PLAYING THE RACE CARD

Well this Clinton victory tonight over Obama has to be the most pyric victories of all time. People like Randi Rhodes have been talking about "the math" since February. It's a little sickening that Hillary seems not to be repelled by people such as Rush Limbaugh. Even worse that Hillary should make statements that "she's appealing to the good white working-class people". And of course now there is this "block" of states Hillary had won or will win in that part of the country. Nothing Hillary has done in months seems to be in the interest of either the party or unifying this tired nation. It's a victory for racism and poverty and ignorance. These of course are the fruits of eight years of Republican adminestration most manifest in West Virginia. West Virginia is 48th. or 50th. in several key catigories involving income and education. It's pointed out that West Virginia is one of our most rural states and not near any big metropolitin areas even if you venture into neighboring states such as Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, or Virginia. West Virginia is only three percent Black and I doubt even that many voted. I imagine little of the state is connected up to the internet which means they have to rely on the right wing media for their information. I guess some right wing news outlet was interviewing voters and one democrat age 67 said he would vote for Mc Cain in the fall if Obama was the candidate. And a 24 year old said he wanted to vote for a "full blooded American" like Mc Cain over someone like Obama. There were roomers that Hillary would drop out of the race after West Virginia. There is not even any guarentee that she'll get out of the race eight days from now after Oregon and Kentucky. I guess if this race is a learning experiance for Obama it's to avoid states like West Virginia and Kentucky in the fall as hopeless bastions of prejudice and ignorance. Still it's nice to have a state like West Virginia where you can step into a time-warp and be transported back fifty years. Actually, a hundred years is more like it. You can expect to see 1908 in a lot of callendars there going back to an era where people called everyone else "cousin" and you had to ask the father for the daughter's hand in marriage and the two-step was the latest dance.

Fifty years ago none of us thought of ourselves as living in a "backward age". Indeed you had shows like Space Explorers on TV, which was a cartoon series about man going to Mars in 1978, twenty years hence, which at the time seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposition. The US government had gotten into the space race with Echo I or something. I think the Nautelus, the first nuclear powered submarine was launched in 1958. In 1959 the St. Laurance Seaway opened up and we were admitting new states and expanding our Frontiers as a nation. And also in 1959 Disneyland got its monorail. We weren't so backward; they had even just come out with stereo records, and the word "stereophonic" was on our lips. The democrats made huge gains in congress in the election of 1958. I think the democrats picked up 48 house seats or something which set up a lopsided majority that would go on for twenty years or more. The people were more progressive than the President and "liberal" was seen as an enlightened word in those days. Back then the John Birch society was considered far right. Today it's platform has pretty much become main stream for the right wing media. We thought of ourselves as a scientific nation. But of course in those days, and for decades to come the National Media was liberal. They were our conscience. And of course the Supreme Court was progressive in those days.

Today I guess the Christian Church has been reduced from political and social involvement, which proved too much for it to bear. (Christians don't like thinking too hard) Instead I suppose now the best thing they can do in the light of an earthquake in China, a Typhoon in Burma, and tornadoes in the midwest and South, is to pass out religious tracts saying Jesus is coming back in five years. People who get their purpose for life from belief in the Supernatural really get off on natural disasters. It gives them an opening. Sylvia Browne said almost a year ago that weather would be in the news. If you wait long enough anything is likely to come to pass. Even Browne is saying stuff like "We only have twenty years left". You know when it comes to space travel, we are living in a new Flat Earth era. From things I read and watch, we aren't going to accomplish squat in the next century or so. It will take us till 2020 to get back to the moon, and beyond 2030 for our first manned excoursion to Mars. And when (and if) we do, who is to say some nay sayers won't come along to scuttle the program after a few flights. It would seem that the medical profession is having much better luck with "inner space" than we are with outer space. Why is it that almost any government program runs BEHIND schedule. Why not have something actually get done AHEAD of schedule for once? That would blow all our minds. Remember it was Kennedy who said, "We are not going to the moon because it's Easy; on the contrary we are going there because it's Hard". You know that dolly that says "Math is hard" when you pull the string or whatever- - if it were easy you wouldn't be expanding your cognitive capacities. We as a people need to "enlarge our capacities". We need a more intellectual climate in this country. We need to make being a redneck newly Unfashionable. (Selah)

YOU MEAN - STAR TREK MIGHT
ACTUALLY BE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING?

You may remember that Next Generation episode where Beverly Crusher was trapped inside her own universe. She asked the computer a question she said "The computer should not be able to answer" , which was to state the size of the universe. When the computer actually Answered this question she knew "something was wrong". Well excuse me- - but there are certain deductions that can be made from Einstein's theory of relativity people haven't thought about. From simple cauculus computations one should quite easily be able to deduce the size of our universe. Let me explain. Back before I even knew him, Mark Campbell was saying things to people (like Pete Richards) that the Universe was like an air bubble floating inside a bottle of green Prell shampoo. I bet this dates back to 1977. Anyhow, the key is that it is a static bubble and not a growing one. People don't know it but according to the theory of relativity itself the speed of light slows down to a stop if you go far enough out. Let me prove it to you with a simple illustration. Suppose you're going 9/10th. the speed of light. If you want to do the Physics thing and square that number you come up with 81/100th. or roughly four fifths. Let's say that when you are nine tenths the speed of light that time slows down by four fifths. Let's also stipulate that space in that direction also shrinks by four fifths. Together you have not a compensating but a compounding effect or multiply five by five and get 25. So that in reality you are only going one /25th. the speed of light. Keep in mind that a keystone of Einsteins theory states that whatever speed you are you'll never see the speed of light vary. If you shrink time any significant ammount and space a similar ammount, pretty soon light has got to slow down. Least you think I'm talking out of my ass, I've seen things like if you go 2/3 the speed of light and send out a light beam going forward- - the result is measured in thirteenths or something. I think you take thirds and fourths and get not twelths but thirteenths is based on the same theory that if you see five X on one side and one X on the other- - you may well wind up before you're done measuring things in multiples of six. In like matter when you speak of a four to one ratio- - youre going to end up measuring things in fifths. Basically the Universe is analogus to a soap bubble with most of the "substance" on the surface (edge) and not in the center. For purposes of argument let's throw out my Ether theory, which makes a hell of a lot more sense to begin with but we'll do things Albert's way. Remember when we talked about accelerat-ING matter verses accelera-TED matter. Einstein himself said (like Newton) there is no absolute stationary point. If this is true then we have to go with accelerat-ING matter. Wherever you are in this bubble universe you can never reach the edge of it and go beyond to the "Sea of Green" as Mark Campbell originally said it was. You can use sheer calculus logic to show that you're talking about there being a fixed, stationary point "out there" you cannot go beyond. Matter and mass shrink into nothingness. But here is Einstein's "out". Nobody knows where the CENTER of this universe is and everyone who is NOT ACCELERATING at the moment believes he is IN the center of our Universe. So it can be said "Everyone has his own center". There is a center here and a center over there. No matter how "close" you think you are to the "Edge" of the universe there is still two down and Infinity to go. So according to Einstein not only is everything that happens in this universe determinate, or predestined- - but there is a fixed "Volume" the universe has with infinity as the edge. Again, simple calculus should be able to reveal this number. I don't know what it is. Perhaps we can get Max Brady on D. L. to help out.