be.

Dead bodies quickly generate Cholera and other diseases. Rats and wild animals will run rampant without predators to keep them in check, and this will quickly spread the disease to the living.

There will be vehicles scattered on the sides of streets, roads, interstates and highways everywhere. Cell phones won't ever work again (what a shame) and there will be no fuel for even a tow truck to come get your vehicle and drag it back to your home. Wherever a vehicle quits is the very spot it will stay for the rest of time and eternity, rusting away until nothing is left of it. People will gather their belongings from a dead vehicle that runs out of gas and try to walk to the nearest place of shelter. There will not be a "ride back home." A ride back home in what?

Martial law will surely be declared, but it won't be enforced for very long. Soldiers and serviceman will soon decide to simply return home to their families to be with them and to protect them. They may even walk if they have to. Drinking water and food will be in extremely short supply before it too, becomes unavailable. We'll talk about later what happens with food and water run out, and it won't be for squeamish to read.

Someone else I know who has seen the future a few years ago using remote viewing told me about seeing street after street, home after home with front doors open and no one around. I didn't understand it then, but I do now.

People will feel forced to pack up and leave their homes to seek out government camps to live in. However, this is a big mistake and equivalent to knocking on the gates of hell and begging to get in. No need here to talk about how bad it will get in the camps when food is gone.

Those who have food storage at home will be anxiously taking inventory of their storage each day to see what they have left. They know that every morsel they eat will bring themselves and their family one step closer to starvation, and there will be little they can do about it. They will be a victim of their own choices made back in today's time, before the power went out. A continuous, unspoken fear about being robbed or killed for what they have left will always be nagging in the back of everyone's mind.

Without the rule and enforcement of law, no place in any city will be safe. Cities will be the first areas to plunge into lawlessness. To believe that police officers will report to an extremely dangerous job without any pay to protect you is to imagine the Moon is made of green cheese. Soldiers that patrol the streets will increasingly be in harms way.

When food runs out people will return to cannibalism. This is when life gets very, very ugly. No one will be safe. Mobs of people will overpower the weak and consume them. I was recently sent a series of very gruesome photos taken of a group of about 20 people consuming a dead man, who was laid out on a board in a field. He was literally hacked into pieces with machetes and long knives. Those eating his flesh were a wide variety of ages from teenage to older folk, and some were smiling for the camera while holding up his body parts.

The distant background in the cannibalism photos showed a modern city. In the last photo only a few ribs were left. Whether staged or not, these photographs accurately show how life without electricity would be reduced to a completely barbaric existence.

Countless gruesome repeated scenes like this every day will be the ultimate end of civilization as we know it. People will kill anyone for a cup of drinkable water. An inherent, primitive drive to survive is present in all human beings and should not be underestimated. Even the most kind and loving people you know could become one of these people almost overnight when they are hungry enough.

The only possible solution for survival is to live in a very rural area, completely out of sight from the road. You will need some form of renewable power to survive, such as wind, water or solar. You will also need hydroponics to grow your own food indoors. If food is grown outdoors, animals or people can consume it or steal it during the night. This will not be hobby gardening, but serious survival gardening.

You'll need to have your own medical supplies, organic non-terminator seeds, hydroponics solution and equipment, a water well, well pump, a source of heat in winter and other basic necessities of life such as shoes and clothing, and either an outhouse or an indoor toilet and bidet. Whatever system you have to survive on, you'll need a lifetime of replacement parts and supplies. One must prepare for this assuming that no store will be available to go buy anything - ever again.

If you are thinking "chain saw" for your wood supply consider how fast a chain saw uses fuel and how you won't be able to obtain any. Sawing down a 36" diameter hardwood tree is far more difficult than most people realize until they try it. It's a two-man job for two men in great physical shape, with the right saw and experience doing it.

You will be forced to defend yourself and your family using deadly force with a firearm, bow and arrow or a long knife. It's easy to shoot at paper targets, but quite different to kill a living, breathing human being begging you on their knees to spare their life. Our culture has raised us to know killing is deeply wrong.

This is the case under normal circumstances.

But killing is a decision that sooner or later you will be forced to make when the power is out and not coming back on again. It's a case of "either you or them." If you are the head of your family, your failure to make the right decision could cost everyone in your home their life. Like breathing, you'll just have to do it automatically without giving it any thought. Logic is the only way to look at it. If you do nothing and the attacker kills you and takes your food, who will be left to protect your family from starvation and harm after you're gone?

A complete collapse of society as we know it will be the result of losing electricity permanently.

Will we be prepared in time? Or be knocking on the gates of a concentration camp begging to get it? Thirst, hunger and cold drives people to do things that they would never imagine themselves doing.

posted in Year 2012 - 8 replies

2012 celestial alignment: Yes or No?

Mon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:01:06 GMT

In a recent thread, someone posted something about an alignment without supplying a source even after we asked for one: http://2012.tribe.net/thread/ea30f51f-18b2-4408-b223-c1ab76810412#4ced503b-a522-41cb-bb7b-f72a6b519fe8
Let's have a thread about the supposed 2012 alignment, and let's try to back up the claims or research with evidence or links to suggested reading material... My current understanding is that there's no such thing as an alignment om 21-12-2012:

"...there is no planetary alignment in December 2012. As to “alignment with the center of the Milky Way” that is a meaningless phrase. It may sound scientific, but it is devoid of content. To put it bluntly, these claims on the Internet of alignments and catastrophe in December 2012 are lies. If more people checked out these crazy claims, we would all be better off...." http://2012news.com/?p=29

"....it is just an Internet hoax. There is no alignment with the center of the Galaxy in 2012 or any time. As to the Sun being in the center of the Galaxy, that it impossible; the Sun and solar system will always remain at about 30,000 light years from the galactic center. These stories on the Internet are simply lies, and I am sorry if they have been a problem for you. A lot of the stuff on the Internet is wrong, and you have to learn to distinguish the truth from the lies. One simple test is to ask if any of these claims are made by real scientists, or if they have been reported in newspapers or on TV news. The stories about alignments or disaster striking in 2012 do not pass this test....." http://www.dailycommonsense.com/2012-galactic-alignment-hoax/

"...According to the U.S. Naval Observatory (the official timekeeper for the United States), the winter solstice in 2012 occurs at 1111 UT on December 21. http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.html And given the New Age Community's fascination with anything related to 11:11, I would expect them to also assign some huge spiritual significance to the time of the 2012 solstice. I'm not sure what the date of the Mayan calender turn-over is, but if it is 23 Dec 12, then it sounds as if someone shifted the date a couple of days to make it coincide with the solstice and make their pet crackpot idea work out.
As for which Gregorian date this will happen is open to some conjecture. By far the most commonly accepted translation by Mayan scholars is that Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0 correlates to Gregorian date December 21, 2012. This is according to the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation constant of 584283. Another less popular correlation constant is 584285, in which Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0 correlates to Dec 23, 2012..." http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/7145-pole-shift-planetary-alignment-2012-a.html

"...sometimes on "alternative" boards, when they start talking about planetary "alignments", they don't necessarily mean "in an astronomical context"--sometimes they're talking about an astrological context, which is a whole 'nother ball game. In astrology, apparently, you can refer to planets as being in "alignment" without its having anything to do with "being lined up" like the rest of the world uses the term, judging by the number of excited "alternative" threads about "planetary alignment" I've clicked on, only to find some kind of deeply esoteric astrological discussion going on that had nothing to do with the planets in question actually "lining up"...." http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/7145-pole-shift-planetary-alignment-2012-a.html#post126174

posted in Year 2012 - 16 replies

small island of coherence can cause a major shift in the prevailent system

rheanapowers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:49:14 GMT

I think for a New Age to really manifest itself in a global/universal sense, all the different approaches and interpretations are necessary to compete and compare, try and error, combine and divide and transform ultimately to what it is or will be. I can see awakening all around me, people being so much more aware of themselves and the energy around them. So many have become sensitive about their hidden abilities and are now in a preliminary trial and error phases. Within the mass of slowly and steady evolving, there are individuals who are spearheading the game.... and everyone together, is creating change with every thought and strength of intention that is accumulating out there. The vortex of progressive thought will build up a point, where the comparatively small island of change will cause a a radical repatterning of the entire system. The collective shining you are talking about is happening, while light gravitates to light and conglomerate to create that spiritual island i am mentioning. The paradigm shift in inevitable.

Are be ready to make that change happen already in a couple of years?
How do we focus that intent?

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

Maya 2012 - De mysteries van een eeuwenoud volk

Hoopes — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:14:08 GMT

Erik Boot has posted a review of the new "Maya 2012" exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnography in Leiden, The Netherlands on his blogsite:

* MAYA * NEWS * UPDATES *
http://mayanewsupdates.blogspot.com

The dates of the exhibit "Maya 2012 – De mysteries van een eeuwenoud volk" are from October 9, 2009 to August 22, 2010). Here's a link to the exhibition website:

http://www.maya-2012.nl/

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

bioneers conference!!

anistara1 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:38:12 GMT

yay!!

my school is pay/ving the way for our sustainable communities class to be there! with budget cuts happening a day after our scheduled input time for financial aid, we swung the conference and 2 night stay at a decent hotel!!! wooo hoooo!!! super stoked!!

i'm hoping to make it to the indigenous forums, but i'm not sure if its up to me. wish me luck!

http://www.bioneers.org/conference

dr. andrew weil, david orr, michael pollan, chief oren lyons... and a serious host of others! <<< i'm star struck!!

yay!! :)

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

Doomsday Film Festival, Oct. 23-25

Hoopes — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:41:00 GMT

"The 2009 Doomsday Film Festival explores our collective obsession with the Apocalypse in film, art, and culture.

"From raptures, plagues, meteorites, nuclear holocausts, aliens, zombie attacks, ecological catastrophe, and cybernetic revolt to the 2012 doomsday predictions, the Festival will touch upon all possible permutations of our collective demise.

"We'll be screening films from across the board, with works ranging from premieres to established classics to rediscovered gems. On the schedule for the 2009 Festival are nuclear fallout cartoons, early '60s atomic parables, '80s zombie punk, award-winning independent shorts, and much more.

"The event will incorporate a panel-based symposium featuring authors, artists, and all manner of experts on the End of Days. We plan to tackle the Apocalypse in all its forms, and hope you'll join us for the ride!"

http://www.doomsdayfilmfest.com

posted in Year 2012 - 1 reply

Kingdom of Plants and Presidents Bush

JohnWilly — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:17:45 GMT

The Kingdom of Plants
and Presidents Bush

Psychedelic plants and mushrooms, living in nearly all regions of Earth, contained the ideas which encouraged me to seek a rare synchronicity in life. The other name in the flower Rafflesia arnoldii, Earth's largest flower, belongs to Stamford Raffles, the British founder of the country Singapore who discovered the flower with Joseph Arnold in Sumatra, Indonesia. U.S. President George W. Bush was born on Stamford Raffles' birthday and Raffles died one day after the same-day deaths of U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826. Adams and Jefferson died on the Fourth of July, America's birthday. Two weeks after the deaths of Raffles, Adams, and Jefferson, astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi died. Piazzi, of course, discovered Ceres, the first dwarf planet discovered in our Solar System, on New Year's Day, 1801, and Rocky Graziano was born on the anniversary of Piazzi's discovery of the rocky dwarf. Four months after the deaths of Raffles, Adams, Jefferson, and Piazzi, astronomer Johann Bode died. Mr. Bode suggested planet Uranus's name and calculated the planet's orbit. He discovered Bode's Galaxy, a brilliant spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major.

Rafflesia arnoldii lives in the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia. The colossal earthquake off Sumatra's West Coast, which spawned the cataclysmic tsunami on December 26, 2004, left a quarter-million people dead on the first anniversary of the Bam earthquake which killed 30,000 Iranians. "Bam!" is an expression made famous in America by celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse. Mr. Lagasse, the star of a televised cooking show, "Emeril Live", shouts "Bam!" while entertaining his audience and teaching culinary skills. I heard him say his use of "Bam!" began so to snap dozing production staff awake during tapings of his show. Emeril was born in my hometown, Fall River, in Massachusetts, the state whose coast is the embodiment of the human head. Emeril was born on the birthday of John L. Sullivan, a man with my name who was also born in Massachusetts and who, like Rocky Graziano, Jack Johnson, and Rocky Marciano, was a world champion boxer.

The back-to-back earthquakes in Bam and Sumatra occurred on the anniversary of U.S. President Harry Truman's death and U.S. President Gerald Ford died on the anniversary of the earthquakes. It was also the birthday of seismologist Emil Wiechert, a pioneer in earthquake measurement. Mr. Wiechert invented the Wiechert seismometer which employs an oscillating pendulum to record earthquakes.

Harry Truman rose to the presidency of the United States upon Franklin Roosevelt's death in 1945. One month into Truman's presidency, on the day of his 61st birthday, World War II in Europe ended. Gerald Ford, who died on the anniversary of Harry Truman's death, also rose to the presidency in the middle of his predecessor's term. Before becoming President of the United States in 1974, Gerald Ford first replaced Vice President Spiro Agnew on December 6, 1973, the anniversary of the 1882 transit of Venus and birthday of astronomer Niccolo Zucchi. The transit of Venus is the alignment of the Sun, Earth, and Venus. In transit, Venus crosses the Sun as seen from Earth. The Venus transit happens twice within an 8-year period and the pair of transits repeats every 120 years (less often than the Mercury transit). The last Venus transit happened in 2004 and the next will occur in 2012. Gerald Ford became vice president on Niccolo Zucchi's birthday and three days before, on December 3, 1973, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft arrived at Jupiter and transmitted the first close-up photographs of the planet. Niccolo Zucchi was the first astronomer to see the enormous cloud bands encircling Jupiter's surface. Jupiter's South Tropical Disturbance, first seen by Percy Molesworth, lasted forty years in the South Tropical Zone, one of those cloud bands Niccolo Zucchi had seen.

President Ford died on the anniversaries of Harry Truman's death and the back-to-back Bam, Iran and Sumatran earthquakes. One month before Ford's death in 2006, the transit of Mercury occurred. The same Mercury transit happened on the anniversary of the elections of presidents John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush. The same Mercury transit occurred on the anniversary of Mount Everest expedition leader John Hunt's death. Mercury transits the Sun about thirteen times per century. The next Mercury transit, in 2016, will occur on the anniversary of Tenzing Norgay's death. Norgay and Edmund Hillary, of course, members of John Hunt's expedition, reached Mount Everest's summit first on the anniversary of the Einstein-Eddington total solar eclipse, John Kennedy's birthday. Man's journey to the Moon, an endeavor President Kennedy promoted, was first achieved by American astronauts on Edmund Hillary's 50th birthday.

one chapter of an evolving project. my project.

posted in Year 2012 - 5 replies

Interesting aside to the Roswell Saga...

emptycloud — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:34:03 GMT

http://www.ufocon.blogspot.com/

<<<The enormity of suddenly being confronted with sky-fallen craft and beings from another world near Roswell, NM in July of 1947 was no doubt spiritually shattering. The psychological impact of such an event had to have been deep and lasting. Everything must have come into question relative to man's place in the universe. Newly-acquired information indicates that the Roswell Base Chaplain at the time -Reverend Elijah H. Hankerson- may have provided needed support to those that were not prepared to deal with such a momentous event. There are three telling elements to the Hankerson saga:>>>

???Can you keep your wits about you when proof confronts you??? It is kind of mind boggling if not frightening, does it threaten or rock our world???

posted in Year 2012 - 0 replies

South America, the embodiment of the human head

JohnWilly — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:01:01 GMT

The Land Masses of South America, Massachusetts, and Maui Are Perfect Embodiments of the Human Form
And Other Massive Signs of Higher Civilization We're Missing in Our Universe
By John I. Sullivan

Massachusetts
The Perfect Embodiment of the Human Head Profile

The Boston Nose
& Cape Ann Eye
The Cape Cod Jaw & the Plymouth Mouth
In 1620, English Pilgrims first went ashore at the Plymouth Mouth.

John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts won the United States presidential election six months after Earth's most powerful earthquake. The earthquake struck the South American coast and sent tsunamic waves across the Pacific Ocean. The tsunami killed people and damaged or destroyed structures in South America and in communities thousands of miles from the epicenter of the earthquake: in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan.

Maui, the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago,
is the embodiment of the human torso and head (similar to Massachusetts).

Maui, Hawaii
Breaststroke in the Pacific Ocean

President John Kennedy

Earthquakes, like emotions, emanate from the source: the planet. The source of the man is the same as the source of the earthquake. Earth is alive and perpetually moving forward. Whether conscious of it or not, we are in synch with this life and motion. The source of Earth is, of course, the Sun. Greater than it all -- the source of our Solar System -- is our Milky Way galaxy. Together, the galaxy, star, and planet are the parents of civilization. It has always been so and will continue to be. We should all be attentive to that while we do our jobs and play our games.

South America

South America, epicenter of the most powerful earthquake in Earth's recorded history, embodies like Massachusetts and Maui do - the human head. Brazil, the large country in eastern and central South America, is the continental face (with a prominent eye, nose, and chin). The South American Eye is the mouth, or delta, of the Amazon River, Earth's most voluminous river.

South America's human population is 400 million, with half of those in Brazil, which is the fifth most populous nation on Earth. I am one of seven million Massachusettsans in the United States. The United States is best known as the strong, capitalist democracy whose ideals are admired and emulated by countries around the world. Ever evolving, I see room for improvement. The constant pursuit of and obsession with monetary wealth and our inattention to intellectual, educational endeavors is troublesome. The collective focus of people now should be on solutions to the myriad, persistent, answerable problems which recur in our often chaotic global environment. Our excursions to the Moon, which President Kennedy famously advocated for, are four decades old. If, in 1962, President Kennedy had said,"We will become greater masters of English and education, and become smarter people," the nation and the planet would have been better served. English is the native or second language of one-sixth of Earth's people. How many people would honestly say they are masters of the language? Those who can settle into luxury usually settle and after 12 to 20 years of schooling most people today aren't committed to education. So, it falls to me and those like me to learn what most will not learn and essentially become the teacher.

I Followed the Leader
Until I Found My Way

John Kennedy won the United States presidential election six months after Earth's most powerful earthquake in 1960. On November 8, 2006, the anniversary of Kennedy's election, Mercury transited the Sun. The transit happens thirteen times per century on average and is the alignment of Earth, Mercury, and our Sun. In transit, Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, crosses the Sun as seen from Earth. President Kennedy was not the only American president to win election on November the 8th. Nor was he the only Massachusetts-born president elected November 8th. George H.W. Bush won the November 8, 1988, U.S. presidential election to become the 41st President of the United States. Kennedy and Bush were born seven miles apart in Brookline and Milton, Massachusetts, respectively, and both men were born in the waning weeks of spring. Massachusetts, of course, is the state whose coast is the spitting image of the human head. U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, all in the league of greatest American presidents, are among the other men who also won a November 8th election.

The Massachusetts Face

Mount Everest, Earth's tallest mountain, is 29,000 feet high. Each human head is 29 bones and 290 million Americans made the United States at the cusp of the 3rd millenium, 2,000 years after Jesus lived. The summit of Mount Everest was reached first by mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on President John Kennedy's birthday in 1953. As earthquakes and emotions emanate from one source -- the planet -- so do the mountains, human heads and the ideas created within. Earth's highest peak has the number 29 in common with the human head. And the first people to summit the mountain did so on the birthday of an American president born in Massachusetts, the state whose coast is the spitting image of the human head -- in the country whose population at millenium's cusp was 290 million souls. John Kennedy was born and Edmund Hillary reached Mount Everest's summit on the 29th of May.

John Kennedy and his great teacher, Jesus, had a common belief in God. Throughout my life, God has been the omnipresent mystery. Thanks to Carl Jung and many others, I am now dedicated to my vision of synchronicity in the cosmos and, more than ever, God is an idea I have within me, rather than an elusive idea outside.

The leader of Edmund Hillary's Mount Everest expedition -- John Hunt -- died on the anniversary of John Kennedy's presidential election and the elections of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush. Mercury transited the Sun on the eighth anniversary of Mr. Hunt's death.

In this photograph by the Japanese Solar Optical Telescope, Mercury transited the Sun on November 8, 2006, the anniversaries of John Kennedy's election to the presidency of the United States and death of Everest expedition leader, John Hunt. The next transit of Mercury will occur on May 9, 2016, the 30th anniversary of mountaineer Tenzing Norgay's death. Mr. Norgay, as part of John Hunt's expedition, partnered with Edmund Hillary on the first ascent of Mount Everest on President Kennedy's birthday.

My Sun and Albert Einstein

The total solar eclipse on May 29, 1919, occurred on John Kennedy's second birthday. Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington used that eclipse to peer at stars beyond the darkened Sun. Eddington's goal, which he achieved, was the confirmation of Albert Einstein's prodigious relativity. Eddington saw what Einstein had already seen - the gravitational power of mass. Mr. Einstein's genius enlightened the world and allowed anyone interested in the Universe the opportunity to more clearly and more accurately experience the Universe. Einstein taught us that the gravitation of great masses like our Sun and Earth and even ourselves are bending space and time.

Massachusetts (abbreviation Mass.)

Energy = mass x speed of light ² (E = mc²)

Our Sun, moving us in orbit, keeping the Solar System planets perpetually stable, is Earth's partner in creating the continents: South America, the Massachusetts Coast, Maui, Mount Everest, each of us and all life here. The summit of Mount Everest was first reached by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on John Kennedy's birthday and on the anniversary of the Einstein-Eddington total solar eclipse. Our planet and everyone here is hopefully progressing towards the masterpiece billions of years in the making. Three continents: South America, Australia, and Africa, embody the heads of animals. South America, as I said, personifies the head of the human - the animal with the foresightful, creative and enduring mind. Australia embodies the head of the tiger, lion, and some dog breeds. Africa, home to one billion (or one-sixth) of Earth's people, is the conspicuous embodiment of a horse's head.

Australia embodies the head of the tiger, lion, and some dog breeds.

Africa, home to one billion (or one-sixth) of Earth's people,
is the conspicuous embodiment of a horse's head.
That Snout is Namibia and South Africa. That Blue Eye is Lake Victoria.
That Ear is Ethiopia and Somalia.

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

Mayan Calendar and Systems Theory

sblonder — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:29:41 GMT

Carl Johhan Calleman sent this note out today on this (not sure why he feels the need to slam JMJ's work on galactic alignment but I'm guessing it's part of the ongoing feud).

"Dear Friends,

For a long time the professional scientific community has resisted the thought
that the different time periods of the Mayan calendar are driving cosmic and human evolution through their influence on consciousness. While of course a large number of professional Mayanists have worked with elucidating the structure of the calendar system of the ancient Maya there has always been a resistance to acknowledging that there would be a reality behind these energies. Hence, even though it may not have been said so directly these cosmic energies have often been regarded as some kind of superstitions.

A beginning of a shift in attitude now however seems to be on its way. At an international conference in Systems Theory at the University of Liege in Belgium Professor Tadeja Jere Lazanski won the award for best scientific paper in the CASYS'09 (Computing Anticipatory Systems) conference:
http://www.upr.si/fileadmin/user_upload/Novice/sporocila_za_javnost/Tadeja_Jere_Lazanski_CASYS_09-The_Best_Paper_Award.jpg
for "Systems Thinking: Ancient Maya's Evolution of Consciousness and Modern Systems Thinking."

http://www.upr.si/fileadmin/user_upload/Novice/CASYS09-Systems_-_Mayan_Evolution_of_Consciousness-Lazanski.pdf

The paper outlines the nine levels of evolution that are developed according to the Mayan calendar system and places them in the context of Systems Theory. In short Dr Jere Lazanski is driving the thesis that what the ancient Maya saw as a plan driven by divine energies is what now is generally referred to as the big picture.

This initial breakthrough into mainstream science of the true Mayan calendar system of Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens is very significant and it opens for the first time a road to discussing not only the Mayan calendar, but also the many evolutionary progressions that it describes in certain scholarly settings.

It is also noteworthy that, in contrast, the urban legend of a "galactic alignment"
as the basis for the Mayan Long Count for good reasons has consistently been
rejected by professional scientists (see for instance Vincent Malmström,
The Astronomical Insignificance of Maya date 13.0.0.0,
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~izapa/M-32.pdf).

That the breakthrough into established science of the True Mayan calendar system first happened in Systems Theory is understandable. It is only from the perspective of the whole system that the Mayan calendar can be seen to make sense and any specialized science such as professional Mayanism, history, biology or physics would have to undergo so significant changes in its methodology and general approaches in order to recognize the validity of the Mayan calendar system that this would only happen against a much greater resistance.

I congratulate Professor Jere Lazanski for her contribution to science and feel this recognition indicates the beginning of an increased openness in the scientific community to the deeper meaning of the Mayan calendar.

Seattle, August 12, 2009 (13 Ix)
Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D

www.calleman.com"

Here's the abstract on the paper...

Abstract
Systems thinking as a modern approach for problem solving was revived after WWII even
though it had been an ancient philosophy. We can track systems thinking back to antiquity.
Differentiated from Western rationalist traditions of philosophy, C. West Churchman often
identified with the I Ching as a systems approach sharing a frame of reference similar to pre-
Socratic philosophy and Heraclitus. In the paper we will compare the evolutionary system of
consciousness, which was presented in Tun calendar at Maya Indians and contemporary
systems theory and systems thinking, which is nothing else but highly evolved human
consciousness in society. The Mayan numerical system and long count units has been proven
as one of the most accurate systems for describing the present and future of the civilization in which we have all evolved. We will present Mayan nine-level pyramids system that
represents the evolutionary system – the consciousness, which nowadays shows the actual
level of human consciousness. Deriving from all described we will show the main systems
principles, discussed by contemporary systems authors and Mayan systems principles, which
differs only in one expression – they named a “big picture” as “the divine plan”. The final
results can be perfectly implied to the society we live in. Seeing the world from the big
picture point of view is reaching a level of awareness, where linear thinking is replaced by
system thinking. Maya explained that the civilization will achieve the system of conscious cocreation. We can claim that linear thinking guides us to a limited consciousness, whereas
systems thinking opens the possibilities of conscious co-creation for the benefits of
sustainable society and future of the planet.

posted in Year 2012 - 7 replies

sons of man

neekos — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:49:05 GMT

someone showed me this book about masonic hand symbolism and while I think the author 'may' have somewhat overstretched his imagination with regards some of the photos, the pattern is there none the less.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3289775/Famous-Freemasons-Exposed

posted in Year 2012 - 2 replies

2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayan elder insists

Rocky — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:15:08 GMT

2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayan elder insists

By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer – Sun Oct 11, 2009

"MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn't survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It's unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico's National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, "He will descend from the sky."

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.

"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.

Another spooky coincidence?

"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

"They're really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012," Plait said.

But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

"If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.

As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the "fateful" date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America's power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu."

While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to "use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don't let the credit cards go up."

Another History Channel program titled "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days" says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift."

"The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster," a narrator proclaims. "Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe."

The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.

Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

"No one who's writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn't," says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_apocalypse2012

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posted in Year 2012 - 42 replies

-nolens volens-

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:39:56 GMT

dictionary.com's word of the day

\NO-lenz-VO-lenz\:
Whether unwilling or willing.

posted in Year 2012 - 10 replies

Nothing in the Book is True

Hoopes — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:46:19 GMT

Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are, by Bob Frissell
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583940677/

"Review
The next stage in the evolution of human consciousness is coming soon. Thanks to a successful interplanetary experiment in 1972, we are spinning out of our old skins and into an other-dimensional reality. Drunvalo Melchizedek, jester and witness-guide from the 13th dimension, is already here as a catalyst to wake us up. Drunvalo journeyed through the great abyss to polarity consciousness and he's going to be around for a while. Look at the signposts to the coming radical change in consciousness: a new assessment of the Great Pyramids, crop circles, cattle mutilations, the invasive antics of the Gray Aliens, ascended masters, Thoth, rebirthing -- and get ready for the next big leap in human evolution. Ably narrated by Victor Talmadge, this three hour abridgement of Bob Frissell's Nothing In This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are meets every standard for good listening! -- Midwest Book Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"If ever there was an aptly named book, this is it. In a highly readable and sincere manner, Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are proceeds to thread together every New Age belief and conspiracy theory into a grand unified field theory of kookiness. They're all here: gray aliens, ascended masters, free energy, cattle mutilations, crop circles, rebirthing, earth changes, the Great Pyramid, and secret colonies on Mars. And yet, despite the sheer unbelievability of half the book, the author's goodwill and spiritual intentions are so infectious that the books ends up being a heartwarming experience. Nothing has the potential to become the Cosmic Trigger (Robert Anton Wilson's 1977 psychedelic mind-bender) of the '90s."
—Jay Kinney, Wired

"What is really taking place as we head toward the end of this millennium? If conventional explanations don't make sense to you anymore and you want to explore other options, read this book. An insightful, radical view of our planet's history and its future."
—Perceptions

"This is an accessible guidebook to consciousness expansion and evolutionary progress which, in effect, restates age-old knowledge, and in so doing reminds us of our heritage as spiritual beings. Frissell tells his account primarily through the experience of one Drunvalo Melchizedek, a 'walk-in' being who claims to be from the thirteenth dimension by way of several vibration-stepping-down incarnations along the way—on this occasion, via a mutual spiritual pact with a male human in 1972. Part of Drunvalo's mission is to remind us that we can assemble within ourselves the universal pattern of creation—our own merkabah vehicles—which will facilitate the evolution of our consciousness as well as that of planet Earth."
—Nexus

posted in Year 2012 - 4 replies

Pictures of Iran (may shock!)

Mon — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:46:11 GMT

http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

"...Iran (Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn](Speaker Icon.svg listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran[8] is a country in Western Asia.[9] The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia. Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural context; however, Iran is the name used officially in political context.[10][11] The name Iran is a cognate of Aryan, and means "Land of the Aryans".[12][13][14]

The 18th largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km², Iran has a population of over seventy million.[15] It is a country of special geostrategic significance due to its central location in Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea and condominium, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq, and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial, and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power,[16][17] and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas...."

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

posted in Year 2012 - 21 replies

The World is Ending Again

Hoopes — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:05:45 GMT

Scroll down to the program titled "The World is Ending Again: This Time in 2012..." for an MP3 file of an interview I did with some theologians from the Unity Church a few weeks ago (first aired on October 2).

"Every generation since the ink first dried on the first copy of the Book of Revelation has believed they were living in the end times. Doomsday and/or the coming of the Kingdom of God has been predicted over 220 times just since the beginning of the Common Era. Now a new crop of end-is-near authors are making large claims—and large profits in book sales—about the new doomsday date in December 2012 when the Mayan calendar completes its cycle. Although New Age literature rhapsodizes about the coming transformation, legitimate scholars like Sandra Noble, executive director of a Mesoamerican research organization, have called the portrayal of December 2012 as a doomsday or cosmic-shift event “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” This week Dr. Shepherd’s panel includes Mesoamerican and Unity biblical scholars as they consider the phenomenon of doomsday in the history and consciousness of humanity."
http://www.unity.fm/program/TalkAboutIt

posted in Year 2012 - 7 replies

synchronicity is overrated

Ommanipadmehum — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:51:05 GMT

i think it's a symptom of imbalance.. (says we gotta) get with the programme.

posted in Year 2012 - 73 replies

For All Tribes - All People

in-PHI-net — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:55:49 GMT

An interesting view of what and how Tribes can change the world: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.html

posted in Year 2012 - 5 replies

scientists discover non-local galactic embrace !!!

emptycloud — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:51:06 GMT

New Cosmic details...
http://www.physorg.com/news174056210.html

One of the astronomers, Dr Hongsheng Zhao of the SUPA Centre of Gravity, University of St Andrews, suggests that an unknown force is acting on dark matter. The findings are published this week in the scientific journal Nature.

Only 4% of the universe is made of known material. Stars and gas in galaxies move so fast that astronomers have speculated that the gravity from a hypothetical invisible halo of dark matter is needed to keep galaxies together. However, a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive.

Now the team believes that the interactions between dark and ordinary matter could be more important and more complex than previously thought, and even speculate that dark matter might not exist and that the anomalous motions of stars in galaxies are due to a modification of gravity on extragalactic scales.

Dr. Benoit Famaey (Universities of Bonn and Strasbourg) explains: "The dark matter seems to 'know' how the visible matter is distributed. They seem to conspire with each other such that the gravity of the visible matter at the characteristic radius of the dark halo is always the same. This is extremely surprising since one would rather expect the balance between visible and dark matter to strongly depend on the individual history of each galaxy."

Dr. Zhao at the SUPA Centre of Gravity notes, "The pattern that the data reveal is extremely odd. It's like finding a zoo of animals of all ages and sizes miraculously having identical, say, weight in their backbones or something. It is possible that a non-gravitational fifth force is ruling the dark matter with an invisible hand, leaving the same fingerprints on all galaxies, irrespective of their ages, shapes and sizes."

posted in Year 2012 - 21 replies

Year 2012's topics - tribe.net

2012 Tipping Point - The Prophet's Conference

LSD less dangerous than alcohol, says government's drug adviser

The Fourth Kind

Soul Hunger: The reason of faith, according to Karen Armstrong

What if the 2012 movie really happens?

Could man exist in a non-monetary culture?

Will Our Universe Collide With a Neighboring One? by Zeeya Merali

History Channel Docu Series - Searching for Expertstopic

The Wayfinders : Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

This Way to Sustainability Conference CSU, Chico

MAHA KUMBH MELA, HARIDWAR 2010 - SCHEDULE

Poetry of the Shift

What happened to global warming?

☆¸.•*¨!SOMVARTA!*`•.☆

The Right Diet

Surviving 2012: Political Aspirations

When You're Ready to Party Like It's 2012

Barack Obama Wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

"I feel no need for food and water" - Prahlad Jani

Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK

the fullness of space

Ancient African ruins

crazy little facts

finacial markets still despratly need reform, sickness is still there

2 die in sedona sweatlodge

Inerton Waves of the Earth

A hoax made with precision cut boards and rope or the real deal

anyone see the mothership lately?

New Proof the Popol Vuh was NOT tainted by the Invasion...

The Maya Flood Myth and the Decapitation of the Cosmic Caiman

Beryllium-10

Fibonacci Sequence

Troll control

2012 and Beyond

Harmonic Convergence

2012 = miscalculation according to Dutch science magazine

The 2012 Story

Collapse

The LOVE POLICE

Aleister Crowley 2012

Presence......... (and, of course the FAKE versions thereof)

World Food Crisis Discussed Over 18 Course Banquet

World's Largest Pyramid Discovered: Lost Mayan City

Iceland says goodbye to the Big Mac

another theory they had wrong

oba jelly m leslie et al

2012 Charlatans

Where 'today' starts on our planet

2012 in Sky & Telescope

the mirror door of maya!

Esoteric Cosmos

Balloon Boy Dad Has 2012 Fears

Superwave, Aetherons and Unified theory

and even more secrets...

ALL ABOUT 2012

Why the world will NOT end in 2012

Israel push to change laws of war

2012: Science or Superstition?

The Plant of Renown

Let's not forget, it's not just.....

2012 Hoax

3rd Person Dies in AZ sweatlodge case

“Signs of Allah” appear on infant’s skin

awesome energy...?

Buddhism, Shamanism and the use of entheogens

Skepsis - The 2012 Phenomenon

Physics with an eye to the missing 96% of Nature's mystery

32 planets discovered outside solar system

Maya Shamaness AumRak's "Crystal Flight" Guided Meditation now available for download.

Canada's Genocide - new film

2012 in Skeptic Magazine

The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar

History is Wrong

fascinating, UN ex Chair, talks about how reform of the UN and America is being blocked by right wing forces

chaotic nodes

Is foreign policy all wrong

Involution- The Lowest Common Denominator

Sprword

Lucifer Speaks

☆¸.•¨!SOMVARTA!`•.☆