I've spent a lot of time off and on health binges - periods when I was devoted to a rigorous exercise program and diet and other periods when I let myself go entirely. The more disciplined periods tend to last for up to about a year, while the less disciplined periods may last several years. Right now, I'm several months into a tight exercise and diet program, and love it. I always love it when I get this far into it. I know I look and feel my best and sense it from everyone around me. I don't care about fashion so much, because when you're fit you look good in everything. The confidence is euphoric and comes from inside you projecting outward. My friend, Sharon, even complimented me by calling my recent performance at Squires awesome and inspiring. Jon and Lauren inquired about booking me around town. So I fully understand the psychology of physical fitness.

The first thing to keep in mind is that no amount of "will power" will overcome a poor attitude from the beginning. In psychology this is known as second order desires. "I wish I really wanted to be in better physical shape." Humans are unique in that we experience these kinds of second order desires, not merely that we want to be in better health, but that we wish we wanted to be in better health. This is a failure of attitude, because if we were sincere, then it would be a first order desire. Simply consider this, when going to the grocery store you will eventually stroll down the soda and candy isles. Before reaching for any of these items simply ask yourself if you crave them now or anticipate craving them later. If you crave something, then that's a question of will power, which is temporary, and the longer you stand in that isle the more likely you'll grab an extra package for 50% off. If you don't crave, but anticipate craving them later, then that's a question of attitude. Personally, I'll eat junk if its right in front of me, in my fridge or in my cabinets. I don't bother implementing will power. When I crave I dig in. Therefore, I develop ways of avoiding the temptation and keep nothing but healthy food in my kitchen. Outta sight, outta mind. Attitude is about thinking in advance, taking steps to avoid temptation and making no excuses. We may not be able to do much about will power, but we can adopt any attitude we like. You either have the right attitude or you don't, so don't lie to yourself and pretend you're powerless to do anything. You already know what you have to do.

Now, this is especially difficult for families, because everyone under the same roof has to be on board with the same attitude, or it just isn't going to work. So the key is to be serious and set rules that everyone has to abide by with no exceptions. These rules concern the kinds of foods that are acceptable. If you can't grow it (natural foods), then there's no room for it in the house. Create a master grocery list with this in mind and don't deviate from it. Fortunately, there is an abundance of foods that are both healthy and delicious, most of which are found around the perimeter of the store, not in the isles. Health information is easy to come by. Remember, no excuses.

I think most people are basically familiar with geometry, but here's how physicists, as well as poets and authors think of it: All geometry is basically nothing more than the study of lines and points. These lines and points are not *in* space, but are properties representing the extendedness of space. One point is zero dimensions. All of existence is thus expressed as a point of zero dimensions. A line intersecting this point rests at one right angle to it and is one dimension; thus, all of existence is expressed as a line, and that line is "finite, though unbounded" in length, because there is nothing *outside* of existence against which to determine length, and this line may have an infinity of points. If we imagine another line intersecting the first line and point at a right angle, we get 2 dimensions, or Edwin Abbot's Flatland. All of existence is then comprised of 2 dimensions. Beings living in only 2 dimensions cannot even imagine a 3rd dimension. It is totally outside of their experience, but when a being from the 3rd dimension passes their hand into flatland the inhabitants see a cross-section like that of an MRI scan coming from no where and morphing as it passes through. They see only a shadow of the mysterious 3rd dimension.
 
So, we imagine a third line intersecting both lines and the point at right angles. Now, all of existence is then expressed as three dimensions. Do we live in a 3 dimensional universe? Well, we did until developments in non-euclidean geometry in the 19th century inspired both Edwin Abbot and Einstein to recognize a 4th dimension - space/time - Like the inhabitants of Flatland, we cannot even imagine this mysterious 4th dimension, which is expressed as a line at right angles to our point and all 3 previous lines, NOT up/down, NOT left/right, NOT forward/backward. It is a line that we cannot imagine. The closest we can come to experiencing this line is when we look at our watch and realize that time is movement in tandem. It is a time-line and that even a straight line can be curved in any number of ways from one perspective and not curved from another perspective, because the curvature of a plane doesn't violate the one condition that a straight line is only the shortest distance between two points on that plane. The plane is nothing more than a "field" of perception. The most striking thing about all of this is that we may not be able to imagine higher dimensions, but we sure can speak of them and conceive them mathematically. Out of this emerges the fact that we can do more with a mathematical imagination than imagination alone.
 
 
A dream is like a river
ever-changing as it flows
and a dreamer is just a vessel
that must follow where it goes.
 
 
 
Einstein once stated that the universe was "finite, though unbounded."
 
http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/
 
 
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

Critical analysis begins with what is known in philosophy as methodic, or Cartesian doubt. Doubt everything, even your own sense impressions. After all, have you ever asked the person next to you if its hot in here? does this smell ok to you? how does this taste? We already know that our sense impressions are fleeting and seldom reliable, but methodic doubt goes further still. What about our memories? People argue all the time about what happened to who said what at the last family gathering, and seldom come to any full agreement afterwards.

As individuals, we are continuously subject to family and cultural biases working to shape us into politically compliant servants to be exploited by others. Politics is an everyday test of wills. When we see this in other communities who do not share our biases we are inclined to "civilize" them, or be civilized by them, if their technologies are superior to our own. Philosophers, however, seek to step beyond petty politics to be truly self-determined. The philosopher wants to know him/herself on a deeper level apart from the pre-established biases waiting for him/her to be born. So, how is this done?

We begin at the beginning, always. Critical analysis involves a feedback, or method of construction and deconstruction of ideas. It is a method best learned early in life while the mind is plastic and pliable. From the moment we are born our environment ceaselessly floods our senses with information, most of which we ignore and filter as signal to noise; therefore, we must learn early that we must be selective according to the things we observe and the context in which we observe them. Science is not about being right all the time. To the contrary, science is about eliminating possibilities, and therefore being wrong as often as is necessary to reach solutions. It is only out of making science a habit that it seems some individuals are more insightful than others.

So, how are we to be selective of the information that floods our senses? First comes our own immediate sense input, experience, or eye-witness accounts. Let's assume for the moment that we are viewing a preview to a new action film. The scenes are cutting second to second as good guys are chasing and fighting bad guys. In one instant we are looking down the barrel of a gun. It fires. In the next instant we see a man fly backwards from what is clearly a gun shot. Did we just see a man get shot, or did we only see a gun fire, then a man fly backwards? If we say that we saw the man get shot, then we have added surplus information to the very limited information in the preview. This kind of embellishing of eye-witness accounts occurs all the time, and is the first thing that we, as scientists must learn to remove from everyday thinking.

Secondly comes secondary resources - books, periodicals, eye-witness accounts of others insofar as the secondary resource's own sense impressions are concerned. Even a court of law will not accept as testimony one person's account of what another person thinks or was overheard to have said from someone else. There are no authorities, only other scientists of greater or lessor insight, and we don't lend any greater weight to their words than rings true to our own experience. Authors frequently change their minds, per the method mentioned above of construction-deconstruction, and the smaller meaning of a word or sentence must be considered only in the larger meaning of the book or article. Authors frequently draft, re-draft their work, have it proof-read, then make corrections. All works must be taken with a grain of salt. Classical novels in particular are usually satire or parodies written for a particular audience and contain subtle truths about life that may not be apparent until viewers themselves have had corresponding experiences.

Finally comes the mass media, which, as a larger entity, does not fall into the previous classification, because journalists, talk shows and talking heads are merely well-paid puppets of corporate entities having only one primary objective - gaining audience market share. They are not to be taken seriously as sources of insight (despite the name of your cable company), except insofar as their own corporate agendas are considered, which brings us back to your own immediate sense input.

And that is the path of the One.

Can you follow it?

Just saw Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed over a week ago. Former attorney and entertainer, Ben Stein is on a personal quest to investigate the political underbelly of the scientific community, which has aggressively ostracized many of its own members for proposing ID (Intelligent Design). Stein compares this to the bullying of Nazis v. Jews and even launches a critique against Darwinian Evolution in an attempt to suggest that it is no more scientific than ID.
 
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled
 
So, is Intelligent Design (ID) a valid scientific hypothesis? Sadly, Stein's documentary is a straw man. That is to say that he actually interviews too many people into a collage of hyperbole, rather than digging deep into the thoughts of few experts in their respective fields. Even the famous Richard Dawkins is shown in a less than flattering light without any of his deeper arguments. After all, its Stein's documentary and he'll be damned if its going to really probe the issue.
 
For a serious review of the central arguments in the debate between ID and Evolution, and the extent to which either is *scientific* I would recommend a still shorter 30 minute lecture on DVD by Professor Stephen Goldman (and every bit as jewish as Stein) from his lecture series, Science Wars: What Scientist's know and how they know it. Lecture 23 in particular addresses this issue.
 
The aggressive political nature of the debate in recent years goes back to a legal case (none of this is mentioned by Stein) McLean v. Arkansas, and later Edward v. Aguillard, which revealed an aggressive attempt by the creationist community to have their own teachings equally accepted as authoritative, but without meeting any standards for scientific rigor. At its heart, ID does not explain the causes and nature of natural phenomena so much as it explains them away. If we all just say "God did it", then game over.
 
While Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace certainly did not have all the answers, they paved the way for our current biological sciences and genetics, and their own work was built on the geological and paleontological sciences of their day. It was only after realizing that the age of the earth was far older than the biblical account that the transformation of living organisms into the myriad forms we see today could even be conceived. It should also be noted that what we have here is the shoe on the other foot nearly a century following the famous Scopes Monkey trial when evolution could not be taught in schools. The main difference is that the religious community at that time was making no concessions that evolution could be taught under any circumstances. The cases cited above do not prohibit teaching creationism under the aegis of comparative religion. The concern is that creationist educators will potentially become wolves in sheeps lab coats.
 
 
 
"How can a creature living only 70 years comprehend the changes that can occur over 70 million years?"
~Carl Sagan
 
 

"All must act as One. If One fails, all fail."
~The Keymaker, Matrix trilogy



Largely unnoticed by audiences and fans of the Matrix trilogy is the subtle nod to mathematics embedded in the plot itself. Neo is the One. Neo is also an anagram for One. More importantly, the story is about finding the One. Mathematics is a language that differs from natural languages in that it represents the framework or skeleton of reasoning apart from any meaning we impose on it. It is used as a tool to test our understanding and thereby solve problems, because the solution to any problem is in the language itself and how we characterize the problem in the first place. Isaac Newton needed to fully develop Calculus as a language for understanding motion and change. Einstein needed to develop Tensor Algebra to understand space/time relationships. Werner Heisenberg needed to develop Matrix Algebra to understand quantum mechanics. Our language is the lens through which we see the world. Even Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis employed what became known as the "talking cure."

The essence of mathematics and how it tells us more about reality than our own experiences stems from one simple rule - Holism. Holism is the essential understanding that all of existence is a continuous whole, and that the particularity and granularity of the universe is an illusion imposed by our own mortality and finite capacity as human beings to comprehend. It is this founding assumption which makes it possible to test the logic and veracity of our work in science through mathematics. The first law of the conservation of mass and energy is specific to physics, and is an essential assumption before we can even begin taking our mathematical calculations seriously. All laws in physics are really just assumptions. But they are essential assumptions from which all else we know about the universe extends. When Euclid established his Elements of Geometry around 300 BC he invented scientific rigor - the system of logical necessity that binds all we can know about lines and points to a small handful of laws of geometry. Over time, however, civilization became a victim of Euclid's success and placed his laws above scrutiny, until Lobatchevsky came along and modified one of his laws to completely reinvent geometry. This development inspired even literary artists, like Lewis Caroll (Dodgson) to send us all through the looking glass.

To see this essence more clearly consider Einstein's famous equation E = mc squared (sorry, no superscript). Now place the equation inside brackets [E = mc squared] and set the exponent to the zero (0) power. The answer is One. In fact, any equation or mathematical expression can be placed in brackets and raised to the zero power to get One. This is because the mathematical expression represents a whole of something. The number 1 is everywhere and nowhere. When we examine the variable we may typically see a coefficient, like 2x, 5x, 3y, etc..., where 2, 5 and 3 are coefficients, but we rarely see 1x or 1y. We assume the placement of the One for the coefficient, as well as for exponents and all other relations to the variable. The key to solving mathematical expressions (as in keymaker) is that all must act as One. We must sometimes recognize the placement of the One where we would not ordinarily write it in order to further reduce the expression to its final solution. It is that which is so obvious that we will tend to overlook. There are no secrets to the universe - only keys.




The Oracle: You have to.
Neo: Why?
The Oracle: Because you're The One.
Neo: What if I can't? What happens if I fail?
The Oracle: Then Zion will fall. Our time is up. Listen to me, Neo. You can save Zion if you reach The Source, but to do that you will need the Keymaker.

Well, I've made it through half of Professor Brian Greene's, The Fabric of The Cosmos, and reached a startling point at which I actually disagree with the author over a point concerning the expansion of the cosmos. My point is better explained at the link below to my own online article. In fact, Greene's earlier chapters reveal an inconsistency in his own logic.
 
The point concerns our ability to actually *know* the age of the cosmos. He cites the discovery of the uniformity of background microwave radiation across the universe, which is considered a remnant from the big bang. He states that this even uniformity across the universe makes it possible to speak sensibly of time, despite the fact that we also know that the universe is expanding in accordance to Hubble's constant (see link). 
 
http://thematrix101.com/contrib/spotter_utm.php#3
 
However, earlier in the text he explains at length one of the fundamental differences between classical (newtonian) and modern (einsteinian) physics is that Newton regarded time as absolute and space as absolute, while Einstein regarded only space/time as absolute. In other words, if space is expanding, then so is time. The notion that space can expand, while time remains constant is itself a remnant of classical thinking and it seems Brian Greene might well have made a perfectly human error in reasoning. In fact, some of the world's greatest minds have made the same error in thinking that there is any meaning to thought experiments in which the experimenter or observer is an external observer looking *into* the universe from somewhere/somewhen else. 
 
To ask "How old is the universe?" is like asking, "How long is piece of string?"
 
Anyway, please check out my new presentations at http://www.scottpotter.net/ and keep in touch.
 
~Scott

   
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/29/lkl.mccain.excerpts/index.html
 
[["McCain: Frankly, what's disturbing about it is that he signed a piece of paper back when he was a long shot candidate. And he signed it, said I won't -- I will take public financing for the presidential campaign if John McCain will. I mean, it's a living document.
He didn't tell the American people the truth. And then twice he looked into the camera when he was in debate with Sen. Clinton and said, "I'll sit down and negotiate with John McCain before I decide on public financing."
Well, he didn't tell the American people the truth. He never had any -- I'm still waiting for the call. "]]
 
 
Actually, donations coming from millions of less affluent citizens frustrated with the crisis-riddled Bush administration couldn't be more public. you can't be anymore maverickie then to take the risk of campaigning for the little guy in an election that has traditionally been all about raising the most money. The public financing system was instituted precisely so that the vast wealth of the few could not usurp the democratic process, but has had very little success in the past due to loopholes, including one that McCain himself previously supported allowing the RNC and McCain's camp to combine treasuries and afford Palin's wardrobe. The less maverickie McCain chose the safe bet of relying on the formally established public financing system, rather than placing his finger on the pulse of the nation and taking our temperature. Barack Obama was the maverick who  put the public back into public financing.

The question of voter fraud isn't to be taken lightly during any political election, particularly between closely matched candidates. It shouldn't be shocking to anyone to know that it does in fact happen and groups in both major parties are often involved. Methods range from trying to register the same voter more than once, to attempting to scare people out of voting with claims that police are waiting at the polls to serve warrants. These are old tactics and happen during most elections. Now, I've heard of news channels that claim to be fast and first with news, even 'on the scene as news happens!' However, Fox news beats them all. They report the news even before it happens with their new 2 week election forecast in a world that still hasn't mastered the 5 day weather forecast. When news breaks, they fix it. Fixed...er...I mean Fox news is already reporting VOTER FRAUD, and we haven't even had an election yet. Oddly, the only people involved in this new round of election fraud are the democrats, who are apparently not satisfied with the following facts:

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/19/obamas-fundraising-success-puts-public-financing-final-rest/
Barack Obama alone'...has developed a donor base that is comparable to what we would consider a donor base for a national political party,' said Anthony Corrado, a political scientist and an expert on political money at Colby College in Maine.

• Obama leads electoral votes with 315 to McCain's 223
• Every major poll has clearly and consistently placed Barack Obama ahead of John McCain
• Every major newspaper endorses Obama (including some notable periodicals that have never endorsed any presidential candidate before)
• Some Bush administration insiders, including Colin Powell are now publicly endorsing Obama
• Son of National Review founder, William F. Buckley endorsed Obama before resigning
• The Wall Street Journal is predicting a 'Super Majority' in the House, Senate and White House as the republican party implodes under the weight of its own indulgences

Everyone knows in what direction the political winds are blowing. Given these facts it seems rather strange that Fixed...er...Fox news would be preoccupied with voter fraud so early before an election for the first time since they've been on the air. It simply will not be a deciding factor in this election, unless it is decisively in favor of the republican party. So why do they care? 2 words: sour grapes. They know this election is over and hope, if nothing else, to bring President Obama's mandate into question. After all, just because the majority of people will elect him President doesn't mean he should be, right? If that were the case, then we might be accused of having a democracy. Apparently, as Fox news sees it the vast majority of people are involved in a vast left-wing conspiracy to elect Barack Obama President of the United States.

The son of National Review founder, William F. Buckley, has resigned from the Journal his father founded after having made the mistake of speaking his mind:
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/14/christopher-buckley-resig_n_134628.html
 
Christopher Buckley:
 
[['So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it's a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
 
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me. ']]

We live in a society that no longer questions the veracity of science. Social scientist Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) correctly predicted that the lab coat would replace the cloth and collar as the wardrobe of authority. Its amazing how people treat you when you put on a lab coat. I've often been required to wear one, particularly at Dad's clinic, but also in a chemistry lab. It reminded me of the movie, Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo Di Caprio. It also reminded me of Dr. Richard Feynman's speech on Cargo Cult Science. Both demonstrate that people will believe their eyes even without thinking critically. Seeing is quite literally believing. Is science something you can see? If so, then why couldn't most people see it before Galileo and Newton? How did they and other notable historical figures illuminate the dark ages? For that matter, did they illuminate the dark ages? Do scientific theories correspond to physical reality? If so, in what way? How about the far east? Is there a scientific tradition in Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism?
 
These are questions I will gradually address over time in short essays and blog posts. Your questions and comments about the subject will help drive the discussion along.