Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Nostradamus

After watching a recorded program recently I caught a snatch of a show on the History Channel about Nostradamus. They were saying he predicted 9 11 and other recent events.

I remember, about five years ago seeing another show on the History Channel from the 1970's. I think it had been a feature film. It reviewed the so called predictions he had made, like Hitler. The show said that he had predicted the then current event of the Shah fleeing Iran and coming to the U.S.

Then the show set out to predict what was in store for the future based on "The Prophecies," No's 1555 book of peculiar quatrains. In the twenty five years that had followed since that film not a single thing they predicted had come to pass. Thank Goodness! A middle eastern despot wearing a blue turban has not taken over the world.

The brief clip I saw of the new show marveled at the accuracy of his predictions of the last thirty years. That is amazing considering that No said the world would end in 1988! Well it is easy to apply his prophecies to things that have already happened. Particularly when they do games like change 1999 to 9111 to say he predicted the September eleventh World Trade Center attack.

The proof is in the pudding. Predicting things before they happened failed utterly. That feature film is still around as proof. Unless they destroyed it.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

I get amused when people on shows, like late night talk shows, talk about The Great Pyramid and their crackpot theories about its purpose, as if it were the one and only pyramid in Egypt. If you look you can see the there is pyramid right next to The Great Pyramid that is almost as large, and one that is about half the size then there are several more smaller ones. Look around and you see more small ones.

To Egyptologist the pyramids are not even close to being a mystery. They were tombs. I remember some show on TV long ago where some man spent his life trying to prove that The Great Pyramid was the Old Testament in stone. I don't know how you could say that that section of stones is the 23rd Psalm. That would be particularly remarkable since the Pyramid was built before the Old Testament was written!

Another of the myriad so called theories was that The Great Pyramid is encrypted data. The person did not suggest what the data might be. He didn't realize that it would be undecipherable now because most of the facing stones are gone. In any case if it was data important enough to be encrypted, why did they not build another pyramid later to update their data?

Contrary to what people who have not done their homework may think. The Great Pyramid was not the crowning achievement of Egyptian Architecture. The Egyptians still had two thousand years of history to go after the Pyramid was built.

I remember seeing Erich von Daniken (of ancient astronaut fame) on TV in the 90's (Ithought his theories had been discredited years ago.) on the History Channel saying that it was obvious that aliens made the pyramids because they were beyond the capabilities of humans at the time.

Not only is that an insult to humans, but if aliens built the pyramids then: They travelled billions of light years to reach earth in order to show humans how to build with stone, went through a series of trail and error to figure out how to build them, built the causeway, funarary chapel and other outbuildings as well as the workers housing.

Egyptians built mastaba, a rectangular shelter of stone above the graves of people. A guy named Zoser decided to stack mastaba on top of each other and ended up with the Step Pyramid. Next there was a guy named Sneferu who made a pyramid that is called the Callapsed Pyramid because they made a mistake in the building and it wasn't stable. Next he built a pyramid that was not anchored on solid bedrock was had a slope that was too steep. They had to change the slope at the top, thus it is called the Bent Pyramid. Finally he got it right and built the Red Pyramid.

Khufu (Cheops) was the pharoh who had The Great Pyramid built. Inside is a thing that looks very much like a sarcophagus, where he was originally buried. We don't know exactly how the pyramids were made, but they were materpieces of craftsmanship, not technology. They may have used ramps of sand, or levers. One guy even thinks they might have put cemicircular shaped wood on the stones so they could be rolled. None of these required intervention from Aliens.

In the workman's quarters archelogists have found graffitti. None of which mentions any alien overseers.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Egypt Facts

There are these people called Egyptologist who spend all their time studying ancient Egypt. These are the guys who actually dig up artifacts, sort through information, or read the hieroglyphs. The knowledge that these guys have gathered is the accumulation of the work of many people over hundreds of years. No one person makes sweeping discoveries that change everything over night. Even big discoveries like King Tut's Tomb take time to sort out. They also are subject to peer review. One person might make a claim but someone else disagrees and they argue about it. A concensus could be reached, or there will be different schools of thought.

People who call in to late night talk shows, or do specials on TV claiming that all the Egyptologist who ever lived and worked are wrong and that they know all the answers need to do their homework. Someone who has never lifted a shovel in his life needs to go to a library and read about Egypt, learn what the Egyptologist think and how they arrived at their ideas before advancing any theories that will rewrite the history books. He needs to publish his ideas, let other scrutinize them and critique, argue with those people, and support his points with verifiable facts.

Would you go to the doctor and tell him that all medical science since hypocrates is wrong and that you and you alone have somehow come upon the real knowledge of how to cure your diseases?

And actually the history books have been rewritten, if you find a text from 20 years ago and compare it with one today you'll see a lot of differences.

I have gotten warmed up, but I'll end it here for now so as not to go too long. I'm ready to do a tirade about the pyramids and the baloney that surrounds them in a later blog.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

I Used To Be Fascinated With UFOs.

I got bored with UFOs. There are so many fascinating things that are incredible that I don't need UFOs. I have also never seen any convincing evidence. There are numerous eye witness accounts, but no verifiable physical evidence that holds up to scientific scrutiny. I am amazed that a whole field of research exist where there is no shred of proof.

How do I explain eye witness accounts? Abductees show real signs of post traumatic stress syndrome and truly believe that their experience was real. I have noticed some interesting features about the most common scenario however. Usually they are minding there own business when a flying saucer appears, they are taken on board, often floating up into the craft. They are laid on a table and painfully poked and prodded by the aliens then put back where they were and left.

It seems that the experience is always unpleasant. They are taken into an unfamiliar environment by hostile beings, literally alien, then have their personal space, there very bodies, violently violated. Now I wonder, with the incredible distance that the Aliens would have to travel, and the technology necessary to do so, why would they go about doing such crude seemingly purposeless experiments? Wouldn't they have better technology where they would not have much need for sharp painful instruments. We have MRI scans. They would have better. And for a blood or tissue sample they certainly would have a means of getting those painlessly. After all, even we have anesthetics. They probably would not even need to put the person on the ship, but could use portable equipment.

And they wouldn't necessarily need to have the subject conscious, we primitives have anesthesia, wouldn't they have better? They could sneak up to the subject and do the examination without the subject knowing that anything happened.

Abductees often don't remember what happened, they just have lost time. But then they start having bad dreams then under hypnoses the story comes out. If the aliens did indeed intend the subjects to not remember then at least in some cases they are not successful. That is pretty shoddy for creatures that can travel thousands of light years. Then you might say they don't understand human physiology. Then what have they learned with all the poking and prodding?

If they were not trying to be secretive then we'd see UFO's everywhere. They should either be so stealthy that we are not aware of them, or so unconcerned that their presence is obvious, or they are stupid.

And I remember on some show, someone commenting that the aliens, after such lack of concern over the obductees well being gently put them back like tucking them in. Also if aliens wanted a specimen they could just take one.

You could explain their behavior by saying that it is alien behavior, after all aliens would act alien.

That is too easy, and too much of a catch all. My speculation is that abductees experienced something horrible, so horrible that their mind blocks it out, that their mind replaces the memory with symbolism. Like the couple who said that a group of people surrounded their car then the next thing they knew, it was hours later. Maybe it was a motorcycle gang.

Maybe the guys who were out in a boat and got taken up, maybe something bad happened. Maybe one of the guys raped the others. Interesting thing about that incident is some of the men have recanted.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I'll begin at the beginning

If the Bible started at Chapter two, this would be the creation story. God made the earth and heavens. No plants were upon the earth, and no rain. No humans existed yet. Streams came up from the earth to water the land. God creates man from the dust and breathes the breath of life into him.
God had planted a garden. He puts the man in the garden. He creates trees including the infamous one. A river flows from Eden and branches into four rivers. God appoints Man to take care of the Garden and tells him he is free to eat anything except from the infamous tree.
God decides to make a helper from man, a woman, but he is just thinking about it. God creates all the animals and brings them to Adam for him to name.
Finally God puts Adam into a sleep and makes a woman from his one of his ribs.

If we did not have the first chapter, this would be the Christian creation story. This story is a separate, contradictory account of creation, not a continuation of the first chapter. The order in which things are created is different. God creates heaven and earth first, then water, then man, then plants then animals, then woman (and woman is a second class citizen).

This is opposed to the first chapter where god creates heaven and earth, then water... then he makes ground, then he makes plants... then he makes birds and fish, then ground animals. Then finally he creates man, male and female at the same time as equals.

People say all the time "If its in the Bible I believe it." Well which of the two contradictory creation stories do you see as The Truth?