Sunday, July 15, 2007

Dinosaur Safari

I got my dinosaur safari. At least, as much as I'm likely to get any time soon. Had more dreams of dinosaur attacks, possibly while Mega Disasters: Asteroid Apocalypse was on the TV while I was napping. Later, The Lost World: Jurassic Park came on. So I got my donosaur safari. Big game hunter Roland Tembo apparently has no basis in real life.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Man Crush

Man-Crush on Ted Nugent
I think I got a Man-Crush on Ted Nugent. He's been on The Fox at least a couple of time. And he's been on Hannity & Colmes a couple of times. I can't believe The Ted pissed off Alan so much he cut him off in mid-sentence. You da man, Ted! I like what Ted has to say.

I was having nightmares of being trampled by big animals. So I turned it into a dream of going on a hunting safari. I want to go on a safari with Ted Nugent. Some day, before my life is over, I vow that I will go on a safari with Ted Nugent. So I went to Ted Nugent's web site, and he hosts safaris! You da man, Ted, but that's just a bit too spooky.

Another Fred Thompson Fact
Monsters hide under the bed because they're afraid of Fred Thompson.

Could Fred Thompson Be Gay???
Say it isn't so! I can't believe that. I know of one good place to verify such an unfounded rumor. I know Frank J. has a man-crush on Fred Thompson. That's where I get all the Fred Thompson Facts. No mention of Fred Thompson being gay. Just lots of mention of John Edwards being famous for lots of suspiciously gay-like facts.

Could I be gay because I have a man-crush on Ted Nugent? Let's check. I'll close my eyes and think of Floorwax naked... Floorwax naked... Floorwax naked... GAAAGHHH! I just threw up a little in my mouth. I guess not. Maybe it's just Ted Nugent. Ted Nugent naked... Ted Nugent naked... Ted Nugent naked... EWWWW!!! LEMME OUTA HERE! Same thing. Okay, now lets see... Kathy Lee naked... Kathy Lee naked... Kathy Lee naked... mmmm yummm, slurp! I guess it's settled then. It's down to Andrew Sullivan and John Edwards.
(Thanks: Van Helsing)

Saturday, July 07, 2007

The Numerology Falacy

July 7, 2007 -- 07/07/07. The 7-7-7 date of the 21st century. The 21st century being the product of 7 X 7 X 7. The newspapers are filled with stories of weddings being heavily booked for this day. Stock market analysts are recommending online wedding planner, The Knot, Inc. (KNOT). At least one metaphysical website is discussing the magical energies released by the mystical 7-7-7 date. And there's the Live Earth concerts kicking off today.

News analysts are hearkening to the two year anniversary of the infamous attacks in London on this day. Numerologically, 07/07/2005 was also a 7-7-7 date. Will this 7-7-7 bring some new world-altering event? We experienced the 6-6-6 date on June 6, 2006, and nothing extraordinarily evil happened on that date. What makes these dates so significant?

It's my contention that numerology, magic numbers and so forth are self-perpetuating artifacts of human culture. They have such truth to them only because people believe in them, pay attention to the supporting evidence, and disregard contrary evidence.

Numbers, as we know them are represented by the symbolism of numerals. A visual mnemonic that is associated with a specific quantity. The evidence is obvious that the arabic numeral system, and for that matter the Roman numeral system, is based on the fact that human beings have ten fingers. I propose that when primitave cultures invented numeral systems, they began by counting on their fingers, and created symbols to represent the quantities.

Imagine, if you will, an alien race from the planet Zork. These beings have three hands, with four fingers on each hand. Counting on their fingers, they would have to "carry the one" and start over when they reach the quantity that we call twelve. They would have a base twelve number system. A race with seven fingers on each of two hands would have a base fourteen number system. A quadruped race that counted with four fingers on each of their four limbs would have a base 16 (hexadecimal) system.

When our hexadecimal digited counterparts encountered us, they would have to make some numeric conversions. I have a calculator that does just that, designed for computer programmers. Not to say that computer programmers are hexadecimal digited. It's just that hexadecimal is the most convenient conversion for the binary (base two) system that is indigenous to the design of digital computers.

But getting back to the numerology thing, the symbolism doesn't translate across number systems. The common practice in numerology is to reduce numbers by repeatedly summing the digits until a single digit is obtained, and then describing the mystical symbolism of that digit. Thus 43 becomes 7; 88 becomes 16, which becomes 7, etc. But when you convert number systems and do this, the sums of digits doesn't translate. 43 (base 10) becomes 2B (hexadecimal), which then becomes D, which is 13 (base 10). Anything that reduces to a digit above 9 in hexadecimal doesn't convert to a single base 10 numeral, let alone the same value. In binary, every number reduces to the digit 1. The numerology of reduction doesn't translate across different base number systems.

Dates have a problem in translation too. The date 07/07/07 is based on the Gregorian calendar. The year in this calendar system is inaccurately based on the birth of Jesus. If Pope Gregory XIII had used some other year as the traditional birth of Jesus, this would be some year other than 2007. And what about the months? The number of days in the months appears to be somewhat arbitrary. If a month is supposed to approximate one lunation, then the seven day week could be derived as one fourth of a 27 day, 7 hour lunation. But the periodicity of the lunar cycle is peculiar to our own moon of Earth. And the length of our year is peculiar to the sideareal orbital period of our planet.

If our alien counterparts were from Mars, their year would be 687 days, their day would be 37 minutes longer than ours. Who knows what historic event would be the basis for their year zero. And what about months? With two moons, they could have a month system based on one moon or the other, both, their conjunction, or a double overlapping month system.

The result of this analysis is that number and date systems are both a result of our human experience on this planet. While numeric quantities are universal, number systems are dependent on our expression of our symbolic numeral system. Numerology is not a universal truth, but an expression of particular human beliefs, culture and history. The assertion that there is some mystical power to magical numbers and dates such as 7-7-7 and 6-6-6 is simply misleading.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

More Boulder Moonbattery

(The) One thing I learned from Loral Langemeier's business building programs was to focus on revenue producing activities. That's why I haven't been blogging much lately. But some days, the moonbattery gets so thick, as Bert Deckers says "you could cut it with a chainsaw."

Independence Day seems to be a day for the nuts to come out and protest our independence. Boulder celebrated their right to tax carbon emissions by exploding exotic pyrotechnics that filled the sky with smoke.

Boulder Colorado. Where the Nutty Professor, Ward Churchill gets paid by our taxpayers to teach kids that employees in the World Trade Center deserved to die on 9/11/2001. Where investigators were powerless to solve the murder of Jon Benett Ramsey, even when John Mark Carr came forward and admitted to the crime. Where a seven week old baby is beaten to death for crying, and the murderous parents are turned loose after the "accidental" death. Where Ron Swerlein sets up an explosives production lab in his garage, stockpiles more amunition than the entire Longmont police department, and is then sent home while neighbors are told that they are safe. Where Boulder High School, at taxpayer expense, teaches teenagers to freely experiment with sex, gay sex, unprotected sex, sex inducing drugs, illicit drugs, any form of licentious behavior they want to. We can only imagine that taxpayers will also pay for abortions resulting from teen pregnancies.

Today the Daily Camera's headline story starts out lauding the taxation of mythological anthropogenic global warming,

Chances are good that Boulder is the only city in the country that kicked off its Fourth of July celebration Wednesday night with a tune about how great it is to have a carbon tax.

"Intentional development is oh so relevant," sang Open Space and Mountain Parks rangers Jeff Kagan and Mark Wesson. "It's a futuristic vision to reduce carbon emissions."


No mention of how insignificant of a greenhouse gas CO2 is. No mention of how much more CO2 is put into the atmosphere by animal life, volcanoes, decaying forest vegitation, especially the earth's oceans. No mention of how weather balloon data indicates that upper atmosphere warming is not occurring, as would be the case with greenhouse warming, human induced or not. No mention of how self-appointed climatologist and inventor of both the Internet and anthropogenic global warming, "former future President of the United States" Al Gore is on record for exaggerating and fabricating data to support his newfound self-perpetuating career. Yet the City of Boulder is taking taxpayer's money to pay for pyrotechnics to celebrate their right to transfer more of taxpayers money to the high priest of moonbattery in the name of carbon taxation.

On the same page is an Ass. Press article decrying President Bush's support of our troops and the ongoing war against fall of western civilization to Islamist extremists.
Burdened by sagging polls and an unpopular war, President Bush sought a friendly audience on the Fourth of July to deliver a patriotic, gung-ho speech about supporting U.S. troops and sticking it out in Iraq.

Apparently the failure of the President is more important than the success of democracy and overcoming the fascist Islamist theocracy. The situation in the middle east has been decades if not centuries in the making, and it's not going to be a simple or quick task to reverse the problem. The article cites previous July 4th appearances along with the perennial troops death toll. Articles such as this are clearly designed to ostracize the President, make issue into a one-man war, and ultimately sabotage the war on terror. Some days the Bush Derangement Syndrome is so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw.