Opposite of “Drill Baby Drill”

I’ve been reading and hearing folks cry about how the USA is not drilling and is importing too much oil. I understand the jobs aspect, certainly. But I have always had a contrarian thought about this topic and I never hear anyone bring this up: To the extent that we buy and import oil/gas/coal/fossil fuels, we are essentially “conserving” our own and burning that of other nations. By “own”, I mean, that which we can dig up inside our current political borders.

This is a complex issue and I don’t mean to simplify it to say good or bad, but think about it, if we burn every last crumb of what we have here, THEN we will have to import 100% of it and there will be no recourse. If we burn others’, we will end up relatively, with more and more. So, to me, so long as things are politically stable, AND we can economically swing it, buying and burning other countries’ oil/gas, makes our slice of the pie (that we politically control), bigger in the longrun.

Also realize that in some ways, even though we are gluttons and that is not a good thing, it is an astounding fact that 90% of ALL the oil burned on ALL SIDES in World War II, came from Texas.

The scary thing is that unless some drastically new technology (not the stupid battery cars) is developed/discovered, or some serious conservation happens, there WILL be a day of reckoning – out about 100 to 250 years, where modern society will cease to “work”, for lack of a better term, as energy becomes so expensive that things we take for granted, like food and transportation (of food) become prohibitively expensive. I would expect “resource-wars” before that, but you get the idea. I’m not taking a political position on this, either, just making the observation. It’s coming. Those reading this probably won’t have to worry about it, but our kids might; or their kids.

I giggle a little at the fracking issue. Trust me, when the price goes high enough, they’ll frack; everyone, including your auntie, will frack. They’ll frack and frack some more because of what the price will do. Thought experiment: imagine a stream in the woods and EVERYONE knows it’s full of gold nuggets but they’re told, “don’t take the gold out”. How long do you think that gold will sit there? Well, sure, it depends on the consequences, as it always does, but when the price of something goes high enough, people will risk even death, to get at it (and I am by no means equating fracking with death.  Not at all.  The same group that ignores such a basic things as the variability of the sun, is now campaigning against fracking).

And before you get upset at how we are blowing through our natural resources (we are, let’s face it), try and realize how many GOOD things have come out of that. That’s the part the “anti-” crowd never wants to imagine or talk about. All the inventions and medicines and knowledge and industry that using the energy has unleashed. Oh yes, it has. It’s real, but it’s harder to imagine, particularly for the simple folks, which is what makes it easy to demagogue. Most of one side’s positions are conveniently on the “easy” side of the ledger and the other side has the complex arguments to make–the uphill climb.

Anyway, to the extent that we burn others’, we bank our own. That was the original premise. Someday we may be glad we did. God help us then.

Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism Theory corroborated by a Near Death Experience?

Ok. Heavy one tonight. Hea-vy. I’ve been reading about NDE’s for 10 years or more. The most influential book I’ve ever read is Embraced by the Light, by Betty Eadie. I’ve read it easily 10 times and see new things every time.

I’m not trying to advocate about NDE’s and make you believe in them. I’m not even sure how much of it I believe. I find them fascinating. I like to consider them as if they were true–you know, “what if?”. I do believe that these folks have had profound experiences and I do NOT believe that many of them are capable of making these things up. But you have to understand that the things they are trying to convey with mere words, are really spectacular concepts and experiences. Words don’t have the ability to convey the full meaning. So, like with any text, there is a lot of wiggle room. And if you want to poo-poo it, it’s probably not hard to do.

I also read/have read a fair amount of Cosmology. I enjoy it. My science and math background is nothing special. College basically. But you can enjoy and understand and follow these concepts, even if you don’t understand the details; the equations and such. The big bang–redshifted galaxies, the microwave background radiation. I would even say I can appreciate relativity, thanks to some great books like “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”. Particle physics and quantum mechanics is where I get lost, but you can follow the broader scientific battles: String theory, dark matter, open or closed universe, cosmological constant (Einstein’s big fudge in his equations that if he’d thought about it, he’d have done all of Hubble’s work on paper! Without a telescope! Let’s face it, he was tired, I’m sure).

Anyway, while reading this kind of stuff, I think to myself that the scientists have pushed things so far, that they will eventually have to factor in things that might normally be considered philosophy or spirituality. I’m not saying I’m some smart guy who knows things–it’s just a passing thought, but one that recurs. It’s a hunch really. It’s based on nothing concrete.

Then you read a book called “Beyond the Darkness” by Angie Fenimore, and in her description of her conversation with God, during her Near Death Experience, she was told that good and evil are actual laws of the universe; actual physical laws. This is her claim. Should scientists be considering this? Hmm, maybe. And maybe they’re not there yet. But it’s coming.

Many, many of the NDE accounts talk about time having no place and absolutely no meaning in the spirit world. Theologians have long said that “God is outside of time”, and I believe there is Biblical stuff on that, but I don’t know where; only that I’ve heard it. These NDE folks mostly confirm that. And it’s just so goofy that you can’t consider it, but they say that “over there, there is only the present”.

Biocentrism also has ideas on time:

Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

This new theory, Biocentrism, by Robert Lanza, has the time issue as one of its tenets. So you see both sides; both disciplines, if you will, converging on several topics. And realize that this is all anecdotal on my part–I haven’t made any “study” of it.

Last night, I was reading an NDE on www.near-death.com, and I came across something very interesting. Reading Juliet Nightingale’s NDE, I came to this:

no matter how things may appear in this world of duality and illusion. It’s merely a hologram – created by the collective consciousness – for the sake of growth and evolution

Well that happens to be a core tenet of Mr. Lanza’s Biocentrism! She’s claimed to die and come back and stated very matter of factly that this is so, and it happens to tie out to a new TOE, or, Theory Of Everything.

Click here to read the NDE piece

Here is a link to Lanza’s Biocentrism for background:

Click here to read about Robert Lanza and Biocentrism

Here are points 3 and 4 of the 7 tenets spelled out on that page.

(3) The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

(4) Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

What that says is that if no one is there to observe matter, it is not actually there, but is just a series of probability waves. It COULD be any one of the points in the set, but it is NONE of them. It’s only a possibility, until a biological observer “observes”, then, it takes one concrete form and all the other probabilities/possibilities collapse. Poof. They’re gone.

Said in a nutshell: “life creates the universe, not the other way around”.

Ok, now look, I’m not claiming to “know” anything. I am not claiming that I’m some big intellectual or anything like that. I just like to read. I like to read these two kinds of books. I have seen the same thing discussed in these two totally separate areas, and I find it interesting. That’s all. It’s neat, for lack of a better term.

My only follow up thought is that I wonder if there are any real scientists actually considering that these NDE folks might be able to point them in an experimental direction? Is there any cross-pollination with regard to ideas? I would think that traditional scientists would totally distance themselves from the NDE’ers. It’s not science, right? It would be like listening to a palm reader down the block from the supercollider.

Also, are there any zealous NDE’ers trying to get face time with big scientists to discuss things they may feel that they have “learned” “over there”?

It’s interesting.

Addendum:

The book on Biocentrism is a good read. There’s a parallel with Einstein that I noticed. You think Einstein: Big breakthrough in science. Outrageously ahead of his time, right? You read “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”, or really any decent account of it, and they will note that Einstein formed General and Special Relativity because of one thing: The speed of light.

Scientists had been measuring the speed of light in the late 1800′s and felt their measures were reliable. (It boggles my mind how you can measure something that does 186,000 miles per SECOND, but they did). Only trouble was, the speed was the same no matter what the source and observer were doing! It makes no sense. If you throw a baseball at 40 mph off a train doing 40, mph, it will approach a stationary observer at 80mph, right? Well light ALWAYS went the same speed, and no one could fathom it.

Einstein’s big breakthrough, was that he was the only one to actually ACCEPT these experimental results and he said, “…what if?” He looked at what the ramifications would be if this were true. Other scientists just blew it off–they didn’t believe the data. Their own prejudices stopped them from working the problem–but not our man AE.

The parallel to me, with Biocentrism, is that much of the theory is based on the double slit experiment. There is no sensible way to account for the behavior of a particle to be totally different, based ONLY on whether or not someone looks at it, but time and time again, you can reproduce this just GOOFY experimental result.

I’d like to think that Lanza was the first guy to take this result seriously and say, “…yes, we DO understand it to be this way and so where does that lead?”

So the double slit experiment, unexplainable since it was discovered 70 years ago or so I think, the double slit experiment is analagous to the constancy of the speed of light. It’s an idea no scientist wanted to tackle, because the result makes no sense, as we define sense.

You know what else doesn’t make sense? Why do managers continue to sacrifice bunt, when computer models show that it is almost always dumb to do so? Einstein and Lanza would not continue to bunt facing that data. –fog

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Rusty can do stuff too, you know

This story was emailed to me and some had heard of it, so it obviously made the rounds recently. It concerns a cat in a nursing home that sits with patients who will expire within 4 hours. The accuracy of the cat is stunning. The question is, why?

Overstimulation

I really like the Clarinet (Bassinet) that Mrs. Pinetar bought (or was given) for the Tomster. It has these little controls on the side and it will play a little music (something they played at our wedding but I didn’t know that-was told) and it has a little “activity center” for Tommy’s “activity time”.

Anyway, it has these bears that hang on a little dry-cleaning rack and you press a button and the bears spin around over Tommy.

But you have to swing it into position first.

 So I’m admiring the thing and we put him down and I swing the thing into position and Mrs. Pinetar says, “…Wait! You can’t do that yet.”

“Why?”, I say.

“You’ll overstimulate him. It’s too much for him”, She replied.

“Oh”, I said.

How cute is it, that the three little flying stuffed bears will overstimulate him?

***

This clarinet has one other thing that I really, really love. The vibration button. You can even adjust the frequency (although not as low as I would like, but I’ll take it). It is like Tommy is at the belly of a big cat that is purring. It’s very soothing and pacifying.

There is some newer research that indicates that the vibrations that cats produce is very, very healing and beneficial to the cats themselves. They actually have been shown to HEAL faster from wounds for purring. This is verifiable data, not the global warming hooey that you see on CNN.

I went through a phase a few years ago where I read anything I could get my hands on re ‘after death experiences’ or, NDE (Near Death Experiences). They have gone on for all history but are more prevalent now due to advancing medical technology (the same amazing medical discovery and technology that Al Gore and Hillary say isn’t fair and needs to be curtailed by government intervention). What’s even more true today is that with medical tech being what it is, people are simply more inclined to entertain the POSSIBILITY that these folks come by some information that they really don’t or shouldn’t have access to, if you discount the “experience”.

The books are fascinating reading and they make you think plenty, especially about some of our downright silly religious customs and institutionalized hokum. The book, “Embraced by the Light” by Betty J. Eadie, is by far, the best book I’ve ever read in my life. I’ve read it over 10 times and it has influenced me far more than any other book, no question. There is a bookend book to it that is also amazing: “Beyond the Darkness” by Angie Fenimore. They compliment each other and should be read together, and read in the order listed. They are quite different so don’t assume…

Anyway, in the dozens of books I’ve read on this topic, one of the things that strikes you about these experiences is their diversity. All are different and highly personal. However, there are still many similarities. One is that many of these folks report on the “music” or “vibrations” that run through and permeate EVERYTHING on the spiritual side. Everything vibrates and resonates and all things are in vibrational/musical harmony “over there”. In this other dimension, these vibrations are described as “healing” and “loving” and “containing great intelligence”.

It is interesting that we are finding out that cats’ purring heals wounds. I predict that in the future, more money and effort will be spent looking into the effect of vibrations on living tissue. I don’t think enough is being done but the vibration gizmo on the clarinet is a good start.

***

We had Tommy outside a lot yesterday and like rookie parents, got him a little too warm in his fleece swaddling blanket. But on day 4, the jaundice is at maximun, so I insisted that we get him some light (indirect) to break down that bad old Billy Rueben. I also decided it was time to fly the Bunker Hill flag. You don’t see many outside of New England.

And this morning he was opening his eyes more than usual. I used a no-flash setting and it was dark so don’t worry about his color there. He is looking great. It’s just hard to get him to open the eyes. A lot of the time, he just opens one eye. It’s funny to see him fall off the feeding spout and then get mad. Unfortunately, it’s a family trait to quickly get pretty mad at something very simple in the scheme of things. Oh well.

We are baptizing him at about 1 month. This shocked the church down the street. They grilled my wife about it. That’s how it was done in the old days (25 years ago and before) but now it is wigging them out. Almost any time I have “official dealings” of any sort with a member of the church, I walk away shaking my head. I’m trying.

Since Mrs. Pinetar may not be able to make the baptism class, I will have to go alone. I told Mrs. Pinetar, “…wait until they get a load of me…”

And she basically said, “Don’t get excommunicated again!”

And that would be the second time this year! The odds on excommunication are currently running about 7-1. We’ll see.

***

For the record, Julio Franco is now 1 for 12 with the Atlanta Braves. I’ll say it again: Somewhere out there, there is a golf-course missing a guy. –fog

The Tommy Show! Starring: Tommy!

 

Here we are going to the hospital at about 2:30am. She had the breakage at 12:30am and there was some discussion as to whether we could sleep on it and then go, or head in. The phone call quickly cleared that up: We had to go in. Once that happens, they want the show on the road. We were calm enough to drag our feet over and hour and take this photo on the way out the door. I wore my Nixon Library shirt for luck. Mrs. Pinetar is feeling good and not having any contractions and is quite calm.

This is right after Tommy is cleaned up and Mrs. Pinetar as well. She’s probably had him on her for all of a minute and a half at this point. He was born at 3pm and right here it’s about 3:10pm. We are both really not believing what a neat little guy we’re holding here. What a privilege!

For the record, we checked in at 3:00am and at 7am, they had induced her somewhat with a drug so traditional labor was marked at 7am. Pushing began at 1:25pm and the winning run was plated at 3:00pm on the button.

And here’s the man that causes all the trouble, Tommy. This was taken a day later when he’s about 22 hours old (kind of like El Duque).

Also at 22 hours and below, Mom and Tom, at 22 hours.

Below is one of the few, specific hopes that I had for my little guy, besides just overall health. In the photo here, you can see that Mrs. Pinetar has really long hands and fingers. I have little, stuby, Fred Flintstone fingers. If I had a boy, I was hoping that he would get “the hands”, so that if he ever pitched a baseball, he’d have a chance to throw a nice overhand slider or split fingered fastball, pitches that I can only dream of with my little fingers.

Anyway, check this out:

Nice and long! So I’d say, he has “the hands”.

But there will be no undue pressure on him to do anything. If he wants to be a Curling star, then we’ll be up early and out at the rink. I’m just happy to have him around. We’re both thrilled and feel very blessed and lucky to have had such a smooth ride and people have been very nice to us all the way through. We thank God. Take that, ACLU! –fog

Just for the record, here’s the old man, tearing up the sheet at the Jaques Cartier Curling Club in Quebec City, Quebec.  Oui.

Tommy 8 Lbs 10.5 oz 22 inches

Well, he’s here! What a nice surprise. Water broke at 12.30 am, and we got down there at 3:00 am and missed the flooding that came later. Labor started or was induced at 7:00 am and the little guy was out at 3:00 pm. Mrs. Pinetar is fine. The boy looks great! He seems to be long–long legs, long torso. He looks a bit like the Mr. Pinetar side of the family. I am typing on the eyboard in the hospital room so it isn’t easy. Thanks to everyone for helping and sending the good prayers over as they certainly seemed to have worked.

 

Nick: I can’t change my lineup from here. Just tried. Make sure you get Helton in there at 1st. Eithier, if he’s playing. Victorino is hot (2 Triples!). Ibanez, only if he matches up. Pitching is hard as Max threw Sheilds and Hallady and got nice retunrs on that. Jerred Weaver is hottest for me now, if you can believe that. Harrang should go. Oswalt, only really at home but you know about his problems. Thanks.

 

Now as to Cincinatti Bill’s comments that having the Yanks’ gluttonous payroll is good for baseball, I totally, totally disagree! Wrong on so many levels! You’re basically saying that the leagues should be rigged with the Yankees sitting at the top as the best business model. Oy. The height of Yankee arrogance…Bill, I love ya but I gotta disagree here…

Tommy’s weigh-in. There’s the 8 10.5 in digital readout. We’ve come a long way from his great grandmother having his grandpa in a house in Wortendyke. He’s just lucky we didn’t give him the old family Swiss name: Balz, short for Balthalsar, which is quite Biblical.

I like the Biblical tie in to the “doubting” apostle, Thomas. I don’t see Thomas’ doubt as a negative, but rather as a positive. He WANTED to believe. He wasn’t going to be lazy about it. He had data points right in front of him and he took advantage of them. He WANTED to believe enough to investigate the thing himself. I see nothing wrong with that (in fact I like it) as I will teach this boy to ALWAYS THINK and to INVESTIGATE and to LEARN, and to question why we do things the way we do them. Apostle Thomas represents a whole group of people by allegory: People that learn and internalize ideas very deliberately. But once learned, they stay learned. In American history, we have the “Thomas” allegory in the people from Missouri, the “show me” state. It’s an old idea.

And after posting this and showering so I can go back to the hospital, a few more things occurred to me. Apostle Thomas, gets a bad rap. People tend to see things negatively and in his moment in The Gospel, Christ uses his boots-on-the-ground, investigativeness to COMPLIMENT another group, by allegory. That is the group that can plug right into an idea without any physical, experimental evidence. THEY are being praised in the “Thomas” moment, and NOT, that Thomas is being chastised. And here’s the “media-bias” in this one: It’s never mentioned in the “report” that inherent in the whole story is that Thomas walked away from his profession and his possessions to follow Christ 3 years before the “Thomas” moment.

Faith, anybody? –fog

Thanks to Pat for helping me understand that point in a discussion several months ago.

Cheny is Evil. The Taliban? Misunderstood.

I got to talking politics a little with the woman next to me at work. Somehow it came up where she repeated the oft-chanted, Democratic/Liberal-talking-point, “Cheney is evil”. Now this woman is older (50′s) and is pretty darned smart, so when I heard the talking point come out of her, verbatim, I was fascinated. I asked her if she was joking. “No”, she said she was serious, and kept repeating that “he is just evil”. I said, “well, what has he done that is evil? Can you give me some examples?”

Virginia Tech Shooting-Look Harder

There are no words.  There are no words today regarding the completely random deaths of 32 people (I refuse to count the shooter). Mrs. Pinetar and I ask that, no matter your denomination, everyone take quiet moment and say a prayer for the families and people left behind dealing with the loss and trying to make sense of the senseless. Prayer works. Prayer is powerful. Get busy. Believe. NOTHING in this world happens for NO reason. EVERYTHING EVERYONE DOES, SAYS or THINKS, affects EVERYONE else in the world (but that’s a post for another day).

My hope for this now runs to how the media handles it and the inevitable political ramifications. I was very annoyed in 1999 when Time Magazine (a horrendously biased, left wing publication that I wouldn’t paper my birdcage with) put the two Columbine shooters on the COVER and named them (of course). In this case, I hope that the country adopts a policy of NOT naming the shooters or giving them any (in)fame or notoriety in ANY WAY. Let’s let the unbalanced copycat-wannabe’s know clearly and totally, that they will gain no measure of immortality whatsoever.

I’m tired of watching these romanticized sendups on the History Channel on Jesse James and the Dalton Gang etc. These people were murdering scumbags who destroyed lives. WHY do we worship these people? The Godfather? Same thing. The Sopranos? Same thing. So let’s let this little **** shooter be an anonymous, faceless, failed mole. Let’s discuss (in order to learn from) the CONCEPTS of what happened without giving any reinforcement to the bad guys.

And people, this the internet age. If you read stuff that you don’t like, EMAIL the perps. Email them and tell them you don’t want to see it/hear it/read about it and you don’t want your kids to, either. An email takes a minute.

****

Politically, I suppose some with try to place blame. Heck, they tried to (and mostly succeeded) blame BUSH for KATRINA, so I could, and will, believe just about any horsepoop blame-chain. The Gun-Lobby? That’s too easy. The real prize is how can Bush-Cheney-Rove be blamed in SOME way, shape or form. Time will tell.

That stuff is generic background noise, however, and it will go on endlessly (and unfortunately, the less sophisticated and more ideologically entrenched type, will buy-in 100%) . My beef will be with the millions and millions of dollars of tax money that will now be spent, going forward, in the name of preventing these things and/or “protecting the children”. Lockdown drills, communication and awareness for professionals like my wife (who teaches) are fine, but I’m afraid of sweeping, monolithic government bureaucracy “fixes”, that institute expensive regulations and the like, in order that a politician can announce to moms everywhere: “we’re on it”.

Oh, it will happen. But they’re not “on” anything. Mostly, in our wonderfully free society, NOTHING can stop a determined and suicidal guy from bringing a couple of clips and pistols into a crowded venue and having an unfettered 10 minutes to do his thing. It could be a mall, a ballgame, a bowling alley and parade—just about anywhere.

I’m not saying we don’t try to get better at prevention and dealing with these things, I’m just hoping that the response is REASONABLE (I love that word) and not hysterical and most of all, NOT political pandering, which is how most wasteful government buracracy gets launched in the first place.

Last thought: I heard a bunch of psychologists on the talk shows babbling on endlessly in psych-gobbledygook about “socialization” and “norms” and ” how kids relate to authority” and you know what? That’s a crock of dump.

What is the reason that the first modern, rampage shooter started shooting, the week I was born, on a Texas campus in 1966, and the reason that they are increasing? It’s the lifelong barrage of violence that people see on TV, the movies and in video games combined with the deterioration of Family Values and In-Tact Families. The correlation is uncanny and entire books have been written on the subject but you won’t hear about it on CNN or in the New York Times in the next few days because it is not part of their “political agenda”. These concepts are too “Rightwing” for them to be lent any credence. These and other liberal media outlets are heavily activist and if some evidence contradicts their agenda, you will not hear or read about it. Look harder. –fog

The truth? Straight up.

The recent rudeness and weirdness resulting from what I thought were some pretty harmless suggestions and observations that are my personal observations BTW, has rankled some folks. And realize that I get emails, pro and con, that don’t get printed on the Pinetar Rag necessarily.

I thought that the most recent and most rude comments were actually exactly what I was looking for but could not demonstrate myself. The complete inability for many/most to even discuss certain things. It’s not healthy and, oh, by the way, that’s my opinion, and it’s not negotiable.

While discussing the judgementalness that we all saw plainly, it was mentioned to me that those that accused others of “cafeteria Catholicism”, probably use/have used birth control themselves. I told this person that “sure, I knew that, but I was actually looking to take the high road on that and not go there and also that once things get heated, I don’t trust people to be honest. So I didn’t mention it. But it is a fair point.”

By the way, what follows is rhetorical–that means I DON’T want to hear about what you do/don’t do/used to do:

If you are using and / or have used and enjoyed the effects of birth control (because even if you did it 10 years ago, you are still experiencing the effects, because you don’t have that child now), then you too, are a “cafeteria Catholic”. I figured that most people understood intrinsically that everyone is some fraction, a “cafeteria-er” (because beliefs can not be PUT ON you; they have to come FROM WITHIN you), and if they can’t admit that, then I’d like to point that out for them now, because frankly, I’m mad at some of the crap that I have been hearing and that my wife has been hearing (which makes me madder still).

And yes, I’ve seen close up in life how denial is a powerful thing and how some people can ignore the most basic things. Is it possible to cast the first stone and hit yourself in the head with it? Sure. Just throw it straight up. –fog