Bermuda - Not the Caribbean

Bermuda Flag with Union Jack and Bermuda Coat of Arms

 I had heard of Bermuda, but in my mind lumped it in the general classification of " a Caribbean Island," with steel bands and Jimmy Buffett bars. I was significantly off-target.  Barbara was given the opportunity for a free Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) cruise this year, with options including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.  Our first instinct was to jump for a cruise out of Barcelona, but the timing was not right (mainly my still being employed with substantial, but not unlimited vacation availability.)  We have never been particularly attracted to the Caribbean, but with a little investigation, it was obvious that Bermuda was altogether a horse of a different color.

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, 6-700 miles East of North Carolina, discovered by a Spanish sea captain in 1505, though never explored as the Spanish saw the multiple reefs as too dangerous for entering.  An English ship on its way to Jamestown, Virginia in 1609 was blown onto the reefs by a storm and the sailors stayed two years before rebuilding a small ship, Deliverance, which they eventually sailed on to Virginia Some sailors stayed behind, and from that grew the town of St George, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A small volcanic island in the Atlantic

 

Dockyards (Cruise Ships and fortifications) on the West end,, and St George on the East end

Bermuda, with Turquoise shallows and reefs as seen from space. (Click on Picture to enlarge)

 The Island has more in common with England than with the Bahamas; conservative, with strict drug and driving laws.  You will not wear a bathing suit into a store or restaurant, you will be summarily deported if caught with any drugs, and Bermudians have strong advantages in home purchasing, with a very few, very expensive homes bought by wealthy foreigners (Opra tried to purchase a $37M house, but after 3 years of bureaucracy gave up & bought in Hawaii instead.)  Citizenship is very difficult to obtain; if you are born there, you will be assigned the citizenship of your mother, and matrimony yields citizenship only after 10 years of continuous marriage bliss - no quickie or convenience marriages count.  Executive authority in Bermuda is vested in the Monarch and is exercised on her behalf by the Governor, who is appointed for a 4 year term. However, Bermuda is self-governed by its Parliament.  

Boston Prelude

Our NCL ship departed Boston, so we flew in a day early to insure against airplane delays and to meet with our long-time investment advisor the morning before boarding ship in the afternoon.  We did a LONG march of about 5 hours and visited a few lesser-known historic buildings, Boston Commons, Boston Garden, Boston Central Cemetery, and the memorials being left at the Boston Marathon bombing site.  Barbara's new knee was functionally normal from what I observed; great to have my walking companion back!

Panorama of the bombing memorial location near the finish line (Click on picture to enlarge)

Cruise from Boston

The ship was first-class construction and I think well-staffed.  Our 11th-deck stateroom was as large as any we have experienced.  That said, half our fellow cruisers were shabbily dressed, tended to the grossly obese, and displayed far too much tattoo-encrusted skin.   The standard restaurant food was mediocre at best, with the buffet much better.  Hamburger bars were great!  They had 6 upscale restaurants with $10-30 cover charges where the food was quite good and the atmosphere more to our taste.  Drink prices were average.  Did I mention the cruise was free?

Our ship, the Norwegian Dawn, gave us one day "at sea" on the way to Bermuda and two days "at sea" on the way back to Boston, and it served as our hotel for three days on Bermuda.

For a friend, we included "Flat Stanley" (actually a flat "Sintu"" in our trip. (click here for the Flat Stanley website)
Our cabin is partially seen, top edge/exact center of the picture.

Looking down the 8-deck high main atrium mid-ship. 
The Dawn  had no issues during our trip, but  has experienced its share of problems. 

Bermuda

We did find this a great place for historical-cultural touring.  The people of the island are uniformly friendly, skin color-blind, literate, and proud of their country.  Historical buildings and fortifications are interlaced with narrow streets and roads.  The tour books minimize the culinary experience, but thanks to a local recommendation, we had our best dining of the week in a pub slightly off the main roads (The Lobster Pot in Hamilton.)  We started with a general overview tour of the island in a mini-bus, ended with a boat tour of the local "millionare row" homes, and in between explored on our own with a ferry/bus pass and a few taxi rides.

Here are a very few pictures from three days of exploration (we took ~500 pictures - only with our iPhones - but you will not be punished with them on this blog.)  When we see you, we will want to share with you personally some stories from our experience.

Our arrival was at the Dockyards at the western tip of the Island.  You can see some of the old fortifications in the background, and the high-speed ferry approaching its dock.  (Click on picture to enlarge)

Obviously part of the British Commonwealth .

We were there during the Hibiscus blooming season.  Lots of other flowers blooming also.

Famous for its pink sand beaches.  Even though the "beach season" had started a month perviously, the water was still chilly.

Though with limited time, Barbara scoured a couple of beaches for enough "sea glass" to make a necklace for herself.

Flat Sintu with some tour and taxi drivers.  It soon became obvious to us that everyone on the island knows everyone else, and is related to many of their fellow islanders.  The 20 sq mile islands is home to only 65,000 citizens.

Originally named New London, St George was established in 1612 is the oldest continuous English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.  The town and the associated fortifications are a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The House of Assembly, the white building in the far background, was originally the only house of Bermuda's parliament, and held its first session in 1620 at St Peter's Church, moving to this building later the same year.

There is virtually no  fresh water on the island.  As a result, Bermuda's roofs have evolved over four centuries to do two things: protect houses against gale-force winds and funnel whatever the heavens rain down into large cisterns that feed household taps. By law, every house must collect 80 percent of the water that falls on its roof. To build a traditional Bermudian roof, masons mortar rectangular slabs, or "slates," of local limestone to each other over a hip-roof frame.  Along the lower edges of the roof, they sculpt a long concrete trough for a gutter, which directs rainwater to a pipe that filters it and funnels it into a cistern buried under, or occasionally alongside, the house. Then they give the whole roof structure a thin wash of cement. Finally, to keep rainwater as clean as possible on its way to the cistern, they paint the roofs with special nontoxic paint (a modern replacement for traditional lime wash), which must be reapplied every two to three years

The underside of a limestone roof.  .

Typical street in St George.

Tucker House in St. George’s was built in the 1750s. A magnificent collection of Tucker family silver, china and crystal, antique English mahogany and Bermuda cedar furniture, portraits by Blackburn, and exquisite hand-sewn quilts are some of the treasures on we did not get to view, as it was closed the day we were there.

St. Peter's Church, in St. George's is the oldest surviving Anglican church in continuous use outside the British Isles. It is also reportedly the oldest continuously used Protestant church in the New World

Triple tiered pulpit in St Peter's

Back to the Dockyards, there are excensive remaing of the ramparts and fortifications, some dating to the 17th century.  (Click on picture to enlarge)

The victualing yard (Click picture to enlarge)

Exploring some of the Dockyard ruins surrounding the victualing yard.

Gun emplacements on the ramparts  The entrance to the munition magazine is in the foreground. 

Hosting mechanism from the magazine to the cannon.

This 18 ton, rifled barrel, muzzle loading cannon could target ships as far as 5 miles offshore. (my hat on the ground for size reference.)

Behind a moat and protected wall is the "Keep" and in a elevated position within the keep is the Comissioneer's House

View from the Comissioner's house porch of the Keep Yard in the foreground, the victualing yard beyond that, and the Casemate Barracks in the background.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

The Comissioner's room on the main level.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

This is an open walk to the old Casemate Barracks.  It's nice that in some countries you are allowed personal responsibility . . . there were several mildly dangerous place on these old walls that would have kept it closed in the U.S.  Same for a number of other areas on the ramparts where without some attention you could fall many yards onto stone.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

The Casemate barracks were used as a high-security prison for a decade, and then abandoned.  They are currently undergoing archaeological study before restoration.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

The clocktower building has a standard clock on the left, and a tidal clock on the right.  (Click picture to enlarge.)

Just before leaving, we did a tour, from the water, of the coves along "millionaire's row".There are indeed Bermudian millionaires and billionaires here, but the foreign billionaires mostly live in  a closed, gated compound on Tucker's Point. (Click picture to enlarge.)

WE WILL BE BACK (but probably not on a cruise; for more time to explore and experience, we will fly in and stay on the island the next time.)

The "Whats" and the "Hows"

Many of you will remember from your younger days the "relationship" questions you faced on some standardized test to which you may have been subjected.  Here is one such question I just created:

Charles Darwin is to James Watson & Francis Crick, as the Bible Book of Genesis is to:

A.  Jesus Christ

B.  Billy Graham, Divinitatis Doctors

C.  Hawkins and Krauss, Doctors Philosophiae

D.  The Biblical book of Revelation

Marked your answer? 

OK, let's take the first part of the question; what is the relationship of Darwin to James Watson and Francis Crick?  As we all know, Charles Darwin was the first to suggest, as was later established by DNA analysis, that the incredible variety of plants and animals present on this planet is the result of differentiation by "evolution," a process which Darwin linked to the ability of those best adapted to their environments to pass on their characteristics to their progeny (sometimes mistakenly referred to as "the survival of the fittest".)  

Evolution as a theory had been controversial for many years after Darwin, in large part due to the lack of a scientific explanation of the process for differentiation and transmission to progeny.  His observations were clearly presented, but how had this process occurred?  If you could not explain how evolution could occur, then instantaneous creation of life in all its varied forms by "God" seemed an equally reasonable alternative.  

In 1953, in what is considered the most respected scientific journal in the world, Nature, two scientist, James Watson and Francis Crick, published their paper "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" and the how of evolution was revealed to the world (a different form of "revealed" truth.)  Subsequent research with DNA analysis over following decades confirmed what Darwin had predicted more than a hundred years previously.

So, the relationship question in the first part of the statement as I see it is:  Darwin demonstrated to the world WHAT happened, and later Watson and Crick demonstrated to the world HOW it happened.

So, the question could be restated "If Genesis tells us that the world was created from a "void," then who can tell us how it happened?"  

Genesis says "the earth was without form, and void was on the face of the deep"  and "God created the heaven and the earth."  This is one of several "ex nihilo" traditions, very similar to Sumerian and Egyptian creation myths.  Since there has to be something from which the earth (and the cosmos) can be created, and some initial cause, then an infinitely existing god seemed a reasonable candidate for the "how" of creation.  After all, you can not create "something" from "nothing," or can you?

Now, from the world of cosmology, astrophysics, and quantum mathematics, emerges what may be the answer to what many have considered the ultimate question . . . how did "this" all come to be, unless it was a supernatural creation by God?  The answer is perhaps a summation of many minds interacting in a community of science, but I suspect the principle names my grandchildren will read of are Stephen Hawkins and Lawrence Krauss, as these two have separately published writings accessible to the average person who is willing to spend a bit of time grasping the concepts they have laid forth in their recent books.  They showed that a true void, "nothing, no space, no matter, not even time" is a very unstable state that will quickly degenerate into "something."  The resulting universe will violate no laws of physics . . and in fact the sum total of energy in our universe is . . . zero . . . . i.e. nothing!

Each of these brilliant minds have shown that, while not disproving that a god created the universe, such a divinity is not necessary.  You really can get "something from nothing," as difficult as the concept may seem on it's surface.  It is both how and why we have "things" rather than "no thing."   I believe it was either A.C Grayling or Betrand Russell who pointed out that the fundamentals of any religion can be explained to someone in 30 minutes, but it takes a lot longer and a lot more discipline for someone to study and grasp the science that brings understanding of how "things" exist.  

On The Origin of Species was such a blow to the creation myth, that now, after a century of denial, even the Vatican officially endorses the phenomena.  I suspect that eventually science will convince the Catholic church that, like evolution, a natural explanation for how the universe came into being, including the "Big Bang," will be accepted, even if clothed in religion as a way through which God acted at the origin.

The correct answer is, of course "C."

2012 in Retrospect

John and Barbara's  2012

First Grandchild Maya, London East End, Christmas in Colorado, Thanksgiving in Tucson, a new battery for John, and a new knee for Barbara.  Add in work, bridge, cooking,  jewelry-making, and side trips, and it was again a full year.

We started 12 months ago with a 2011 family Christmas in Estes Park.  Karen, Brian, Matt, and Rachael flew in early, and there was a short appearance by Anne and RC.   The weather cooperated with a beautiful snowfall, providing the opportunity for some to snowshoe the Emerald Lake trail in Rocky Mountain National Park on a bright sunny day (common) without wind (not so common.)  The usual wildlife was accented by watching a bobcat nap right under Karen's bedroom window, so close you could touch it but for the glass!

In the spring of 2010 Barbara had bought (at a great price) a week in a London Condo through a silent auction in Palm Desert, but we could not get the time free until January.  We were a little concerned about doing this in the winter, but from experience knew the weather could not be too terrible.  The good thing about flying to Europe in winter is that we managed to get tickets with frequent flyer miles.  To simplify things and spare Barbara's arthritic knee, I arranged for a driver to meet us at Heathrow and take us directly to Ipswich in East Anglia where Barbara was going to start some genealogy research.  He dropped us at the Ipswich genealogy center for the afternoon returned later that evening to take us on to our Hotel in Lowestoff on the East Anglia coast, where Barbara planned additional genealogy research. As it turns out, David, our driver was from one of the small towns from which Barbara's ancestors immigrated, and his mother was also a Dickerson; so he and Barbara were almost certainly related. Small world!  Before taking the train to London, we had a wonderful evening with some of our daughter in law's English uncle and grandmother. (Here is the post for that trip.)

The flat we had for the week was in East London, and even though we had lived in England for three years and have visited London numerous times since, this was a whole new part of the city for us to explore.  The “East End” is historically, socially, economically, and culturally complex.  Over 100 languages and dialects are spoken in this area. Our condominium was close to the large East London Mosque, as well as next to an historic Jewish synagogue.  Barbara, of course, found a theme to guide our explorations - Jack the Ripper.  We explored alleys where murders occurred, pubs that were inns occupied by prostitutes and victims of the times, and the Spitafield church where prostitutes were offered shelter in its basement.  There were only a few typical English pubs remaining in this area, but restaurants serving foods of Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe were numerous . . . and delicious!

Clive Moore, a dear friend we first met almost 40 years ago in England, made a trip into the city, allowing us to have a wonderful day with him.  We were also hosted by an online physician friend of John's,  Anthony and Christine Campbell, for a most enjoyable dinner. ( Anthony's blog - http://www.acampbell.org.uk/serendipity/ )  Brian Bruns, a young man who spent much time in our house as a friend of our children in high school and who is sort of a second son to us was in London to receive a literary prize, so he took the spare bedroom of our condo and spent 3 days with us.  It was on this trip that Barbara realized that she had finally become limited in travel by her arthritic right knee, and it was time to do something about it beyond the injections which had provided only temporary relief.  More details and some pictures of this trip are available in John's blog ( http://blipsinthecosmos.blogspot.com/2012/02/back-to-uk.html ). 

In February and March we returned again to our RV Park in Palm Springs, with John commuting to work in Iowa. Local trips included a drive to San Diego so we could spend some time with Barbara's brother Martin, who had come down from Alaska. On our return to Iowa, we stayed two weeks in Tucson at Catalina State Park.

We returned briefly to Phoenix in May for Anne's graduation from Mesa community college (she is now finishing her bachelor's degree at Northern Arizona University,) and in June made a fun weekend run to Joliet and Chicago. John also had a new pacer battery pac installed.  The first one only lasted 7 years, but after its first check, the new one says it will last 12 years. While Barbara started preparations for her knee replacement on August 7, John flew to Portland, for a short but wonderful visit with Matt and Rachael during Fleet Week and the Rose Festival.

In early August, Karen flew out from Tucson and kept Barbara distracted for several days prior to surgery, and flew home two days after surgery. After that, Anne and Dana Fritz separately came to Cedar Rapids assisting Barbara's recovery.  (John did a few weeks of laundry, cooking, and personal assisting as well.)  The rehabilitation for knee surgery is a long and arduous process and continues even today, but she has worked diligently and is doing very very well.  We also had wonderful visits from cousin John and Donnice Cochenour from Ft. Collins Colorado, and from Rod and Char Mann, friends that date back to Air Force days in San Antonio in 1978.  In October, as Barbara continued her convalesence, John drove to Estes Park for a week to check on things and visit with friends.

This November, we rented a house for three weeks in north Tucson and hosted a  family Thanksgiving reunion.  Matt and Rachael flew down from Portland, and Anne and RC drove down from Chandler.  Our first grandchild (adopted) was born on October 23, and went home with Karen and Brian on October 24, Karen's birthday.  Adding to the festivities, Brian Bruns drove down from Las Vegas for a few days. On Thanksgiving Day, our family joined Ron and Judy Longenbaugh and a number of their family members for a big Thanksgiving feast at their house; it was a lot of fun.

John is working through Christmas and New Year's holidays this year, it's his turn, so we will take the opportunity to hole up in our nice warm condo and scheme for the coming year.

Our best wished for each and everyone of you this year; we keep you close in our hearts.

John & Barbara

On the Conneticut School Shootings

On the conservative American Family Radio, Brian Fischer blamed the lack of prayer in public schools for the tragic shooting “And I think God would say to us, ‘Hey I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve gotta invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted.’”

Also, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee opined on FOX News “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," . “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Are they suggesting that God "allows" the slaughter of school children just because they don't pray to him/her in the classroom? This threatening, fearsome deity full of hate and retribution to which they refer is the god of the religious right, but not my god, and I suspect not the god of many Christians.  It seems logical that (paraphrasing Epicurus) if God could have stopped this and didn't, then he/she is a malevolent, vindictive, petty god, and certainly does not deserve my worship.  If  unable to stop it, then he/she is certainly not omnipotent.  In either case, why call him/her God?

As for returning "God" to the classroom, which god should be returned?  The Catholic god?  The (non-Christian) Jewish god?  Allah?  The pantheon of countless Hindu gods and goddesses (after all, Hinduism is the worlds 3rd largest religion)? Buddha (actually a philosophy)?  Wodan/Odin?  Or perhaps the god of Religious Humanism?  Our country's founders were careful to keep affairs of state independent of religion; they had seen the evils perpetrated by the alignment of kings and clerics, as well as the suffering by members of religious minorities in the presence of state-sanctioned majorities.  Tolerance and inclusion become exclusion and conversion.  Look what happened to native American religions in the 19th century when we put their children in schools where their native beliefs were severely suppressed and replaced with Catholic or Protestant indoctrinations.

Yes, we have some bad people perpetrating tragedies in this country and in the rest of world, but edging towards a state-sanctioned religion and eventual theocracy would bring more strife and death; just look at conflicts around the world where religion is tied to governance: Muslim-Jewish, Sunni-Shia, Christian-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim, Buddhist-Hindu, etc, etc.  This is not the time to seek governmental endorsement of any particular faith/religion.  We should remain a pluralistic, multi-religious (and non-religious) society wherein every citizen can maintain his/her own religious belief with the protection, but without the endorsement, of our government.  

The Days Are Getting Shorter

Fall landscape from my living room window 

PART I

As I approach my 68th year, the changing of the seasons takes on more poignancy in the fall, as, like the accelerated shift from long days to long nights, my body reveals in not so subtle ways the results of years of molecular corrosion and aging. If nothing else, it prompts reflection of years past, and adds just a bit of urgency for actively, more than passively, making ongoing decisions about life, love, work, learning, and creation.

To this point, I feel some satisfaction, convinced, or possibly deluded, that I have more often than not taken advantage of opportunities that were presented over the years.  Most satisfying has been the daily co-existence for 4+ decades with my best friend and wife, and the knowledge that the world will be better for the presence of our 3 children.  The chance to be educated was taken, and over the last 45 years I never woke in the morning dreading or resenting going to work, for it has remained interesting and challenging for all that time, and it remain so to this day.  Of course, the move from sharecropper to physician in 3 generations was entirely made possible by the middle generation, my parents, and is perhaps more their credit than mine.  Now, having transitioned to part-time work, I enjoy the absolute best of both worlds:  the excitement and rewards of my profession, yet with enough time and income to travel, read, and do all those things that most must postpone until official retirement.

As a "free-range" youth living in a tiny, remote west Texas town, I explored the low hills, stream beds, and mesas of the desert southwest with little restraint, feeling comfortable with the flora and fauna of the dry land, re-creating in my mind the lives of those who left the flint arrowheads I collected, watching the slow progression through the cloudless day of shadows so well-defined the edges seemed sharp enough to cut, and from a rise in the landscape watched tornadoes given life by a weather front cross the plane of the horizon.  Texas is a huge state, and I have lived in and explored not only its semi-arid plateaus and deserts, but also the piney woods, the grasslands of its south, the gulf coast, and the urban centers of north Texas.  Friends, enmities, and loves were encountered; some of each persisted as others drifted beyond my presence.

Married and later widowed, I was then gifted with a spouse who was fiercely devoted to family, but also to experiencing the world, and who was not only willing to roam, but who pushed, cajoled, and lead me to experiences in 49 of our states, Canada, and most of western Europe and Scandinavia.  I held hands with my best friend as she gave birth to our children and shared their many ups and downs as they became adults, I shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the time of the Camp David peace talks, drank Georgian sparkling wine in Leningrad at the height of the cold war while the temperature hovered at 50 below in the Russian winter, was included as family for a 5-day wedding celebration in Provence, watched bald eagles mate in the sky in Kodiak Alaska, ran aground on the Danube River, helped  a family reunion take place in rural Norway, warmed myself with hot coffee in Colorado and in Canada as the rising sun spread over Rocky Mountain peaks, watched the tidal bore in the Bay of Fundy, was awed by the stars at altitude in the dry, dark New Mexico highlands, stared at the blue Cherenkov radiation glowing in the core of a nuclear reactor, saw dolphins playing in the coastal California surf, read many wonderful books, had a lifetime of professional work, and a thousand other things.  Surely this has been enough.  If I don't explore Angkor Wat, see the Taj Mahal at sunrise, or stand at the edge of Victoria Falls, there will be no regrets, because there were only a few misused opportunities.  

Along the way I tried to live by the Golden Rule, failing far more often than I like to admit to myself, especially in the early years, but I suspect this simple philosophy is enough for a Humanist.  Others have seen and done more during their lives, but many have experienced far less. I remain ready for more, and I certainly hope for more, but with no anxiety that I haven't experienced enough already.

PART II

I take great solace in the knowledge that my existence is a small, but integral component of processes evolving since the big bang, and as the universe spins on I am playing my part to the best I can.  I am more of an environmentalist every year.  We watched the vixen that raised her pups in the hill below us for two seasons until, sadly, adjacent street construction destroyed their den.  Her care of, and I suspect concern for the pups was in many ways little different from that of human mothers.  I don't know, but I imagine that in the pantheistic, pre-Christian old world (and perhaps in pre-Colombian America) people felt more related to their surrounding world and less superior to its non-human inhabitants.  "No man is an island," and  that extends to our whole earth.  Growing up in concrete and steel urban environments as do so many of the current generation, empathy with nature comes less naturally.  For myself though, with the polar bears, elephants, whales, tigers, and assorted other creatures, not to mention plants, disappearing, I feel a kinship with the threatened and therefore experience a sense of loss and an impotence to do anything about it.  I am not above, but a part of, the natural universe.

When my time is over I will not be aware of events, but I would like to return as simply as possible to this earth, and with as little injury to it as possible, perhaps only with only an unadorned wood box, or even just a biodegradable shroud, and no concrete vault.  My elements would drift into the soil, be recycled by the bottom of the food chain, and keep recycling until drifting ultimately into the oceans, from which life likely originally started on this planet.  This might require short-term refrigeration rather than embalming, but such burial arrangements will be challenging in this day and age, in this country, particularly as a national cemetery may host my internment, so I will not hold my survivors to this task if it proves difficult.

PART III

I view my conscious self as the sum product of my physical mind; I am not a dualist.  Any surviving "soul" or "spirit" I would view as simply the totality of changes in friends, family and other individuals, and thereby on society, that result from my existence.  In my mind I keep hearing a song by Steve McDonald (Link to Music  or Video).  (shared, as most of my music experience has been, from my wife.)

So neither fearful of nor anxious for the end, as I enjoy memories, I still need to make the best of what is left.  "Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.  When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." - Marcus Aurelius.

Cosmological Quartet

A course on astrophysics and cosmology in four books
  

THE other day I was talking to a friend about the Chandra x-ray telescope currently in orbit and the images constructed from that data from photons that had traveled 12 billion light years across the universe from a colossal energy emitting source. My friend challenged "they don't know that's where those came from, they could've come from 1000 miles away or from the sun. They just have no way of knowing that they started 12 billion light years away!"  this was a very intelligent friend, and I was shocked that my friend would not simply accept these observations as fact.

I have often been concerned, though without thinking very deeply, that some people reject so easily what I consider scientific fact, including a 13 billion-year-old universe, a 6 billion-year-old Earth, the appearance of life on Earth about 3 billion years ago, the appearance of primates about 60 million years ago (after the dinosaurs had disappeared,) and the evolution of humans during this multi-billion year process. If you have no formal education or self-education in this area of science, perhaps one sees no reason to accept these things as something other than "opinion" of some scientists in a remote observatory.

I was at somewhat of a loss as I tried to formulate my response to this challenge to something I really had no question of in my own mind.  My education spans almost a half-century of chemistry, physics, and biologic sciences education. In recent years I have read a number of books that, while directed at the lay population, are reasonably sophisticated in the subject matter that they address; my favorite four are pictured above. I founded a near impossible task to try to abbreviate that background into a short, understandable response to my friends challenge.

These four books are an excellent resource for understanding this incredible universe in which we exist, and I think they are best read in order, from left to right as presented above. Indeed, the three on the left have all been discussed in previous postings on this blog.  I most recently finished the fourth book, Gravity's Engines, and I find it an excellent complement to the first three.  Caleb Scharf, the Arthur, is director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center and has written a number of books directed both at scientist and at the lay public.  Gravities Engines is nominally about black holes, but encompasses a general discussion of a much broader astrophysics world in order to lay the groundwork establishing the importance of these mysterious entities in the creation and maintenance of our universe.

Everyone of course has heard of black holes. In the Star Trek universe from television or the movies, these are mysterious entities with such gravitational pull that nothing can escape but perhaps provide access to "wormholes" through which a different universe can be reached. In actuality, not only are these very complex structures, with various interesting theories regarding their origin and formation, but they also provide a source of almost unimaginable energy projected into the universe and are probably of critical importance in the formation of galaxies such as our Milky Way and it's 100 billion or so stars.  they can be visualized as dots of whirling vortices intensely deforming space time with a mass equivalent to billions of our sun, but compressed to a diameter much smaller than the Earth. The gravity from this mass, which is spinning at close to the limits of theoretical possibility, is such that within a certain distance, not even light can escape its pull.  However,this is a vast oversimplification, and the processes occurring during the accumulation of mass by the black hole and the complex events happening at the event threshold throwing huge beams of matter outwards, generating massive amounts of secondary radiation, and affecting rather dramatically the local cosmic structures while giving scientists (with appropriate information gathering instruments) new insights into the origin and nature of these "black stars."

(As an aside, there is a wonderful, well illustrated resource regarding the general topic of "stars" in a wiki site here.)

Sir Arthur Clarke, British scientist, writer, and futurist is famous for many things, including "Clark's laws". The third law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  I would suggest that the term "sufficiently advanced" is relative to the observer of that technology, and it is indeed difficult to discuss the practical or even philosophical implications of something when one party finds it indistinguishable from magic.

I did read another book recently, Before the Big Bang:  the Prehistory of our Universe, but I found it a bit repetitive, poorly focused, with some strange opinions that are at the fringe, if not completely at odds with generally accepted origin concepts.  I do not recommend it.

It's time to conclude my astrophysics and cosmology reading for a while. I want to go back and find some interesting books on world history or some new twist on theology or philosophy. Of course, there is a great deal of excellent fiction writing out there, and I need to pay a bit more attention to worthwhile reading in that genre than I have in recent months.

In the child, the man

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. - Proverbs 22:6


Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher observed that

…the experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience, or as it were, the categories according to which all later things are classified—not always consciously, however. And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and there with as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed.

My childhood years, one might think, might have led to someone very different from my current self, since I grew up in the household of a preacher and a very religious mother. On the surface, attending church events multiple times a week for the better part of two decades, participating or hearing prayers before every meal, and spending more than the average amount of time in the company of other preachers families, would seem to have oriented me towards a very religious-based life. However, it seems I was never hyper-religious, even as a schoolboy before I left for college.

Referring back to Schopenhauer's comments, I would agree that "in our childhood years the foundation is laid for our later view of the world" but once I critically look deeper at my upbringing, it makes it easier to understand my adult philosophy. First of all, my mother, while very religious, was also well-educated. If there was a conflict between a biblical verse and science, she always accepted science and religious dogma had to adapt. My father, in the meantime, was incredibly well-read, not only in theology, but also in philosophy, world history, and in general science. My parents did provide the customary encyclopedia in our house (at no small expense to their budget) and a steady supply of magazines including life, National Geographic, popular mechanics, and popular science, at least providing the opportunity to expand the depth and breath of my young mind.

So when you really look at my upbringing, it was clearly within a deeply religious environment, but also with the opportunity, or even the obligation, to open my mind, exercise rationalism, and go wherever it took me. This opportunity, and implied permission, to travel the journey with knowledge and rationalism as my map and guidepost was perhaps my parent's greatest gift.

POSTSCRIPT

I need to make one additional comment about the importance of "thinking" in my father's philosophy.  I have a copy of his Thesis, about the book of Job and titled "Job and the Moral Right to Think."  In the final pages he comments:

The evidence leads to the conclusion that God approved of Job, the independent thinker, and condemned Job's friends, who would hold to traditional ideas about God's dealings with man without subjecting them to honest intellectual inquiry." 

and

"Job teaches that true religion is more than a formal system of ideas, beliefs, or practices.  This was the prevalent conception of religion among Job's contemporaries:  religion involved an acceptance of the traditional beliefs and ideas and the practice of the customary ritual.  Religion for Job was an honest intellectual search for truth based on personal experience."

So, you see I come by it naturally.  (I wrote about my father more directly in a post from Oct 2010, The Rev John Lewis Floyd - A Green Minister?).

Who to vote against?

It is that time again; the presidential election is upon us,and I must decide who I will vote against. 

As usual, the media debate will be limited to major party politicians. The last time there was a real third choice, Ross Perot and Adm. James Stockdale were allowed to participate in the debates, and I thought it added great flavor to the election season, as these two people were totally unafraid to say exactly what they thought, and often demonstrated that the Emperor (the major candidates) had no clothes. In fact, it was so upsetting to the powers that be, that the League of Women Voters have excluded a third-party from participating in the debates ever since. 

the upcoming presidential election is, with the selection of Paul Ryan for vice president candidate, the first time in several decades where the country is presented clearly two choices;
1. Candidates who firmly believe the country is best served by substantial intervention by the federal government in the economy of the nation and, through taxation and redistribution of material resources, provide for the needs and happiness of the citizen general, or
2.  Candidates who find intervention in a free market, capitalistic society by the federal government to not only be intrusive but also counterproductive to the overall good of the citizen general.

As a third option, the Libertarian party always gets my interest, especially following an encounter with a middle or lower-level bureaucrat who has total control over some part of my life, and uses that power aggressively, and often without logic, either for fear of  straying from instructions from higher up, or simply to relish that small bit of power that they have been allowed one part of their life. The nexus of the Libertarian party with the Democrats tends to be in social issues, and the nexus of the Libertarian party with Republicans tends to be on (absence of) taxation issues. Of course, no one would want to live in a totally Libertarian state, anarchy is never attractive. a nice discussion. I found within a reasonably small book an excellent discussion of libertarianism a few years ago: What It Means to Be a Libertarian by Charles Murray.

So, putting the Libertarian option behind me, my choice comes down to the obvious; Democrat versus Republican; or acid is sometimes put "trickle up" economics versus "trickle down" economics. Among all of the economic philosophers from Aristotle, through Adam Smith, and Karl Marx, I think we are basically talking about the standoff between John Maynard Keynes and Frederick Hayek.

Keynes, a British economist publishing between the two world wars, proposed government economic intervention as necessary for citizens individually as well as the country as a whole.  Frederick Hayek, an Austrian, had been recruited by the London school of economics as a free-market economic theorist who would counter the rising popularity of Keynes at Oxford.  The economic debate began before, and extended through, the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany, but the debate and the divide persist as strongly as ever today.  I read two books recently regarding economics first is Friedrich Hayek's original book, the Road to Serfdom, and the second is a more recent publication by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky (a father-and-son/economist-and-philosopher combination) How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life.

A recently published a book by Kensian biographer and experts Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky (a father-and-son/economist-and-philosopher combination) How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life  is actually quite deep and not quickly read.  Their thesis is that free-market capitalism has permitted many countries to have a gross national product that can provide for the needs of all of its citizens, but that this was obtained with a Faustian agreement, as capitalism, as an economic philosophy, contains no ethics or morality inherently. The problem, as they see it, is that economic growth has become an (insatiable) end in itself, unrelated to any sense of what a good life might look like. In fact, the very idea of the good life has been so eliminated from public conversation that we are left floundering with a vague theory of happiness, a more definitive understanding proving insatiable and elusive.  we certainly have enough wealth to provide for the basic needs of everyone in the population, but the distribution of that wealth has become very asymmetrical, and the drive to accumulate more wealth has become insatiable, because there is no longer a link to the goods and services individuals require such as food, shelter, safety, health care, etc. This is perhaps best exhibited in the hedge fund and derivatives markets where the item of accumulation (a "share") is so far removed from any specific a good or service that it is meaningless as anything other than a marker for "success."  they point out that when you survey for "happiness" the societies that rank highest on the scale are those societies with the narrowest distribution of wealth, as long as the country is not sunk in overall poverty (most notably seen in the Scandinavian countries.)while they do not advocate socialism, collectivism, or central control of the economy, they certainly advocate for relatively high tax rates and central government actions that provide a minimal level of economic security for every citizen.  The book argues that progress should be measured not by the traditional yardsticks of growth or per capita incomes but by the seven elements of the good life: health; security; respect; personality; harmony with nature; friendship; and leisure.  They make a series of sensible suggestions for how the good life could be attained: a basic citizens income, an expenditure tax and curbs on advertising to rein in consumerism; a Tobin tax on financial transactions. It is a well-written book with lots of charts and data to support the arguments.

Frederick Hayek is no Ayn Rand, but does argue that allowing the central government to use taxes to redistribute money, either as cash payments or provision of free or subsidized services to the general citizenrys is a slippery slope. He regards the competition of free-marked capitalism as superior to Socialism, Communism, collectivism, etc. not only because in most circumstances it is the most efficient method known but because it is the only method which does not require the coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.  His book also is not an easy read, and I am certainly not confident that I understood completely his thesis.  He argues that freedom is not provided by a state assuring economic success for everyone but by letting the power of capitalism have free reign.  "Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?"  Actually, Hayek does not argue that the state has no obligation to providea minimum level of assistance.  "But there are two kinds of security: the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all and the security of a given standard of life, of the relative position which one person or group enjoys compared with others. There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision."  Furthermore he states, "The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition."   However, were Hayek alive today, he no doubt would point to the current economic crisis in Greece and other Western European countries as prime examples of the danger inherent in government income redistribution.  

 As I stated at the beginning, I'm left pretty much with a decision as to who I vote against.

I will not vote Libertarian, since, among other things, the Libertarian candidate while strongly upholding rights of the individual to be free from government control, also considers a fetus to have "personhood" and would use the power of the government to prevent a pregnant woman from undergoing abortion.  To me, this denies the individual rights of the pregnant mother and refutes the whole basis of libertarianism.

Mitt Romney Paul Ryan are I believe most likely to advance the gross domestic product of our country, but I think they are also most likely to aggravate the asymmetrical distribution of income between the common citizen and the rich. We already are in danger of becoming a plutocracy, and I think their philosophy of unrestrained capitalism will accelerate this process. If, eventually, the wealthy few possess the vast majority the nation's wealth, revolution in some form will be inevitable. I also think some of their ideas are flawed. Take health care for example. The Ryan plan is to replace Medicare, Medicaid, etc. with a voucher program, giving each individual a certain amount of credit to take to the marketplace and purchase health insurance. This will leave many people inadequately insured or completely uninsured, since it does absolutely nothing to control the accelerating cost of healthcare, only partially subsidizes the cost of health insurance, and does absolutely nothing to contain the rampant greed of the giant health care insurance companies. This I am certain of, since I have observed how the healthcare market works both as a provider and as a consumer. (see my blog postregarding the Ryan healthcare plan that I posted on April 29, 2011.)