The Origin of Hobbits

I have been listening to the Tolkien Professor podcast.  I am just about at the end of his course lecture series.  He has a lot of inside information on Tolkien and his works and depth of knowledge, but of course I do have some disagreements.  Perhaps, though I have not gotten to the proof of those aspects of the books.

Let me just say, I am learning stuff that I never knew about the books and there is quite a lot that I have forgotten.  I have read the Lord of the Rings about eight times and I read the Hobbit twice, and I read the Silmarillion twice too and both Unfinished Tales as well, but I have to admit that those last books, the hardest to read books, I read in high school, which the professor said he could not do; I may have missed a few things.  I did read the the poem about Beren and Luthien more recently and the Tale of Turin when it was released separately a few years ago.

The Tolkien Professor is a theologist and decidedly so, blatant even.  But that is a good thing with Tolkien, because he was too, even if it does not show through to his writing explicitly.  As an atheist it took me many readings of the books to make the connections, which was so different from my experience of reading CSLewis' Tales of Narnia, pillow vs sledgehammer.  The religion within Middle Earth is made up almost entirely and unlike this world, the gods have an affect on the world.  

The entire Middle Earth name is that of Religion.  Growing up I thought it did not make sense as the Valar had their own continent and the continent in the first age had sunk, so why was this continent called Middle Earth?  Middle Earth is the mortal realm, the lands between Heaven and Hell.  Simple really, but also very Christian.  

The Tolkien Professor says a lot of things from the plot shows divine intervention and the gods moving people and weather to influence decisions, but he does not make the leap that I did and saw.  Hobbits were created to be ring bearers.  The proof is two part.  First hobbits are not one of the created races and they materialized in the correct time and place to acquire the Ring, the One Ring, and before that they did not exist.  Two no other race in creation had the power to resist the power of the ring so well.  That they were so the opposite of being beneath its power is evidence of this.

The history of the hobbits.  The hobbits were first known to the peoples of Middle Earth in the Third age.  The Rohan had tales about them in their histories from their time in the north, just south of the eaves of the Greenwood (Mirkwood), and although it does not state it the Elves would have had contact with them there too.  From there they migrated to the other side of the Misty Mountains and to the West after the fall of the Kingdom of Anor. Roughly to the Shire.  And there they stayed and did not move for nearly 1500 years.  Another oddity to be sure.  The local people knew of them but not many others, they slipped into mythology to all.  The Men of the South, Gondor, knew of them as halflings, but that was likely because their lands extended to where they lived in early Third Age, on the banks of the Great River, near the eaves of the Greenwood.

But there were some isolated races that had never heard of them before.  The Ents for one.  In the beginning they roamed far and wide over Middle Earth, they explored everywhere.  In the Second Age they roamed far and wide looking for their Entwives, but in that time they catalogued all the great races and put them to song, indeed knowing Ents, they probably rolled all the living things into one song to have a comprehensive list of things, but they did not have any line for a hobbit.  Nothing.  So much so that Treebeard had to add a line to the lists for them and the Ents had to discuss it.  This means that sometime in the Second or Third Ages a new species, a new race was created and put in place.  Point one proven.  

There is still the possibility that the hobbits might have ducked and hidden themselves from Entish notice, but this seems unlikely given that hobbits are extremely inquisitive and social critters even if isolationists.  They tend to dig and investigate their immediate surroundings.  If an Ent had entered their preview, they would have found it and Ents on their part are very observant and have a tendency to stop and smell the air for days at a time and just act like trees, so that the two did not encounter each other before the end of the Third Age, an age when both were isolationists, is suspect.

There have been a grand total of Five Masters of the One Ring, three of whom were hobbits.  Sauron, Isildur, Gollum, Frodo and Sam.  Sauron forged the ring last after his escape from Númenor and upon forging it, all the others became aware of it and war was declared.  The One Ring was chopped from his hand and Isildur claimed it, and he possessed it for years before he headed North where he died and the ring was lost in the Great River on the eaves of the Greenwood.  Gollum "found" the ring, murdered the hobbit that found it, and slinked and slunk for years around the others and was later driven away and later under the mountains.  In all Gollum had the ring for over 2500 years, so long that when the Wizards arrived the Ring was safely ensconced deep within and under the mountains.  

When Frodo offered the Ring to people during the quest, Galadriel, Aargorn, Gandalf, and the Council, none of them want it, because they fear it's affect, the Men it affects the strongest, Boromir just traveling with it becomes overcome by it, but living with it for years the hobbits resist.  They it appears have an inner will that none of the others have, the people in the books suggest that they don't have the power to be corrupted, but it is more like that they are not affected as strongly, like they were made that way.

In the movie, which differs from the book, Isildur decides inside the Crack of Doom to keep the Ring, but in the book it was immeadiate, merely on the slopes where the battle occured.  Frodo, who had it and had worn it for years, did not succumb until the last moment, he resisted for the entire journey.  The Ring was designed to rule the other great Rings, to rule the Elves, Dwarves and Men, but not the hobbits; they are made of something different.  When Sam puts on the Ring despite being so close to the place where the ring was made, he is freely able to give the ring back up to Frodo when he asks for it back.  He has just spent a while using it too, more than Frodo had used it recently.  Remember how much Boromir was affected by just being in its presence and not even wearing it.  Sam has been closer to it far a greater period of time too, with no possessive feelings toward it.

Besides the resistance to the Ring there is the resistance to the evil of Sauron in general there are the coincidences that are peppered around, of course it must be noted that the Hobbit was written without the light of the Lord of the Rings slant, it was a children's story not connected to the plot until after the Lord of the Rings was written.  Tolkien did rewrite the Hobbit after LotR was written however, so the slant was repurposed in the Hobbit.  

One aspect that also must be considered is that the Valar were taking an increasingly lesser direct role in the events of Middle Earth, but that does not mean that they were ignoring them.  They directly involved themselves with Morgoth in the First age, but in the second age they left it to the Elves and Númenorians.  In the Third age they took a more indirect hand by bringing forth the wizards, but still it looked like there was some movement from possibly Eru Ilúvatar, the creator of the Valar and of everything.  I say this because of the first argument, that hobbits were unknown to the Elves and since elves are favoured of the Valar they did mention hobbits in the Silmarillion at all.  It is like a push that changed the fate of everything.  Of course, the creation myth of Middle Earth says that the song was told to the Valar and then they were to create it, so they could have adjusted wrong notes of history to become true by making these small adjustments.

The unlikely events are that Gollum found the Ring, that Bilbo found the Ring and not a goblin and the series of unlikely events that got the Ring to the Shire.    In LotR when they select two additional hobbits that allow for a decoy party.  Pipin meddling with things beyond his power allowing Sauron to think that Saurman had the Ring, the Nazgûl surly informed Sauron that Saurman was was unseated focusing his attention on the West.  The little nudges that push the real ring bearers to Mount Doom just at the right time.  This all suggests divine intervention.

Given the above two arguments and the rest of the seeming coincidences from the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, it is clear that divine intervention occurred and it was written with that in mind.  Certainly it could be said that I am grasping at straws to explain inconsistencies from the two stories, but given the complexity of the back stories of the other races and given the prominence of Hobbits in the two popular stories, the clear lack of explanation  of this one species suggests their divine and sudden creation to fit a role in the story of the destruction of the remaining prime source of Evil in Middle Earth.

One question that I have that I would like to ask the Tolkien Professor, maybe I will ask him, is if Orcs are immortal like elves, they were created from elves after all.

 

Grandma

Tough to put your memories all together about one person, especially if they are a person that you have known all your life.  Especially if you don't have any negative memories of that person.  I mean no negative contextual memories, she never disciplined me, she never hurt me, she never really said anything mean to me.  She may have silently judged me, but she never told anyone if she did.

She had a link to people who I never knew very well and people who I do know quite well but who knew them in a way that I never could because she knew them before I was born.  My grandmother.  She died a day or so ago.  I have only told one person, before I am telling you.

She was born in Smallville back in 1921 on April 26. I am not sure if she was born at home on Emily street or in a hospital, but she was born.  There are many things to say about her early life, most of it I don't know.  Emily street is on the wrong side of town.  Her mother celebrated her eighteenth birthday, the day before.  Being on the wrong side of town, electricity in homes was not a common thing, nor were indoor toilets.  When she was young her father introduced electric lighting to the house and to the outhouse.  She proudly said that she was the only one on the street, on the hill that had a light to guide the way to the lou, in the dead of night and in the Winter.  

She cut through Claude street and over the Railway, not at a legal crossing, walking passed the house of her future husband, skirting far around their duck pond, which was filled with the cartankuous beasts to get to school, Victory School.  A path that I would take to walk to work, some eighty years later sans the duck pond and the house that was torn down and replaced with The Friends, a private community housing complex.

Her parent's house was a model of both efficiency and terribly dangerous unsound practices that threatened anyone who stayed within with near certain death, yet no one ever died.  The single wood stove was the only heat source in the house and the only means for cooking.  The chimney snaked its way through the entire house in a mimicry of central heating, but dangerous because of the potential for creosote buildup, the number one cause of chimney fires, and therefore house fires and winter lose of homes at the time.  But the house did not burn down and is still there disguised under a layer of prefab aluminum siding.  Vinyl siding.

But the house did not get working toilets for decades after.  She married her husband in The War.  World War Two, the second war to end all wars.  And was introduced to indoor plumbing.  There was a little resentment there mixed with the statement that they were the only ones to have a light to the outhouse, but they were the last to still use that outhouse too..  She moved with my grandfather out to the west coast, but moved back to Smallville to give birth to my father and they lived in a little house behind the local funeral home on Miller Street.  There was a lot of resentment there, between her and that funeral home, but not due to living next door.

Being the only funeral home in town meant that they could charge a lot for their services, but did not create any value for the customers.  When she buried her father and mother it was the same shabby room that it had been since it was built.  The expectation that you had to pay them anyways.  They only updated their facilities when the second funeral home opened up, because they were forced to.  Change under duress is not any change at all.

Not long after that's he moved to Forest street, to a house that was kitty corner, nearly so, to her husbands family's home, nearly across from the School that she attended as a child.  Growing up in a small town like Smallville means that if you dig deep enough, you can find connections to everyone in the town.  For instance, MPTR's grandfather was practicing learning to drive next door and my grandmother was warned, out of fear that my father would be run over because of his poor driving.  That I was told when I started dating MPTR.  Other connections and coincidents that happen over the years are taken as less strange because of connections within the town, even when they occur outside the town.  Like when the boy that cut through their backyard on Forest street to get to school.  Many years later, after my grandparents had moved away they decided to move again and the coincidentally purchased his home that he was selling in Grimsby so he could move back to Smallville.  He just walked by me this second actually, he used part of the money from the house sale to buy a hotel and later invest in a Tim Horton's and later build the Laundromat that I am sitting in.  Odd connections.

Other odd connections.  There my Grandmother was a Taylor, born a Taylor.  I currently live in a house that was built by and for one of her uncles.  There are more than one Taylor in town though and they are not related.  I am related to the ones that built the Tannery in town, but there is another Taylor family in town that built their wealth from the Fur Trade and one of their descendants became a local large construction company.  He has a trophy on his wall that he sets out to show people that his family had athletic roots, roots in greatness.  It is funny when people do this, especially when it was my Grandmother that won that trophy and not his.  She won the smimming race across the Harbour back in that day, not his, but not valuing a trophy is something that my family does, it is just a thing, they through it out and his family collected it.  I think it is funny.

Back in those times, after the War, things were different.  How different is hard to understand.  They bought a car, but neither of them knew how to drive it.  Back then, though, they were told that it was simple to learn.  Someone came over and took my grandmother for a ride and that was her only lesson, and from that lesson she taught my grandfather.  That was it.

When my father was eleven, they moved to a new town far away.  They moved to Prescott Ontario and I know next to nothing about her life there, except it was a life of leisure.  Women were expected to do housework all day and that was the work they did, but she was living in the golden age when the work that she was doing was getting many new innovations like the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner and others that cut how much work she needed to do and her husband was earning enough money that she did not have to work.  One thing I do know about that time was that after dinner, they used to play games like Scrabble, Cribbage and Bridge, loser had to do the dishes.  To this day, I can't beat my father in scrabble, he tells me that they regularly got 400 point games when they played.

I was born many years ago, and my sister soon after.  I remember visiting them after they moved to Stoney Creek into an apartment building.  My mother dressed us up in grandparent friendly hallowe'en costumes, paper mâché bunny heads to trick or treat them, later they dropped my sister off with them on Grimsby while I was taken for a week long camping canoe trip with my parents to Algonquin Park.  I remember when I was in the canoe and was told if I shouted something, it would come back to me, an echo.  I shouted "Grandma ________!" and it came back.  I was 3 or 4.  

We soon moved to Smallville and not long afterwards they followed suit.  They plied us with sweets that they made every time we visited them.  On Saturdays they had better cartoons than we had, they had cable TV, we did not.  Later after he had died, back in 2001, she continued on.  Still had the treats but we talked.  Occasionally we talked about my dad when he was young and the dumb things he had done.  She told me about the things that she and my grandfather had done.  I got insight into the adult lives of my grandparents, but I also got confirmation about my family legacy Alcoholism.  I knew that my father has it, I know my sister has it, both of them have smartened up, I know that if I ever touched the stuff, I would have had that problem. She told me at her father had it and that her husband had it too.  But that where her father was not smart about it, my grandfather was; he realized when he was drunk he could not drive and told my grandmother to drive.

From her eyes I was able to confirm that the path of my Autism, was through the men.  My grandfather was an engineer, but not the kind that you get today.  He did not have four years of university and two more years of Grad school, he took e long route: years of apprenticeship followed by writing tests to complete the long steady path.  I learned that before the war he helped build the road through Algonquin Park, drilling the holes for blasting the rock by hand, sledgehammer and drill spike, quarter turns between strikes.  I did not learn what he did in the War though.  I am sure that there are many families that have that gap.  

But I will miss her, my Grandmother, my last.  My second last connection to that time, last from that time though.

Winter YouTube Trolling

I have been trolling some YouTube videos while I have some time.  It has been taking away from my writing, but I think that it is potentially more worth while.  I have been countering Creationists and Rape-Apologists.  Each one is a different kind of scum, in my eyes.

I just spent some time countering, not very well in all likelihood, because I don't have all the facts that I would like at my finger tips.  I wish I was still in Contact with MagicEyes, so I could hand him off to her and sit back and watch a real female feminist rip his arguments apart.  I miss you MagicEyes sometimes.

Here is what he wrote and I countered with '-'.  Part way through the angry discourse, the Rape-Apologist identifies me by a name, that is not mine and a sex that I do not share.  I replaced the name with Greenpsychopomp.  Enjoy!


You know I am currently debating a muslim about islam and have to sit through the lies and bullshit he says then I listen to your bullshit.

- let me guess you are telling him how his religion is all wrong.  I am guessing that you talk a lot about things that you know nothing of.

At least I can say that 3rd wave feminism and islam share many traits. Such as propagandizing bullshit and lies and claiming the mantle of victimhood.

- to be honest I had to look up 3rd wave feminism.  I then found that my home town features prominently in the movement.  That i never heard of it is not strange, because the things that I was talking about seem to me, to be self evident.  I of course would phrase it differently than you, getting the information out to the public, giving people information that counters what they grew up with and gaining personal power, not meaning power in the way that Men traditionally mean, but a personal voice.

Normal people are told to keep their hands to themselves. Even when I was a child.

-normal people DO keep there hands to themselves, but my definition of normal is not what everyone believes is normal.  Children learn it from their parents.  They learn that as a child they are not supposed to do the thing that they see happening around them, they learn that and not what they are told.  And in most cases, this IS what they are told.

Women are given preferential treatment at the expense of men. Many universities give women and minorities places to fill quotas so they can feel good about themselves many times leaving out men who are way more qualified and deserving of such places.

-I am sorry that you live in a country that oppresses women and minorities so much that they have to give them a helping hand.  In my country it is different: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/more-women-than-men-have-post-secondary-education-1.1358656

Women are given equal pay in the defense forces when they do not do the equal dangerous jobs that men need to do.

- there is really only two words for you, ready? Fuck You, now read: https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/women-and-war/history/timeline

- granted, of the 158 Canadian deaths in Afganistan, only one was female and three were civilians, but statistics were not kept during the world wars, we can't easily find out how many of the 7000 women in the merchant marine died, submarines sunk boats not on the basis of what gender was on board.  Granted that women were only allowed in combat roles, in Canada, only in 1987.

Women are given equal pay for the firefighters and police yet have to meet a much lower entrance standards than men.

-really, see your own comments about spouting bullshit and lies, just stop.  Safety of the public is the number one component in mind when hiring Fire and Rescue people.  The strongest man is going to be stronger than the strongest woman, but they don't have to exceed that standard, they just have to meet the same standards as the men do.  Often, because they are in a position where they feel they have something to prove, they try to exceed these minimal standards:  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130528133839AAm0bJA

For sport women whined about equal pay yet played less tennis than men do who have to play the best out of 5 sets compared to women's 3.

-wow, one sport.  so you think the same follows in other more bad-ass sports, say hockey?  Nope, I would suggest that women have been playing Professional Tennis, since the First Wave of Feminism.  I suggest you make a big deal about it to the Tennis League, see what they say.

Most women find a natural aversion to any job that is dirty, hard, icky, dangerous or all of them. Yet when a job is suitable they cry like babies demanding equal opportunity and pay many times without equal input or outcome.

- like cleaning bathrooms and changing diapers, which has got to be one of the ickiest things to do EVER.  Or what about Female Doctors, ugh how gross to operate with all that blood.  Or Morticians.  Perhaps what you meant to say was that women have to do icky jobs which men place no value on and thus lower the pay grade for, but equally skilled jobs that Men want to do, have a much better pay grade.   I would guess you don't understand what women actually were fighting for when they were talking about Equality.

You say that women do not need the protection of men. What utter rubbish.

-see above.  Oh and they do need protection from the filth that is spewing from your computer.

When something dangerous is around chances are it will be a man that faces it so a woman does not. When something heavy needs to be lifted women won't do it.

-I can lift nearly 250 pounds, if you couldn't would you not ask me to lift something for you?  Given that most women are smaller than most men, they can mostly lift more than most women.  Strangely, the opposite can be said.  Most men think that a dish cloth, a cleaning sponge is too heavy for them to lift, so they pass it on to women.

Greenpsychopomp you are like a whining spoilt child never satisfied with what you get.

- I don't whine.  Most women don't whine either.  When women get sick you will see them working just as hard as they do when they are well, because they know that if they did not the work would not get done.  Men on the other hand, except the responsible man, a dying, rare breed, get the slightest head cold and whine ad nosium and can't go into work.  Don't believe me, look up Man Cold, which only differs by the sex of who has it.

You talk about equal pay. Lets talk about the death rate in the workplace which men are 93% of or the death rate in the military when men are 97% of. Do you think we should make that 50/50?

- right.  Are we going to talk about the Darwin Awards too, they are 93% more likely to be men too.  Do you see a co-relation?  Men are more likely to do stupid things than women, they are bigger risk takers and so they die more frequently.  go watch an Epic Fail video, look at the gender ratio.  If two soldiers encountered a dangerous situation in the military, it is the male soldier that is most likely to do something dumb.  Typically, dumb things result in injuries in many professions re: Man Masturbating with a Belt Sander.

If in a fair world in many jobs women should be paid less.

-what are you talking about, in this world, many of the jobs that women do are paid less than a job of equal value and equal skill than when a man does it.  If we were going to have a fair world, then we would say 'All jobs that have the same Value in society, that have the same Qualifications, have the same pay', but apparently you believe that we should add 'unless you are a Woman'.

Yet women want the same pay without the same responsibility, risks and adversity.

-Said by no woman ever.  Or rather wished by everyone ever.  seriously, you would love to get paid more and work less, you are a man obviously.

I believe like respect that pay and opportunity should be earned not demanded like women do all the time when they do not get their way.

-Women that demand equal opportunity, are being shut out of opportunities because of there gender and only because of their gender have every right to be angry.  Women that demand Equal pay and Equal respect for doing jobs that men do, need to demand, because no one pays attention to them when they don't.  Paradoxically, this is partial Women's fault: every time a man lifts a finger to vacuum the carpet or carves the meat for a Sunday meal and  a Woman congratulates him for doing something she does day in and day out without appreciation.

Understand this Greenpsychopomp before you start strutting around think what a big girl you are. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING all your cloths, house, materials, opportunities, salary etc are all given and made possible to you by men. Never forget that.

-??? LOL!!!  What drugs are you on, please share.  You are a Young Earth Creationist aren't you?
Every invention that you use that you never give a second thought to or really a first one was given to you by men.

-Every opportunity that those men were given was denied to a woman, when ever a woman did do something to contribute, there was a man right beside her to take the credit.  I think that i should have handed this conversation over to a Woman, because as a MAN, I would not want you to think that a woman could not argue for herself.

The rest of your argument about rape is weak and of course you do not have any data to prove it because that would have required work on your part maybe some man can do it then you can take credit for it.

-you know, almost every person who reads your writings is going to feel one of two emotions.  Men are going to feel shame.  Women are going to feel anger.  Your gender views are at best shameful, but it does explain your position on Rape.  You know you just hurt everyone's counter argument with this tripe!  Thank you!




If you wrote this, Please do not tell me.  Since I did not identify you, you can pretend it is some other dumb fuck.

Canned Ham

Watching the Nye Ham debate.

Ham seems to be bringing forth an argument that the world is only as old as it looks to lay person.  He is backing it up with scientists who agree with his world view, essentially using their degrees as making his ideas more credible.  He is also trying to show show that the words of science have been co-opted by another religion, that of atheists.  Ken Ham is a smooth speaker and presents these ideas using easy language and simple words.  He does not need to explain anything in detail because the level of knowledge he is using is at a low level.

Nye is using the argument that the world is a lot older than 6000 years old.  He is doing this by giving examples of things that are observably older than the Biblical flood which supposedly wiped everything out.  He is using science to explain things, but the problem is that he is trying to condense and simplify the science that is complex and takes many years to understand into simple phrases in a limited period of time.  As such he is skipping over some of the details, even some of the connections to why what he is talking about is relevant to his argument.  He is stammering while he is speaking, which makes his arguments appear confused.

Right now in the middle of the debate they have opened up their positions and the trues debate is yet to begin, but it seemed to be Ken's argument to lose.  I would point out that Bill Nye's arguments so far are good, but he needed more time to put them forward.  It seems that as always, it is easier to make outrageous claims and it is difficult to refute them, even if they are easily refutable.

The second half of the debate took a different direction, after they had made their arguments in the first half against or for their side, this next section was to refute the others ideas.  Ken Ham was still polished and Bill Nye was still choppy, but less so as he was more able to speak on what he was passionate about.

Most of this was centered on what was right and what was wrong.  Ken Ham knew what Bill Nye was going to focus on, the geological age of the earth as brought to us by radiometric dating, so he launched into a prepared counter argument that included slides and reports from various creationist scientists explaining that the science of radiometric dating was bogus and unreliable.  His evidence was incredible, actually uncredible, but since there was no way to do any fact checking on the spot, had to be taken as fact.  I could take the time, I could pause the debate and check it out.  Ken Ham presented petrified wood found encased in basalt rock.  He suggested that the basalt poured over the trees and this was the result.  But that does not fit the evidence, primarily the radiometric data, the lava was 30 million years old and the wood was 45 thousand years old.  Secondly if the formed at the same time, as Ken Ham was suggesting, the lava, which would have been 2100°C at the time would have melted steel and burned any wood that was present.  Instead the creationist geologist found wood particles in basalt.  A much more likely situation would be that tree roots grew in cracks in basalt.

The third section of the debate, the last quarter of the debate, was a question and answer session.  Members of the audience submitted questions at the start of the debate and they were segregated into Ken Ham and Bill Nye questions, each directed question was followed by a two minute response and a one minute counter response.  Each participant was alternately asked questions.  And very few questions were answered as the questioner put e question.  The style of the debate did not allow any chance to rebut any false information after the rebuttal.  

At one point Ken Ham was asked to give evidence that the world is only six thousand years old, without the bible as a source, he ducked the question for the full two minutes, but when Bill Nye got his minute rebuttal, he did not point out that Ken had ducked the question, that other than the Bible, he has nothing.    Shortly after that, Bill Nye was asked other than radiometrics, what proof did he have that the world was 4.5 billion year old.  Bill dropped the ball, he stated that the proof of radiometrics was all that's he needed.  Near the end he talked about the search for the age of the Earth, but it was too late and the argument was weak.  He should have said that the science of radiometrics is strong and points to a Earth 4.5 billion years old, but there is proof for a slightly younger Earth, but one that is much older than the Young Earth Creationists Earth age, the speed of genetic mutation in mitochondrial DNA, plate tectonics, complexity of life and the order of life in the fossil column (if not exact age, then comparison there of), and others.  In Ken Ham's rebuttal he states that there are no rocks on Earth that are 4.5 billion years old, and the only evidence is from space.  So does not mean the earth is that old.  That sort of thinking is erroneous and disingenuous as well.  First, radiometric processes work on the Earth and off the Earth the same way, they are not affected by location, radioactive decay is inherent feature of materials.  Two, Ken Ham adding that tidbit of information was suggesting his argument was wrong, creationists believe the entire universe was created ate the time the world was created, in fact they believe that the Earth was created before e universe.  Three, there are rocks in Australia and Canada that are from close to that time period.  They are zirconiums with Uranium 235 inside them.  Zirconiums are minerals that incapsulate other minerals and are not porous, so what is in them cannot get out.  This means the uranium decays and the daughter minerals have to stay right beside them.  Uranium 235 has a half life of about 4.5 billion years, and almost half the uranium is still there along with its daughter material.

So who one the debate?

That really depends on which side you were on to begin with.  Really.  You see partisan politics is rife everywhere.  Who had the best arguments?  Who was the best speaker?  Who used the pulpit the the greatest effect?

I am a ardent Rationalist and an Atheist; I have enough of a science background to battle creationists and where I lack, I can root out and find the counter arguments on the Internet.  But Ken Ham won, for a number of reasons.  1. The style of debate was in his favour, quick assertions of ideas, with little in the way of scientific fact.  2. He has a practiced speech with nice easy flow; he is clearly a professional speaker.  Where Bill Nye is not and his speech was choppy and incoherent.  3. He spoke to his audience, and his audience is not scientifically literate.  They don't understand complex things and they don't want to.  They want people to tell them it is not necessary to know this stuff because it is all wrong.  They are intellectually lazy.  And let me say that there is nothing wrong with that— NO, there is something wrong with that, because it means that they are predisposed to not thinking, that are letting someone else do their thinking and thus, someone else can manipulate them and they will never know.

But then I don't think Bill Nye really cared if he won or not.  This is not me saying that because, "I think Bill won because I support science"; I don't think he cared because he knew that he was losing the debate by just having it, but he was using it as an opportunity to reach an audience that he would never have access to.  People who are closed minded towards science would never listen to his point of view, but if he were debating a creationist, he gets those people to watch him.  Bill Nye, the science guy, was using the platform to address an issue that is affecting his world: the dumbing down of society and the lack of scientific innovation.  Bill points out that it was scientific innovation that drove America to the top of the world's economy, but America's lack of scientific innovation in the present, was dragging America down.  He used the platform to plea for the watchers to get government to increase science funding and research funding, about three times.  He used the platform to point out that the venue state had know center of scientific knowledge.  He pleaded with the viewing audience on at least two occasions to go out and learn science, for patriotic reasons and for economic reasons.

Now for what the podcasts have said about the debates, most I bet would say that Bill Nye won, but that is because people are so partisan these days.

Surprise, SGU said that if you thought Nye would have won before you listened to the debate, he won, but if you thought Ham would win before you entered the debate, then he won.  They agreed with my analysis of the debate, with different details.  They did not come to the same conclusion as to why Nye entered the contest, they had no conclusion that way.

Epic fight

I played this game from White Wolf called Aberrant.  The idea was that this horrible accident happened, a satellite with a strange radiation exploded in the sky and almost immediately, people under great stress, usually death like stress, changed and became powerful; they became Super Heroes.  You could create any power that they had listed in the game and modify it in multiple ways, but it had to be with a motif and the motif made it unique.  Power Bolt was a power, you shot something and it damaged things, was it a psychic punch, a rock or puff of high velocity air? Fire, water, earth, wood, lightning or anything, but it is the same power and did the same thing, but looked differently.

It was a cool game because you got to be a Super Hero, and who would not want to do that?  The story line had the Super people changing the world for the better and it had greedy Supers who fought against them.  There were Super smart people inventing stuff and turning deserts into paradises and there were Supers turning farmland into wastelands.

I was reading Brandon Sanderson's new book Steelheart and it took place in a world like this, except whenever a Super Hero used their powers, they became mean and greedy and heartless; the power turned them bad.  The story is of one person who in the early days sees one of the most powerful Super bleed.  Every Super has at least one weakness, one thing that will make them fragile even if they are invincible.  

I don't want to give away the plot, but the story takes place in Newcago, Steelheart has remade Chicago, turned the city to steel, and the lower part of Lake Michigan as well.  Ten years has passed since David had seen his father killed, before his eyes, he saw the Super Villain bleed.  He is seeking, the only people who have ever been able to stand up to these Super Villains and kill them, The Reckoners.  He has to join them and persuade them that Steelheart can be killed, so he can avenge his father and save his city.  How Epic eh, no it is not, because that is what the Supers are known as, Epics.  How Super of them to fight the Epics.

Brandon Sanderson has done it again, and there is a sequel, Firefight, coming out later this year.

Mercury is in Retrograde

So I went to yoga last night.  It was great, it brought me back to my first days of yoga.  And I told the teacher that.  I told her that the only thing that would have made it better was if there was some chanting, but I knew it would not go over well in Smallville.  A woman over heard me, a woman of Asian extraction, she said why?  The yoga teacher said she might introduce the OM, first because it is about body awareness, feeling the vibration in the chest.

Why would chanting not go over well in Smallville?  Why did the Coke commercial during the 2014 Superbowl get a bad reaction?  Why did people say that they wanted to start a boycott of Coca-Cola, #SpeakAmerican.  The idea that a sacred song could be song in any other language other than English.  It brings back a memory of my favourite teacher in my first year of University.  She told us a story of riding in an elevator with her friend, both of whom spoke French fluently with someone who did not.  They got on to the elevator speaking French and continued the conversation.  The other person got made at them because he could not understand what they were saying and that they were being rude.  The implication was that he thought they were talking about him.  He did not know what they were saying therefore it was about him.  The Coke Commercial?  Did the Americans who hear the song thought they were changing the words to make fun of America?

My point is that small minds assume that if they don't understand what is being said, it must be bad.  That is why chanting in yoga might not be right for Smallville.  I call this town Smallville, because it is small, isolated and small minded.  I was told when I first got here, the second time, that someone who was getting into yoga a few years before I got there was told by her religious leader that the Animal Poses in yoga let animal spirits into their soul and she had to stop.  Not everyone in Smallville is small minded, and I would hope that people who are into yoga are open to other things.  And they are, just not good things.

I heard two comments yesterday after class first hand and I heard one comment secondhand.  The last comment was a criticism that I could not let anything pass and that when a woman made a comment I should have just let it slide.  And I won't, and I told her why.  The comment was a spontaneous spouting of astrology mumbo jumbo.  She stated that a person might be off, because, "Mercury was just entering retrograde.". I jumped on the comment.  Retrograde actually means something, it is when the apparent motion of that planet on the background of the stars appears to reverse and go the opposite direction.  This apparent motion reversal confused early astronomers because they thought the paths of the planets were circles.  That is why Ptolemy figured out, briefly, that adding an additional wheel to to motion of some planets would account for this reverse motion, retrograde motion.  And it was only a few planets, the ones outside our orbit, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other planets were not visible.  The inner planets appear to move normally in the sky, because their year is shorter than our year, so they appear to move around the Sun faster to us, so we never catch up to them and make them appear to move backwards.

I told the woman, that only the planets outside our orbit, go into retrograde, the inner planets don't, so Mercury in retrograde is baloney.  I did not tell her that astrology was garbage.  It is garbage.  Take three never been seen horoscopes read them to the person tell them that one of them is their horoscope, they have to pick the one it is.  Probably should use all of them, twelve, but I am being kind to both people.  Statistics say that they should be able to pick out the right one, one third the time.  

Here are my proofs that horoscopes are garbage: 

1. The zodiac constellations are different sizes and the sun stays in them for different times, giving each one the same length of time is not a true reflection of how long The sun is in any given constellation.

2. There are thirteen constellations that the sun passes through in a year, but there are only twelve zodiac signs.  So what about those people born under Ophiuchus, do they not get a horoscope?

3. The mechanism that has been proposed that influences people on Earth by the position of planets is Gravity.  They say that the gravity of Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and the Constellations has a subtle effect on the person and their personality.  Gravity is dependent on mass and distance here are the four greatest Gravitational  fields that might be affecting you, in order: the Earth,  it is close by and heavy and it keeps us from flying away.  The Moon, it is the closest celestial body and it is pretty massive, it causes tides on the Earth but only with the water, because it flows.  The Sun, it is very massive, 99+% of the mass of the solar system is in the Sun, but it is very far away so it modifies tides, makes them taller or shorter, but only marginally so.  The fourth largest gravitational field, drum roll please, is, is … the closest person next to you.  Low in mass but really close to you, if you are close enough to touch them, they are having a bigger gravitational pull on you than Venus or Mars, certainly Jupiter, Mercury or Saturn.  Most definitely more affect than a constellation of stars that may have stares further away from each other than to us, but still have no pull on us what so ever.

The third comment that I heard was second hand and from an unreliable source, and is thus here-say.

OM

Yoga

So once a very long time ago, well not that long ago I lost my job and a new one opened up by chance.  And I went for it.  It was an easy job that I was over and under qualified to do, but it paid better than I had ever been paid before and no one else wanted the job and it had to be filled.  So I filled it.

There was lots of down time and I used the down time to read a book.  It was a very tough book.  It was called The Ramamyana.  It was the national epic of India, well one of the national epics.  It was on par with the Iliad and the Odyssey,  the Aeneid and stuff like that.  I was not forced to read it; I wanted to read it.  I was on a Asperger's Indian obsession.  I liked the food, I liked the women, I wanted to like a lot more of the women and so I was reading this, because you never know.  After reading the Ramayana, I wanted more.  I picked up the Upshandis and thought I would read that; I still have that book somewhere and I have not read past the first chapter.  I decided to go in a different pathway.

I was living in Big Smoke and there was a lot of yoga studios around and I was not sure which one would be for me.  I did an Internet search for one and came up with a number of choices.  I looked through at least three of them and then went to the first one that was on my list.  I was looking for one that had beginner classes.  I was looking for one that I could learn not just yoga, but other aspects of the culture and the practice.  Back then I did not know that it was called a practice.  I went to one and this was very big for me, because I was quite shy and being forward was very alien to me.  There were things that I did not know that made me feel like it was an alien experience.  Like taking off your shoes at beside the door before coming in to the studio.  I grasped this right away and complied.  And slowly approached the front desk.  There a smiling face greeted me and seemed to want to answer all my questions.  I would later know her as Yumi (sp), although I would never use her name.  I find it hard to use names, any name, unless it is vary familiar to me or if we have been properly introduced and I know how you say it an I know how to spell it.  Really.

This was Jivamukti Yoga.  I later learned that it was a very specialized form of Yoga, that there were only two places in the entire world that taught it outside of India, if it was even taught in India.  Jivamukti was taught initially in a beginner class four lessons, one each week, but up to three classes a week in that one lesson, that is they repeated it three times a week.  They started each class with a harmonium, which is like an accordion but in a box that sounds out a single note.  The first class they began to teach me.  They taught me how to say OM.  

OM they told me was the sound of the universe.  It was many things at once.  It was, as they said a cosmic eraser; saying it erased what I said and replaced it with what I meant to say.  as Yumi said, there are four sounds in a well chanted OM: "aaaaah" the sound you make when you wake up on a glorious morning, "ooooo" the sound you make when you approach the breakfast table and see all the foods that you like spread over the top in quantity and quality, "mmmmmm" the sound you make when you are sated and satisfied after you eat those foods.  You take a deep breath and one sound flows into the next sound until all your breath is expelled.  The fourth sound is Silence.

There were three regular instructors, I only really remember one's name but there was the principal partner who I took classes with only rarely and there was the tall brunet, who I did not enjoy as much as she kept eluding to a test when we moved about.  Yumi was a tiny Japanese woman who was incredibly flexible and also small.  To be absolutely clear, I would have had a crush on her if I had not made a really short sighted vow not to use Yoga as a vehicle to find a partner.  A relationship.  On the other hand this was a good thing as I would not have been able to be there at all, all the women were very pretty and there was a lot more of them than men.  

During the short meditation, one instructor would walk behind everyone and rub a lotion on the neck of the students, it had a nice smell but occasionally it burned after we got started.  One instructor would lead the class and one instructor would walk around and correct the poses.  This is the one thing that I have noticed that other places did not do.  Many of the poses have a correct way to do them, to prevent injury or to get the maximum effect from them.  They emphasized body memory, if you learn in the correct position then you do it every time.  

They used the sanskrit word for everything, the poses and the chants.  The chanting is that part that I miss most.  No one chants in Boonieland, perhaps because people are unwilling to learn, or because there is a fear that the words are selling your soul to the devil.  Really some believe that.  When I learned these words, it changed every thing, it changed yoga for me: Lokah Samastah Sukinoh Bahvantu, may everyone, everywhere, be happy and free and may my thoughts, words and actions contribute in some way to the happiness and freedom for all.  Followed up with an OM, to smooth out any pronunciation errors that may have been made so that I would have said them the way I meant them to mean.  

I went three times a week.  Two evenings a week and Saturday mornings.  I walked there and I walked home afterwards.  I walked in the Summer, I walked in the Winter, Spring and Autumn too.  I lived about nine kilometers away, so you can understand walking was a commitment.  I could at that time walk it in a little more than an hour.  If I was running late I might take the subway, but as a matter of principle, I walked.

They believed in inversions, once a class.  I am not very good at inversions, one I weigh a lot, not just fat though.  I have a large frame, I am muscular and fat.  But the inversions freaked me out a little because a few of them use your head and neck as one of the supports; that one uses your arms too, but the core weight is carried by the head and neck.  The other I can do a shoulder stand, leading to plough.  The shoulder stand, the weight is in the shoulders and upper back so it is not so bad as my shoulders are quite broad, so I did not fear this position as much.  Plough was difficult.

Fear is a part of yoga, learned from them.  Inversions are about turning your life over, upside down.  They told me that people fear only one thing, expressed in a multiple different ways.  Fear of planes, fear of snakes, fear of spiders, fear of public speaking are all fear of death.  Even public speaking is a fear of death, we are afraid the crowd will hate what we are saying and tear us limb from limb.  Once you know that you are fearing death, that calms you.  Of all the ways that people die, public speaking, sharks, spiders, snakes, planes etcetera, can all be rolled up in to one and it would not equal the number of people who die in car accidents and yet we all get into cars as part of our regular life.  So fear of those things is silly.  Being afraid of something is normal, letting it stop you from doing things is just silly especially the same everyday things that a lot of people do.

In plough you start with a shoulder stand, then bring your legs and body backwards over your shoulders until your toes hit the ground.  When they hit you relax and let your knees touch near your head.  But until your toes touch the ground, you don't know that's here they are or how close you have come, because you can't see your toes.  My instructors told me that I was almost there, which did not help, but kept me trying.  They then put a block under my toes on the ground to show how close I was.  When they did this I relaxed and my toes touched.  Accomplishment!  It took me months to get that far.

I am not going to do Head Stand though until I lose a lot more weight and my arms can support me— that is risking my life!  And then I laugh at myself.

Here is the thing that you learn when you do yoga.  Our bodies are different.  That is silly I hear you say, of course our bodies are different, but what I mean is that each person has a different range of motion, every body has a different ratio of bones and different ratio of muscles and each of those play with each person to give them different ranges of motion.  It means for some people one pose is easy and other people a different pose.  The anatomical difference between men and women affect the poses.  Having a sensitive organ between my legs is a concern when transitioning between some poses that most yoga practitioners have no clue about.  Almost all people who do yoga are women in the West.  Many of the positions are dependent on placing your feet hip width apart and that affects everything.

They had special events, musicians that came and the founder of the New Yuck Practice would come occasionally.  Extra money to attend, so I did not attend many, but there was shunting and there was eating.  Everyone brought a vegan meal, which was one of the reasons why I never wanted to attend, I did not want to put my minimal cooking skills to test.  They must have thought I was not a vegetarian, I never told them that I, at that point had been vegetarian for over ten years, but I let then think what ever they thought.

When I left for Teacher's College, they gave me a package.  A chant book, and a CD with a sample practice and a wish to return.  I missed them until I could come back to Big Smoke.  In Teacher's College, I joined a class but everything was too basic and I did not feel right attending the class.   When I moved to Smallville and decided to stay I sought out a place to continue my practice.  I found one place and another I went to them both, because you don't know which one is the one for you.  One was filled with couples, not for me.  The other  the people liked to talk, that was not for me at first, but everything was so relaxed that I enjoyed it.  Some of the classes were filled with laughter.  That was delightful.  

In that time my yoga studio in Big Smoke went bankrupt.  Yoga had gotten big in the city and people were opening up lots of yoga studios.  Birkam Yoga, was the most popular, called hot yoga.  The temperature of the studio was pushed up to 30°C and people went through the moves and they sweated.  People equate a good workout with sweat, so they jacked up the heat to make people sweat.  Yoga done properly in a cool studio, will make you sweat.  Every time.  I was suspicious of this yoga.

Here is the thing about Proper yoga.  There are no weights, there are no gimmicks.  There is just a mat, to soften the floor and give your feet grip and I guess to mark out your place on the floor, a place where your sweat can splatter.  The positions are attained with mindfulness, you are paying attention to how your body is moving and where.  Where is your foot, where is your back, is it straight?  Body awareness has another important characteristic, engagement.  Each muscle is engaged, if one muscle is keeping you in position the counter muscles need be engaged to pull the first muscle until the first muscle is fully engaged.  Example Mountain pose, standing straight.  Place your feet, big toes touching and heels together and spread your toes as wide as you can and dig them into the mat.  Engage the front and back of your legs to make them hard as the mountain.  Raise your chest up high, but shoulders low down your back, your core engaged to push your chest up.  Your gluts are engaged bringing your back down to the legs.  Your forehead is the summit proud and strong high into the air.  Your arms are engaged thrust down your sides.  Try standing like that for a minute, it is tough, every muscle engaged, body solid, as solid as you can manage.  That is standing, the other positions are more complex, but each body part is in a place and fully engaged. Fully engaged for an hour, you sweat buckets.  The stronger you are the harder you work.  If a position is easy, you can alter it slightly to make it more difficult so that every person is engaged and pushed to their individual maximum.  Everyone sweats in a proper yoga class.  

There is also relaxation too though.  There is one pose that is about relaxation, several poses, happy baby pose, lie on your back and grab your big toes and roll around on your back, in Jivamukti you would express your inner child with a gurgle.  Corpse pose where you lie on your back and let all your bones and muscles spread and relax.  Meditation is a part of yoga, the focus is breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Nothing else matters.

Breathing is the one thing I could never get used to each movement is associated with a breath, inhale move, exhale move, inhale move, exhale move.  Often I was exhaling when I should have been inhaling.  This may have not been a problem but many of the moves are enhanced with a specific breath, so I guess it does matter.

When you have been doing yoga for a while you start to become aware of your body.  For instance, I am aware of my feet.  My feet are muscular, like everywhere, unlike everywhere else not much fat.  My feet are big and I am hard on my feet.  No shoe has ever truly fit them, and certainly no boot, so my feet are covered with calluses.  Calluses protect your feet from harm, but they are slippery and not very good for establishing grip and I slip a lot.  I have flat feet, so that aids the gripping process.  Makes me want to have a pedicure, but then I still have to put the work-boots back on and the callouses are necessary.

Body awareness is something that is important for your practice.  But it is important to realize that your body is different from every other body and everyone has their quirks and so you need to know what they are, also don't let anyone tell you what your quirks are if you know that they are something else.  An instructor told me that I could not go further until I learned to relax once because my muscles were hard, unflexed.  She said that they should be pliable.  Her muscles were pliable relaxed, most people have pliable muscles, mine are more pliable, but never loose like she said they should be.  So don't let anyone tell you what your body should be like until they have lived in it.

Part of the problem of being taught and corrected constantly while learning, is that when I see other beginners being taught without that direction.  I see that they are in the incorrect place, that they are bent incorrectly, that they are not straight enough, that they think they are doing everything correctly, but they are not and will continue do these things, because they are becoming habits.  Bad habits are due to poor body awareness.  The only way that They will get that instruction is if the instructor stops leading the class by example and adjusts people's poor positioning.  Just a little peeve.

Anyways perhaps Yoga is something that I need in my life forever right beside cycling.  We will see.

Coin rant

Renting has a few challenges that people who own houses generally do not have like where you are going to do your laundry.  I don't have a laundry facility in my apartment, but the people below me do, only part of the reason why I am a little peaked about my first land lord.  When I moved in I was charged a rate that was okay for a two bedroom apartment, but the people below me in the house have three bedrooms, laundry access to the basement and 50% more living space and were charged only a little more for rent.  The house was sold and the new land lord has raised their rent each year and mine has stayed the same.  So I know ere was reason to complain.  I did not find out that the rents were that similare until long after I moved in.

Laundry.  So I go to a Laundrymat to wash clothes, and I am okay with that because I have been going to a laundry mat for decades, except eleve years when there was laundry in the building I was in, but even then it was not included in the rent.  I am about to complain about the government in a few  seconds.  So laundry mats come in two varieties, ones where you purchase tokens to run the machine and ones where you use coins.  He token ones are easier to use in some ways; see rant.  Tokens do mean that you may have to buy too many tokens and you can't use them anywhere eles, but machines are easier to use.  Coin operated machines are fine until your government starts messing around with the coin weight.

Every year they have been changing one thing or another.  They change the bills so that the people don't get bored with the same bills year in year out.  The change one bill at a time, so that you can see the new bill and realize that the government is working for you, so that you money is not as boring as say American Money.  But every time they change a note the coin machines need to be recalibrated to accept the new bill. So this is an expense for coin machine operators, seamingly every year.  But they are not as big a hassle as coin changes.  

Coin operated machines have to be able to tell the difference between a metal slug and an actual coin.  They have to be able to determine the difference bettween a count that is looks nearly identical to another coin.  The Big Smoke Transit System had a token for their system years ago that worked fine for decades until Mexico began minting a coin made of the same material, of the same size and shape, so it wieght the same too.  The Token cost two dollars and the Mexican coin was valued at about a cent.  Problem for the transit system.  So that is a few of the problems.  

My government has now started messing around with the weights of the coins, telling tax payers that they are saving a few million dollars every time they punch out a trillion coins.  Then the coin machine operators have to then update all their machines to accept the new coin weight.  Then the next year they change the coin again and the the systems have to be alter again.  I just did laundry and I had five dollars worth of coins rejected from the machine, all of them were last year's coins.  The dovernment has been releasing new coins with colours on them and these special coins also get regularly rejected. 

I like new interesting coins, there is a bit of pride in having good looking money, it must be horrible for people with the same boring green money, but would you please make up your mind and stop changing the mass of e money.  I mean really that was half my coins that got rejected.